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Defense beat: Europe Won’t Pay Its NATO Share
President Trump’s call for Europe to pay 5% of GDP for its defense has been much “ballyhooed,” notes Gerard Baker at The Wall Street Journal, but the “math agreed to by all members except Spain is on closer inspection a little fuzzy.” While some Euro nations such as Poland and Finland are “serious about their defense,” Germany, France and Britain “face economic, demographic, political and cultural challenges” that will make real change unlikely because the “fiscal positions of most European countries” are simply too ugly for them to pay more. “Budget restraint” in Labour-run Britain is impossible to impose, and European “climate policies are blowing even larger holes in budgets.” Only “economic growth” can get these countries on the right footing to afford to pay more for their own defense.
Foreign desk: COVID Tied to Bioweapons Work
“A bioweapons expert likely to head the Trump administration’s top Pentagon post for countering weapons of mass destruction has charged in a new report that the Covid-19 pandemic was probably the result of a military-research-related accident in a Chinese laboratory, and that work at that lab may have been part of research China was conducting in possible violation of a treaty banning biological weapons,” reports City Journal’s Judith Miller. The report, by Robert Kadlec, “adds to the growing consensus” that COVID “was the result of a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and not a naturally occurring outbreak of a deadly virus originating in animals.” But the report is strong grounds for Team Trump to start “prioritizing U.S. intelligence efforts aimed at Chinese bioweapons research.”
Mideast journal: Iran’s Long Road Back to Nukes
The “19 senior Iranian nuclear scientists” Israel assassinated during the 12-Day War had “nuclear knowledge spanning decades” — much “centered on explosives, nuclear coding, and ballistic missiles,” cheers Adam Kredo at The Washington Free Beacon, citing a new intelligence assessment by a leading nonproliferation organization. The scientists’ “average age was 60,” suggesting “Israel targeted the most experienced crop of engineers.” Plus, the Jewish state “successfully destroyed” Iran’s nuclear “technological blueprints.” Indeed, the attacks “evaporated decades of nuclear know-how, striking at the heart of Tehran’s weapons program in a way kinetic attacks could not.” The result: “Recovering may be far more difficult and take far longer.”
From the right: Poll Flags Border Ignorance
A new CBS poll suggests “significant numbers of Americans, even now, are not fully informed” about immigration under President Trump, marvels the Washington Examiner’s Byron York. The poll found 56% of respondents disapprove of Trump’s immigration approach, but it also asked a factual question: whether Trump’s policies are making the number of migrants crossing the border “go up, go down, or not change.” Only 64% “gave the obviously correct response — Trump has made the number of migrants crossing” go down. “And 8% said crossings have actually gone up, which was crazy wrong.” This reveals a “lack of knowledge” of basic facts and “could tell us something about the answers to all the other immigration questions in the CBS poll, and perhaps in other polls as well.”
Education beat: Don’t Use AI To ‘Teach’
The Computer Lab “was that magical room” where students could experience “the wonders of the Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, and Mavis Beacon,” reminisces Understanding America’s Oren Cass. Back then, computers “did not teach, they were a subject to be taught.” Yet “the irresistible logic of technophilia determined that every child needed a computer” to “compete in the global economy of tomorrow.” Today, the same is being said of AI: “All students need to know how to use AI,” and “AI should be integrated throughout the educational experience.” Trouble is, AI “will offer counterproductive shortcuts for not only unengaged students, but also their teachers.” Kids need to understand that “learning is not a technological function” but “a habit of mind.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board