February 24, 2023
Welcome (and—even better—to some readers, welcome back) to Home & Away. Appropriately enough, I have been away—in Munich and London. But now I am back home, in NYC. Which I suppose makes me something of an expert on home and away.
For home I want to focus on the Supreme Court – SCOTUS to friends and foes alike – and more specifically on the issues raised this past Tuesday and Wednesday in oral arguments. The matter at hand is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which states that “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."
Stated somewhat differently, the 1996 law provides protection for those who own the pipes of the internet, shielding them from responsibility for the content of what travels through those the pipes. Obviously, the content is provided by users, although algorithms employed by the owners of the pipes can push or otherwise highlight certain information so that more readers and viewers are likely to encounter it.
It gets complicated real fast. I appreciate all the concerns about hate speech and the dangers of incitement and more. There is a practical problem, though, in requiring platforms to review all the content posted given the volume and velocity with which it appears. Then there are free speech issues: Where should the line be drawn? And speaking of line drawing, is this something we want to entrust to a bunch of 25-year-old computer science majors (or anyone else for that matter) sitting at Meta or Google or Twitter?
I don’t see an easy answer to this problem, and predict that the Supreme Court may well determine it lacks a clear remedy and decide to punt. If it does, the justices will likely make clear that Congress needs to step up, especially as it was the 1996 law passed by Congress that got us to where we are today.
What makes this all so important is that social media is pervasive and can pose a threat to American democracy, the rule of law, individual and collective safety, a tolerant society, and functional government. The internet can obviously serve as a tool used by networks and groups up to no good to recruit and organize. In addition, misinformation and conspiracy theories run wild online, all of which make fact-based debate and deliberation all the more difficult.
The Court is being asked to decide on the responsibility that internet companies should shoulder. Let me toss out a different idea. No matter what the Court announces in June or Congress legislates, it will not cover many of the problems with what is available on the internet. As a result, we also need to consider how we can make those who post and view content on the internet more critical consumers of information. This argues for teaching information literacy. New Jersey just became the first state to require this be taught in its schools. Other states would be wise to look closely at what is happening in the Garden State and put something similar in place. There is growing support for what is known as “pre-bunking,” the idea that people should be shown how to spot misinformation before they encounter it in the real world. All this constitutes a vital dimension of civics, the promotion of which is central to what I write in The Bill of Obligations.
As for Away, the inbox overfloweth. Today is the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion (or, more accurately, the most recent Russian invasion) of Ukraine. The good news is that the current situation is far better than almost anyone (other than Vladimir Putin) imagined a year ago. The bad news is that the war promises to go on as peace prospects are poor; China’s new 12-point proposal will not enhance peace prospects as its call for an unconditional cease-fire with no requirement for Russian military withdrawal will be rejected out of hand by Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukraine is unlikely to be in a position to achieve its aims no matter what the West provides in the way of advanced arms. Here is my most recent analysis, just published in Project Syndicate.
President Biden’s trip to Kyiv and Warsaw sent a strong message that Putin’s most recent assumption, that time is on his side, is as flawed as his previous assumptions that led to his ill-conceived decision to invade. My sense is that Putin remains unconvinced that he should seek a settlement, especially as the prospect of increased Chinese support (potentially to include drones and munitions) appears to be growing. He may well want to see what happens in the United States in the 2024 election. Again, and despite the optimism frequently voiced at the Munich Security Conference, this suggests we are in for a long, stalemated conflict, more reminiscent of the First World War than the Second.
Relations between the United States and China continue to go from worse to whatever is worse than worse. The balloon incident short-circuited what little positive momentum there was in the relationship and a Chinese decision to provide military support to Russia would lead to more recrimination and sanctions. And then there is Taiwan. The Biden administration keeps dialing up U.S. interaction with Taiwan officials and increasing military-to-military exchanges, and it is only a matter of time before the new Speaker of the House packs his suitcase and makes a visit to Taiwan to keep up with or, better yet from his vantage point, outdo his predecessor. China will likely react with new sanctions against Taiwan, additional aircraft incursions, and something that looks a lot like a blockade. The chance of an incident is high while the ability to manage the aftermath of one is low. I continue to think it was a mistake for the secretary of state to postpone his trip to China as a meeting with Xi would have provided an opportunity to set some rules of the road on Taiwan and improve crisis communications, which are sorely in need of improvement.
As if all this were not enough, the last week brought news of a new intercontinental ballistic missile test by North Korea, that Iran continues to inch closer to acquiring a threshold nuclear weapons capability, and of democratic backsliding in India, Mexico, and Israel as well as something even more worrisome in what looks to be a failing Pakistan. More positively, there were reports of progress between South Korea and Japan as well as the UK and the EU, but as of this writing the reports remain reports rather than firm outcomes. All of which is to say I did my best to end this newsletter on a more upbeat note but came up short.
Again, there are lots of links to share from the worlds of television and podcasting.
In the news
Monday, February 20, 2023: MSNBC Morning Joe, Get Connected on 106.7 Lite FM, PM on BBC Radio 4
Tuesday, February 21, 2023: Meet the Press NOW
Wednesday, February 22, 2023: MSNBC Morning Joe
Thursday, February 23, 2023: The Brian Kilmeade Show on Fox News Radio, Instagram Live with Nick Kristof of the New York Times
Articles:
Why the War Will Continue, Project Syndicate