Sportswashing: A masterstroke of foreign influence operations (Video) | Responsible Statecraft

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Analysis | Washington Politics

Sportswashing is the next frontier of foreign influence in the United States. Authoritarian regimes are investing billions of dollars in the sports that Americans love — from the NBA to WWE, UFC, and, the PGA Tour.

In many cases these investments come with strings attached. Foreign powers aren’t just trying to make money, they’re hoping to launder their reputations and censor their would-be critics in the U.S. This can have potentially dire consequences for Washington foreign policy, given that many of these regimes seek to pull the agenda in a decidedly unrestrained direction via U.S. military entanglements.

(Video production by Khody Akhavi)

Analysis | Washington Politics

Peter Thiel: 'I defer to Israel'

Peter Thiel attends the annual Allen and Co. Sun Valley Media Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, U.S., July 6, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Peter Thiel: 'I defer to Israel'

The trouble with doing business with Israel — or any foreign government — is you can't really say anything when they do terrible things with technology that you may or may not have sold to them, or hope to sell to them, or hope to sell in your own country.

Such was the case with Peter Thiel, co-founder of Palantir Technologies, in this recently surfaced video, talking to the Cambridge Union back in May. See him stumble and stutter and buy time when asked what he thought about the use of Artificial Intelligence by the Israeli military in a targeting program called "Lavender" — which we now know has been responsible for the deaths of an untold number of innocent Palestinians since Oct 7. (See investigation here).

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Are budget boosters actually breaking the military?

Committee chairman Jack Reed (D-RI), left, looks on as co-chair Roger Wicker (R-MS) shakes hands with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin before a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on President Biden's proposed budget request for the Department of Defense on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., April 9, 2024. REUTERS/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades

Are budget boosters actually breaking the military?

Military Industrial Complex

Now that both political parties have seemingly settled upon their respective candidates for the 2024 presidential election, we have an opportune moment to ask a rather fundamental question about our nation’s defense spending: how much is enough?

Back in May, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, penned an op-ed in the New York Times insisting the answer was not enough at all. Wicker claimed that the nation wasn’t prepared for war — or peace, for that matter — that our ships and fighter-jet fleets were “dangerously small” and our military infrastructure “outdated.” So weak our defense establishment and so dangerous the world right now, Wicker pressed, the nation ought to “spend an additional $55 billion on the military in the 2025 fiscal year.”

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Israel-Gaza Crisis

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