YouTube Videos about Coronavirus Are Full of Misinformation, Study Says Be careful what you read and believe. by Stephen Silver

A clip from a documentary called “Plandemic,” which alleged a massive conspiracy involving the spread of coronavirus and supposed misdeeds by the likes of Bill Gates and Dr. Anthony Fauci, went hugely viral earlier this month. Multiple fact-checking outlets debunked virtually all of the major claims in the video, leading YouTube and other platforms to take the video down.

According to a new study, misinformation about coronavirus was a big problem on YouTube months before the arrival of “Plandemic.”

BMJ Global Health has released a study called “YouTube as a source of information on COVID-19: a pandemic of misinformation?”

Authored by Heidi Oi-Yee Li, Adrian Bailey, David Huynh, and James Chan, a quartet of researchers associated with the University of Ottawa and Ottawa Hospital, the study looked at the most popular YouTube videos dealing with the pandemic, and found that over a quarter of them included inaccurate information.

“Over one-quarter of the most viewed YouTube videos on COVID-19 contained misleading information, reaching millions of viewers worldwide,” the conclusion says. “As the current COVID-19 pandemic worsens, public health agencies must better use YouTube to deliver timely and accurate information and to minimise the spread of misinformation. This may play a significant role in successfully managing the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The researchers, on March 21, looked at the top 75 viewed videos for the keywords ‘coronavirus’ and ‘COVID-19.’ Omitting videos that were “duplicates, non-English, non-audio and non-visual, exceeding 1 hour in duration, live and unrelated to COVID-19,” the researchers studied the remaining 69 videos, which had a total at the time of nearly 258 million views among them.

They then determined that 27.5 percent of the videos, with a total of over 62 million views, “contained non-factual information.” The incorrect information referenced took many forms, from scientifically inaccurate descriptions of how viruses work, to bogus medical advice, to racist statements to far-flung conspiracy theories.

The researchers also found that government and professional videos were more likely to be factual than “internet news videos” or “entertainment news videos.”

There are a couple of caveats to the information in the study. Its sample sizes are small, and the findings concern the videos that were most popular nearly two months ago, which in the time of coronavirus is practically a lifetime. March 21, after all, was long before “Plandemic” or multiple other controversies over false or conspiracy videos that have taken place since.

Even so, it’s hard to dispute that false information on YouTube, the place where many people get their news, is a major problem and not an easy one to solve.

These Face Masks Light Up After Detecting COVID-19 No longer just a sci-fi dream? by Ethen Kim Lieser

Scientists from Harvard and MIT are developing groundbreaking technology that would enable face masks to light up when they detect the novel coronavirus.

For the past six years, the research team has focused on making sensors that can detect viruses, including the ones that cause Zika and Ebola. Now, they are adapting that technology to tackle today’s pandemic.

The team is aiming to create a face mask that is able to produce a fluorescent signal when an individual infected with COVID-19 breathes, coughs or sneezes. If the technology proves to be successful, it could be deployed for a variety of uses.

“As we open up our transit system, you could envision it being used in airports as we go through security, as we wait to get on a plane,” Jim Collins, whose bioengineering lab at MIT began work on the sensors in 2014, told Business Insider.

“You or I could use it on the way to and from work. Hospitals could use it for patients as they come in or wait in the waiting room as a pre-screen of who’s infected.”

Collins admitted that this project is in the “very early stages,” but the progress has been encouraging. More recently, the team has been testing the sensors’ ability to detect COVID-19 in a small saliva sample.

The team is also debating whether to embed the sensors to the insides of masks or create a module that can be attached to any face mask available on the market. There are high hopes to demonstrate a functional mask within the next several weeks.

“Once we’re in that stage, then it would be a matter of setting up trials with individuals expected to be infected to see if it would work in a real-world setting,” Collins said.

Once the sensors detect a trace of the coronavirus, they will give off a fluorescent signal within one to three hours, which is considerably less time than the 24 hours it generally takes to run current tests for the virus. There have been instances in which patients didn’t receive results for several days.

The sensors consist of virus-binding genetic material—DNA and RNA—which is freeze-dried onto fabric using a machine called a lyophilizer. The moisture is sucked out of the genetic material without destroying it.

In order to be activated, the sensors need moisture and be able to detect the virus’ genetic sequence. The moisture can come from saliva or mucus.

The masks have a relatively long shelf life because the genetic material can remain stable at room temperature for several months.

How to Understand ‘Obamagate’ Trump’s latest catchphrase is an attempt to recapture the force that first propelled him to political prominence. by David A. Graham

President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, or his lack of a plan to do so, has been almost universally criticized, and while Trump has been obviously angry at the criticism, none of it managed to spur him into real action until Barack Obama weighed in. Not that he took action to improve the nation’s response, of course—instead, he demanded the prosecution of his predecessor.

