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Brownstone Institute

Why is Everyone Concerned About the WHO?

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22 minute read

From the Brownstone Institute

BY Meryl NassMERYL NASS

Over the past two years you’ve probably heard about the attempted WHO power grab. Here’s everything you need to know to understand the status today:

Overview:

  • The build-out of a massive and expensive global biosecurity system is underway, allegedly to improve our preparedness for future pandemics or biological terrorism. In aid of this agenda two documents are being prepared through the WHO: a broad series of amendments to the existing International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR) and a proposed, entirely new pandemic treaty.
  • Pandemic Fund a.k.a. financial intermediary fund to aid preparedness worldwide has been established by the World Bank and WHO.
  • Multiple names have been used for the new treaty as new drafts are produced, such as: Pandemic Treaty, WHO CA+, Bureau Text, Pandemic Accord, and Pandemic Agreement.
  • Negotiations for these documents are being held in secret. The latest available draft of the IHR amendments is from February 6th, 2023.
  • The latest Pandemic Treaty draft is from October 30th, 2023.
  • Both the amendments and treaty are on a deadline to be considered for adoption at the 77th annual World Health Assembly meeting in May 2024.
  • WHO’s principal attorney Steven Solomon has announced that he crafted a legal fig leaf to avoid making the draft amendments public by January 2024, as required by the WHO Constitution.

How Would these Drafts Become International Law?

  • A treaty requires a two-thirds vote of the World Health Assembly’s 194 member states to be adopted and is binding only for States that have ratified or accepted it (Article 19 and 20, WHO Constitution). However, it could be enacted into force in the US by a simple signature, without Senate ratification. [See CRS report, “US proposals to Amend the International Health Regulations.”]
  • The IHRs and any amendments thereto are adopted by simple majority, and become binding to all WHO Member States, unless a state has rejected or made reservations to them within predefined timeframes (Articles 21 and 22, WHO Constitution; Rule 72, Rules of procedures of the World Health Assembly).
  • Last year, however, amendments to 5 articles of the IHRs were considered in opaque committee meetings during the 75th annual meeting, and then adopted by consensus without a formal vote. This process makes it harder to blame individual diplomats for their votes.
  • The current draft of the IHR Amendments would allow the Director-General of WHO or Regional Directors to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), or the potential for one, without meeting any specific criteria (Article 12). The WHO would then assume management of the PHEIC and issue binding directives to concerned States.
    • PHEICS and potential PHEICs could be declared without the agreement of the concerned State or States.
    • WHO’s unelected officials (Director-General, Regional Directors, technical staff) could dictate measures including quarantines, testing and vaccination requirements, lockdowns, border closures, etc.
  • WHO officials would not be accountable for their decisions and have diplomatic immunity.

 

What are Some Specific Problems with the WHO’s Proposed Amendments?

  • Article 3 of the proposed IHR amendments removes protections for human rights:
    • Struck from the IHR is the crucial guarantee of human rights as a foundation of public health: “The implementation of these Regulations shall be with full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons…”
    • This has been replaced with the following legally meaningless phrase: “based on the principles of equity, inclusivity, coherence…” 
  • Proposed article 43.4 of the IHR notes that the WHO could ban the use of certain medications or other measures during a pandemic, since its ‘recommendations’ would be binding:
    • “WHO shall make recommendations to the State Party concerned to modify or rescind the application of the additional health measures in case of finding such measures as disproportionate or excessive. The Director General shall convene an Emergency Committee for the purposes of this paragraph.”
  • States’ obligations in the proposed IHR Amendments would include:
  • Conducting extensive biological surveillance of microorganisms and people (Article 5);
  • Monitoring mainstream and social media and to censor “false and unreliable information” regarding WHO-designated public health threats (Article 44.1(h)(new));
  • Taking medical supplies from one State for use by other States as determined by the WHO (New Article 13A);
  • Giving up intellectual property for use by other States or third parties (New Article 13A);
  • Transferring genetic sequence data for “pathogens capable of causing pandemics and epidemics or other high-risk situations” to other Nations or third parties, despite the risks this entails (Article 44.1(f) (new)).

