Why Sexist Myths About Women and Science Keep Coming Back in New Forms There are still sexist views of women’s brains. by Gina Rippon

In 1879, French polymath Gustave Le Bon wrote that even in “the most intelligent races” there “are a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to those of gorillas than to the most developed male brains”. He continued his insult with: “This inferiority is so obvious that no one can contest it for a moment; only its degree is worth discussion.”

Today we have moved on, right? But whenever we attempt to explain the under-representation of women in science, debunked myths seem to sneak back into the debate in different guises – no matter how often they are challenged. A century after the birth of Rosalind Franklin, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, it’s sadly time to once again shed light on the prejudices about women’s brains and abilities.

The view that women are inferior to men has taken many different forms over the years. In the 19th century, a patriarchal anxiety emerged that exposure to the demands of scientific education would damage women’s vulnerable biology. In 1886, William Withers Moore, then president of the British Medical Association, warned of the dangers of overeducating women as they could develop a disorder he called “anorexia scholastica”, which made women immoral, insane and asexual.

In the 20th century, explanations focused more on female deficits in specific skill sets allegedly required for science – such as spatial cognition. Testosterone-fuelled male brains were seen to be hard-wired for the pursuit of science. The message was clear: women don’t do science because they can’t.

But there is increasingly strong evidence that females often outperform males in many spheres of science, neatly disproving the myth that women lack the cognitive capacity to do science. Even men’s “superior” skills in spatial cognition have been shown to be diminishing over time – with women even outperforming men in certain cultures.

The choosiness myth

Yet the myth keeps popping up, like whac-a-mole, in the form of a “female choosiness” argument. This was characterised by the notorious Google memo in which Google engineer James Damore asserted that the biologically determined preferences of women meant that a gender equal distribution in technology was unlikely. Women, he argued, prefer “people” to “things”.

But scientists have challenged this idea. Just because women are more likely to be nurses than men, and men are more likely to be bus drivers than women, doesn’t necessarily mean that it is because they prefer either people or things. Women and men are encouraged to do different jobs by society from an early age. And women were long barred from jobs, such as bus driving in London.

Yet female choosiness continues to be used as an explanation for gender gaps in science. In 2018, two psychologists from the UK published a paper called “The Gender-Equality Paradox in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education”. The paradox refers to the fact that women are more likely to be underrepresented in the sciences in countries that have the highest levels of gender equality.

The authors’ explanation for this was couched in two stages. One was that in the least gender equal countries, STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) jobs were better paid and so economic necessity drove the choices of both sexes. The second part of the explanation, backed up by some other scientists, was that in countries with better social and economic conditions, the “natural expression” of “innate differences” could emerge.

Having to acknowledge that there were no differences in performance on science subjects between males and females, a different form of the “cognitive capacity” myth has emerged in the last couple of years. Females are universally better at reading, so they are more likely to achieve a sense of gratification by choosing non-scientific subjects and careers.

As it happens, a fierce debate is now raging in scientific circles about the paradox, particularly about the accuracy of the gender-equality measures used and the causal interpretation of the correlations found. This has forced the authors of the gender-equality paradox paper to issue a correction of their original data analysis – it turned out they had used a rather unusual way to calculate sex differences in STEM graduates. When using more standard approaches, such as looking at the difference between the percentage of STEM graduates who are female or male, one team of scientists said they couldn’t replicate the results.

Many scientists argue that there’s still bias and discrimination against women in gender-equal countries, and that may be why they opt out of science careers. History shows that women played a large part in the development of different scientific disciplines. But, as science became more professionalised, women were deliberately excluded from scientific institutions, explicitly based on their innate deficits.

One would like to think that we have put all of that behind us. But the underlying narrative still pops up in various forms, most likely putting women off. There is evidence of powerful beliefs that great scientists are born and not made – and, more particularly, are born male.

