US navy in Lakshadweep: Gunboat diplomacy masquerading as freedom of navigation
The Narendra Modi government mistakenly believed a FONOP in the South China Sea has no implications for India. As the US operation in India’s EEZ makes clear, it owns the seas and will brook no competition from any country
The West is practicing vaccine apartheid on a global level
China and India are the only two major countries that have been willing to export vaccines while also vaccinating their own people. Meanwhile, to rich countries, the billions of dollars of vaccine market for Big Pharma far outweigh the benefits of saving millions of lives
As US loses its edge, game of cyber chicken could have deadly consequences
Cybersecurity threats are emerging as one of the most serious challenges of the 21st century. The US and its NATO allies have turned down every attempt within the UN framework for banning cyber weapons
Vaccine wars, ASEAN and the Quad
The COVID-19 pandemic demands that all nations cooperate to vaccinate the entire global population. The usual rules of which countries win and which ones lose do not operate in this civilizational crisis
Texas grid failure: Electricity obeys laws of physics, not the market
The recent grid failure in Texas and the catastrophe that followed reveals the risks of de-regulation in the power sector which is a philosophy that has been adopted across the world
IMF and big business for universal vaccination: Better red than dead
The me-first policy on vaccine sharing will bring losses of $203 billion to $5 trillion to rich countries, while the returns are the highest if they support global universal vaccination
The ugly truth of WhatsApp’s user data privacy
Facebook’s meteoric rise as one of the biggest global monopolies has been accompanied by continuous weakening of its user privacy. With WhatsApp users voting with their feet, has Facebook’s past finally caught up with it?
In India, pseudo-nationalism trumps science in vaccine clearance
The recent regulatory clearance given to an indigenous developed vaccine candidate in India is an example of vaccine nationalism at its worst and jettisoning of all the principles of an evidence-based, scientific approach