What are Problems with the Proposed Pandemic Treaty?

All the Pandemic Treaty drafts (as well as the proposed Amendments to the IHR) produced so far are based on a set of false assumptions. These include the following:

  • The WHO Constitution states that, “The WHO is the directing and coordinating authority on international health work.” Recently, to justify becoming the global director of health, the WHO disingenuously dropped the last word–and began claiming it already was “the directing and coordinating authority on international health.” But it is not and never has been. The WHO has always been an advisory body, responding to requests for help from member states. It has never previously been a directing or governing body with authority to govern member states. Here is the relevant part of its Constitution, on page 2:
  • The WHO claims that “international spread of disease demands the widest international cooperation,” which ignores the fact that international spread may be quite limited and able to be managed by local or national authorities; ignores that the most appropriate responses will be determined by the specific circumstances, and not by a WHO algorithm; and ignores that the WHO has limited infectious disease expertise relative to large nation states.
  • The claim made by WHO is that nations will be able to retain national sovereignty through their ability to pass and enforce health laws, while they will simultaneously be bound and accountable to obey the directives from the WHO on health. This is contradictory and designed to confuse: if the WHO can impose its public health decisions on member states, it and not the states will have sovereignty over health.
  • The tremendous cost and suffering from COVID are being blamed on lack of preparedness. However, the US was spending about $10 billion yearly on pandemic preparedness before the pandemic. Yet we had few masks, gloves, gowns, drugs, etc. when the pandemic struck. Why would we expect a central WHO authority, which relies on vested interests for 85 percent of its funding, to do any better?
  • The claim is that lack of equity led to failure to share drugs, vaccines, and personal protective equipment (PPE)–ignoring the fact that no nation had sufficient PPE or tests early in the pandemic, and that it was nations withholding generic drugs from their populations that caused important treatment shortages. Furthermore, now that we know the COVID vaccines result in negative efficacy several months post-vaccination (making recipients more susceptible to developing COVID), it is apparent that nations that were last in line for COVID vaccines and whose populations are mostly unvaccinated have fared better overall than those who received vaccines for their populations. The so-called lack of equity was fortuitous for them!
  • The claim is that pandemics invariably arise at the animal-human interface and that they are natural in origin. Neither is true for COVID or monkeypox, the last two declared public health emergencies of international concern, which came from laboratories.
  • The claim is that the vaguely defined “One Health approach” can prevent or detect pandemics and ameliorate them. Yet it remains unclear what this strategy is, and there is no evidence to support the claim that One Health offers any public health advantages whatsoever.
  • The claim is that increasing the capture and study of “potential pandemic pathogens” will be accomplished safely and yield useful pandemic products, when neither is true. The CDC’s Select Agent Program receives 200 reports yearly of accidents, losses or thefts of potential pandemic pathogens from high containment labs within the United States: 4 reports (and 4 potential pandemics) per week! And this is only within the US.
  • Drafts of the treaty and amendments assume that pharmaceutical manufacturers will agree to give up certain intellectual property rights.  In factneither developing nations nor pharmaceutical manufacturers are happy with the recent treaty proposal on intellectual property.
  • The claim is that the UN adopted a Declaration on pandemic preparedness supporting the WHO plan on September 20, 2023. In fact, 11 countries rejected the Declaration procedure and it was only signed by the UN General Assembly president, representing himself and not the UN General Assembly.
  • The claim is that the WHO has the legal right to require nations to censor “infodemics” and only allow the WHO’s public health narratives to be shared, yet this violates our First Amendment’s freedom of speech.
  • The claim is that health “coverage” (insurance) will automatically provide the world’s citizens access to a broad range of health care, while the primary reason for lack of access to healthcare is the lack of practitioners and facilities, not lack of “coverage.”

Here are some Specific Examples of What is Wrong with the Treaty:

Article 3, #2. Sovereignty

“States have, in accordance with the charter of the United Nations and the general principles of international law, the sovereign right to legislate and to implement legislation in pursuance of their health policies.”