This is despite the fact that research has shown that the concept of a “male” and “female” brain is flawed. The experiences you have can actually change the brain, including the stereotyping you face. If you are encouraged to read, your brain gets better at reading. What’s more, it has been shown that when people have negative thoughts about how well they will do on a task, they actually avoid it and perform worse.

Many factors related to success in science, including hiring and promotion, also show clear evidence of gender bias against women. In a large study of research reports in chemistry, female-led papers were more likely to be rejected by journals, and less likely to be cited.

Franklin no doubt had to deal with a lot of prejudice, with her role in discovering the structure of DNA going unacknowledged for a long time. It is heartbreaking that the message that science is not for women remains a powerful a century after her birth.

Does Hydroxychloroquine Actually Work Against Coronavirus? "We don’t know for certain if, and in what manner, hydroxychloroquine works. We should trust clinicians to review the data for themselves, and it would behoove the media, the politicians, and the public to let the science play out." by Kevin Pham

Early in health officials’ response to the pandemic, one drug offered hope of a safe, widely available, and cheap therapeutic that would break the death grip that COVID-19 held on the world.

However, after its promised efficacy didn’t materialize in large, statistically significant numbers, enthusiasm for the drug, hydroxychloroquine, quickly waned. Why, then, has it made its way back into the headlines?

When it was first suggested that hydroxychloroquine may be an effective antiviral against the new coronavirus, which scientists call SARS-CoV-2, the U.S. government purchased and delivered the drug by the millions of doses even before research could prove its efficacy.

At the time, what scarce data was available suggested it would work, and waiting much longer would’ve been unethical. After all, the drug has a decades long history of use to treat malaria.

But with those millions of doses being administered, clinicians found only mixed results. Some, as in the early French trial, found tremendous success, while many others found no clinical benefit.

Thus, the buzz surrounding hydroxychloroquine began to die down and it nearly was forgotten in the news cycle, until early July when the results of 2,500-person study were published by the Henry Ford COVID-19 Task Force.

That study found that among those who received hydroxychloroquine, the mortality was 13.5%. This compares to those who received none of the studied drugs, among whom the mortality was 26.4%.

The group of patients who received hydroxychloroquine alone suffered about half the mortality of the baseline group. Note that this is different from saying hydroxychloroquine “was responsible for reducing mortality by half.”

The Ford study is a retrospective observational study, which means it looks back on cases that already have happened. These studies often can gather a large amount of data, but they tell only correlation rather than causation. Although it’s a positive study for the drug, it adds to a growing body of mixed results.

To tell definitively whether hydroxychloroquine is responsible for the reduction in mortality, what’s required is a randomized controlled trial. That is, a prospective study designed to test the direct effect of a drug or intervention.

One such randomized controlled trial was published in July in the New England Journal of Medicine, which also put hydroxychloroquine back in the news. The study, of 507 patients with confirmed COVID-19, found there was no significant difference in clinical outcome with the addition of hydroxychloroquine, either with or without azithromycin.

Patients included in this study were hospitalized but did not require more than four liters of supplemental oxygen. This means that the condition of the patients studied was of relatively low severity, and that treatment with hydroxychloroquine began earlier on in the course of the disease.

Therefore, this study was intended to test the conditions for which hydroxychloroquine has been proposed to be used and found it to have no clinical benefit over the “standard of care.”

But the researchers noted several limitations to their study. For instance, the study was not blinded, which could have skewed the results, and there was difficulty with adherence to the treatment regimen, which could have affected the outcomes.

Furthermore, hydroxychloroquine with or without azithromycin was compared to the “standard of care,” which at the time of the study, in March, was not very standard. Physicians were free to use other drugs such as steroids, immunomodulators, or other antibiotics.

So hydroxychloroquine in this study did no better than other drugs, but it is difficult to say that hydroxychloroquine had zero effect when its effect may have been matched or covered up by other drugs considered “standard of care” at the time.

