SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
michael mccaul
House Republican Floats Bill to Authorize US Military Action in Iran as Fears of Broader War Grow
"We are inching toward a regional war in the Middle East, further fueled by Biden's refusal to call for a cease-fire and deescalation," argued one analyst.
Oct 17, 2023
The Republican chairman of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on Monday said his panel is drafting legislation to authorize the use of military force in Iran amid growing fears that ongoing violence in Israel and Gaza could set off a broader regional conflagration.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) toldCNN that his committee is preparing the bill "in the event it's necessary" for the U.S. military to become directly involved in another Middle East war. McCaul's comments came on the 21st anniversary of the enactment of a measure that authorized the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
"I hope I never have to mark this bill up," said McCaul, who has repeatedly accused Iran of direct involvement in Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel even though U.S. intelligence sources and other government officials there's no evidence to support that claim.
McCaul added that "we have a situation in the Middle East that's growing day by day with intensity," pointing to the increasing likelihood of a full-blown conflict between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah and Iran's recent warning that it could be forced to intervene if Israel invades the Gaza Strip.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote on social media Tuesday that McCaul's remarks provide additional evidence that "we are inching toward a regional war in the Middle East, further fueled by [U.S. President Joe] Biden's refusal to call for a cease-fire and deescalation."
U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), for his part, responded dismissively to the nascent push for another war authorization bill.
"How about we first repeal the AUMF that greenlighted the colossal blunder in Iraq before neocons ask Congress to vote for a new blunder and war that will cost us more blood and treasure?" Khanna wrote.
"The possible expansion of the war on other fronts is approaching the inevitable stage."
The Biden administration has reportedly sent back-channel messages to Iran warning it not to get involved in Gaza, and the U.S. has mobilized the world's largest aircraft carrier strike group to the Eastern Mediterranean in what one White House official described as "a strong signal of deterrence should any actor hostile to Israel consider trying to escalate or widen this war."
Hossein Amirabdollahian, Iran's foreign minister, said Monday that Tehran wants "killings and war crimes" in Gaza to stop immediately and cautioned that "the time for political solutions is running out."
"The possible expansion of the war on other fronts is approaching the inevitable stage," Amirabdollahian said, raising the possibility of some form of "preemptive" action against Israel.
Citing an unnamed regional diplomat familiar with Iran's conversations with its allies, The Washington Post's Liz Sly reported Tuesday that "it appears the Iranians do not want an escalation and are keen to find ways to avoid one."
"While making it clear that their allies are prepared to fight, Iran and Hezbollah have not publicly set red lines for what scenario in Gaza would trigger their involvement—which could range from continued attacks on Gaza, the launch of a ground invasion, or only in the event that Hamas is at risk of being completely defeated," Sly noted.
War hawks in the U.S., meanwhile, are going out of their way to connect Iran to Hamas' attack on Israel and demand military action in response. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) suggested in a CNN interview last week that he would support U.S. and Israeli military action against Iran even without specific evidence that Tehran was directly involved in planning the Hamas assault.
In an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Graham said that if Hezbollah—which is backed by Iran—launches a major attack on Israel, he will "introduce a resolution in the United States Senate to allow military action by the United States in conjunction with Israel to knock Iran out of the oil business."
"They're the great evil," Graham said of Iran. "So, if Hezbollah escalates against Israel, it will be because Iran told them to. Then Iran, you're in the crosshairs of the United States and Israel."
Additionally, congressional Republicans are pushing the Biden administration to permanently bar Iran from accessing $6 billion in assets that can only be used for humanitarian purposes. Last week, the Biden administration agreed to temporarily deny Iran access to the funds—a move that the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) decried as "a reckless and unnecessary provocation amidst a tinderbox situation in the Middle East."
"If Biden is indeed following in the footsteps of Donald Trump and reneging on a second Iran diplomatic agreement, he would be confirming that our domestic politics preclude the U.S. from being able to play a responsible leadership role," said NIAC president Jamal Abdi. "Far from quelling the political dramas in Washington, this will only add further fuel to bad-faith political critiques. And it would embolden those calling for even greater and more dangerous provocations, such as those in the Senate now urging the U.S. to bomb Iran."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rhetoric and brutal actions in Gaza have also helped fuel concerns of a broader regional conflict.