This language fails to address the issue of the WHO assuming sovereignty for health matters over states through this treaty. It is a disingenuous attempt to grab sovereignty while claiming otherwise.

Article 3, #3. Equity

“Equity includes the unhindered, fair, equitable and timely access to safe, effective, quality and affordable pandemic – related products and services, information, pandemic – related technologies and social protection.”

However, Article 9, #2 (d) states that parties shall promote “infodemic management,” and infodemic is defined in Article 1(c) as false or misleading information. Article 18, #1 instructs the Parties to “combat false, misleading, misinformation or disinformation…” In earlier drafts the WHO spelled out that only the WHO’s public health narrative would be allowed to spread.

Article 4, #3. Pandemic Prevention and Public Health Surveillance

“The Parties shall cooperate with the support of the WHO Secretariat to strengthen and maintain public health laboratory and diagnostic capacities, especially with respect to the capacity to perform genetic sequencing, data science to assess the risk of detected pathogens and to safely handle samples containing pathogens and the use of related digital tools.”

While this section omits incentivizing Gain-of-Function laboratory research (which was included in the earlier Bureau draft) it does direct nations to perform genetic sequencing of potential pandemic pathogens (i.e., biological warfare agents) they find and to safely handle them, which requires high containment (BSL3/4) laboratories. Also in Article 4 is the need to “develop, strengthen and maintain the capacity to (i) detect, identify and characterize pathogens presenting significant risks…” indicating the directive for nations to perform surveillance to seek out such pathogens and study them.

Article 6, #4. Preparedness, Readiness, and Resilience

“The Parties shall establish, building on existing arrangements as appropriate, genomics, risk assessment, and laboratory networks in order to conduct surveillance and sharing of emerging pathogens with pandemic potential, with such sharing pursuant to the terms and modalities established in Article 12.” Article 1 (h) defined ‘ “pathogen with pandemic potential” as any pathogen that has been identified to infect humans and that is potentially highly transmissible and capable of wide, uncontrollable spread in human populations and highly virulent, making it likely to cause significant morbidity and/or mortality in humans.”

Why does the WHO require nations to go out and find potential pandemic pathogens (a.k.a. biological warfare agents) and supply both biologic samples and pathogens’ genetic sequences to the WHO, where they will be shared with pharmaceutical companies, research centers and academic institutions, as well as possible others? They are also to share the genetic sequences online, where hackers could obtain the sequences and produce biological warfare agents. Yet this behavior is prohibited by Security Council Resolution 1540.

Article 8, #3. Preparedness Monitoring and Functional Reviews

The parties shall, building on existing tools, develop and implement an inclusive, transparent, effective and efficient pandemic prevention, preparedness and response monitoring and evaluation system.”

Yet 4 different monitoring systems (“tools”–see graphic below) have been used to gauge nations’ readiness for pandemics and all 4 failed to predict how well they would do when COVID appeared. There is no acknowledgement of the failures of our assessment tools, nor discussion of whether there exist any useful assessment tools. And this begs the question why, if our means of assessing progress against pandemics failed, do we think that similar efforts are likely to be successful in future?

Article 10, #1 (d). Sustainable Production

“The Parties encourage entities, including manufacturers within their respective jurisdictions, in particular those that receive significant public financing, to grant, subject to any existing licensing restrictions, on mutually agreed terms, non-exclusive royalty-free licenses to any manufacturers, particularly from developing countries, to use their intellectual property and other protected substances, products, technology, know-how, information and knowledge used in the process of pandemic – related product development and production, in particular for pre-pandemic and pandemic diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics for use in agreed developing countries.”

This and related sections are probably what make the pharma organization so upset with the current Treaty draft.

Article 12, #4 (a) i (2) Access and Benefit-Sharing

“Upload the genetic sequence of such WHO PABS (Pathogen Access and Benefits System) material to one or more publicly accessible databases of its choice, provided that the database has put in place an appropriate arrangement with respect to WHO PABS material.”