As if it weren’t already confusing enough, few studies have included zinc as part of the treatment regimen along with hydroxychloroquine. Zinc is an essential mineral that is important for immune function, and may have some direct antiviral properties that some researchers propose would be amplified when used in conjunction with hydroxychloroquine.

Researchers at New York University Langone Health, a medical center, began adding zinc to their treatment plans for COVID-19 patients. In a study of 932 patient cases, the medical center found that the addition of zinc to hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin was associated with a decrease in mortality in patients who were not admitted to the intensive care unit.

Because this also was a retrospective study, it can tell only correlation and not causation.

That said, it’s a promising result that suggests hydroxychloroquine might need supplemental zinc to be fully effective. This warrants further investigation.

Few published results exist from studies that include zinc, and fewer if any results exist from a clinical trial of zinc with hydroxychloroquine. But several studies of this drug combination are in progress, some of which are expected to conclude as late as next year.

All of this is to say that the science is not yet settled. It is an open question as to whether hydroxychloroquine in combination with any number of other drugs may have a beneficial effect on the disease course of COVID-19.

A great deal of evidence says it doesn’t work, but enough evidence says hydroxychloroquine does work that it would be irresponsible to write it off completely at this time, especially in combination with other drugs. In fact, researchers around the world are conducting hundreds of trials with hydroxychloroquine.

Hydroxychloroquine is dominating the news again for many reasons, not the least of which is that results from several important studies recently have been released. But the angst, the controversy, and cynical politicking around the drug is completely unwarranted.

We don’t know for certain if, and in what manner, hydroxychloroquine works. We should trust clinicians to review the data for themselves, and it would behoove the media, the politicians, and the public to let the science play out.

China Is Trying To Crush Christianity and Islam Alike If the Chinese government cannot crush Christianity altogether, it will attempt to reshape it in the image of the Chinese Communist Party. by Arielle Del Turco and Tony Perkins

In the campaign against people of faith, there is no line the Chinese government won’t cross.

On Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo testified at a congressional hearing, highlighting the Trump administration’s efforts to stop China’s human rights violations and international aggression in its tracks.

Proud of the administration’s track record, Pompeo stated,

No administration, Republican or Democrat, has been as aggressive in confronting China’s malign actions as President [Donald] Trump’s … We’ve sanctioned Chinese leaders for their brutality in Xinjiang, imposed export controls on companies supporting it, and warned U.S. companies against using slave labor in their supply chains. We’ve terminated special treatment agreements with Hong Kong in response to the [Chinese Communist Party’s] crackdown.

 This is an impressive list of accomplishments, and the Chinese government proves every day that it deserves to be targeted in this way. China’s campaign of repression against those of all faiths is almost unparalleled.

Just this week, more reports emerged detailing how China is using the coronavirus pandemic to crack down on Christian house churches. The Family Research Council’s Bob Fu explained the situation to CBN News:

[Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s portrait was even put on the church pulpit along with Chairman Mao and the first line item of worship by the government-sanctioned church before COVID-19 was to sing the Communist Party national anthem.

If the Chinese government cannot crush Christianity altogether, it will attempt to reshape it in the image of the Chinese Communist Party.

News also surfaced this month that low-income Christian families are pressured to abandon their religious practices before they receive government aid.

 Local officials in one province told Christians to stop attending church services and instructed them to hang portraits of Mao Zedong and Jinping in their homes. One woman even lost her financial aid after she said “thank God” upon receiving her small monthly stipend.

At Thursday’s hearing, Pompeo once again reiterated that China’s abuses against Uighur Muslims is the “stain of the century.”

The most recent horrors committed against Uighurs to be exposed is China’s efforts to limit Uighur births. New research estimates that hundreds of thousands of Uighur women have been subjected to mandatory pregnancy checks, forced sterilization, and even forced abortion.

