Russian hackers are still rummaging through global computer networks despite headline-grabbing Russian and Chinese attacks over the past several months that should have prompted corporations to tighten security and the White House to take more pointed and forceful action. Sure, some companies have said they want to communicate better about digital breaches and the Biden administration slapped some mild sanctions on Russia last spring. Russia’s response to this tepid pushback? Merriment, i

Viewpoints Oct. 28, 2021

Plans to survey chipmakers and keep tabs on the supply chain to head off further disruption highlight just how disconnected the US government is from the realities of a $500 billion industry that spans the globe. Instead, American diplomats would do well to work with allies to build an integrated real-time database that will last well beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. A request last month by Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo for semiconductor companies to detail their sales, products, technology and

Viewpoints Oct. 18, 2021

By going officially and formally rogue, Poland may unwittingly have done the European Union a favor. In blatantly challenging the bloc’s legal authority, Warsaw is forcing the EU to decide whether it wants to become the “ever closer union” it claims to be, or to remain the malleable club of nations it actually is. Union or club -- either way the EU will have to make fundamental changes if it intends to survive in the long run. Last week’s judgment in Warsaw was the judic

Viewpoints Oct. 15, 2021

If you want to know why nearly 40 million leaked documents on the salting away of assets in offshore financial centers have failed to result in comprehensive change since the revelations started eight years ago, Billie Holiday provides a clue: “Them that‘s got shall get; them that’s not shall lose. So the Bible said, and it still is news.” The latest set of leaks to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is the largest yet. After sifting the data, medi

Viewpoints Oct. 7, 2021

Is the specter of communism haunting Russia again? Not since the election of 1996, the only post-Soviet presidential race in Russia to result in a runoff, has the country’s Communist Party seemed like a real threat. In more than two decades since Vladimir Putin first took the helm, it has played the role of pliant opposition, helping the Kremlin to maintain a facade of democratic choice. The future looks less predictable. Gennady Zyuganov, the 77-year-old former Soviet ideologue who unsuc

Viewpoints Oct. 6, 2021

Indonesia’s tourist spot Bali will start allowing direct arrivals from China, Japan and South Korea as a receding Covid-19 outbreak lets the country ease restrictions further. Foreign visitors from New Zealand, Qatar and United Arab Emirates can also enter the country through the island’s Ngurah Rai International Airport starting from Oct. 14, said Luhut Panjaitan, coordinating minister for investment and maritime affairs who’s overseeing the pandemic response. Only Jakarta an

Social Affairs Oct. 4, 2021

SoftBank Group Corp. sold about $1.69 billion worth of its stake in Coupang Inc., the South Korean e-commerce giant whose stock surged and then tumbled after its initial public offering in March. SoftBank sold 57 million shares at $29.685 on Sept. 14, the company said in a statement to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Japanese company is still Coupang’s largest shareholder. Masayoshi Son has stepped up sales of stakes in his portfolio of public companies in recent months

World Business Sept. 17, 2021

In the days before COVID-19, I’d often get frustrated by the response that doctors would give when I turned up at their clinics with some infection or other: “It’s just a virus,” they’d say. As someone who’s long been fascinated by the detective work that goes into tracing the origins and history of infections, the answer always seemed too perfunctory. Which virus was it? Where and when did this strain emerge? How many other people were getting infected wit

Viewpoints Sept. 17, 2021

Most of the talk this year about the labor market recovery has focused on leisure and hospitality, and the struggles that restaurant and hotel owners have had trying to staff up. Under the radar, it’s a different industry -- manufacturing – that’s having even more difficulty finding the workers it needs. And that’s what this week’s job openings report hammered home. Despite its reputation for high wages, the manufacturing sector is falling behind on the compensatio

Viewpoints Sept. 16, 2021

The planned fall 2021 return to the office is being delayed. Until January, purportedly. That’s when Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and some other major employers of knowledge workers now say they expect people back at their desks, 22 months after sending everybody home at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the current high US levels of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and in some places deaths, it’s understandable that companies don’t want to do a big ret

Viewpoints Sept. 14, 2021

There are optimistic suggestions that the hard-won integration of Afghanistan into the global economy will remain despite the ascendancy of the Taliban and the withdrawal of the US. A number of commentators have suggested that China -- which the Taliban have declared their strongest ally -- could become Afghanistan’s primary economic supporter and help the country stay part of the global system. That analysis is unrealistic. For one, it ignores the sanctions regime imposed by the internat

Viewpoints Sept. 13, 2021

In March, a Chinese military satellite appeared to spontaneously disintegrate in orbit, leaving a trail of debris high above the Earth. If China knew anything, it wasn’t saying. Did the propulsion system explode? Was there a collision with some of the space junk that’s accumulating in orbit? Or did something a bit more conspiratorial happen? The mystery persisted until last month, when an astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics announced the answer. Yunhai 1-02, as the satellite is

Viewpoints Sept. 8, 2021

A day after the Constitution-flouting Texas anti-abortion law went into effect, a divided Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that it won’t block the law before it can grapple with a concrete case that tests it in practice. The five most conservative justices agreed to an unsigned, one-and-a-half-page opinion that said the law might or might not be unconstitutional, but that given its unusual form, which delegates enforcement to private citizens instead of state authorities, it was too legall

Viewpoints Sept. 6, 2021

As Afghans grapple with fear and uncertainty in the wake of the US military pullout from their country, Iraqis are beginning to wonder if it will be their turn next. The Biden administration, doubling and tripling down on the president’s defense of his Afghanistan withdrawal, has been deploying Washington‘s current catchphrase, “forever wars,” as well as invoking old shibboleths about the “national interest.” Pursuing the latter, so the theory goes, requires

Viewpoints Sept. 6, 2021

Reports from Washington and Kabul show the extent to which the Biden administration has been counting on the Taliban to facilitate the US withdrawal from Afghanistan -- and, apparently, to keep up the fight against IS-Khorasan, the local franchise of the Islamic State group, after the Americans are gone. The White House and Pentagon believe that the new rulers in Kabul share their eagerness for a speedy evacuation: a “common purpose,” in the words of Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, commander

Viewpoints Aug. 30, 2021