The treaty requires the sharing of pathogens and the need to identify and upload their genetic sequences online, where they will be accessible. This could also be called proliferation of biological weapons agents, which is generally considered a crime. In the US, “Select Agents” are those designated to have pandemic potential, and the select agent program is managed by CDC and USDA. For safety, CDC must give permission to transfer select agents. Yet the select agent rules are ignored in this WHO Treaty, which demands transfer of agents that could cause a worldwide pandemic. And in an apparent effort to handwave over existing rules, the draft states in Article 12, #8.

“The Parties shall ensure that such a system is consistent with, supportive of, and does not run counter to, the objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol thereto. The WHO PABS system will provide certainty and legal clarity to the providers and users of WHO PABS materials.”

Article 13, #3 (e). Global Supply Chain and Logistics (SCL)

“The terms of the WHO SCL Network shall include: facilitating the negotiation and agreement of advance purchase commitments and procurement contracts for pandemic-related products.”

Advance purchase commitments are contracts that obligate nations to buy products for pandemics in advance, sight unseen. Neither the manufacturer nor the state party knows what is coming, but once WHO issues a pandemic declaration, the contracts are activated and the US government will have to buy what the manufacturer produces. The 2009 swine flu pandemic provides a useful example. Advance purchase commitments led to tens of billions in vaccine purchases in North America and Europe for a flu that was less severe than normal. The GSK Pandemrix brand of vaccine led to over 1,300 cases of severe narcolepsy, primarily in adolescents. Rapid production of vaccines for which profits are guaranteed and liability is waived has never once been a win for the consumer.

Article 14. Regulatory Strengthening

Nations are to harmonize their regulatory requirements, expedite approvals and authorizations and ensure that legal frameworks are in place to support emergency approvals. This incentivizes a race to the bottom for drug and vaccine approval standards, particularly during emergencies.

Republished from the author’s Substack


Further Reading:

The WHO’s Proposed Treaty Will Increase Man-Made Pandemics, by Meryl Nass M.D.

What Can Countries Do Right Now to Slow Down the WHO? (PDF Download)

Collected IHR Amendment Drafts

Collected Pandemic Treaty Drafts

Author

  • Meryl Nass

    Dr. Meryl Nass, MD is an internal medicine specialist in Ellsworth, ME, and has over 42 years of experience in the medical field. She graduated from University of Mississippi School of Medicine in 1980.

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Brownstone Institute

Jeff Bezos Is Right: Legacy Media Must Self-Reflect

Published on

From the Brownstone Institute

By David ThunderDavid Thunder 

I can count on one hand the times I have seen leaders of media organizations engage in anything that could be described as hard-hitting forms of self-critique in the public square.

One of those times was when Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg went on public record, in a letter to the Republican House Judiciary Committee (dated August 26th, 2024), that he “regretted” bowing to pressure from the Biden administration to censor “certain Covid-19 content.” Another was the almost unprecedented public apology in January 2022 (here’s a report in English) by a Danish newspaper that it had towed the “official” line during the pandemic far too uncritically.

We witnessed a third moment of critical introspection from a media owner the other day, when Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post and is the largest shareholder of Amazon, suggested in an op-ed in his own newspaper that legacy media may have themselves at least partly to blame for the loss of public trust in the media.

In this context, he argued that his decision not to authorize the Washington Post to endorse a presidential candidate could be “a meaningful step” toward restoring public trust in the media, by addressing the widespread perception that media organizations are “biased” or not objective.

You don’t need to be a fan of Jeff Bezos, any more than of Mark Zuckerberg, to recognize that it is a good thing that prominent representatives of the financial and political elite of modern societies, whatever their personal flaws and contradictions, at least begin to express doubts about the conduct and values of media organizations. Some truths, no matter how obvious, will not resonate across society until prominent opinion leaders viewed as “safe” or “established,” say them out loud.

