Geopolitical Business Communications
Happy Wednesday.
Here’s today’s ITK Daily.
To be ITK, know this:
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ITK Summer School session: Communications
Decisions made in Beijing now influence actions in Brussels, which then compel policy in Washington, DC.
Managing this dynamic, geopolitical business communications environment is challenging for government officials, policymakers, voters, and CEOs of multinational companies.
So.
Next up.
ITK Summer School session: Communications: How the Media, Journalists, Bloggers, and Social Media Cover Globalization.
Next Tuesday - July 25, 2023, @ 9:00 am (NYC).
Online live or on-demand.
45 minutes.
Class is in session.
Book your spot here: https://www.caracal.global/store/itk-summer-school-communications
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The man charged with steering the yuan through China’s economic turmoil: Pan Gongsheng has experience in high-stakes tasks, but China’s fragile economy raises new risks. WSJ
+ Pan Gongsheng is set to take the reins at the People’s Bank of China as it confronts an urgent challenge: whether and how to defend the Chinese yuan.
+ Some foreign investors since then have dubbed China “Hotel California,” where investors can check out but never leave. Still, Pan was praised by foreign investors for seeking them out to explain the central-bank’s policy.
+ “Pan’s elevation is a choice of policy continuity and technocratic know-how, which in the context of China’s economic challenges and political dynamics should be considered reassuring,” said Michael Hirson, head of China Research at New York-based consulting firm 22V Research and a former US Treasury officer.
The old approach to US-China relations no longer works: A new architecture of engagement, based on a Sino-American secretariat, is urgently needed. Stephen Roach
+ US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen’s recent trip to Beijing was the economic policymaker’s carbon copy of Antony Blinken’s earlier diplomatic mission — plenty of talk but no meaningful conflict resolution.
+ I am in favour of the establishment of a US-China secretariat as the centrepiece of a new architecture of Sino-American engagement — a permanent organisation, staffed by equal complements of US and Chinese professionals, located in a neutral jurisdiction with a broad remit for policy development, troubleshooting and conflict resolution.
+ Stuck in the past, diplomats are now celebrating the thaw after a big freeze. While, for the time being, the escalation of tensions is on a tenuous hold, it is urgent that both superpowers seize the moment and push for an entirely new approach to conflict resolution — before it is too late.
What drives Putin and Xi (Part 1): A conversation with Stephen Kotkin and Orville Schell. Foreign Affairs
AP: US deploys nuclear-armed submarine to South Korea in show of force against North Korea
US soldier held in North Korea after crossing border: WSJ reports an American man on a tour of the South Korean side of the Joint Security Area crossed over the military demarcation line without permission, the U.N. Command said.
North Korea detains US soldier who ran across DMZ: NYT reports the soldier had recently been released from a South Korean prison, an official said. He was to return to Texas for additional disciplinary actions.
South Korea moves forward on reactor construction plans: Nikkei reports the nation needs to think about new nuclear plants, says energy minister.
Japan PM rounds out energy-focused Gulf tour with Qatar visit: AFP reports Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited gas-rich Qatar on Tuesday to wrap up a Gulf tour centered on energy security and cooperation with Tokyo's main suppliers.
US pushes military cooperation in space: Conflict in Ukraine has made it clear that space is fundamental to modern war, says chief of space operations. WSJ
+ The US military wants allies to train and plan together for space operations, in the same way that they already do in ground, air and naval combat, Gen. Chance Saltzman, chief of space operations, said in an interview.
+ There is already some military coordination in space, including shared satellite launches and NATO space centers in Germany and France. But Saltzman said he thinks that cooperation so far has been nascent and needs to go further.
+ “Quantity is a quality in itself,” he said, using an expression often employed in the military. For example, the satellites of a large coalition would be harder to target than those of one nation, he added.
+ Saltzman, who was talking at a recent visit to the Royal International Air Tattoo, an air show outside of London, said he is impressed by space expertise in the UK, Australia, Canada, France and other allies. While these countries’ budgets aren’t as big as the US’s, their “strategic thinking” on space has been valuable, he said.
WP: Ukraine aims to sap Russia’s defenses, as US urges a decisive breakthrough
Politico: EU plans €20B fund to stock Ukraine’s military for years
Russian deserters keep fleeing abroad: The number of Russian deserters is rising. Thousands of men continue escaping the country, desperate to avoid military service. DW
+ Scores of Russians are applying for refugee status in Kazakhstan.