In an address to the Israeli parliament on Monday, Netanyahu described Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas as an "axis of evil," invoking the infamous phrase that former U.S. President George W. Bush used in the lead-up to the catastrophic invasion of Iraq.
Simon Tisdall, a foreign affairs commentator for The Guardian, argued in a column on Monday that "a confrontation setting Israel and the U.S. directly against Iran has rarely appeared closer."
"As Netanyahu keeps saying, this is just the beginning," Tisdall wrote. "The war with Hamas could be about to go global."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Mainstream Media Gives Congress an Unearned Redemption Arc on AI
Many of those weighing in on AI regulation own stock in Big Tech companies and have a powerful incentive not to rein the technology in.
Sep 12, 2023
“Everyone Wants to Regulate AI. No One Can Agree How,” Wired (5/26/23) proclaimed earlier this year. The headline resembled one from The New Yorker (5/20/23) published just days prior, reading “Congress Really Wants to Regulate AI, but No One Seems to Know How.” Each reflected an increasingly common thesis within the corporate press: Policymakers would like to place guardrails on so-called artificial intelligence systems, but, given the technology’s novel and evolving nature, they’ll need time before they can take action—if they ever can at all.
This narrative contains some kernels of truth; artificial intelligence can be complex and dynamic, and thus not always easily comprehensible to the layperson. But the suggestion of congressional helplessness minimizes the responsibility of lawmakers—ultimately excusing, rather than interrogating, regulatory inertia.
Struggling to ‘Catch Up’
Amid a piecemeal, noncommittal legislative climate, media insist that policymakers are unable to keep pace with AI development, inevitably resulting in regulatory delays. NPR (5/15/23) exemplified this with the claim that Congress had “a lot of catching up to do” on AI and the later question (5/17/23) “Can politicians catch up with AI?” Months earlier, The New York Times (3/3/23) reported that “lawmakers have long struggled to understand new innovations,” with Washington consequently taking “a hands-off stance.”
The Times noted that the European Union had proposed a law that would curtail some potentially harmful AI applications, including those made by U.S. companies, and that U.S. lawmakers had expressed intentions to review the legislation. (The E.U.’s AI Act, as it’s known, may become law by the end of 2023.) Yet the paper didn’t feel compelled to ask why the E.U.—whose leadership isn’t exactly dominated by computer scientists—could forge ahead with restrictions on the U.S. AI industry, but the U.S. couldn’t.
These outlets frame AI rulemaking as a matter of technical knowledge, when it would be more accurate, and constructive, to frame it as one of moral consideration. One might argue that, in order to regulate a form of technology that affects the public—say, via “predictive policing” algorithms, or automated social-services software—it’s more important to grasp its societal impact than its operational minutia. (Congressional staffer Anna Lenhart told The Washington Post—6/17/23—as much, but this notion seems to be far from mainstream.)
Could it be that delays on price controls were caused more by pro-corporate policy choices than by a lack of technological expertise?
This certainly isn’t the prevailing view of The New York Times (8/24/23), which argued that legislators’ lag continues a pattern of slow congressional responses to new technologies, repeating the refrain that policymakers “have struggled” to enact major technology laws. The Times cited the 19th-century advent of steam-powered trains as an example of a daunting legislative subject, emphasizing that Congress took more than 50 years to institute railroad price controls.
Yet the process of setting pricing rules has little, if anything, to do with the mechanical specifics of a train. Could it be that delays on price controls were caused more by pro-corporate policy choices than by a lack of technological expertise? For the Times, such a question, which might begin to expose some of the ugly underpinnings of U.S. governance, didn’t merit attention.
The Wrong Incentives
The New York Times need look no further than its own archives to find some more illuminating context for U.S. lawmakers’ approach to AI regulation. Last year, the paper (9/13/22) reported that 97 members of Congress owned stock in companies that would be influenced by those members’ regulatory committees. Indeed, many of those weighing in on AI regulation have a powerful incentive not to rein the technology in.