Bezos opens his Washington Post op-ed by pointing out that public trust in American media has collapsed in recent generations and is now at an all-time low (a substantial decline can be seen across many European countries as well if you compare the Reuters Digital News Report from 2015 with that of 2023 — for example, Germany sees a drop from 60% to 42% trust and the UK sees a drop from 51% to 33%).

In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working…Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose.

Something we are doing is clearly not working. This is the sort of candid introspection we need to see a lot more of in journalists and media owners. If someone stops trusting you, it’s easy to point the finger at someone else or blame it on “disinformation” or citizen ignoranceIt’s not so easy to make yourself vulnerable and take a long, hard look at yourself in the mirror to figure out how you’ve lost their trust.

The owner of the Washington Post does not offer an especially penetrating diagnosis of the problem. However, he does point out some relevant facts that may be worth pondering if we are to come to a deeper understanding of the fact that the Joe Rogan podcast, with an estimated audience of 11 million, now has nearly 20 times CNN’s prime-time audience:

The Washington Post and the New York Times win prizes, but increasingly we talk only to a certain elite. More and more, we talk to ourselves. (It wasn’t always this way — in the 1990s we achieved 80 percent household penetration in the DC metro area.)

More and more, we talk to ourselves. Much of the legacy media has become an ideological echo chamber, as I pointed out in an op-ed in the Irish Times a few years ago. Conversations go back and forth between journalists about things they care about, while a substantial number of ordinary citizens, whose minds are on other things, like paying their mortgage, getting a medical appointment, or worrying about the safety of their streets, switch off.

While there are some notable exceptions, the echo-chamber effect is real and may be part of the explanation for the flight of a growing number of citizens into the arms of alternative media.

The increasing disconnect between self-important legacy journalists and the man and woman on the street has been evidenced by the fact that so-called “populism” was sneered at by many journalists across Europe and North America while gathering serious momentum on the ground.

It was also evidenced by the fact that serious debates over issues like the harms of lockdowns and the problem of illegal immigration, were largely sidelined by many mainstream media across Europe while becoming a catalyst for successful political movements such as the Brothers of Italy, Le Pen’s Rassemblement National in France, Alternativ für Deutschland in Germany, and the Freedom Party in Austria.

Perhaps part of the problem is that those working in well-established media organizations tend to take the moral and intellectual high ground and severely underestimate the capacity of ordinary citizens to think through issues for themselves, or to intelligently sort through competing sources of information.

Indeed, even Jeff Bezos, in his attempt to be critical of legacy media, could not resist depicting alternative media exclusively in negative terms. “Many people,” he lamented, “are turning to off-the-cuff podcasts, inaccurate social media posts and other unverified news sources, which can quickly spread misinformation and deepen divisions.”

While there is undoubtedly an abundance of confusion and false and misleading information on social media, it is by no means absent from the legacy media, which has gotten major issues badly wrong. For example, many mainstream journalists and talk show hosts uncritically celebrated the idea that Covid vaccines would block viral transmission, in the absence of any solid scientific evidence for such a belief. Similarly, many journalists dismissed the Covid lab-leak theory out of hand, until it emerged that it was actually a scientifically respectable hypothesis.

We should thank Jeff Bezos for highlighting the crisis of trust in the media. But his complacency about the integrity of traditional news sources and his dismissive attitude toward “alternative sources” of news and information are themselves part of the reason why many people are losing respect for the legacy media.

Republished from the author’s Substack

Author

David Thunder

David Thunder is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Navarra’s Institute for Culture and Society in Pamplona, Spain, and a recipient of the prestigious Ramón y Cajal research grant (2017-2021, extended through 2023), awarded by the Spanish government to support outstanding research activities. Prior to his appointment to the University of Navarra, he held several research and teaching positions in the United States, including visiting assistant professor at Bucknell and Villanova, and Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Princeton University’s James Madison Program. Dr Thunder earned his BA and MA in philosophy at University College Dublin, and his Ph.D. in political science at the University of Notre Dame.

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Brownstone Institute

If Trump Wins

Published on

From the Brownstone Institute

By  Bret Swanson  

How will he organize the “deportation” of illegal migrants? In the best case, it will be difficult. There will be scuffles and chases. Critics will charge the new Administration as cruel and worse. How much stomach will Republicans have for a messy process?

Trump enjoys the momentum. Four of the most recent major national polls show him up 2 to 3%, while Democratic-friendly outlets like the New York Times and CNN both show a TIE race in their final surveys. The 2016 and 2020 elections were razor close even though Clinton (5%) and Biden (8%) had solid polling leads at this point. We need to contemplate a Trump win not only in the electoral college but also in the popular vote.

Here are some thoughts:

  1. JD Vance ascendant, obviously. Big implications for the Republican trajectory.
  2. Will Trump replace Fed chairman Jay Powell? Or merely jawbone for a change in policy? In a new CNBC interview, former Fed governor Kevin Warsh argues that the Fed has juiced both the stock market and inflation. Would reducing inflation, which Trump has promised, automatically therefore lead to a stock market correction and economic slowdown? Not necessarily. If Trump unleashes productive economic activity and Congress ends the fiscal blowout, the Fed could normalize monetary policy without causing a major economic slump.
  3. Will Trump impose the broad and deep tariffs he proposed? Or will he mostly threaten them as a bargaining tool with China? I’m betting on some of the former but more of the latter. We notice, however, Trump allies are floating a trial balloon to replace income taxes with tariffs. As impractical and improbable as that may be, we’re glad to see the mention of radical tax reform reemerge after too long an absence from the national discussion.
  4. How will he organize the “deportation” of illegal migrants? In the best case, it will be difficult. There will be scuffles and chases. Critics will charge the new Administration as cruel and worse. How much stomach will Republicans have for a messy process? One idea would be to offer a “reverse amnesty” – if you leave peacefully and agree not to return illegally, we will forgive your previous illegal entry(s) and minor violations. This would incentivize self-identification and quiet departure. Plus it would help authorities track those leaving. Would migrant departures truly hit the economy, as critics charge? We doubt large effects. Substantial native populations are still underemployed or absent from the workforce.
  5. We should expect a major retrenchment of regulatory intrusions across the economy – from energy to crypto. Combined with recent Supreme Court action, such as the Chevron reversal, and assisted by the Elon Musk’s substance and narrative, it could be a regulatory renaissance. Extension of the 2017 tax cuts also becomes far more likely.
  6. Trump has never worried much about debt, deficits, or spending. But he’s tapped Elon Musk as government efficiency czar. It’s an orthogonal approach to spending reform instead of the traditional (and unsuccessful) Paul Ryan playbook. Can this good cop-bad cop duo at the very least return out-of-control outlays to a pre-Covid path? Can they at least cancel purely kleptocratic programs, such as the $370-billion Green Energy slush funds? Might they go even further – leveraging the unpopular spending explosion and resulting inflation to achieve more revolutionary effects on government spending and reach? Or will the powerful and perennial forces of government expansion win yet again, sustaining a one-way ratchet not even Elon can defeat?
  7. What if the economy turns south? One catalyst might be the gigantic unrealized bond losses on bank balance sheets; another might be commercial real estate collapse. Although reported GDP growth has been okay, the inflation hangover is helping Trump win on the economy. But many believe the post-pandemic economic expansion is merely a sugar-high and has already lasted longer than expected. A downturn early in Trump’s term could complicate many of his plans.
  8. How will NATO and its transatlantic network respond? Or more generally, what will the neocon and neoliberal hawks, concentrated in DC and the media, but little loved otherwise, do? Does this item from Anne Applebaum — arguing Trump resembles Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin all rolled into one — portend continued all-out war on prudent foreign policy? Or will they adopt a more sophisticated approach? If the neocons move wholesale and formally (back) into the Democratic fold, how long will the coalition of wokes and militarists hold? On the economic front, Europe, already underperforming vis-a-vis the US, will fall even further behind without big changes. Reformers should gain at the expense of the transatlantic WEF-style bureaucrats.
