Interested in election interference? Wondering why it happens & if it affects election results? Want an in-depth view of such past meddling & of 2016? If you answered yes then my new book "Meddling in the Ballot Box", now finally out, is the book for you!

@cszabla Yup- Quebec already came pretty close to an outright insurgency in early 1970s vs. fellow Anglo Canadians. Against those rather annoying English speaking Yankees and their hegemonic Anglo Saxon culture...

@cszabla Clear ROW varies by region- huh indeed...

@cszabla I see similar treatment of both for ROW- less popular name in brackets below i.e. Gulf of America/Arabian Gulf below Gulf of Mexico/ Persian Gulf

@HeerJeet I wrote a substack post on on how it (and other key hawkish Biden FP decisions) inadvertently increased inflation in the US

@APHClarkson UK hasn't seen GDP growth ~15 years. Public services perceived as degrading. In that situation no politician can talk about "lets continue SQ with minor changes". Naturally need content so changes effective but political logic sound.

@cszabla Agreed- should have focused on the pure urgent humanitarian stuff USAID does (HIV medications, food etc.). Americans not fans of foreign aid- but pure obvious emergency humanitarian stuff usually gets favorable reactions from US public. At minimum led more care not disrupt it

@sbmitche True- but I recall how in Trump 1.0 similar claims were made about the EU & little was done in practice. You may need first a US actual takeover of Greenland etc. to reverse such a longstanding institutionalized alignment.

@cszabla If 70s any guide likely creation of new corporations for spying & intel analysis for hire to highest bidder-lots of which will be in the gulf & some big private corporations looking for industrial spying. Some will be occasional CIA contractors used for the most "deniable" stuff

@timgill924 May it go well 🙏

@cszabla Some serious ppl have been talking recently about replacing human based declassification w/AI to speed up to more reasonable speed-may be only case currently where AI can effectively replace humans in gov work. If he does that & FOIAs come back w/docs in reasonable time frames😀

@mad_corean @PAstynome Always possible- but I haven't seen yet evidence for that. These are all isolated examples.

RT @AustinMStrange: 🚨Workshop! "China in the Global South" Join us at @HKUniversity for (very timely) research+policy discussions organize…

Lots of good reasons to oppose Musk & team's actions-but after 2024 complaints of US becoming a gerontocracy, framing issue w/Musk's team as being young dumb. Do Democrats want,post Tiktok debacle, further alienate genZ by implying unworthy of significant involvement in politics?

@PAstynome @mad_corean Peace corps actually got a special promise from US intel in early 60s not to be used for this purpose. Meant as pure soft power tool by JFK. CIA used other umm questionable methods for this goal.

@cszabla @HeerJeet Of course not- US FP establishment is ~95% of times incapable of admitting to policy failure except as either 1. my wise policy should have been even MOAR extreme then what I did 2. I overestimated ability of allies/US public to follow my otherwise wise policy to full success.

@cszabla Yup- OECD assumption when agreeing to this loophole w/US was 1. US presidents trend towards free trade support b/c represent whole country- so averse to restricting trade wholesale 2. US would use it only in reasonable narrow definition of term. Then Trump came along and...

@cszabla Yeah when I was at CMU many talked there how Pittsburgh's universities helped city get over industrial decline of key industries and avoid sad fate of Detroit, other rust belt cities. Too bad decisionmakers still live in past where service job treated as minor stuff or "junk"