*US-Sino Relations Will Define the 21st Century

“Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.” – Toni Morrison

“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” – Ibid.

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis arrived in Beijing Tuesday to “have a conversation” with President Xi Jinping. The end. More? Ok, later he’ll travel to South Korea and Japan. Beyond that, details on action items were nothing if not nebulous.

Of course, the US and China have plenty of specific things to talk about. There’s the Chinese military buildup in the South China Sea. Last month Mattis rescinded Beijing’s invitation to participate in the large multinational naval exercise known as the Rim of the Pacific because of China’s growing presence in the region. And he was fairly vocal-less than a month ago when publicly accusing China of “intimidation and coercion” for placing surface-to-air missiles and other military equipment on contested islands in the South China Sea. (China has long contended the islands were indisputably its own, although to varying degrees, the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Malaysia have all staked claims.) Regardless, Xi forged ahead building bases on the islands, replete with airstrips and radar towers, which he said were solely for self-defense.

Then there’s the June 12 summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. That’s a burgeoning relationship Xi has every intention of remaining part of, by using his country’s economic leverage to keep the North firmly in its current orbit around China. Oh, and there’s America’s apparent support for an independent Taiwan, which Beijing considers part of its territory. Or even another big elephant in the room: Trump’s tariffs, Xi’s tit-for-tat responses, and ever-increasing fears of an all-out trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

But hey, no worries. On this trip, Mattis just wants to have a little friendly dialogue with Chinese officials “to understand how they see the strategic relationship developing… I want to go in, right now, without basically poisoning the well at this point, as if my mind’s already made up.”

– President Trump thinks his decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal was having such a huge impact that the country’s leaders were being forced to change their behavior in the region. But analysts say the real impact has been on Iran’s internal politics (more crackdown on dissenters) and its economy (runaway inflation), not on its regional posture. The husband of a prominent human rights lawyer who was arrested last week said: “Even if the nuclear agreement was fully implemented, and all the money reached here and the banking system was not under sanction, the mismanagement inside the country would have squandered the oil revenue and other transactions. We are in bad economic and social states, and it has nothing to do with Trump and sanctions he imposed or will impose.” (NYT)

– Apparently, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte thinks he’s so powerful that just routinely insulting his earthly subjects isn’t challenging enough. So in a speech Friday Duterte decided to publicly take on God, casting doubt on the biblical story of creation and asking why Adam and Eve were let to be tempted and fall from grace. “Who is this stupid God? This son of a bitch is then really stupid,” he said, which probably startled at least some of the believers in this highly religious country, which is more than 80% Catholic. It certainly riled leaders of the Philippines’ politically powerful Roman Catholic Church, but an opposition senator said Duterte’s remarks were really just meant to distract the public from “the incompetence and corruption plaguing the administration.” It’s a familiar playbook. (NYT)

– Amidst concerns about Chinese interests interfering in Australian politics, Chinese company Huawei treated a dozen Australian politicians to lavish overseas trips to its headquarters in Shenzhen. From 2010 to present day, Huawei has been the biggest contributor of foreign travel for Australia’s politicians. (NYT)

– Chinese People’s Liberation Army veterans held protests in the past few weeks in many Chinese cities. The veterans are protesting over lack of benefits, job opportunities, and mistreatment. Many of the veterans complain that rampant corruption at the local level is the root of their woes. (NYT)

– One topic not likely to come up in any dialogue between US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Chinese officials is anything having to do with British-born comedian John Oliver, who recently skewered President Xi Jinping on his HBO weekly special Last Week Tonight. HBO’s entire online content has been blocked from access by mainland Chinese internet users since Saturday, which seems a bit harsh since Oliver’s show was never even included in the programming lineup distributed by a subsidiary, HBO Asia. And you won’t find anything Oliver-related on Weibo, either. (NYT)

– The US Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision handed down Tuesday, upheld President Trump’s power to craft national security policy and his authority to “suspend the entry of aliens into the United States”. Opponents of the administration’s third iteration of an anti-Muslim travel ban had argued the ban had not made the country safer and was in violation of constitutional protections against religious discrimination. The ban targets travelers from Syria, Iran, Libya, Yemen and Somalia, and includes limited sanctions against North Korea and Venezuela. The president hailed the ruling as a “tremendous victory for the American people”. (The Guardian)

– “America is now home to the world’s speediest supercomputer. But the new list of the 500 swiftest machines underlines how much faster China is building them.” (NYT)

– The NSA is a government entity that undoubtedly has a few supercomputers. And there’s a good chance that one is located two blocks away from Daily Pnut’s HQ. We just learned that one of the NSA’s (“purported”) hidden spy hub in San Francisco is indeed a couple blocks away. Fascinating. All of this makes sense now as we’ve rarely ever seen anyone walk in and out of that building. But it just goes to show that so much of life is hidden in plain view. “THE WIRETAP ROOMS: The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities.” (The Intercept)

– We weren’t paying attention to the purported NSA building and that is because attention and motivation are closely linked. Why would we care about another big building in SF. Motivation might help you find a spy building but it is also “How To Get Kids To Pay Attention.” (NPR)

– Facebook is a company that unlike billions of frustrated parents has mastered how to grab and hold the attention of more than 2 billion people while becoming even more powerful than the NSA. And it also likely has company offices a few blocks away from Daily Pnut’s HQ. (Ahh….surrounded!) In case you aren’t creeped out by Facebook by now, the company is able to predict “whether you’re in a romantic relationship using information such as how many times you visit another user’s page” and can “predict when a major life event, such as a birth, death or graduation, is likely to occur” based on your posts and messages. And Facebook sees and hears all, as it has a patent application that “explores using your phone microphone to identify the television shows you watched and whether ads were muted. It also proposes using the electrical interference pattern created by your television power cable to guess which show is playing.” (NYT)

– We love running but we’ve found that after hitting our mid-30s it’s harder to run faster. Maybe we simply aren’t motivated enough. But this article has provided extra motivation as scientists have found “what many runners know from their own experience: we can use running as a tool to improve the way we think and feel. And we are now learning precisely why running can return focus, vanquish stress and improve mood. Plus we know why – if you’re lucky – you might get a brief glimpse of nirvana.” (Guardian)

– Should run be running or walking? Well “It all depends on your goals.” Of course, as we just were reminded, it’s all about one’s motivation. (Consumer Reports)

LAST MORSELS

The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson

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