On May 9, CNN reported that Obama had labeled Trump’s pandemic response “an absolute chaotic disaster” the day before, on a call with alumni of his administration. Early the next morning, as part of a long string of Mother’s Day tweets—as these rants exceed themselves, it’s become more and more difficult to find superlatives to adequately describe them—Trump retweeted a user who had mentioned “Obamagate.” The term has quickly become part of Trump’s vernacular, with 13 subsequent uses, including two yesterday.

Precisely what Trump is alleging against Obama is obscure, and probably beside the point. Trump isn’t really interested in alleging any particular crime. The point of “Obamagate” is to try to recapture the force that propelled Trump to political prominence—questioning the legitimacy of the first black president—as he heads toward a difficult reelection campaign in the midst of a global crisis.

Trump’s political career has always revolved, perversely, around Obama. Trump transformed himself from businessman into politician by questioning whether Obama was truly an American; now in office, Trump constantly measures himself against his predecessor, and finds nothing so maddening as being criticized by Obama.

According to some interpretations of Trump’s rise in politics, his Rosebud was the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner. By then, Trump had already become the nation’s most prominent birther, espousing the racist and baseless theory that Obama was not a citizen or was not born in the United States. While most “respectable” members of the Republican Party rejected the claims or at least avoided openly endorsing them, Trump was tapping into a deep vein of racism and white identity politics in the GOP base that would later allow him to dominate the 2016 primary.

Trump was a guest at the dinner, and Obama ridiculed him during his remarks. Noting that he’d recently released his “long-form” birth certificate, Obama said Trump could “finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter—like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?”

Trump fumed as the rest of the room guffawed. (He would later end the tradition of presidential speeches at the dinner.) Confidants have since said it was the moment he decided to run for president. As president, Trump has often publicly contrasted himself to Obama, and he has sought to end policies—including the Affordable Care Act and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)—associated with Obama, even when he supports their goals.

Given that Trump’s presidency has been, to borrow a phrase, “an absolute chaotic disaster,” Obama has shown remarkable restraint in seldom criticizing Trump openly. Even his comments on the call were delivered privately, though in a way that effectively guaranteed they’d be made public. And for Trump, it seemed to have been the 2011 dinner all over again: Here was the black president, laughing at him, and it was too much to take. The result has been several days of hyperventilation about Obama, including a demand yesterday that the Senate call him to testify.

It’s not really clear what Obama would be testifying about. Trump’s allies have said darkly that Obama knew about a counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, which is neither scandalous, surprising, nor news. They have claimed that Obama and some of his aides asked for Michael Flynn’s identity to be “unmasked” in intelligence reports about conversations with the Russian ambassador, ignoring the fact that these people couldn’t have known it was Flynn until he was unmasked. As Tim Miller explains in a useful piece at The Bulwark, “Obamagate” is a long-running meme in certain conservative precincts, but it is neither coherent nor persuasive.

What does Trump mean when he uses the phrase? When a reporter asked that Monday, Trump served him this word salad:

Obamagate. It’s been going on for a long time. It’s been going on from before I even got elected, and it’s a disgrace that it happened, and if you look at what’s gone on, and if you look at now, all this information that’s being released—and from what I understand, that’s only the beginning—some terrible things happened, and it should never be allowed to happen in our country again. And you’ll be seeing what’s going on over the next, over the coming weeks, but I—and I wish you’d write honestly about it, but unfortunately you choose not to do so … You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours.

If Trump were actually interested in ferreting out crimes and punishing wrongdoing, this sort of vagueness would be a major liability, but that’s not what he’s going for.

When Obama released his long-form birth certificate and then joked that Trump could move on, he misunderstood the nature of the birtherism conspiracy theory. No document could ever put the matter to rest. There was always some way to explain away any evidence that showed Obama was born in Hawaii—forgery! Corrupt officials!—and moreover, the theory was always more about expressing the idea of Obama’s illegitimacy and interloping than about the forensic details of his birth. Trump continued to question Obama’s citizenship after the long-form certificate was released, only acknowledging that he was an American in September 2016; he reportedly continued to discuss the matter privately.

“Obamagate” works the same way, echoing 2018 and 2019’s hottest Trump catchphrase: “witch hunt.” Trump’s dodge in the news conference allows the “scandal” to remain protean, changing to fit whatever need Trump has and whatever new information arises. If he offered any specifics, they might box him into a particular version, which could be falsified. When it’s this opaque, it’s unfalsifiable.

