Why did US wait to retaliate for drone attack on its troops?

“Defence and security officials said that weather had made it difficult to retaliate sooner, with Friday presenting the best conditions for launching strikes.
Though the White House and Pentagon also repeatedly said they were avoiding “telegraphing” operations in the days leading up to the strikes, experts believe they did just that – with the ultimate intention of avoiding a wider war with Iran.

Arabian Gulf States Institute of Washington fellow Hussein Ibish, said the delay appeared to be the US signalling “what they’re not going to do, which is strike inside Iran”.

Mr Mulroy told the BBC it is possible that the US allowed Iranian Revolutionary Guard personnel “to leave the facilities that are going to be struck”.

Experts noted the US must walk a fine line between deterring a country like Iran without igniting a greater conflict.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-did-us-wait-retaliate-020425239.html

State Governments Promised Private Companies More than $10 Billion in Subsidies Last Year

“Governments often make deals with private companies, offering generous subsidies to encourage development in their respective states. The year 2023 was unfortunately no exception.
According to a new report from Good Jobs First, a watchdog group that tracks economic development deals, 16 states promised more than $10 billion to private companies last year. The group counted 23 “megadeals,” which it defines as any agreement involving at least $50 million in subsidies to a private company.”

https://reason.com/2024/01/05/state-governments-promised-private-companies-more-than-10-billion-in-subsidies-last-year/

India begins to flex its naval power as competition with China grows

“India is widely publicizing the deployments, signaling its desire to assume a wider responsibility in maritime security to the world and its growing maritime ambitions to regional rival China.
“It is a message to China that, look, we can deploy such a large force here. This is our backyard. Though we don’t own it, but we are probably the most capable and responsible resident naval power,” Chawla said.

The Indian navy has helped at least four ships, three of which were attacked by Houthi rebels and another that Washington blamed on Iran, a charge denied by Tehran. It has also conducted several anti-piracy missions.”

“India has not joined the U.S.-led force battling the Houthis.

On Jan. 26, the Indian guided missile destroyer INS Visakhapatnam assisted the crew of a Marshall Islands-flagged tanker in fighting a fire after it was hit by a missile in the Gulf of Aden. About 10 days earlier, the Visakhapatnam responded to a distress call by the U.S.-owned Genco Picardy merchant vessel following a drone attack in the same waters.

“Maritime security has not been a strong pillar of India’s foreign policy engagements in a way we are beginning to see now,” said Darshana M. Baruah, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “China is a factor in this.”

The rivals are already locked in a military standoff along their disputed border high in the mountains.

China has built up its presence over the years in the Indian Ocean, a key route for its energy supplies. It has the world’s largest navy by number of ships, more than three times the size of the Indian navy. China also operates a powerful fleet of large coast guard ships and what is referred to as its maritime militia consisting of fishing vessels that cooperate with the coast guard in asserting territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Beijing has deepened its engagement in the Indian Ocean mainly through infrastructure deals with India’s neighbors, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and most recently the Maldives.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/india-begins-flex-naval-power-032626361.html

US hits hard at militias in Iraq and Syria, retaliating for fatal drone attack

“The strikes by manned and unmanned aircraft hit more than 85 targets, including command and control headquarters, intelligence centers, rockets and missiles, drone and ammunition storage sites and other facilities. U.S. Central Command said the strikes used more than 125 precision munitions, and they were delivered by numerous aircraft, inlcuding long-range bombers flown from the United States. One official said B-1 bombers were used.
Omar Abu Layla, a Europe-based activist who heads the Deir Ezzor 24 media outlet, said the strikes hit areas in east Syria including the countryside of Mayadeen, Quriya and Rahba that is home to a telecommunications center for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and arms depot in Boukamal along the Iraq border.

The assault came came just hours after Biden and top defense leaders joined grieving families to watch as the remains of the three Army Reserve soldiers were returned to the U.S. at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

It was unclear what the next steps will be, or whether the days of U.S. warnings have sent militia members scattering into hiding, making it more difficult to detect and strike them. But it was evident that the recent statement released by Kataeb Hezbollah, one of the main Iran-backed militias, saying it was suspending attacks on American troops had no impact on the administration’s plans.

The U.S. strikes appeared to stop short of directly targeting Iran or senior leaders of the Revolutionary Guard Quds force within its borders. Iran has denied it was behind the Jordan attack.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-bolsters-defenses-around-jordan-144526727.html

Universities Use DEI Statements To Enforce Groupthink

“Inbar is an eminent, influential, and highly cited researcher with a Ph.D. in social psychology from Cornell University. There is no question that he is qualified. Anyone worth their salt doing work on political polarization knows Inbar’s name. Inbar also jumped through all the hoops UCLA put up for the job, including submitting a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statement, which is currently all the rage in colleges and universities. He even shares the politics of the majority of the psychology department. But on his podcast, Inbar had expressed relatively mild concerns over the ideological pressures that DEI statements impose and wondered aloud whether they do harm to diversity of thought.

As a result of this petition—signed by only 66 students—UCLA did not hire Inbar. And he’s not the only academic this has happened to. Far from it.”

https://reason.com/2024/01/06/the-conformity-gauntlet/

The Big Flaws in That Study Suggesting That China Manipulates TikTok Topics

“The latest wave of fearmongering about TikTok involves a study purportedly showing that the app suppresses content unflattering to China. The study attracted a lot of coverage in the American media, with some declaring it all the more reason to ban the video-sharing app.”

“But there are serious flaws in the study design that undermine its conclusions and any panicky takeaways from them.
In the study, the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) compared the use of specific hashtags on Instagram (owned by the U.S. company Meta) and on TikTok (owned by the Chinese company ByteDance). The analysis included hashtags related both to general subjects and to “China sensitive topics” such as Uyghurs, Tibet, and Tiananmen Square. “While ratios for non-sensitive topics (e.g., general political and pop-culture) generally followed user ratios (~2:1), ratios for topics sensitive to the Chinese Government were much higher (>10:1),” states the report, titled “A Tik-Tok-ing Timebomb: How TikTok’s Global Platform Anomalies Align with the Chinese Communist Party’s Geostrategic Objectives.”

The study concludes that there is “a strong possibility that TikTok systematically promotes or demotes content on the basis of whether it is aligned with or opposed to the interests of the Chinese Government.”

There are ample reasons to be skeptical of this conclusion. Paul Matzko pointed out some of these in a recent Cato Institute blog post, identifying “two remarkably basic errors that call into question the fundamental utility of the report.””

“the researchers fail to account for differences in how long the two social networks in question have been around. Instagram launched nearly 7 years before TikTok’s international launch (and nearly 6 years before TikTok existed at all) and introduced hashtags a few months thereafter (in January 2011). Yet the researchers’ data collection process does not seem to account for the different launch dates, nor does their report even mention this disparity. (Reason reached out to the study authors last week to ask about this but has not received a response.)
The researchers also fail to account for the fact that Instagram and TikTok users are not identical. This leads them “to miss the potential for generational cohort effects,” suggested Matzko. “In short, the median user of Instagram is older than the median user of TikTok. Compare the largest segment of users by age on each platform: 25% of TikTok users in the US are ages 10–19, while 27.4% of Instagram users are 25–34.”

It’s easy to imagine how differing launch dates and typical-user ages could lead to differences in content prevalence, with no nefarious meddling by the Chinese government or algorithmic fiddling by Bytedance needed.”

https://reason.com/2024/01/08/the-big-flaws-in-that-study-suggesting-that-china-manipulates-tiktok-topics/

How Congress is planning to lift 400,000 kids out of poverty

“Putting all the provisions together, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that the deal will lift about 400,000 children out of poverty, and make another 3 million less poor, in its first year. By 2025, it will be keeping 500,000 children a year out of poverty. The Tax Policy Center finds that the bulk of the tax cut will go to families earning $20,000 to $40,000 a year, with most families in the bottom fifth of the income scale getting a tax cut. Because of the business tax cuts, the total package winds up concentrating its benefits at the bottom and at the very top of the income scale.

While nothing to sneeze at, this is a far cry from the roughly 3 million children that would been lifted out of poverty in 2022 if the 2021 expansion of the credit had been extended. It is a dramatically more modest step. It also takes as a given that the credit will not be available to families with zero earnings, a key disagreement between Democratic and Republican legislators on which the latter have shown no flexibility.”

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2024/1/16/24035922/child-tax-credit-wyden-smith-deal

How John Deere Hijacked Copyright Law To Keep You From Tinkering With Your Tractor

“companies such as John Deere have vertically integrated the entire ecosystem for equipment, requiring customers to purchase repair services exclusively from dealers and using software to prevent independent repairs.
Whenever software has been used to prevent the owners of products from altering or repairing their property, groups of ideologically driven individuals have used their skills to circumvent such constraints. Agricultural equipment is no different, and hackers have taken it upon themselves to “jailbreak” or open up the closed software systems that prevent independent repairs. In the words of one such hacker, “We want farmers to be able to repair their stuff for when things go wrong, and now that means being able to repair or make decisions about the software in their tractors.”

Hackers have now developed tools that would give power back to the owners of farm equipment, allowing farmers unversed in handling software to circumvent manufacturers’ software locks and independently make repairs and service their equipment. There’s only one problem with this movement to liberate the tractors: It’s a violation of federal copyright law.”

“The ways in which John Deere and other corporations have used the copyright system is a glaring example of regulatory capture in action, highlighting the absurdity of a system where owning a product doesn’t necessarily convey the right to fully control it. There are certainly circumstances where the manufacturers are justified in protecting their products from tampering, but such cases should be handled through warranty nullification and contract law, not through exorbitant fines and lengthy prison sentences.

With the Farm Bill up for reauthorization, Congress is in a perfect position to reform Section 1201 of the DMCA, giving farmers, hackers, and the owners of all types of tech the freedom to repair. ”

https://reason.com/2024/01/08/how-john-deere-hijacked-copyright-law-to-keep-you-from-tinkering-with-your-tractor/

Could Elite Colleges Embrace the SAT Again?

“While many are put off by the persistent score gaps across racial and economic lines, the idea that ditching the test will help minority students or those from low-income families is short-sighted. Yes, SAT scores correlate with income and race—but so do high school GPAs and essays, the other metrics elite colleges most often rely on in the absence of test scores.
GPA is a particularly muddy metric to rely on when making admissions decisions for highly selective colleges, as rigor—and grade inflation—varies widely between high schools. Leonhardt highlighted two recent studies that show this. One found that SAT scores were much more predictive of success (such as being admitted to a top graduate school or being employed by a prestigious firm) than high school GPA. The second found that college grades were much better predicted by standardized test scores than by high school grades.”

“Ultimately, those who stand to benefit most from test-optional admissions aren’t disadvantaged students but mediocre wealthy ones. Standardized test scores, while imperfect, are the closest to an objective measure colleges have for making admissions decisions—one that isolates academic achievement from expensive extracurriculars and tutor-polished essays.”

https://reason.com/2024/01/08/could-elite-colleges-embrace-the-sat-again/