| | | | Ukraine: A Laboratory for Information War | | Ukraine is struggling to contain the spread of disinformation as it prepares for Sunday's final round of presidential-election voting, Nina Jankowicz writes at The Atlantic. The country became the epicenter of Russian disinformation amid President Vladimir Putin's invasion; now, Ukraine's information ministry (which carries a mandate to fight interference) confronts a new problem—some fake news originating from within the country.
Ukraine is considering outlawing the spread of false information and is investing in media-literacy education, Jankowicz writes. It offers some lessons for the US, ahead of 2020—the main one being that disinformation is difficult to fight. | | Finland looks like a good summation of today's contradictory politics: In elections held Sunday, the country's far-right party (which has turned even more nationalist), surged down the stretch and showed populism is alive and well, The Economist writes. At the same time, the country moved left, as Social Democrats vaulted over centrists to soon form a coalition government, and women will now hold more seats in parliament than at any point in history, the Atlantic Council's Leo Michel notes.
If those colliding trends sound familiar, there's one notable difference: In Finland, politics are not a "blood sport," Michel writes, and the election proceeded in a respectful tone. Despite the same tectonic shifts seen elsewhere, it's a country where "the art of compromise is still practiced." | | Who's Afraid of Social Scoring? | | | China's social credit system looks dystopian and terrifying, but it's not as advanced as Western media have made it out to be, Shazeda Ahmed writes in Logic. It lacks a centralized database (scoring systems remain more localized), Ahmed writes, and China already employed blacklists—social scoring is mostly about consolidating them and making punishments harder to evade. There's also a sunnier side to things, as volunteerism is being incentivized with discounts in online purchases.
The real risk, Ahmed writes, is that bad marks are difficult to challenge, and the system could develop without input from the people getting hurt. | | As London saw a third day of climate protests organized by the group Extinction Rebellion, The Economist wonders if the movement will become the next Occupy Wall Street. Organizers claim protests were staged in 80 cities across 33 countries, and the magazine notes that activists have a knack for drawing attention with theatrics (and arrests—290 in London by Tuesday night) to attract more supporters, casting climate change as a moral cause without being "preachy."
Climate activism is having a moment, with students walking out of classrooms worldwide, and if we're to believe Der Spiegel's Christian Stocker, young people in particular only stand to get angrier. | | For all the concern about China's Belt and Road Initiative—and whether it will help China win geopolitical dominance—it's also a collage of dubious investments, Tyler Cowen argues at Bloomberg, as small, developing countries might renege on their loans.
Debt concerns have mounted in Belt and Road countries (Malaysia and Ethiopia, for instance, have sought to renegotiate), and Cowen writes that not only are the loans risky, China has failed to augment them with soft power to maximize the influence it gains—a relatively gloomy picture of Belt and Road as a political enterprise, too. | | | | | | |