A current war collides with the past: How World War II endures in Ukraine: World War II has been an ideological battlefield in today’s war in Ukraine, and it is cropping up on the actual battlefield as well. NYT
+ World War II has been an ideological battlefield in today’s war in Ukraine, with Russia falsely calling Kyiv’s government neofascist and citing that as the rationale for its invasion. The country’s military history is cropping up on the actual battlefield as well, not just with artifacts in the soil but in the lessons Ukraine has learned from a war fought long ago.
+ Indeed, key battles have coincided so closely with the sites of World War II fighting, the Ukrainian military says, that soldiers have found themselves taking cover in 80-year-old concrete bunkers outside Kyiv.
+ They have discovered the bones of German soldiers and Nazi bullet casings in the dirt they removed from trenches in the south.
+ World War II reached what is now Ukraine in 1939 with a Soviet invasion into territory then controlled by Poland in western Ukraine, at a time when the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were in a military alliance. When that pact broke down in 1941, Germany attacked Ukraine from west to east.
+ Strategically, he said, Ukraine’s generals most directly drew on World War II history in devising a defense of the capital, Kyiv, last year.
+ In other ways, too, the fighting is distinct. The Nazi and Soviet armies fought across Ukraine moving perpendicular to the north-to-south flow of the main rivers. Ukraine in the counteroffensive is mostly moving parallel to the rivers, providing at least one military advantage; it does not have to undertake many perilous water crossings.
G20 meeting in India split on debt relief and Ukraine: DW reports finance ministers from the Group of 20 major economies met to discuss a raft of issues, including debt restructuring deals for low-income nations and the effect of Russia's grain deal pullout on developing economies.
From Khrushchev’s KGB to Putin: The deep roots of Russian influence in Africa: When Russian President Vladimir Putin develops his network of influence in Africa, he isn’t doing so at random. He is drawing on the rich history of Soviet relations with African countries that dates back to the 1960s and the efforts made by Russian spies during the Cold War to counter US influence on the ground. AFP
Nikkei: Turkey's Baykar signs largest drone deal with Saudi Arabia
France and Italy send firefighting planes to Greece: Le Monde reports the planes and their teams of firefighters are part of a European Union civil protection mechanism, and they will join some 30 Romanian firefighters already stationed in the country.
Macron skeptical about hire of American economist to regulate Big Tech: The French President said he was expecting an explanation of the appointment from the European Commission. Le Monde
+ Macron said he had respect for Yale University professor Fiona Scott Morton's academic record but questioned whether no EU citizen was qualified for such a strategic position.
+ Scott Morton, 56, was appointed chief competition economist at the European Commission on July 11. She will be the first United States national and woman to take the job.
+ Along with professorships at Yale and Edinburgh and a post in former US president Barack Obama's administration, she has worked as a consultant for Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon.
Tony Blair’s Labour rehabilitation continues as he shares stage with Keir Starmer: Current Labour leader tells the party’s last election-winner he will keep making ‘tough decisions’ amid a row over welfare. Politico
+ Tony Blair is in fashion again.
+ Starmer — whose five “missions” for government echo Blair’s own five promises to voters from his first term — said it was “impossible to list all the challenges” his administration might face.
+ Labour leader saying a cost of living crisis, climate change, an aging society, artificial intelligence, “the mess of the last 13 years,” a “botched” Brexit deal, a “mortgage bombshell,” infrastructure “starved of investment,” underfunded public services and “stagnant” productivity all needed sorting.
Populism has given the elites more power than ever: The rise of protectionism empowers a ‘deep state’ that demagogues claim to hate. Janan Ganesh
+ To this day, the adjective “Napoleonic” describes something centralized and perhaps officious, not something martial.
+ Prepare for a Napoleonic world, then. The most important governmental trend today is the rise of protectionism.
+ In the US, Europe, China and India, the state is turning from open trade to the cultivation of domestic industries.
+ One justification is strategic: don’t count on frail or hostile regimes for essential goods. Another is progressive: give skilled manual labour a break for once. Both trace back to the election-winning arguments of Donald Trump in 2016.
