Malawi Wire

At a gathering of current and former U.S. officials and private-sector executives Friday in Washington, concern was rampant that the United States has fallen behind China in the development of several key technologies, and that it faces an uncertain future in which other countries could challenge its historic dominance in the development of cutting-edge communications and computing technology.

The gathering was convened by the Special Competitive Studies Project, an effort spearheaded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the stated purpose of which is “to ensure that America is positioned and organized to win the techno-economic competition between now and 2030, the critical window for shaping the future.”

Among attendees, the prevailing sentiment was that the nation’s ability to actually win that competition was under threat.

Dire predictions

A few days before the summit, the SCSP issued a report predicting what would happen if China became the global technological leader.

“Understanding the stakes requires imagining a world in which an authoritarian state controls the digital infrastructure, enjoys the dominant position in the world’s technology platforms, controls the means of production for critical technologies, and harnesses a new wave of general purpose technologies, like biotech and new energy technologies, to transform its society, economy and military,” the report said.

The report envisions a future where China, not the U.S., captures the trillions of dollars of income generated by the new technological advances and uses its leverage to make the case that autocracy, not democracy, is the superior form of government.

In the report’s grim vision, China promotes the concept of a “sovereign” internet, where individual countries limit the flow of information to their people, and where China develops and possibly controls the key technology supporting critical infrastructure in countries around the world.

Finally, the report warns that under such a scenario, the U.S. military would lose its technological lead over China and other competitors, and China might be in a position to cut off the supply of “microelectronics and other critical technology inputs.”

‘Nothing is inevitable’

In an address to the summit, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan appeared to agree that the nation faces significant challenges in keeping pace with China in the development of new technology.

“We know that nothing is inevitable about maintaining America’s core strength and competitive advantage in the world,” Sullivan said. “And we know that it has to be renewed, revitalized and stewarded, and that is especially true when it comes to U.S. technological leadership.”

In China, he said, “we’re facing a competitor that is determined to overtake U.S. technology leadership and is willing to devote nearly limitless resources to do so.”

Sullivan also said, however, that President Joe Biden’s administration is aware of the threat and has been working to meet it. In particular, Sullivan noted the recent passage of the CHIPS Act, which directs more than $50 billion toward establishing advanced microchip fabrication facilities in the U.S.

“We’re making historically unprecedented investments, putting us back on track to lead the industries of the future,” Sullivan said. “We’re doubling down on our efforts to be a magnet for the world’s top technical talent. We’ve adapted our technology protection tools to new geopolitical realities. And most importantly, we’ve done this in a way that is inclusive, force multiplying and consistent with our values.”

Not ‘fast enough’

H.R. McMaster, a retired Army general who served as national security adviser during the Trump administration, appeared as a panelist at the conference. He said that while progress is being made, the pace needs to be quickened.

“It’s not going fast enough, because we’re so far behind, because there’s too many years of complacency based on flawed assumptions about the nature of the post-Cold War world,” McMaster said.

He called for a more active effort to block China’s technological advancement, saying, “We need export controls now, to prevent China from getting a differential advantage, [while] maintaining our competitive advantages.”

China has repeatedly criticized U.S. efforts to impede its technological advancement, an issue that Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning addressed this week when asked about U.S. export controls.

“What the U.S. is doing is purely ‘sci-tech hegemony,’ ” she said. “It seeks to use its technological prowess as an advantage to hobble and suppress the development of emerging markets and developing countries. While trumpeting a level playing field and a so-called ‘rules-based order,’ the U.S. cares only about ‘America first’ and believes might makes right. The U.S. probably hopes that China and the rest of the developing world will forever stay at the lower end of the industrial chain. This is not constructive.”

5G as a warning

A recurring theme at the event was the development of 5G wireless internet technology, a field in which Western countries, including the U.S., fell far behind China. With the benefit of favorable treatment from Beijing, Chinese firms, specifically Huawei, developed a dominant global position in the provision of 5G networking equipment.

Concerned that having Chinese-made equipment serve as the backbone of sensitive communications technology could create an espionage or security risk, the U.S. and some of its allies mounted a global campaign to block the installation of Huawei’s equipment, even if that meant significant delays in the rollout of 5G wireless service.