The vagueness means there’s little chance of charging Obama in a court of law, but that’s not the goal anyway, and besides, it’s too risky. Even with a Justice Department happy to cater to Trump’s whims, there are too many hurdles—constitutional law, criminal procedure, independent judges—who could wreck such a ploy. Instead, Trump is interested in assigning blame. That’s something Obama grasped perfectly in his WHCD jokes. Right after the quip about Biggie and Tupac, Obama went on:

We all know about your credentials and breadth of experience. For example—no, seriously, just recently, in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice—at the steakhouse, the men’s cooking team did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks. And there was a lot of blame to go around. But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And so ultimately, you didn’t blame Lil Jon or Meat Loaf. You fired Gary Busey. And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night.  

But Obama provides Trump with a more useful villain than the washed-up actor, because no one questioned Busey’s qualifications to be on Celebrity Apprentice, whereas lots of people remain upset that Obama was able to live in the White House. Trump doesn’t have to mention race; it’s subtext that everyone understands, especially the segment of his base to whom the attack caters.

From the perspective of the electorate as a whole, attacking the very popular former president right now makes no sense, and the general public will find the whole thing too arcane to follow, but Trump’s hardest-core followers will either already know the whole backstory or be ready to sign on even if they don’t. The president’s decision to focus on base maintenance, rather than expanding his coalition, may prove a dubious strategy come November, but it’s no accident. It worked for him in 2016, and he’s made a conscious choice to pursue it this time too.

Even if the necessity of vagueness precludes a true legal proceeding, it doesn’t mean there can’t be show trials in the Senate, reminiscent of when House Republicans called Hillary Clinton to testify on Benghazi in 2015—though that was generally accepted as a victory for Clinton in the end.

“If I were a Senator or Congressman, the first person I would call to testify about the biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA, by FAR, is former President Obama,” Trump tweeted yesterday. “He knew EVERYTHING. Do it [Senator Lindsey Graham], just do it. No more Mr. Nice Guy. No more talk!”

Graham quickly shot down the idea. “I am greatly concerned about the precedent that would be set by calling a former president for oversight,” he said in a statement. “No president is above the law. However, the presidency has executive privilege claims against other branches of government.”

But if the nation has learned anything about the relationship between Trump and Graham, it’s that the South Carolinian cannot resist the president. He was one of Trump’s fiercest critics during the 2016 campaign and has become one of his most slavish defenders; his flip-flops during Trump’s impeachment are embarrassing to recall. If Trump keeps up the drumbeat, the odds that the Senate will try to call Obama at some point between now and November are very high.

Graham understands perfectly what’s going on, as his statement yesterday showed.

“As to the Judiciary Committee, both presidents are welcome to come before the committee and share their concerns about each other,” he said. “If nothing else, it would make for great television. However, I have great doubts about whether it would be wise for the country.”

For Trump, however, good television always outweighs what’s wise for the country.

Art of the (North Korea) Deal: Why Trump and Kim Could Sign a Deal at the White House Imagine this: Trump and Kim will meet somewhere and sign something before the election which might have some benefit. The goal would be to preserve a modest détente than transform relations on the peninsula. by Doug Bandow

What is going to happen in U.S.-North Korea relations this year? 

It depends on the interaction of a 36-year-old communist emperor who exercises absolute power and a vainglorious 73-year-old president who wishes he had the same authority. Toss in a world roiled by the COVID-19 pandemic, global recession, and an incipient China-U.S. cold war. Who knows what to expect.

Donald Trump will be most concerned about being reelected. His administration’s ostentatiously incompetent response to the coronavirus invasion and subsequent economic collapse have substantially dimmed his chances. Yet Democrat Joe Biden is a desperately bad choice, his abilities atrophied by age and moderate image belied by multiple leftward policy lurches. The political campaign will be a brutal battle to the political death, in which the American people will be the primary casualties.

The president will be desperate to highlight a foreign policy success. If not North Korea, then what?

The tattered China trade accord may not survive until November. The Afghan peace pact is looking like the continuation of nearly 19 years of conflict. Despite abundant rhetoric against “endless wars,” U.S. troops also remain in action in Africa, Iraq, and Syria. Cuba, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela continue to ostentatiously resist Washington despite the application of “maximum pressure.” The president’s closest foreign “friends” are all appalling dictators—Kim, China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Egypt’s Abdel Fatteh al-Sisi, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman. Imagine a campaign commercial with their purported endorsements of the president.

A deal with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea looks like the best bet.