One Uighur woman who worked at a hospital recounted witnessing forced abortions:

The husbands were not allowed inside. They take in the women, who are always crying. Afterwards, they just threw the fetus in a plastic bag like it was trash. One mother begged to die after her 7-month-old baby was killed.

Such tragic accounts are a grave reminder of the suffering Uighurs endure every day in China.

And while as many as 3 million Uighurs languish in “reeducation” camps, the Chinese government has been putting many of these arbitrarily detained victims to work in its forced labor program.

As China seeks to financially profit from its vast internment camp system, American companies, consumers, and politicians should be making every feasible effort to avoid funding these atrocities.

In what is often described as the “open-air prison” of Xinjiang, advanced surveillance technology is used to track and control ordinary people as they go about their day.

Unfortunately, American technology companies have directly and indirectly aided the Chinese government in its use of technology to repress the Uighur people. And major technology companies, including Apple, have been linked to forced labor in Xinjiang as well.

Reports of the Chinese government’s repression of religion continue to get worse, even when it seems that’s not possible.

The Trump administration’s effort to expose China’s abuses, spearheaded by Pompeo, is important work. Nothing will change until the world knows about it. Now that China’s repression is out in the open, it is time for free countries around the world to join with the United States in pushing back on China’s oppressive agenda.

The "Yellow Peril," Revisited (As In Blaming Chinese People for the Coronavirus) This is wrong: Blaming Chinese people or Chinese culture for the pandemic only serves to reinforce stereotypes of East Asians as the “yellow peril.” by Anita Jack-Davies

This past spring, Asian students at Queen’s University indicated that they were victims of racial discrimination as a result of COVID–19. Their complaints echoed similar incidents of racial discrimination and exclusion of Chinese students at other Canadian universities.

This rise in anti-Asian sentiments is not limited to university campuses. The president of the United States recently yet again called COVID–19 the “China Virus.” While some American officials have tried to downplay the president’s rhetoric, others blamed China’s culture for the virus.

Despite consensus among social scientists that race is a social construct, xenophobic attacks on Chinese communities and Asians at large during the pandemic show that race has real life consequences for groups marked as an other.

Blaming Chinese people or Chinese culture for the pandemic only serves to reinforce stereotypes of East Asians as the “yellow peril.”

How do constructions of the Chinese as “diseased” inform their dehumanization and that of East Asian communities in Canada and globally? How does their dehumanization at this time mirror the techniques of racialization of other racial and ethnic groups that have often played out in popular media? These are difficult questions that can be better understood by examining the racism that Chinese communities in Canada and the U.S. have suffered well before they were regarded as members of today’s “model minority.”

The New ‘Yellow Peril’?

Chinese immigrants first arrived in Canada when Chang Tsoo and Ah Hong entered British Columbia to prospect in the Cariboo gold rush in 1858.

By 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act legally restricted Chinese labourers from the U.S. and resulted in Chinese migration to Canada and Mexico. At the time, the law was the first of its kind at the federal level in the U.S. and denied Chinese immigration for over 80 years.

The act was in place until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and prohibited Chinese labourers, both skilled and unskilled, from entering the U.S.

In a study of the historical antecedents of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), writer Carianne Leung found that Chinese communities in Canada were historically constructed as the “yellow peril” and their presence compared to that of the plague. Chinese settlements in the country “were regarded with the same hysteria as an infectious disease spreading across Canada.”

In 1885, a commissioner described Vancouver’s Chinatown as an “ulcer” and suggested that, if left untreated, would “cause disease in the places around it and ultimately the whole body.” At that time, newspapers discursively cast Chinatowns as relating to “disease and filth.” By the mid 1890s, the Vancouver municipal council included Chinatowns as categories for inspection, along with “sewage,” “slaughter houses” and “pig ranches.”

Linking COVID-19 with China invokes a well worn narrative of Chinese people as “diseased,” a link also present with the appearance of SARS in 2003. It is a technique of racialization that works to dehumanize via discursive practices. Language is used to cast Chinese communities as a foreign and dangerous other. In this example, the idea of illness, sickness and disease is invoked. A group must first be dehumanized and stripped of their humanity before their marginalization can be justified.

These discursive practices provide justifications for marginalization, distrust, exclusion and increased social distancing between Chinese communities and other communities.

A Technique of Dehumanization

Wherever a pandemic goes xenophobia is never far behind. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus reports of racism toward East Asian communities have grown apace.

In a CBC radio story, Amy Go, president of the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice said that many of her friends and family members experienced racism due to misinformation and stereotyping about the disease. Meanwhile, in the United States, Chinese Americans are increasingly becoming the targets of xenophobic attacks.

Earlier this year, a University College London student from Singapore was racially assaulted. The perpetrators, two boys aged 15 and 16, allegedly shouted, “I don’t want your coronavirus in my country.”

n a recent article for The Atlantic, Yasmeetn Serhan and Timothy McLauglin write that pandemics often isolate specific groups, as indicated by the targeting of Africans during the 2014 Ebola outbreak. With this in mind, the World Health Organization (WHO) refrained from linking the virus to a specific geographic location when it was first described to the global community.

Dehumanization is often the first and most insidious technique of racialization. The racism accompanying the spread of and response to COVID-19 must be addressed.

What Does the Word "Race" Actually Mean? Using race to describe inequality is misleading when what we seek to discuss are socioeconomic disparities. by Nina G. Jablonski and George Chaplin

Race-thinking has been discredited for decades. But it is still with us. Yet race is a historical contingency, not a state of nature. One of the most sinister things about race is that its sibling, racism, not only lasts, but continues to grow. Race has so co-opted our consciousness and language that any attempt to deal with the effects of racism has been very difficult.

The language of race was one of the questions that occupied us, a group of academics, during the course of a multi-year series of discussions that constituted the Effects of Race project at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study.

The addictiveness of race-thinking thwarts all efforts to unite humanity into a common cause. New endeavours to utilise race for economic, educational, biological, and – most recently – genetic reasons continue despite the fact that people share so many overwhelming commonalities. Any subdivisions erected between people are essentially meaningless.

Many embrace race as a concept, but it mostly persists because the damage caused by racism persists. The economically powerful see race as a shorthand for class, intelligence, education, ability, as well as biology. The economically disadvantaged see it as the cause of their suffering and as a uniting principle. In both cases, it is a factor used to justify an Us-Them dichotomy.

What can be done about the durability of the concept of race? One thing we can consider is changing the vocabulary.

Language and Power

Language space is constantly changing, but the reuse of value-laden words has the power to reinforce past preconceptions and prejudices. Reusing old race words in new contexts doesn’t remove their original meanings, it only adds to them. The language-space of race is so crowded that new terms (neologisms) with no connections to past meanings are hard to derive, but a new vocabulary is what is needed because so many of the old words are derogatory and hurtful.

Neologisms like “people of colour” arose in the 1930s after “coloured people” became restricted to mean African American people in the United States. It was revived again at the end of the twentieth century as an inclusive group of people identified as anyone who wasn’t a person of European descent with light skin – “whites” – and who were subjected to differential treatment by the dominant white culture.

One successful effort has been the conversion of hateful speech by subjugated people themselves. The word “queer” was once a highly derogatory term for people who prefer partners of the same gender. Redeployment and repurposing of the word as a positive identifier has lessened its impact as a slur, even though it is still used as marker of Us-Them. In fighting homophobia, the upbeat neologism “gay” has been more effective at thwarting discrimination of non-binary sexuality.

Repurposing official race labels like the apartheid-era “Black” and “Coloured”, for utilitarian purposes of government and social restitution in South Africa, has not seen the power and confusion of those words diminish much. Any reuse or redefinition of race-thinking terms just reinforces all previous meanings.

What Does “Race” Actually Mean?