“The key message here is we need to make sure that what happened to us in 5G does not happen again,” said Schmidt. “I cannot say that more clearly. You do not want to work on platform technologies that you use every day that are dominated by nondemocratic, nonopen systems.”

Schmidt said that it would be difficult to stay ahead of China technologically, predicting that Beijing would “double down on competing in the areas that we care about,” including artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotechnology and others.

Maintaining relations

Jon Huntsman, a former U.S. ambassador to China, said that Americans are generally uninformed about how far China is ahead of the United States in some technologies. Now the vice chairperson of Ford Motor Company, Huntsman said that in the development of electric vehicles, for example, China is at least five years ahead of the U.S.

He said that the U.S. must walk a fine line to catch up with China in some areas and to maintain its advantage in others. In particular, he stressed the need to retain person-to-person business and other relationships with the Chinese people.

“Decoupling our people is not a good thing,” he said. “We’ll wind up with China right where we are with Russia if we do that.” He added, “Decoupling is only going to create estrangement, misunderstandings and instability, globally, on the security side.”

Source: Voice Of America

A powerful storm traveling north through the Bering Strait on Saturday caused widespread flooding in several western Alaska coastal communities, knocking out power and sending residents fleeing for higher ground.

The force of the water moved some homes off their foundations, and one house in Nome was floating down a river until it became caught at a bridge.

The storm is what remains of Typhoon Merbok, a storm that is also influencing weather patterns as far away as California, where strong winds and a rare late-summer rainstorm were expected.

In Alaska, there have been no reports of injuries or deaths from the storm, said Jeremy Zidek, spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. Officials had warned communities that some places could see the worst flooding in 50 years and water could take up to 14 hours to recede.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Saturday issued a disaster declaration for the communities affected.

Among the hardest hit was Golovin, where most of the village’s 170 or so residents either took shelter at the school or in three buildings on a hillside. Winds in the area were gusting at more than 95 kph and the water level was 3.35 meters above the normal high tide line and was expected to rise another 61 centimeters Saturday before cresting.

“Most of the lower part of the community is all flooded with structures and buildings inundated,” said Ed Plumb, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Fairbanks.

Clarabelle Lewis, the facility manager for the tribal government, the Chinik Eskimo Community, was among those who sought refuge on the hill overlooking Golovin. She and others were riding out the storm in the tribal office after securing items at their homes from the winds and helping their neighbors do the same.

“The winds were howling; it was noisy,” she said.

Lewis has never experienced a storm like this in the 20 years she’s lived in Golovin.

“We’ve had flooding in the past a few times, but it was never this severe,” she said. “We’ve never had homes moved from their foundations.”

There were also reports of flooding in Hooper Bay, St. Michael’s, Unalakleet and Shaktoolik, where waves broke over the berm in front of the community, Plumb said.

He said the storm will track through the Bering Strait on Saturday and then head into the Chukchi Sea.

“And then it’s going to kind of park and weaken just west of Point Hope,” he said of the community on Alaska’s northwest coast.

He said there would be high water in the northern Bering Sea vicinity through Saturday night before starting to subside through Sunday. Rising water levels farther north, in the Chukchi Sea and Kotzebue Sound areas would persist into Sunday.

In Northern California, wind gusts up to 64 kph were forecast overnight Saturday and into Sunday morning along coastal areas from Sonoma County down to Santa Cruz and at higher elevations in the Sierra Nevada, the National Weather Service said.

Winds of that strength can bring down branches and drought-stressed trees and cause power outages, said weather service meteorologist Ryan Walbrun.

Storms were expected to start Sunday morning and dump up to 7.6 centimeters of rain in coastal areas of Sonoma County and a bit less as rains move southward to the San Francisco area and into the Santa Cruz mountains, Walbrun said.

“It’s a pretty significant rain for this early in the season,” he said, adding that the storms are forecast to last on-and-off through at least Monday and would make commutes to work wet with slick roads.

In the Sierra Nevada foothills northeast of the state capital of Sacramento, fire crews have been fighting what has become the largest wildfire in that state so far this year. While rain was needed, the winds were a concern for crews battling the Mosquito Fire, which was 21% contained as of Saturday morning.