  9. Can Trump avoid another internal sabotage of his Administration? Before then, if the election results are tight, will the Democrats seek to complicate or even block his inauguration? Can he win approval for his appointees in the Senate? Can he clean house across the vast public agencies? How long will it take to recruit, train, and reinvigorate talented military leadership, which we chased away in recent years? And how will Trump counter – and avoid overreacting to – taunts, riots, unrest, and lawfare, designed to bolster the case he’s an authoritarian?
  10. Will the Democrats reorient toward the center, a la Bill Clinton? Or will the blinding hatred of Trump fuel yet more radicalism? Orthodox political thinking suggests a moderation. Especially if Trump wins the popular vote, or comes close, pragmatic Democrats will counsel a reformation. James Carville, for example, already complains that his party careened recklessly away from male voters. And Trump’s apparent pickups among Black and Latino voters complicate the Democrats’ longstanding identity-focused strategy. Other incentives might push toward continued belligerence and extreme wokeness, however, and thus an intra-party war.
  11. Will the half of the country which inexplicably retains any confidence in the legacy media at least begin rethinking its information diet and filters? Or has the infowarp inflicted permanent damage?
  12. Will big business, which shifted hard toward Democrats over the last 15 years, recalibrate toward the GOP? Parts of Silicon Valley over the last year began a reorientation — e.g. Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, and before them, Peter Thiel in 2016. But those are the entrepreneurs. In the receding past, businesses large and small generally lined up against government overreach. Then Big Business and Big Government merged. Now, a chief divide is between politically-enmeshed bureaucratic businesses and entrepreneurial ones. Does the GOP even want many of the big guys back? The GOP’s new alignment with “Little Tech” is an exciting development, especially after being shut out of Silicon Valley for the last two decades.
  13. Industry winners: traditional energy, nuclear energy, Little Tech. Industry losers: Green Energy, Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Food. Individual winners: X (nee Twitter), Elon Musk, RFK, Jr.
  14. How will the Censorship Industrial Complex react? A Trump win will pose both a symbolic and operational blow to governmental, non-governmental, old media, and new media outlets determined to craft and control facts and narratives. It will complicate their mission, funding, and organizational web. Will they persist in their “mis/disinformation” framing and their badgering of old media and social media companies to moderate content aggressively? Or will they devise a new strategy? A.I. is pretty clearly the next frontier in the information wars. How will those who propagandize and rewire human minds attempt to program and prewire artificial ones?
  15. How will Trump integrate RFK, Jr. and his movement? Will RFK, Jr. achieve real influence, especially on health issues? Big Pharma and Big Public Health will wage a holy war to block reforms in general and accountability for Covid mistakes in particular.
  16. Trump has promised to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. On one hand, it should be easy. Despite what you hear from DC media and think tanks, Ukraine is losing badly. Hundreds of thousands are dead, and its military is depleted and faltering. Ukraine should want a deal quickly, before it loses yet more people and territory. Russia, meanwhile, always said it wants a deal, even before the war started, focusing on Ukrainian neutrality. Why Ukrainian neutrality should bother the US was always a mystery. And yet even critics of the West’s support for Ukraine, who want an agreement, think it will be difficult to achieve. The Western foreign policy establishment has invested too much credibility and emotion. It will charge “appeasement” and “betrayal” and make any deal difficult for Trump. Russia, meanwhile, has secured so much territory and now has Odessa and Kharkiv in its sights. Putin will not be eager to accept a deal he would have taken in 2021 or before. The far better path for all involved was a pre-war agreement, or the one negotiated but scuttled in April 2022.
  17. What if A.I. launches a new productivity boom, enabled by an agenda of energy abundance, including a nuclear power revival? The economic tailwinds could remake politics even more than we currently see.
  18. Can Trump, having run and won his last campaign, consolidate gains by reaching out and uniting the portions of the country willing to take an extended hand?

Republished from the author’s Substack

Author

Bret Swanson is president of the technology research firm Entropy Economics LLC, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and writes the Infonomena Substack.

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