In The News

A New Front, but It's Still One War

David E. Sanger October 20, 2002
The revelation of a nuclear weapons program in North Korea will test the Bush administration's ability to manage foreign policy and a multi-front war on terrorism. Former ambassador to Korea Stephen Bosworth says he's concerned "about the overload on the intelligence side, human and the technological." The doctrine of pre-emptive defense, outlined recently in the new US...

Our Good Friends

October 20, 2002
On October 17, the day that Commander-in-chief of United States central command, Gen Tommy R. Franks, arrived in Islamabad to witness a much-awaited resumption of US-Pakistan joint military exercises, the New York Times quoted US intelligence sources to claim that Pakistan helped North Korea's clandestine nuclear weapon program. Pakistani denial notwithstanding, the story has had a...

Urgent Worries About Pakistani Nuclear Material

Nayan Chanda October 18, 2002
Following the North Korean admission that it has a secret nuclear weapons program, analysts are searching for the source of North Korean technological advance. A New York Times report on October 18 ("quoted intelligence sources to say that technology to create weapons-grade uranium, appears to have been part of a barter deal in which North Korea supplied Pakistan with missiles in the late...

Debate on Intellectual Property

Steve Lohr October 14, 2002
Based on the economic history of the United States, Taiwan, South Korea, and other nations, the borrowing of ideas – and the making of improvements upon them – is essential to building strong domestic industries. Each of these countries owes a great deal of its economic success today to earlier eras in which foreign patents, copyrights, and trademarks received little or no protection. Now,...

Small Screen, Smaller World

Walid Mougayar October 11, 2002
When TV manufacturers outsource their products along a global supply chain, they create a win-win-win situation. The manufacturers have lower costs, the consumers have cheaper TV sets, and the sets are better made. Standardization of parts, economies of scale and lower transportation costs have made most TV factories assemblers rather than manufacturers. Parts from all the over the world are...

Guerilla Warfare, Waged With Code

Jennifer Lee October 10, 2002
Computer programmers around the world have joined together to ensure global internet freedom. Concentrating most recently on China, which has the third largest online population, “hacktivists” program ways to get around government firewalls and to allow viewing of traditionally government-censored information. The activists also have begun work in Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia by...

The Big Idea: A Doctrine Passes

Jane Mayer October 7, 2002
President George W. Bush's doctrine of preemptive self-defence has got a big thumbs down from an iconic figure of American diplomacy. Commenting on the Bush doctrine in an interview with the New Yorker magazine, George Kennan , the author of the policy of containment and doctrine of deterrence, said "I could see justification only if the absence of it would involve a major and imminent...