One of those 97 was Rep. Donald S. Beyer, Jr. (D–Va.), who “bought and sold [shares in Google parent company] Alphabet and Microsoft while he was on the House Science, Space, and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight.” Beyer, who serves as vice chair of the House AI Caucus, has been featured in multiple articles (Washington Post, 12/28/22; ABC News, 3/17/23) as a model AI legislator. The New York Times (3/3/23) itself lauded Beyer’s enrollment in evening classes on AI, sharing his alert that regulation would “take time.”
Curiously, the coverage commending Beyer’s regulatory initiative has omitted his record of investing in the two companies—which happen to rank among the U.S.’s most prominent purveyors of AI software—while he was authorized to police them.
Congressmembers, dozens of whom have historically owned stock in AI companies, surely must be capable of learning about AI—and doing so swiftly—if they’ve been choosing to reap its monetary rewards for years.
Elsewhere in its congressional stock-trading report, The New York Times called Rep. Michael McCaul (R–Texas) “one of Congress’s most active filers,” noting his investments in a whopping 342 companies, including Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta, formerly known as Facebook, which also has a tremendous financial stake in AI. McCaul, like Beyer, boasts a top-brass post on the House AI Caucus.
McCaul’s trades were dwarfed by those of fellow AI Caucus member Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.), who, according to the Times, has owned stock in nearly 900 companies. Among them: leading AI-chip manufacturer Nvidia (as of 2021), Alphabet, and Microsoft. (Khanna has nominally endorsed proposals to curb congressional stock-trading, a stance contradicted by his vast portfolio.) Save for the Times exposé, none of the above pieces addressed Khanna’s, or McCaul’s, ethical breaches; in fact, Khanna is a recurring media source on AI legislation (Semafor, 4/26/23; San Francisco Chronicle, 7/20/23).
Congressmembers, dozens of whom have historically owned stock in AI companies, surely must be capable of learning about AI—and doing so swiftly—if they’ve been choosing to reap its monetary rewards for years. Why that knowledge can’t be applied to regulating the technology seems to be yet another question media are uninterested in asking.
Defense of Toothless Action
In omitting this critical information, news sources are effectively giving Congress an undeserved redemption arc. Following years of legislative apathy to the surveillance, monopolization, labor abuses, and countless other iniquities of Big Tech, media declare that legislators are trying to right their wrongs by targeting an ascendant AI industry (Yahoo! Finance, 5/17/23; GovTech, 6/21/23).
Accordingly, media have embraced policymakers’ efforts, no matter how feeble they may be. Throughout the year, politicians have hosted chummy hearings and meetings, as well as private dinners, with the chiefs of major AI companies to discuss regulatory frameworks. Yet, rather than impugning the influence legislators have awarded these executives, outlets present these gatherings as testaments to lawmakers’ dedication.
CBS Austin (8/29/23) justified congressional reliance on executives, whom it called “industry experts,” trumpeting that corporations like Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta were helping policymakers “chart a path forward.” The broadcaster went on to establish a pretext for business-friendly lawmaking:
Congress is trying to find a delicate balance of safeguarding the public while allowing the promising aspects of the technology to flourish and propel the economy and country into the future.
The New York Times (8/28/23), meanwhile, stated that Congress and the Biden administration have “leaned on” industry heads for “guidance on regulation,” a clever euphemism for lobbying. The Times reported that Congress would hold a forthcoming “closed-door listening session” with executives in order to “educate” its members, evincing no skepticism over what that education might involve. (At the session, Congress will also host civil rights and labor groups, who are theoretically much more qualified than C-suiters to determine the moral content of AI policymaking, but received much less fanfare from the Times.)
The guests of the “listening session,” per the Times, will include Twitter.com‘s Elon Musk, Google’s Sundar Pichai, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella. Might the fact that each of them has fought tech-industry constraints have some bearing on the future? Reading the Times story, which didn’t deem this worth a mention, one wouldn’t know.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Calling Out 'Hypocrisy and Censorship,' Campaign Aims to Prevent US TikTok Ban
"Stop feeding moral panic and pass a real data privacy law to stop Big Tech companies—including TikTok!—from harvesting and abusing our personal data for profit," a new Fight for the Future petition urges lawmakers.