So, should we stop talking about race? In a word, no. We must understand the full expanse and power of racial language. Denial of race will not bring about the demise of race, instead it only cloaks terms that perpetuate the power of the concept and its potential for harm.

What we need to do is unpack the term “race” from other confusions surrounding it.

Do races have a biological reality? If race is biologically real, then it should only be defined by a biological meaning. All people living today belong to one species, Homo sapiens, and this species has never been divided into separate groups that were on their way to becoming new species.

People have always moved and intermixed, but, despite this, the concept of population isolation and a belief in “pure races” is common.

But species are individuals in the logical sense. Subsets of species, whether called subspecies or races, have no such individual reality. They are always in flux and have identities that vary according to the time and place of their definition.

The categories of race and ethnicity used by the United States Census such as “Black or African American” and “Asian” are good examples because they have very specific meanings for the census, but change regularly and are only understood clearly by people of the time and place the usage was developed. These widely used terms lack any biological reality, but that association still exists for most people because race started out as a quasi-scientific concept.

Let’s Find New Words

Race is not biology nor is it a linguistic-ethnic grouping. It is not class. Race is not shorthand biology or any other grouping definition. But continued belief in the existence of real races and the biological or social reality of the race concept provides justification for the continuation of a racially inequitable status quo – and the social marginalisation of historically disadvantaged groups.

When we use race we need to be very specific about what we mean. Using race to describe inequality is misleading when what we seek to discuss are socioeconomic disparities.

Let’s find new terms to describe these phenomena. It’s essential that we abandon official race labels and stop educating children about race categories because these concepts are freighted with toxic baggage.

We cannot just keep the “good parts” of race because othering has no good side. Race should be spoken about only in an historical context or in terms of current racism.

India vs. Pakistan: Who Would Win in a War? (Nobody) The disparity in forces, war plans on both sides, and the presence of tactical nuclear weapons makes a regional nuclear war—even a limited one—a real possibility. by Kyle Mizokami

Outnumbered and under-equipped, the Pakistani army believes it is in a position to launch small local offensives from the outset, before the Indian army can reach its jumping-off points, to occupy favorable terrain. Still, the disparity in forces means the Pakistanis cannot hope to launch a major, war-winning offensive and terminate a ground war on their own terms. As a result, the Pakistani army is increasingly relying on tactical nuclear weapons to aid their conventional forces.

The Indian subcontinent is home to two of the largest armies on Earth. Not only are the armies of India and Pakistan both larger in personnel than the U.S. Army, but they have stood at alert facing one another since the dissolution of the British Indian Army in 1947. The two armies have clashed four times in the past seventy years, and may yet do so again in the future.

The Indian army is the primary land force of the Indian armed forces. The army numbers 1.2 million active duty personnel and 990,000 reservists, for a total force strength of 2.1 million. The army’s primary tasks are guarding the borders with Pakistan and China and domestic security—particularly in Kashmir and the Northeast. The army is also a frequent contributor to United Nations peacekeeping missions abroad.

The army is structured into fourteen army corps, which are further made up of forty infantry, armored, mountain and RAPID (mechanized infantry) divisions. There is approximately one separate artillery brigade per corps, five separate armored brigades, seven infantry brigades and five brigade-sized air defense formations.

Infantry and mountain divisions are mostly assigned to the mountainous North and Northeast regions, where manpower intensive counterinsurgency and mountain warfare forces are important, while infantry, RAPID, and armored formations sit on the border opposite Pakistan. Perhaps unusually the Indian army has only one airborne unit, the Parachute Regiment, which is actually an umbrella headquarters for army airborne and special forces. The Parachute Regiment controls seven special-forces battalions and three airborne brigades.