“The winds will definitely cause erratic fire behavior” that could ignite new hot spots, said Cal Fire spokesman Scott McLean, but the rains will bring welcome moisture. “The rain is not going to put out the fire, but it will help.”

Source: Voice Of America

The World Health Organization has declared an end to Ghana’s outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus after more than six weeks without any new cases.

Three cases of the virus were recorded in the West African country in late June, killing two people.

Marburg is a highly infectious viral hemorrhagic fever in the same family as Ebola. The symptoms of Marburg include diarrhea, fever, nausea and vomiting.

Speaking at a press conference Friday in Accra, head of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, said having passed the mandatory 42-day period without a new case, the country is now free of the virus.

“I do hereby state that, the appropriate outbreak reasons to Marburg disease have been implemented during the 42 days, following the last negative PCR test result for the sole surviving patient with recommendation from WHO,” he said. “Ghana has, therefore, successfully interrupted the first Marburg virus disease outbreak and hereby declare that the outbreak is over.”

A total of 198 people were tested for the virus when it first broke in Ghana. They all tested negative.

It is the second time Marburg made a West African appearance. The first outbreak was in Guinea in September of last year.

Marburg has also appeared in Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda.

There are no vaccines or antiviral treatments for Marburg, but WHO says supportive care — rehydration with oral or intravenous fluids — and treatment of specific symptoms improves the rate of survival.

Source: Voice Of America

Research to develop a pill form of insulin is showing promise at the University of British Columbia in western Canada. The goal is to eliminate the need for diabetics to inject themselves with the lifesaving medication.

According to the World Health Organization, there are an estimated 422 million diabetics worldwide. The disease claims 1.5 million lives each year. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 30 million Americans have diabetes.

Although widely available in the developed world, current forms of insulin require refrigeration, which can be a stumbling block in developing nations.

An oral version of insulin, in the form of an everyday pill, could change everything, making it easier and cheaper to transport and distribute — even to remote regions of the planet.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver think they might have discovered a formula for a pill that effectively delivers a full dose of insulin to a patient’s liver — where it is needed to regulate blood sugar levels — without dissipating uselessly in the stomach.The trick is to not swallow the pill, according to Anubhav Pratap-Singh, an assistant professor at the school’s Faculty of Land and Food Systems and the project’s lead researcher. He said the pill can be absorbed in the mouth by wedging it between the cheek and gums. In laboratory studies on rats, full doses of insulin reached the liver, he said.

“So we are getting quite a high amount of yield and so we hope that this will be more economical,” Pratap-Singh said.

Pratap-Singh started studying oral insulin in 2018, inspired to help his diabetic father, who has to inject insulin multiple times a day. He said a pill form would increase the quality of life for millions of patients who use insulin around the world.

“Instead of having to take insulin and having to travel with it in refrigerated boxes, one will simply have [a] normal capsule or tablet in a normal wrapper, which will be shelf stable, and very, very affordable,” Pratap-Singh said.

Dr. Daniel Drucker is professor of medicine at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute and the University of Toronto. He said previous attempts at oral insulin failed to efficiently deliver enough of the drug within the body. To compensate, huge pill doses were required that would have driven prices higher for the drug.

“We have to pay the manufacturing costs of a large amount of insulin in this case that never makes it into the body,” Drucker said.

Drucker said new insulin pumps, which act as an artificial pancreas, have become increasingly effective in treating diabetes. He also said the development of cell-based insulin replacement therapy, which would create beta cells that automatically release necessary insulin, look promising.

For Pratap-Singh and other researchers, the next steps involve years of further testing of what could be a revolutionary method of insulin delivery.

Source: Voice Of America

U.S. President Joe Biden Thursday applauded the tentative agreement reached between major railroads and workers’ unions regarding wages and improved working conditions, likely avoiding a nationwide rail strike.

The Biden administration announced the agreement in the pre-dawn hours Thursday after 20 hours of negotiations brokered by Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, the railway companies and the unions.

The agreement still must be ratified by the union membership.