Feb 28, 2023
Data privacy and free speech advocates on Tuesday sounded the alarm about "hypocrisy and censorship" as U.S. House Republicans pushed for a bill to effectively ban TikTok, a video-sharing platform created by the Chinese company ByteDance, across the country.
House Committee on Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) held a hearing on "combating the generational challenge of CCP aggression," referring to the Chinese Communist Party, after introducing the Deterring America's Technological Adversaries (DATA) Act last week.
Meanwhile, the U.S.-based group Fight for the Future launched a #DontBanTikTok campaign opposing the bill (H.R. 1153).
"If policymakers want to protect Americans from surveillance, they should advocate for strong data privacy laws."
"If it weren't so alarming, it would be hilarious that U.S. policymakers are trying to 'be tough on China' by acting exactly like the Chinese government," said Fight for the Future director Evan Greer. "Banning an entire app used by millions of people, especially young people, LGBTQ folks, and people of color, is classic state-backed internet censorship."
"TikTok uses the exact same surveillance capitalist business model of services like YouTube and Instagram," she stressed. "Yes, it's concerning that the Chinese government could abuse data that TikTok collects. But even if TikTok were banned, they could access much of the same data simply by purchasing it from data brokers, because there are almost no laws in place to prevent that kind of abuse."
According to Greer, "If policymakers want to protect Americans from surveillance, they should advocate for strong data privacy laws that prevent all companies (including TikTok!) from collecting so much sensitive data about us in the first place, rather than engaging in what amounts to xenophobic showboating that does exactly nothing to protect anyone."
\u201cNEW: @fightfortheftr has launched #DontBanTikTok, a campaign calling for US lawmakers to stop their unserious and xenophobic handwringing around TikTok and pass a goddamn data privacy law to actually protect people from corporate & government surveillance https://t.co/JQ7ykDwQKU\u201d— Evan Greer is on Mastodon (@Evan Greer is on Mastodon) 1677617090
Fight for the Future's campaign includes a petition that is open for signature and sends the same message to lawmakers: "I want my elected officials to ACTUALLY protect my sensitive data from China and other governments. Stop feeding moral panic and pass a real data privacy law to stop Big Tech companies—including TikTok!—from harvesting and abusing our personal data for profit."
In addition to sharing the petition and highlighting the inadequacy of U.S. privacy laws, the campaign site notes that the ACLU is also opposing McCaul's bill, and on Sunday sent a letter to him and Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), the panel's ranking member.
"Having only had a few days to review this legislation, we have not included a comprehensive list of all of H.R. 1153's potential problems in this letter," wrote ACLU federal policy director Christopher Anders and senior policy counsel Jenna Leventoff. "However, the immediately apparent First Amendment concerns are more than sufficient to justify a 'no' vote."
"This legislation would not just ban TikTok—an entire platform, used by millions of Americans daily—but would also erode the important free speech protections included within the Berman Amendment," they continued. "Moreover, its vague and overbroad nature implicates due process and sweeps in otherwise protected speech."
\u201cTell Congress: Don't ban TikTok https://t.co/jQzj4vbhEB\u201d— ACLU (@ACLU) 1677538588
The letter explains that 35 years ago, the Berman Amendment "removed the president's authority to regulate or ban the import or export of 'informational materials, including but not limited to, publications, films, posters, phonograph records, photographs... artworks, and news wire feeds' and later electronic media."
In a statement, Leventoff declared that "Congress must not censor entire platforms and strip Americans of their constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression."
"Whether we're discussing the news of the day, livestreaming protests, or even watching cat videos," she said, "we have a right to use TikTok and other platforms to exchange our thoughts, ideas, and opinions with people around the country and around the world."
Notably, Meeks spoke out against the bill during Tuesday's hearing. Reuters reports that the ranking member "strongly opposed the legislation, saying it would 'damage our allegiances across the globe, bring more companies into China's sphere, destroy jobs here in the United States, and undercut core American values of free speech and free enterprise."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular