Tlthough most famous for her work on another banality, Hannah Arendt wrote forcefully against the use of cliché verbiage. Said Arendt, “clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality.” This seems especially true for those of us who work in media, on both the right and the left. Phrases such as “coastal elites” and “the mainstream media,” not to mention the banality that is “making space” for transgender voices, all too often stand in for actual thought. Such clichés do our thinking for us, and when we…

Remarks likely seek to pressure US to strengthen nuclear umbrella amid concerns about alliances’ defenses, experts say Seoul could rapidly develop its own nuclear weapons if threats stemming from North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction become “more serious,” South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said Wednesday. The remarks represent the president’s most explicit comment to date about South Korea acquiring nuclear weapons, a prospect that enjoys widespread public support but which Seoul has long rejected as a U.S. ally under Washington’s nuclear umbrella and a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.  “The North Korean nuclear threat is not only a threat to…

My family and I lived in the United States of America for ten years. I vividly remember the hot summer day we arrived. The taxi driver, an elegant man in his sixties picked us up at Newark Airport. Isn’t it strange the things we notice in the first moment of being somewhere new? The air-conditioning in the car that covered me in goosebumps in the dog days of summer. The driver humming along with Aretha Franklin’s “I Say a Little Prayer” on the radio. Our children in the back, pointing enthusiastically at Lady Liberty, pick-up trucks, and huge empty malls…

In recent years, as progress in artificial intelligence (AI) has accelerated, nearly every major power has pledged to develop advanced AI capabilities and effectively integrate AI into their armed forces. Yet none have pursued those efforts as purposefully as China. Not only has Beijing issued an ambitious plan to make China the world’s leading AI power by 2030, but the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has unveiled an aggressive innovation-driven strategy for the Chinese military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Likewise, Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the CCP, has consistently emphasized China’s commitment to AI development and “intelligent warfare”– most recently in…

The war in Ukraine is the largest military conflict of the cyber age and the first to incorporate such significant levels of cyber operations on all sides. Below, Carnegie Endowment experts Jon Bateman, Nick Beecroft, and Gavin Wilde discuss the key insights from their new series, “Cyber Conflict in the Russia-Ukraine War.” What does cyber competition in the war look like so far? Gavin Wilde: In many ways, February 2022 was the culmination of one of the most long-running and extensive information assaults by one state on another in history. If Ukraine could be considered Russia’s testing ground for offensive cyber and information operations—primarily…