The army is equipped from a number of sources, primarily Russia and a growing domestic arms industry, with increasing amounts of Israeli and American weaponry. More than 4,000 tanks equip the country’s ninety-seven armored regiments (the equivalent of American battalions), including 2,400 older T-72 tanks, 1,600 T-90 tanks, and approximately 360 Arjun Mk.1 and Mk.2 tanks. Complementing the T-72/90 tanks in armored and mechanized infantry formations are BMP-2 mechanized infantry combat vehicles.

Most of the Indian Army’s 4,000 artillery pieces are from Russia, including newer 300-millimeter Smerch multiple launch rocket systems, but the country appears to be turning away from Russian field artillery towards American towed M777 and South Korean K-9 Thunder self-propelled howitzers. A new howitzer, the Dhanush, appears close to widespread adoption. Air defense artillery, on the other hand, is dominated by Russian equipment, from battlefield Tunguska self-propelled anti-aircraft guns to S-400 “Triumf” high-altitude air-defense missiles.

The Pakistani army numbers 650,000 active duty personnel and five hundred thousand reserves, for a total strength of 1.15 million. Although Pakistan resides in what most would consider a rough neighborhood, it is on relatively good terms with neighbors China and Iran. As a result, the army’s primary missions are domestic security operations against the Pakistani Taliban and facing off against the Indian army. Like India, Pakistan is a major contributor of forces to United Nations peacekeeping missions.

The Pakistani army consists of twenty-six combat divisions falling under the control of nine army corps. Most divisions are infantry divisions, with only two armored and two mechanized infantry divisions. Each corps also controls an average of one armored, one infantry and one artillery brigade each. Not only is the Pakistani army smaller than the Indian army, but it features fewer offensive forces capable of attacking India head-on. Special operations forces are concentrated under the control of the Special Services Group, which controls eight commando battalions.

The army’s equipment is mostly Pakistani and Chinese, with Turkish and American armaments in key areas. The country has fewer than seven hundred frontline tanks, including the Khalid and the T-80UD, with another one thousand modernized versions of the 1970s-era Chinese Type 59. Pakistan lacks a modern infantry fighting vehicle, relying on more than two thousand upgraded M113 tracked armored personnel carriers.

Pakistan has nearly two thousand artillery pieces, primarily Chinese and American, but they are older models with little in terms of acquisitions in sight. Standouts among these are roughly 250 M109A5 155-millimeter self-propelled howitzers and two hundred A-100E 300-millimeter multiple launch rocket systems—similar to India’s Smerch. One standout category where Pakistani weapons outmatch Indian ones is the area of attack helicopters, where the country fields fifty-one older AH-1S Cobra attack helicopters with another fifteen AH-1Z Vipers on order.

If the two countries went to war, a major clash between the two armies would be inevitable. Outnumbered and under-equipped, the Pakistani army believes it is in a position to launch small local offensives from the outset, before the Indian army can reach its jumping-off points, to occupy favorable terrain. Still, the disparity in forces means the Pakistanis cannot hope to launch a major, war-winning offensive and terminate a ground war on their own terms. As a result, the Pakistani army is increasingly relying on tactical nuclear weapons to aid their conventional forces.

For its part, the Indian army plans to immediately take the offensive under a doctrine called “Cold Start.” Cold Start envisions rapid mobilization followed by a major offensive into Pakistan before the country can respond with tactical nuclear weapons. Such an offensive—and Pakistan’s likely conventional defeat—could make the use of tactical nuclear weapons all the more likely.

The adversarial relationship between India and Pakistan makes the Indian subcontinent one of the most dangerous places on Earth. The disparity in forces, war plans on both sides, and the presence of tactical nuclear weapons makes a regional nuclear war—even a limited one—a real possibility.

Microsoft Buying TikTok? Don't Get Too Excited Just Yet Moving ownership to a US company could help address concerns surrounding the perceived influence of the Chinese government over TikTok. But there will need to be strong oversight to ensure existing user data is transferred entirely to Microsoft’s control. by Paul Haskell-Dowland and Brianna O'Shea

In what seems to be a common occurrence, Chinese video-sharing app TikTok is once again in the headlines.

