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Of note: the Morning Briefing will return December 2, after the Thanksgiving holiday. Happy Thanksgiving!
Also of note: this is a project we have been working on for awhile: the Sphere Podcast is live! Here is a link to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube. Subscribe wherever you like to get your podcasts, share and like and comment and all that good stuff.
The first episode (episode links: Apple, Spotify, YouTube) is a conversation with Conn Carroll, commentary editor of the Washington Examiner, about his fascinating new book, Sex and the Citizen. We really enjoyed the interview, and we're very grateful to Conn for allowing himself to be used as our guinea pig for the first, decidedly low-production-values episode. The least you could do is buy his book.
FEATURED: The Quality of Life Agenda →
SEE ALSO: Here's Why British Farmers Are Rebelling Against Their Government →
China and the Bio Threat
We are still working our way through the US-China Review Commission's mammoth ~750 page report. Another thing that caught our notice: the amount of attention paid to the bio threat.
The Commission warns that Chinese companies have become increasingly embedded in U.S. drug development and bio-manufacturing supply chains, while simultaneously gaining access to sensitive technologies and data through their research and market presence in the United States. According to the report, China is advancing rapidly in genomic research, novel biopharmaceuticals, and new material applications, and it notes that these are areas with potential dual-use applications. When people talk about China stealing our technology and using that to catch up with us and potentially overtake us, it is very often discussed in very general terms. Here we have a specific field where the problem is particularly grievous.
The Commission's Report to Congress outlines two major sets of recommendations to address biotechnology security concerns.
The first recommendation requires Congressional action: new legislation mandating prior approval and ongoing oversight of Chinese involvement in U.S. biotechnology companies. This would be conducted by HHS, and would cover any firms engaged in genomic research, those evaluating or reporting genetic data for medical or ancestral purposes, companies participating in pharmaceutical development, and biotechnology organizations involved with U.S. higher ed, or any level of government.
The second major recommendation is to increase Federal investment in domestic biotechnology development, from from basic research through product development and market deployment, including building up America's intermediate services capacity and equipment manufacturing capabilities.
Approval and oversight of Chinese investment in U.S. biotech is a no-brainer (in fact we are shocked to learn it's not already the case). Federal investment in biotech seems like less of a priority: the problem with the biotech industry in the US is not lack of capital. If anything it's regulation. The way to beat China is to let RFK, Jr. destroy the FDA? Crazier things have happened.
Less striking than the recommendations themselves, though, for us, was simply sounding the warning bugle about China's accelerated progress in biotech, and how vulnerable US companies currently are to Chinese investment and technology theft.
Policy News You Need To Know
#AmericanManufacturing — The smartest person we know of who works in the area of reshoring manufacturing to America is Harry Moser, President of the Reshoring Initiative. We enjoyed this article he wrote about how manufacturers use automation to enable reshoring. This is good for jobs! A factory where 90% of the work is done by robots is more manufacturing jobs than no factory at all.
#DOGE — The question everyone has about DOGE is, is it going to be a PR exercise in headline-grabbing government cutting, ending "studying the sex lives of racoons" studies that cost .0000001% of the Federal budget, or a truly deep exercise into reforming government, or something inbetween? If you think it's the former, boy, Sen. Ernst has something for you: The Iowa Senator has come out with a 22-point list of cuts, most of which sound good, some of which sound vague, but none of which add up even remotely to the promised $1 trillion or address actually serious issues with the way government operates such as recruitment and contracting rules.
#DOGE — Meanwhile, AEI's Jim Capretta, who is always worth reading, has some advice for DOGE on how to improve government efficiency.
#Reg — Believe it or not, the lame-duck Biden-Harris Administration is still tacking on the red tape, as helpfully chronicled by American Action Forum. Writes President Douglas Holtz-Eakin, "the combination of Environmental Protection Agency and Federal Aviation Administration rules produced another red-tape-heavy week in the life of the Biden Administration." The silver lining is that once the Trump-Vance Administration gets in and slashes those regulations, if history is any guide, there will be a boom in small business optimism.
#DEI — The great stats blogger Crémieux alerts us to an important new study showing that exposing people to DEI trainings and the works of people like Robin Di Angelo and Ibram X Kendi makes people more racist, not less. Yes, yes, you already knew that, but it's still a vindication to have hard, empirical evidence. In the study, participants who were exposed to DEI materials imagined racism into existence: they projected bias, microaggressions, and so on, into a nonracialized scenario they were then exposed to. "What's worse, the participants who read the DEI passages also wanted to punish the "offenders" who—I'll remind—literally did nothing racially biased. They were more likely to want to harm people who did nothing due to their own imaginations," Crémieux explains. "These findings were so shocking and forceful that the authors immediately sought to replicate them. They gathered a nearly three-times larger sample and found... the same results!," he adds.
#DEI #Media #WokeIsNotDead — Speaking of, Colin Wright, an anti-DEI activist, reports that the New York Times and Bloomberg "abruptly shelved coverage" of the city we just mentioned. Just an additional data point for the woke is dead/woke is not dead sweepstakes.
#DEI #WokeIsDead — Or wait, maybe woke is dead after all? Fox News has a review of the long list of large American companies who are jettisoning (or at least scaling back—the fine print may have devils lurking) their DEI initiatives, the latest being none other than Walmart. It's easy to see what is prompting this sudden come-to-Jesus moment. It's not even Trump's election. It's the fear of prosecution. Which highlights why getting the right people into DOJ really really matters.
Thanksgiving Essays
Obviously, you should spend every possible hour of your Thanksgiving holiday enjoying your family. If you do have some alone time and would like to use it to enrich your mind, the first thing you should do is read our Quality of Life Agenda.
The second thing you should do is subscribe to the Sphere Podcast (Apple, Spotify, YouTube) and watch/listen to our first episode with Conn Carroll (Apple, Spotify, YouTube).
If, even after all that, you still have time to yourself, we can recommend the following essays:
If you want to read a moving personal remembrance about Thanksgiving, we recommend David French's essay about Thanksgiving while deployed in Iraq.
If instead you want to have a good laugh, we recommend F. Scott Fitzgerald's turkey leftovers recipes.
Not technically an essay, but you will certainly appreciate, if you haven't already heard it, Rush Limbaugh's retelling of The True Story of Thanksgiving.
Meanwhile, in non-Thanksgiving related reading:
Jim Pethokoukis interviews the great Charles Murray about a very important topic: how to support America's smartest kids.
The great English writer Louise Perry, at First Things, describes our fertility drop as "Modernity's Self-Destruct Button."
Angela Merkel—yes, that Angela Merkel—has published her memoirs. All 750 pages of them. And according to Katja Hoyer's review at The Telegraph, Angela Merkel's main takeaway about Angela Merkel's legacy is that Angela Merkel was right. About everything. Budget austerity, destroying Germany's electricity grid, inviting countless millions of unvetted migrants into Europe. She was right about all of it. How very German.
Ross Douthat is always worth reading: here is his interpretation of the Trump cabinet.
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