What the North’s Chairman/Supreme Leader thinks of America’s election spectacle is unknown. However, he almost certainly would prefer that Trump win. From what we know of the DPRK, Kim holds all power tightly. That makes normal diplomacy, with others negotiating the details of an agreement to be formalized by the principals, more difficult. Trump’s professed preference for deal-making—and demonstrably poor skill in forging serious and good arrangements—offers another advantage.

Finally, if Biden followed the Obama administration’s strategy with North Korea, there wouldn’t be any negotiations if he won. Indeed, the presumptive Democratic nominee is likely to criticize Trump for having legitimized Kim’s rule without getting anything in return. That would make a Kim-Biden deal even less likely.

Also playing a role will be South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Washington’s sanctions blocked his policy of expanding ties with the North, which led Pyongyang to belittle the Republic of Korea’s efforts. However, Moon’s party greatly strengthened its control of the National Assembly in the recent election and the opposition is in disarray. Moon is likely to be emboldened to press Washington to relax restrictions that limit his ability to increase economic cooperation with the North.

This suggests a reasonable chance that the stars will align and Messrs. Trump and Kim will meet somewhere and sign something before the election which might have some benefit. Although more to preserve a modest détente than transform relations on the peninsula.

Possible is an executive agreement that includes:

- A firm, cross-his-heart-hope-to-die promise by Kim to denuclearize once all parties agree that stable, peaceful bilateral and regional relations have been established by all the former combatants;

- A U.S. commitment to lift some sanctions and suspend others, with a focus on limits that hinder South-North integration;

 A pledge by Pyongyang to dismantle some parts of its program, such as the Yongbyon nuclear facilities. Otherwise, the sanctions will “snap back".

- An offer by Kim to take actions that will provide a vivid photo op of impending disarmament, akin to the 2008 destruction of the cooling tower of Yongbyon’s nuclear plant.

- Borrowing from proposals at the failed Hanoi summit and other sources, the two sides will agree to legalize travel both ways; establish liaison offices in the respective capitals; initiate regular diplomatic consultations; issue a peace declaration, and rename the 105-story Ryugyong Hotel the “Trump Spectacular.”

To make the greatest impact, Trump will invite Kim to the White House for the signing ceremony. That will create the photo op to “trump” all photo ops. On Kim’s departure, the president will declare “peace in our time,” or something similar. While declaring their accord to be the greatest diplomatic achievement in human and perhaps galactic history, he will blame Barack Obama, and especially Joe Biden, for the persistence of the Korean cold war. Which, the president will note, further demonstrates the immensity and genius of his achievement.

Or maybe not. Perhaps Trump will replace Mike Pence with Lindsey Graham and begin bombing North Korea, since the subsequent war and mass deaths and destruction would be “over there” rather than “over here,” as the South Carolina senator put it. The president would insist that the resulting war was the best ever and that responsibility for starting it belonged to Biden.

When things look bad, it always is worth remembering that they could be worse.

Yes, a Deal with North Korea Is Still Possible This Year Diplomatic give-and-take is the only way for the United States to constrain North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs. Here is what a deal could look like. by Leon V. Sigal

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated, Kim Jong-un might say. The same could be said for nuclear diplomacy with North Korea.

Why? Diplomatic give-and-take is the only way for the United States to constrain North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.

It is also the only way for Kim Jong-un to realize his grandfather’s goal of reducing his country’s security and economic growth dependence. Kim Il Sung had played off the Soviets against China throughout the Cold War, but in 1988, anticipating the collapse of the Soviet Union, he reached out to the United States, South Korea, and Japan in an attempt to end enmity and hedge against a rising China.

There is evidence that the North was determined to reconcile. In 1991, before it had any nuclear weapons,  it stopped reprocessing to extract plutonium, the only way it then had to generate fissile material to make them, in an attempt to open talks with Washington. It signed the Agreed Framework in 1994, verifiably shutting down its plutonium program and did not reopen it until 2003. It agreed to shut down that program again in 2007 in six-party talks.

In 1997, however, when Washington was slow to “move toward full normalization of political and economic relations,” as it had pledged in the Agreed Framework, Pyongyang began acquiring the means to enrich uranium, another way to make fissile material but kept its plutonium program shuttered. It also balked at initially implementing the 2007 accord after Washington imposed sanctions designed to bar its access to international financial institutions, and resumed fissile material production when South Korea, with U.S. support, halted delivery of promised energy assistance.

In 2017, Kim Jong Un opened the way to the first-ever US-DPRK summit meeting by suspending tests of nuclear weapons and longer-range missiles – stopping short of developing a proven thermonuclear device and an ICBM equipped with a reentry vehicle.

President Trump never quite reciprocated. At that Singapore summit, he suspended joint military exercises with South Korea – only to resume them soon thereafter, albeit scaled back. 