After months of speculation about national security risks and users’ data being harvested by the Chinese Communist Party, US President Donald Trump has announced plans to ban TikTok in the United States any day now.

In response, a deal is being negotiated between TikTok’s parent company ByteDance and US software giant Microsoft. If successful, Microsoft will take over the app’s operations in the US and potentially also in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

A US ban would not be unprecedented. India barred TikTok last month, alongside dozens of other Chinese-owned apps and websites.

According to reports, ByteDance has agreed to sell some of its TikTok operations to Microsoft. The deal, which is unlikely to progress before mid-September, would appease US regulators and could be seen as a way forward for TikTok in Australia.

Microsoft has indicated any takeover would include a complete security review and an offer of "continuing dialogue with the United States government, including with the president."

Moving ownership to a US company could help address concerns surrounding the perceived influence of the Chinese government over TikTok. But there will need to be strong oversight to ensure existing user data is transferred entirely to Microsoft’s control.

While Microsoft has pledged to ensure TikTok data are deleted “from servers outside the country after it is transferred” – it would be difficult to prove copies had not been made before control was handed over.

What’s more, a Microsoft-owned TikTok may not appeal to everyone. Some may think Microsoft is too closely tied to the US government, or may consider it a monopoly holder in the personal computing market.

Also, it would be naive to think foreign governments will not be able to covertly access US-stored user data, if they are so inclined.

Who Will Benefit?

Should the deal go ahead, it may open an opportunity for the Australian and New Zealand governments to align with a US-supported initiative.

Australia is still deciding how to proceed, with the Senate Select Committee on Foreign Interference through Social Media due to hear from TikTok representatives on August 21. The committee has been tasked to look at the influence of social media on elections and the use of such platforms to distribute misinformation.

TikTok won’t be alone though – Facebook and Twitter are both due to attend. It is, however, unlikely the Microsoft acquisition will have much influence on the proceedings as the deal is still in the early days of discussion.

Microsoft’s acquisition may introduce fresh concerns about the US government’s influence over TikTok. Although, this is perhaps more politically palatable than potential Chinese government influence over the app – given the Chinese Communist Party’s unsavoury record of privacy abuses.

Perhaps the only winner from the deal would be ByteDance itself. A product that is increasingly disliked by foreign governments will only become harder to sell with time. It would make sense for ByteDance to cash out its asset sooner rather than later.

The deal would also likely earn it a significant payout, given TikTok’s millions of users.

Are the Risks Real?

Despite ongoing allegations, there is no solid evidence of a threat to either national security or personal data from using TikTok. Many of the concerns hinge on data sovereignty – specifically, where data are stored and who can use and access them.

TikTok has responded to allegations by stating its user data are not stored in China and are not subject to Chinese government influence or access.

That said, while TikTok user data may well be stored outside China, it is unclear whether the Chinese government has already secured access, or will seek to do so later through legal channels.

There are, however, other potential issues that may be driving the US’s concerns.

For instance, in 2018 an unexpected consequence of sharing fitness tracker data through the Strava website inadvertently revealed the locations of secret US military bases.

Thus, services such as TikTok which are meant to be relatively benign (if used ethically) can, under certain circumstances, present unexpected threats to national security. This may explain why Australia’s defence forces have banned the app.

Another Trump Power Move?

Threats from the US against TikTok are not new.

The country’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo indicated TikTok was being examined by US authorities in early July. And suggestions of a national security review go as far back as November last year.

However, in regards to Trump’s most recent threat, one contributing factor may be the personal feelings of the president himself.

There are theories much of the new hype over TikTok could be a reaction from Trump to an ill-fated political rally in Tulsa.

A number of TikTok users reserved tickets to the Trump rally and didn’t show up, as a protest against the president. The rally saw only a few thousand supporters attend, out of hundreds of thousands of allocated tickets.