+ The contradiction is most obvious on the US right.
+ Trump apparatchiks dream of taming the deep state if their man gets to govern again. So-called Schedule F appointments would make it easier to fire civil servants.
+ At the same time, the Trump world demands more industrial strategy.
+ At some point, demagogues will have to choose which they hate more: free trade or the blob.
+ The right could never follow its antitrade logic to its natural conclusion, which is the aggrandisement of officialdom. Trump managed to fall out with the national security state, of all things.
+ The idea that he could abide a US version of Japan’s former, and lordly, Ministry of International Trade and Industry, is fanciful.
+ I fear, though cannot know, that we are living through the biggest wrong turn in government policy of my lifetime.
+ Imagine being told in 2016 that elites would have more clout, not less, and owe it to their own tormentors.
AP: Trump and his legal woes overshadow DeSantis as he rolls out military policy plan in South Carolina
Six candidates have qualified for the Republican debate: Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Chris Christie, and Tim Scott have met the Republican National Committee’s polling and fundraising thresholds to earn invitations to the first GOP presidential primary debate next month, Politico reports.
AP: House Republicans propose planting a trillion trees as they move away from climate change denial
Disney's 100th year is anything but magical so far:
- 7,000 job cuts
- Linear TV assets up for sale
- Theme park traffic slowest in a decade
- Streaming losses of ~$800 million in Q3
- Shares closed at lowest level this year on Monday
HT @MorningBrew
Microsoft to charge $30 per month for generative AI features: FT reports the tech giant’s chief Satya Nadella defends premium price for a new version of office software.
Taco John’s, Taco Bell terminate ‘Taco Tuesday’ trademark tussle: WSJ reports the restaurant chain Taco John’s said it is giving up its fight defending its trademark of the phrase.
Why United Airlines’ huge bet on Newark airport is not paying off: US carrier has gone all-in on New Jersey hub that suffered storm-related meltdown this summer. FT
+ On a good day, passengers flying into Newark airport in New Jersey can catch a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty. On a bad day they have to sleep on the floor.
+ No company’s fortunes are more entwined with the airport than United Airlines, which accounts for 57 per cent of passengers.
+ New York’s airspace is among the world’s most congested, and air traffic control services operating under the jurisdiction of the US Federal Aviation Administration in the region are staffed at 54 per cent of the agency’s target.
+ Newark has 40 departures scheduled per hour, a figure that was reduced by up to 75 per cent between June 25 and June 27, Kirby said in the memo.
+ “Airlines, including United, simply aren’t designed to have their largest hub have its capacity severely limited for four straight days,” Kirby said in the memo. “The reality is that [Newark] can’t function under thunderstorm conditions unless there are departure routes to the west.”
How London first gentrified, then became bourgeois: Gentrification has made the entire inner ring around the center of the British capital unaffordable. Le Monde
+ After being popular, then gentrified, the East End is becoming simply bourgeois. On average, a house in the neighborhood sold for £80,000 in 1995, which has increased to £1.1 million today. That's an increase of 1,200% in almost three decades. Over the same period, inflation has been just 100%.
Why ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ still matters at 50, and not just to dads: Pink Floyd’s masterpiece maintains a cross-generational appeal that has made it among the best-selling albums of all time. WP
+ “Dark Side” represented the culmination of the group’s struggle to extricate itself from the long shadow of original leader Syd Barrett, the textbook case of a 1960s rocker who went the chemical distance and never returned.
In the 90s, we worried about Nirvana ‘selling out’. I wish that concept still made sense: Big data has helped the music industry sell us only what we already like – but the results are less alive and less surprising. Dan Brooks
+ Those of us who survived 90s culture will remember that it was intensely conscious of the value of being different.
+ That “be different” was primarily a marketing pitch – literally, in the case of Apple computers – was somehow not evident to us until years later, or evident at the time but explained away by the idea that consumer culture was “co-opting” authentic youth values rather than manufacturing them.
+ Selling music was a less exact science, so there were more surprises.
+ And there is something wrong with popular culture in the 21st century, isn’t there? You don’t have to be a middle-aged punk to think that it feels less surprising and alive than it once did.
+ The entertainment industry in general and music industry in particular have become exceptionally good at selling the maximum number of units, but selling units is not what music is for.