So why have negotiations stalled? The trouble began with the February 2019 Hanoi summit when both parties overreached, demanding too much and offering too little in return.

In the run-up to Hanoi, secret talks began to sketch out a first-phase deal. The Trump administration proposed to exchange liaison offices as a step toward diplomatic normalization and approved some exemptions from U.N. sanctions. In pivotal talks with Kim Jong-un in October 2018, then-CIA Director Michael Pompeo committed to accepting an end-of-war declaration paving the way to a peace process in Korea. Kim, in response, offered “dismantlement and destruction of North Korea’s plutonium and uranium facilities ... and more,” according to U.S. negotiator Stephen Biegun.

On the eve of Hanoi, the North’s negotiators fell short of what Kim had offered and asked for substantial relief from U.N. sanctions. They opened the door for National Security Adviser John Bolton’s “Libya solution”: complete denuclearization as well as the elimination of the North’s chemical and biological weapons first, with “a very bright economic future” to follow. A North Korean attempt to clarify its stance on denuclearization failed to head off an abrupt U.S. departure from Hanoi

In the immediate aftermath. pushback came from those in Pyongyang opposed to engagement with Washington, leading Kim, in an April 12, 2019 speech, to harden his negotiating position and hint at ending his unilateral restraint on longer-range launches and nuclear tests, a step he has yet to take. While saying he was still open to negotiation, he raised the barrier to entry, demanding unilateral U.S. steps to reciprocate his test moratorium. He then presided over tests of short- and intermediate-range missiles.

In subsequent meetings in Panmunjom and Stockholm, the Trump administration offered more sanctions relief and refrained from large-scale or provocative exercises, but it did not allow North Korea exports of textiles and coal or suspend field exercises for a time or commit to what Pompeo once called “a fundamentally different strategic relationship” or security partnership.

These measures are a lot to ask, but if President Trump wants a significant foreign policy success, he may be prepared to offer them upfront, and Kim, if he does not want to abandon his grandfather’s goal of reconciliation, can put his test moratorium and his pledge to dismantle his plutonium and enrichment facilities in writing. 

Negotiations are dead! Long live negotiations!

Do Americans Even Care About North Korea?

"The reality is that North Korea just does not resonate in US domestic politics – not its gross human rights abuses (perhaps the worst in the world), not its nuclear program, and not the latent threat that Pyongyang poses to America’s allies and the tens of thousands of US troops based in Northeast." by Peter Harris

It is unlikely that any serious work will be done to improve US-North Korean relations during the remainder of this year. Having entertained grand hopes for resolving the North Korean nuclear dispute just a few years ago, President Trump must surely now have resigned himself to the fact that no breakthrough with Pyongyang will happen on his watch – at least not in the next six months. Even so, 2020 might yet offer some clues about how the future of this critical bilateral relationship will unfold, with North Korea’s treatment in the US presidential election being of particular importance. 

Foreign policy issues never dominate presidential elections. Domestic concerns – the economy, healthcare, and this year the coronavirus pandemic – tend to weigh most heavily in the minds of voters. Insofar as foreign policy intrudes upon electoral politics at all, it is usually so that candidates for office can emphasize certain traits to the voting public. This November, for example, Trump and Joe Biden can be expected to trade barbs over China policy as each man struggles to avoid the criticism of being “weak” on national security.

On its face, North Korea offers several opportunities for both Trump and Joe Biden to place themselves in a favorable light before domestic audiences. Trump could make hay from his diplomatic overtures towards Pyongyang, brandishing his anti-war credentials (such as they are) and styling himself as an earnest man of peace. For his part, Joe Biden could try – indeed, he has already tried – to paint Trump as a coddler of dictators, someone who has jettisoned American values and put US national security at stake. Both candidates could promise to bring a problem-solving mindset to the White House if they were to put forward a detailed plan for the next four years.

All of these are possible ways that North Korea might intrude upon the presidential election. But more likely, North Korea will remain a peripheral issue at best during the November campaign. If the coronavirus pandemic and the economic crisis allow any international issues to see the light of day, it will be China’s rise, Russia’s interference in US democracy, and America’s wars in the Middle East that are the subjects of debate.

The reality is that North Korea just does not resonate in US domestic politics – not its gross human rights abuses (perhaps the worst in the world), not its nuclear program, and not the latent threat that Pyongyang poses to America’s allies and the tens of thousands of US troops based in Northeast Asia. Even if most Americans say that North Korea poses a critical threat to US national security, there is no groundswell of support for action against Pyongyang; and no political leader has managed to mobilize public opinion on North Korea into a force at the ballot box.

