| | | | India's 'WhatsApp Election' | | Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP has mastered WhatsApp as a political tool, creating a panoply of groups on the messaging platform to target voters based on their interests, identities, or castes, writes Congress party Member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor in a Project Syndicate op-ed. There's just one problem: The chat groups are "rife" with disinformation.
In what's been dubbed the latest "WhatsApp election," India has seen the platform play an outsized role—and a surge in fake news has followed, writes Tara Varma of the European Council on Foreign Relations. It's a dangerous trend, as social-media rumors have led to 31 killings in India in the last two years; WhatsApp has taken action, blocking accounts and limiting activity, but its privacy and encryption make disinformation tough to fight, Varma writes. | | | Venezuelan opposition leader and National Assembly President Juan Guaido made his boldest moves yet this week, Michael Albertus writes at Foreign Policy, and his opposition movement faces a make-or-break moment. Either Guaido will unseat President Nicolas Maduro in the next few days, Albertus predicts, or Maduro will hold onto power and emerge stronger, just as his predecessor Hugo Chavez did after an attempted coup in 2002. In the meantime, Guaido should be concerned that high-profile military figures haven't flocked to his side, Albertus writes. | | | American sanctions are squeezing Iran's economy, but they're also boosting the influence of Iran's nationalist general Qasem Soleimani, who leads the elite Quds Force and is known for masterminding Iran's regional influence, Roula Khalaf writes at the Financial Times. Soleimani has risen to the status of national hero, and Khalaf predicts he'll become Iran's next president in two years, as economic conflict pushes Iran closer to war with America.
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, meanwhile, has a new leader in Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami, and it's possible he was appointed to reinvigorate Iran's confrontation with the West, Nader Uskowi and Omer Carmi write at Foreign Policy—though the IRGC might be more cautious for a time after the shakeup. | | The Coming Tripolar World | | The liberal international order is fading fast and will be replaced by something that looks a bit like the Cold War, John Mearsheimer writes in the latest issue of International Security.
Thanks to globalization, misguided wars, and impingements on national sovereignty, the current geopolitical system will be replaced by three new, separate world orders, Mearsheimer writes: one international, one led by the US, and one led by China. The first will be built on arms control, while the US and China will compete through their own networks of alliances and economic pacts. The world will revert to a duopoly of powers and intense security competition, and the US needs to recognize that and move on from the international order it built, Mearsheimer writes. | | On 5G, the US Should Play to Its Strengths | | | As it races with China for 5G dominance, the US should trust what works, Larry Downes argues in the Harvard Business Review. Some are wondering if the US government should build and run a 5G network in America, to compete with China's heavily government-subsidized 5G development, but Downes advises against it: If Congress can't manage to rebuild American roads and bridges, while Silicon Valley has produced some of the world's most valuable companies, it's best to let private companies and investors take the lead, he writes. | | | | | | |
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