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January 2023

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

TikTok Is Bad, but WeChat Is Worse Beijing uses the popular app to steal data, censor, propagandize and spread disinformation in the U.S. By Seth D. Kaplan

By on January 25th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-is-bad-but-wechat-is-worse-china-social-media-data-censorship-spying-ccp-app-mass-surveillance-11674593345?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

WeChat is the most popular communications platform in the world for Chinese speakers. It’s also a preferred vehicle for China’s Communist Party to steal data, censor, propagandize and spread disinformation in the U.S., where the app has an average of 19 million daily users. Congress banned the use of TikTok on government devices recently, and the Biden administration is reportedly seeking to go further by, for instance, limiting access to user data to mitigate the app’s dangers. Given the zeal to address threats emanating from a Chinese app, why is WeChat being ignored?

First developed by Tencent in 2011, WeChat is China’s “app for everything.” A billion people use it for texting, calling, video conferencing, playing videogames, shopping, paying bills, sending money, reading news and more. In the U.S., it is the most important source of news for Chinese students, immigrants and first-generation Chinese-Americans. But since it is a China-based technology product, WeChat is also a prominent part of Beijing’s mass-surveillance network. User activity is tracked, analyzed, censored and handed over to the government in line with Communist Party mandates. Algorithms are adjusted to promote the party’s narratives and demote or censor information that runs against them, making the app invaluable to the party’s efforts to spy on and influence Chinese communities world-wide. (Tencent said in 2020 that “user privacy and data security are core values” and that it was taking “seriously” reports that it surveilled foreign users.)

Lydia Liu, an immigrant from China with a doctorate from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, knows this all too well. She started a WeChat public account in 2018 with the aim to tell “the truth of real American life to Chinese immigrants in the U.S.A. and world-wide,” as she told me. Ms. Liu worked countless hours over three years to build the account, eventually reaching more than 250,000 followers and millions of monthly views.

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EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Kenneth Roth’s Reward for Slandering Israel The former head of Human Rights Watch will move to Harvard, underlining how foolish policy gets made. By Dominic Green

By on January 25th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/kenneth-roths-reward-for-slandering-israel-human-rights-watch-ngo-bds-kennedy-school-donors-11674576378?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Should Kenneth Roth, recently retired executive director of Human Rights Watch, receive a fellowship at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government? In late July, the Kennedy School’s dean, Doug Elmendorf, rejected Mr. Roth’s nomination as a one-year fellow at its Carr Center for Human Rights. Last week Mr. Elmendorf reversed course following protests from students, faculty, the editorial board of the Boston Globe and the Nation magazine.

Mr. Roth claims that he had been “canceled” and that “academic freedom” was at stake. This is an inversion of the truth. Candidacies for tenure and fellowships often fail to go the administrative distance—and a refusal always offends. Mr. Roth’s plaint of victimhood received global coverage when it should’ve fallen on deaf ears: Only weeks after he heard that the Harvard fellowship wouldn’t be confirmed, Mr. Roth accepted a fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. Bouncing from one Ivy League college to another isn’t cancellation.

Academic freedom is a nebulous concept. Legally, it overlaps with free speech, but it is also ethical and cultural, a matter of values. The freedom to speak openly in a professional field is essential to the growth of knowledge. But such an expansive notion can easily slide into taking liberties—freedom to rant about your intellectual hobbyhorses, freedom from debates that might correct your errors and so on. If there is a crisis of free speech on campus today, Mr. Roth isn’t its victim. If anything, he and Human Rights Watch are among its instigators.

The only voices that are systemically silenced or absent on campus today are conservatives in general, and pro-Israel voices in particular. The academic hunt for supporters of Israel is an attack on America’s free market of ideas reminiscent of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Student supporters of the BDS movement (boycott, divestment and sanctions) disrupt pro-Israel speakers on the rare occasions they come to campus. Rather than encourage open debate, faculty incite its foreclosure. Administrators turn a blind eye to an organized campaign of calumny against Israel as an “apartheid” state, which frequently spills into physical violence against Jewish students.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Elected Officials No Longer Reflect Views, Values Of Average Voters: I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

By on January 25th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/01/25/elected-officials-no-longer-reflect-views-values-of-average-voters-ii-tipp-poll/

Washington, you have a problem, and elected officials should take note: Regardless of party affiliation, those who elected you no longer have faith in the idea that you actually represent them, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

It’s no surprise that many voters are turned off by the political class these days. As repeated polls show, voters from both parties agree that the results of recent years from Washington have been less than stellar. And the voters feel Washington is divorced from their everyday concerns.

In the most recent online I&I/TIPP Poll, taken Jan. 4-6 from 1,107 registered voters across the country, we asked voters two questions about their elected officials in Washington.

In the first we asked simply: “In general, do you believe that elected officials in Washington represent MOSTLY the views and values of … ” with the choices being “their constituents,” “Big Donors,” or “not sure.”

The answer was overwhelming and doesn’t bode well for official Washington. Two-thirds (66%) said elected officials represent mostly the views and values of their big donors, not average Americans. Just 16% said they felt their elected officials represented their constituents. Another 18% said they weren’t sure.

When it comes to the politics of those who took the poll, which has a margin of error of +/-3.0 percentage points, this was one of the most uniform responses in I&I/TIPP Poll history.

Among Democrats, 61% said “Big donors,” compared to 68% of Republicans and 73% of independents. “Constituents” garnered 20% of Democrats, 16% of Republicans and just 9% of independents.

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