+ And there is something wrong with popular culture in the 21st century, isn’t there? You don’t have to be a middle-aged punk to think that it feels less surprising and alive than it once did.
+ Perhaps what is missing from popular culture in the 21st century is sufficient contempt for those who give us what we asked for already.
Oppenheimer review: Christopher Nolan's break down of an atomic genius: For his 12th feature film, the British-American director focuses on three periods throughout the life of the creator of the atomic bomb, a complex figure who combined idealism and opportunism. Le Monde
Saw an advanced screening of Oppenheimer last night.
Political.
Powerful.
Romantic.
Controversial.
Thought-provoking.
+ The film plays out like a series of Russian dolls, shedding a light on the creeping confusion
+ As Nolan's film concludes, we still don't fully know who Robert Oppenheimer was.
+ This is probably appropriate given the complexity of the character, both an idealist and opportunist, full of contradictions and weaknesses, torn between remorse for his terrible invention and the conviction that he had saved lives by ending the war.
+ The anacolutha of Nolan's writing, the space-time shocks, the fascinating search for the point of entropy, and the struggle of beings in the whirlwind of the elements that surround them always prevail in his films over the question of incarnation or the political point of view, as if he were the Oppenheimer of cinema itself.
Vingegaard pulverizes Pogacar in Tour de France Alpine time-trial: AFP reports Jonas Vingegaard soared to a crushing triumph on stage 16 of the Tour de France on Tuesday, winning the 22.4km time trial by 1min 38sec from Tadej Pogacar, who was second.
The US wants a Women’s World Cup three-peat. The world has different ideas. The US hopes to extend its dynasty in the 2023 tournament that begins this week. But its young, injury-riddled squad faces tougher competition from European powers. WSJ
+ Since July 17, 2011, the United Kingdom has seen five prime ministers. The US has had three presidents. The world has gone through a global pandemic. And the US women’s soccer team hasn’t lost a single knockout game in a World Cup.
+ The U.S., meanwhile, was already facing a generational transition on its roster when a rash of injuries left it with a squad with even less experience in international play. Only nine of 23 players on the roster played in the last World Cup.
An ACL crisis at a moment of global growth for women’s sports: “The quintessential ACL-busting cohort is in female soccer players,” said Andrew Pearle, chief of the Sports Medicine Institute at the Hospital for Special Surgery. WP
+ Studies show female athletes are two to eight times as likely as male athletes to tear an ACL, one of the bands of tissue that connect the femur and tibia at the knee.
+ Since 2021, at least 87 players from eight of the world’s top women’s soccer leagues have torn their ACLs.
+ Addressing it, many in the sport say, requires a zoomed-out approach that begins at soccer’s lowest levels and peels back all the layers of a gendered problem, from the physiological to the environmental.
+ Biology offered some insight. In women, the intercondylar notch, the area in the femur where the ACL sits, is narrower; additionally, women’s pelvises are wider, creating a higher angle between the hips and knees that can put greater stress on the quadriceps and the ACL.
+ Female athletes tend to land flat-footed with knees inward on jumps and have more strength in the quads rather than the hamstrings.
+ Many experts agree neuromuscular training is essential to mitigating the risk of ACL injury. Regular preventive exercise programs have been shown to work in reducing the incidence of this injury by roughly 50 percent.
+ Studies have shown that female soccer teams often engage in fewer strength and conditioning sessions than men’s teams. Girls and women participate in strength-building resistance training at less frequent rates than boys and men. Societal expectations and assumptions of femininity and muscularity could play a role.
+ In 2006, FIFA developed the 11-Plus, a set of 15 warmup exercises that has been adapted by teams and federations around the world; the Hospital for Special Surgery developed an app that condenses essential exercises into seven-minute sessions. But implementation remains a challenge, particularly at the youth levels.
49ers Enterprises completes Leeds United takeover: The Athletic reports Leeds United are under new ownership after the English Football League (EFL) approved the sale of the club to 49ers Enterprises. 49ers Enterprises taking full control of Leeds brings to an end Andrea Radrizzani’s time at Elland Road, where he has been the majority shareholder since 2017.
Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.
-Marc
Marc A. Ross | Chief Communications Strategist @ Caracal
Caracal produces ITK Daily.
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