At the end of his eight years in office, President Obama called the North Korean nuclear issue America’s “most urgent problem.” But most Americans see things differently. They can (and do) tolerate a nuclear-armed North Korea, and they will not (and do not) punish their leaders for letting this happen. They would surely balk at the normalization of relations with North Korea, but they also want to avoid a worsening of the security situation. In short, Americans can live with the status quo.

This is probably what we will see confirmed during the presidential election and beyond. No candidate will derive any political advantage for proposing radical solutions towards North Korea. They will, instead, be on the safest available ground when hewing to a policy of “muddling through.” In the end, this is what should be expected from both Trump and Biden.

The Most Remarkable Part of Rick Bright’s Testimony The whistleblower’s claims about the government’s lack of COVID-19 preparedness went largely uncontested, even by the president’s allies. by RUSSELL BERMAN

It was a single, salty sentence that first made Rick Bright realize a pandemic crisis was coming: “We’re in deep shit.”

The warning had come in an email in late January, weeks before the deaths began piling up and the American economy all but shut down. The head of a Texas mask manufacturer, Mark Bowen, was confirming what Bright had long known—that the nation had nowhere near the supply of N95 masks it would soon need. “From that moment,” Bright told a House committee today, “I knew that we were going to have a crisis with our health-care workers because we were not taking action. We were already behind the ball. That was our last window of opportunity to turn on that production, to save the lives of those health-care workers, and we didn’t act.”

Bright was then the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a federal public-health agency involved in developing vaccines and treatments to protect the country from pandemics like the novel coronavirus. He’s now a congressional whistleblower, and the latest federal bureaucrat to cast the Trump administration in a withering light.

Those four words, punctuated by the profanity, also neatly summarize Bright’s stark message to Congress over the course of his four-hour testimony: The United States dropped the ball early in the pandemic, and it remains woefully unprepared for the painful months to come. “Lives were endangered,” he said, “and I believe lives were lost.” Without a significantly improved federal response, Bright told lawmakers, “2020 could be the darkest winter in modern history.”

Bright voiced doubt that a safe and effective vaccine would be available within the 12-to-18-month timetable that federal health officials have given—a lag that President Donald Trump has already said he wants to cut in half. “I still think 12 to 18 months is an aggressive schedule, and I think it’s going to take longer than that to do so,” Bright said.

And he warned that even if a vaccine is developed, the U.S. currently lacks the supplies necessary to make it universally available. Nor does it have a plan in place to procure them. “We don’t have a single point of leadership for this response,” Bright said, “and we don’t have a master plan for this response.”

Bright’s testimony represented a far more pointed and damaging critique of the administration’s performance than Anthony Fauci’s remote appearance before a Senate panel yesterday; Fauci has toed a careful line, at times contradicting the president without criticizing him directly. But taken together, their warnings about a resurgence of the virus in the fall served as a sobering check on the rush to normalcy that Trump has been cheerleading. And they appear to be aimed not so much at the American public, which, according to polls, recognizes the ferocity and staying power of COVID-19, but at the president and his allied Republican governors who are pushing to reopen faster than public-health experts believe is safe.

“Our window of opportunity is closing,” Bright said. “If we fail to improve our response now, I fear the pandemic will get worse and be prolonged.”

Bright was testifying today because the Trump administration removed him from his post—an action he says was spurred by objections he raised to the wide-scale distribution of an antimalarial drug that the president had promoted as a treatment for COVID-19. Last week, Bright, through his attorneys, filed an 89-page whistleblower complaint with the federal Office of Special Counsel outlining his allegations. He told Congress that his repeated early warnings about supply shortages and the coronavirus threat went unheeded. “I was told that my urgings were causing a commotion, and I was removed from those meetings,” Bright said.

Bright was transferred to a lower-level position at the National Institutes of Health, and he is now appealing to get his job at BARDA back. Shortly before the hearing began this morning, Trump denounced him as “a disgruntled employee” who, “with his attitude, should not be working for our government.” Bright is part of a cohort of whistleblowers who have accused the administration, and in some cases the president directly, of impropriety or incompetence over the past three years. And though the social-distancing policy of the pandemic stripped this hearing of the usual visual drama, Bright’s indictment of the government was no less devastating.

Unlike Fauci, who is self-quarantining after a potential exposure to the coronavirus, Bright testified in person on Capitol Hill. He wore a mask when he entered, and most members of the committee wore masks except while they were speaking. In a setting that was already far from normal, Bright’s utterance of a four-letter profanity in a formal televised hearing barely seemed to register with lawmakers. For the most part, Republicans treated him with more restraint than the president did on Twitter, although some faulted him for how he’d raised his concerns within the government. Unlike during last year’s impeachment hearings, when a parade of current and formal federal officials spoke out against Trump, there were few fawning GOP defenses of the president.

