America’s Monopoly Crisis Hits the Military

Wall Street’s short-term incentives have decimated our defense industrial base and undermined our national security. (The American Conservative)

Early this year, U.S. authorities filed criminal charges—including bank fraud, obstruction of justice, and theft of technology—against the largest maker of telecommunications equipment in the world, a Chinese giant named Huawei. Chinese dominance in telecom equipment has created a crisis among Western espionage agencies, who, fearful of Chinese spying, are attempting to prevent the spread of Huawei equipment worldwide, especially in the critical 5G next-generation mobile networking space.

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Launching a Global Currency Is a Bold, Bad Move for Facebook

The way we structure money and payments is a question for democratic institutions, not technology companies. (New York Times)

On Tuesday, Facebook, in partnership with a surfeit of other large and powerful corporations, including Uber, Spotify, PayPal and VISA, announced that it would lead the effort to create a new global currency called Libra. “We believe,” says the organization that will govern the currency, “that the world needs a global, digitally native currency that brings together the attributes of the world’s best currencies: stability, low inflation, wide global acceptance and fungibility.”

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