During a brief ceremony in the White House Rose Garden, Biden called the tentative pact a win for both sides and a “win for America.”

He said the rail workers will see a 24% wage increase over the next five years, a cap on health care costs and better working conditions.

He said the deal is also a win for the rail companies because it will enable them to retain and recruit more workers in an industry that will continue to be part of the backbone of the nation’s economy for generations to come.

Biden also thanked workers and the railroad companies for their work through the COVID-19 pandemic to make sure U.S. “communities got deliveries of what have kept us going during these difficult years.”

The tentative agreement seeks to head off a strike that could have begun as early as Friday.

Source: Voice of America

Republican governors expanded their tactic of sending migrants to Democratic strongholds without warning, including a wealthy summer enclave in Massachusetts and the Washington home of Vice President Kamala Harris.

The governors of Texas and Arizona have sent thousands of migrants on buses to New York, Chicago and Washington in recent months, but the latest moves — which included two surprise flights to Martha’s Vineyard Wednesday paid for by Florida — reached a new level that critics derided as inhumane.

Upon arrival in Martha’s Vineyard, where former President Barack Obama has a home, the migrants who are predominantly from Venezuela were provided with meals, shelter, health care and information about where to find work.

The vacation island south of Boston, whose year-round residents include many blue-collar workers, appeared to absorb the dozens of arrivals without a hitch.

“We are a community that comes together to support immigrants,” said State Rep. Dylan Fernandes, who represents the area.

Lawyers for Civil Rights, based in Boston, said it was providing free legal services and investigating whether Florida’s governor may have violated human trafficking laws if it turns out any migrants were sent against their will or duped into taking the flights.

The president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, Domingo Garcia, said that some of the migrants sent on buses from Texas to Washington were tricked — an allegation that AP has not confirmed and that officials in Texas and Arizona have denied.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office didn’t answer questions about where migrants boarded planes and how they were coaxed into making the trip.

Massachusetts state Sen. Julian Cyr told The Vineyard Gazette that one plane originated in San Antonio, Texas, raising questions about whether the migrants ever set foot in Florida. Flight tracking data shows a flight originated in San Antonio, stopped in Crestview, Florida, and Charlotte, North Carolina, before landing in Martha’s Vineyard.

The two buses of migrants from Texas that arrived early Thursday outside Harris’ residence at the United States Naval Observatory carried more than 100 migrants from Colombia, Cuba, Guyana, Nicaragua, Panama and Venezuela.

“The Biden-Harris administration continues ignoring and denying the historic crisis at our southern border, which has endangered and overwhelmed Texas communities for almost two years,” said Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who is up for reelection and has poured billions of taxpayer dollars into making border security a signature issue.

After migrants seeking asylum cross the U.S.-Mexico border, they are processed in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility along the border and enter the country legally pending the outcome of their cases in immigration court.

Republicans say Biden’s policies encourage migrants to vanish into the U.S.; Democrats argue the Trump-era policy of forcing migrants to wait out their asylum cases in Mexico was inhumane.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday that federal officials were not told in advance by the Republican governors who sent the migrants to Massachusetts and Washington.

“We’re talking about children, we’re talking about families who were promised a home, promised a job, put on a bus and driven to a place that they do not know,” said Jean-Pierre.

Abbott has bused 7,900 migrants to Washington since April, later sending 2,200 to New York and 300 to Chicago. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has bused more than 1,800 migrants to Washington since May. Passengers must sign waivers that the free trips are voluntary.

DeSantis appears to be taking the strategy to a new level by using planes and choosing Martha’s Vineyard, whose harbor towns that are home to about 15,000 people are far less prepared than New York or Washington for large influxes of migrants.

Texas and Florida have infuriated officials in destination cities by failing to provide passenger rosters, estimated times of arrival and other information that would make it easier to prepare. In contrast, Arizona has coordinated with officials in other cities.

President Joe Biden is facing the same challenges as earlier presidents: a dysfunctional asylum system in the United States, and economic and social conditions that are prompting people from dozens of countries to flee.

U.S. authorities stopped migrants crossing from Mexico about 2 million times from October through July, up nearly 50% from the same period a year earlier.

Source: Voice of America