What was remarkable, however, and perhaps should be most troubling to the public, is that even in the partisan environment of a congressional hearing room, Bright’s core contention—that the federal government isn’t ready for a resurgence of a pandemic that could takes tens of thousands more lives this fall and winter—went largely uncontested.

International Organizations are the Devil’s Playground of Great Power Competition It is now clear that America’s strategy for great-power competition needs a new plank. In addition to facing-off against China at sea, in the marketplace and online, Washington needs a better game plan for besting Beijing at the United Nations and other international forums. by James Jay Carafano, Brett Schaefer, Terry Miller, Nile Gardiner, Walter Lohman and Luke Coffey

President Donald Trump started with a strategy custom-built for great-power competition. He has delivered. Arguably, the American competitive position against China, North Korea, Russia and Iran is now stronger than it was four years ago.  

International organizations used to play an inconsequential role in the great-power squabbling. That has changed. The World Health Organization (WHO) effectively stabbed the West in the back when it allowed Beijing to manipulate it into spreading fatally false information about the coronavirus crisis.  

It is now clear that America’s strategy for great-power competition needs a new plank. In addition to facing-off against China at sea, in the marketplace and online, Washington needs a better game plan for besting Beijing at the United Nations and other international forums. 

The Reluctant Globalist  

In some respects, the problems posed by China in global forums represent nothing new. One of the shortfalls of international organizations is that every nation-state has a right to play, but not all states play fair. Nations like the U.S. respect popular sovereignty, human rights and free enterprise. States like China don’t. No matter. They all get to participate.  

Some might think these organizations aren’t worth worrying about. They are. Global institutions can impact the everyday lives of Americans. How? The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) manages the implementation of the convention that governs civilian air travel worldwide. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) sets the rules for the safety and security of maritime transport worldwide. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is the Internet’s traffic cop.  

We voluntarily participate in these organizations because they provide tangible benefits. For example, after 9/11, the United States led an effort at the IMO to establish new international shipping and port security codes to reduce the threat of terrorism at sea. Although some are more important than others, the United States cannot afford to simply international organizations. 

The popular critique that Trump eschews international organizations and cooperation is demonstrably false. Critics point to examples like the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords, claiming they reflect the totality of how Washington treats the world. That is simply not true.  

In the first two years of Trump’s presidency, for example, the administration signed thirteen international agreements. That’s only one less than the same period in the Obama administration. More recently, the United States led the fight to prevent China’s candidate from taking the lead of the World Intellectual Property Organization, a clear example that Washington isn’t indifferent to the importance of these organizations. The United States is tracking at least six upcoming elections that could impact U.S. interests.  

In practice, the Trump team acts pretty much like a typical Republican administration: skeptical of international organizations and the potential threats to national sovereignty, but willing to engage when it serves American interests. 

Acting the reluctant internationalist, however, won’t cut it anymore. And that’s largely because of China. The Chinese Communist Party has a deliberate strategy of placing individuals who are answerable to the party in high posts at international organizations. Chinese nationals are already in charge of four of the UN’s key fifteen specialized agencies. Recently one of them, Houlin Zhao, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union, declared that opposition to Huawei, the Chinese telecom company was “political.” In reality, the company has raised significant national security concerns. Zhao’s outrageous comments are just the ice shavings on the tip of the iceberg. 

If the United States does not counter the Chinese Communist Party’s assault, then Beijing will bend global norms, removing any obstacles to the expansion of Chinese power. American interests can’t be protected unless the U.S. takes a more proactive and constructive role. 

Managing Global Mayhem 

There is no “silver bullet” strategy for achieving this goal. The importance, structure, and agendas among international organizations are too varied to apply one approach across the board.  

One option is to just walk away. Sometimes, this is a legitimate choice, such as when President Bill Clinton chose to leave the UN Industrial Development Organization because the organization lacked clear purpose, or when the Trump administration left UNESCO because the decision to grant membership to the Palestinians prevented the United States from providing funding.  

Other times, however, leaving could be more costly than staying. There is, for example, a Congressional proposal to withdraw from the World Trade Organization. “Job one” right now has to be to get the U.S. economy and those of America’s key strategic friends and allies up and running. Disrupting the basis for America’s international trade regime would impede that goal.   

Another option is to create new organizations to supplant those that are not adequately performing critical functions—an idea most recently pitched by Ash Jain and Matthew Kroenig. But there are pitfalls to starting over. If international organizations seem out of whack now, think about what it would be like if the UN Charter were drafted today under the guidance of China, the European Union, the Group of seventy-seven, and liberal non-governmental organizations. U.S. influence would be greatly diminished.  

