CFR Blogs

"What I will argue is that when looking at a public policy problem, the best place to create liability is where it will have the desired impact. If the goal is to stop ransomware attacks, raising the costs of paying ransoms beyond what the criminals are demanding is the best way to do that." http://blogs.cfr.org/cyber/2016/02/29/paying-ransom-on-ransomware-shou…

Not sure how much the Iraq war ended, when last year they bombed it as much as they bombed Syria, and they were actually trying to wipe out ISIS in Syria (or was it Assad? I lost count on which side the U.S. was there) after the attacks in Paris and whatnot. So that tells you a lot about just how active the US military is in Iraq. You can't say you "ended" a war where you're still dropping 1,000 bombs a month in a country, or more than 30 every day. Imagine 30 bombs being dropped every day in the U.S. by another nation. Would you feel "not at war" with that country? And the U.S. is a huge place with the population spread around. The Middle Eastern countries are much smaller so the impact (both physical destruction-wise, but also psychological to the population) is greater. http://blogs.cfr.org/zenko/2017/01/05/bombs-dropped-in-2016/

He's got some excellent new commentary here: http://blogs.cfr.org/setser/2008/09/16/lehman-v-argentina/#comment-112…

A big question is why government stays on the sidelines of cybercrime (and espionage). They said something here, but it's not usual, and what have they done about it? They don't seem to feel responsible for protecting IT assets like they do for older infrastructure: If someone was blowing up pipelines, it would be shocking if the U.S. government was so passive about it. The government needs to step forward and do its job of protecting citizens, including in cyberspace - hardly a minor consideration at this point. I've been thinking about it recently after reading this article: http://blogs.cfr.org/cyber/2016/10/04/risky-business-when-governments-…

At some point the use of "your freedom" is just a shield behind which one tries to hide complicity in removing others' freedom. Unless one happens to find themselves on the side of the people who get to define what is "oppressive regime" and "others freedom". It's not as clear cut as one may think when you consider the perspectives of other societies and the people in power there (even as individuals who learn how to create their own tools for their own means become more powerful). The whole UN regulation issue makes light of this [http://blogs.cfr.org/patrick/2012/12/04/un-control-of-the-internet-an-…

Long-term unemployment is happening in the US too: http://blogs.cfr.org/kahn/2013/04/17/our-long-term-unemployment-challe… Unemployment in the US is near 15% including U6, or near 23% if using pre-1994 counting methods: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts (On that subject, I'm looking for work in the north SF bay area, Sonoma/Marin region)

If you look at the graph with the longer time horizon, you can see that Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia had stronger growth pre-crisis, a bigger bubble, a bigger collapse from the bubble, and a stronger recovery from the performance trough. Only by measuring by performance from their GDP peak do they look bad, and it's not obvious why this is the natural measure of recovery policies. You would think performance from the trough of the crisis or from some neutral pre-crisis point would be more relevant. Here is another article with more graphs explaining this point: http://blogs.cfr.org/geographics/2012/07/02/postcrisis/ -- though you will find some debate in the comments.

>The A10 is still good at CAS that's what it was designed to do. That's not really true. The A-10 was designed to destroy tanks in Europe. CAS was always a secondary role. >If you have air superiority you need a good bomb truck a lot more useful than a stealth fighter. If that's the argument then the right thing to do is retire the A-10 and reactivate some B-1s. >What were the other 80% of CAS missions carried out by? What % of aircraft deployed were A10s? That 20% figure needs more to back it up. >Eighty percent of CAS missions in Iraq and Afghanistan have been conducted not by the A-10, but by an array of other aircraft, including AC-130’s, F-15E’s, F-16’s, MQ-1’, B-52’s, and yes, the B-1. http://blogs.cfr.org/davidson/2014/05/20/if-the-air-force-has-such-a-g… The thrust of the article is correct. The reason people don't want to see the A-10 retired is the Air Force doesn't have a lot of credibility when it comes to CAS. I used to have a link to a chart with percentages, but I can't find it.