For instance, just based on recent reform proposals, the UN Security Council would be much larger and many would prefer that no nation have a veto. Because negotiations would have to engender support from a large majority of governments, we can be sure that the mandated responsibilities and powers of the new organization would be far more expansive to placate the agendas of these countries. This is a case where it is smarter to try to reform from within because any new universal-membership replacement would be worse, and any non-universal membership replacement would leave the bad actors in charge of the UN with all of its historical, legal authority that many nations respect. 

Moreover, at this point, this administration is not in a position to be able to lead a decisive effort of replacement. U.S. international leadership is not as hamstrung as critics contend, but the administration certainly has perception problems in this area. Consider, for example, the recent unfair criticism leveled at the administration for not participating in a COVID vaccine donor conference.  

Further, the White House has still not filled out its diplomatic team. A number of vital positions are either still vacant or lack qualified, dependable political appointees. In particular, the administration’s “IO” team has seen a great deal of churn over the past three years. 

The bottom line: Nothing substantive is going to happen in the short term. For Trump to do something really meaningful about “fixing” international organizations, he will first have to put the right team in place to do it; develop a fulsome strategy; lay the groundwork with allies, and dedicate his second-term to implementing change. If Trump loses the election, nothing will happen. The liberal establishment will never bring itself to apply the pressure and leverage necessary to achieve real, meaningful reform.  

Reforming the World 

An effective U.S. strategy for international organizations should be a hybrid, a combination of withdraw, reform, and replace.  

These three tactics all share one thing in common: the more broadly they are supported by the free world, the better the outcomes they will produce. This means we must line up in support, in advance, among nations that respect human dignity, enterprise, and liberty.  

How do we do that? By investing more smartly in better governance, security and economic freedom, including better instruments of public diplomacy. Further, the United States has to lead the free world in economic recovery. We need strong, confident partners to take on the challenge of illiberalism. If free countries align and act together, they can lead international organizations toward desired outcomes. Of course, this also requires that they approach the organizations with clear-eyed realism rather than a starry-eyed vision of benign global governance—an attractive yet dangerous chimera.

Withdraw. We should skip, marginalize, punish and ignore organizations that have simply become the devil’s playground, no longer capable of delivering real value. The Human Rights Council is a good example.  

The council has become captured by states hostile to basic human rights and fundamental freedoms. The United States can and should continue to press for reforms. There is, however, no reason to rejoin unless reforms are actually made because changes are necessary to ensure that the council actually becomes a force for good.  

Likewise, the United States has no reason to rejoin the UN World Tourism Organization. Punishing the International Criminal Court for overstepping its jurisdiction, is another good example of the kinds of steps the United States should take to mitigate the threat of bad behaviors from international organizations.  

Reform. Some organizations (e.g. ICAO and IMO) require universal membership to fulfill their functions; some do not. Those that require global participation need determined and consistent U.S. leadership. The WHO is a case in point. The organization’s mission includes detecting and coordinating a response to international pandemics that requires a modicum of cooperation with all nations. Sadly, most of WHO resources are focused elsewhere—on non-communicable diseases, corporate services and other initiatives that do not address cross-border threats to health.  

An effective approach to communicable diseases requires a global effort. Otherwise, they can crop up and spread before they are detected. If the WHO cannot be reformed to fill this function effectively, then America should seek to set up an alternative, but it needs to include all nations. That will be a much heavier lift than fixing the WHO.   

Replace. Where organizations with a critical mission are failing and can’t be fixed, then America should establish new international organizations and frameworks. It should be brave enough to be bold and not dismiss the value of new freedom-oriented organizations. It should ignore the critics who think changing, abandoning or replacing an ineffective status quo is selfish and isolationist.  

In some cases, these frameworks do not need to be new international organizations, per se. To build a likeminded consensus that can be used to influence the behavior of international organizations, the United States can work through informal networks like the Quad, existing multinational organizations like NATO, or new strategic alliances, such as a Middle East framework. The mounting pressure to readmit Taiwan to the WHO is a good example of a joint effort by like-minded nations seeking to right an unjust act. 

A Free World Free Trade Agreement to complement or supplant the WTO might be an approach worth considering. In 2001, analysts at the Heritage Foundation proposed a Global Free Trade Agreement, under which nations meeting established standards of free trade and investment practices could agree to further reduce or eliminate their trade barriers, minimizing the need for lengthy negotiations that often hamper bilateral or multilateral trade deals. 

The time is ripe to stitch together a reform, withdraw, replace plan and lead the free world in using international organizations to protect and expand freedom around the world.