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China and Swift: Dual threats?
This is the year of elections, with half the world’s population set to vote in more than 65 elections, so it’s no wonder there’s a lot of urgency over one issue: election interference.
Right now, Canada is holding a critical independent inquiry into election interference from China and Russia and yet, they naively missed the most disruptive election conspiracy mastermind of them all: Taylor Swift.
Or not.
In the department of “Weapons of Mass Distraction,” Swift merits a brief diversion before we get to China and Russia. As we covered in the Daily this morning, there is a double album of MAGA paranoia around China and Russia – sorry, I keep doing that … around Taylor Swift – and her plot to tilt the US election to Joe Biden.
One-time Republican presidential candidate-turned-Trump Hype Man Vivek Ramaswamy courageously exposed how Swift and her beau Travis Kelce, the future Hall of Fame tight end from the Super Bowl-bound Kansas City Chiefs, have it all cooked up. Working alongside, um … Deep Football and the Democrats, Swift and Kelce have, apparently, hatched an anti-Trump football plot.
“I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month,” Ramaswamy tweeted out knowingly, “and I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall.” What? No way! Vivek doubled down on his doubters, with one of those cryptic-conspiracy bro things that sound smart but then you realize you have no idea what he actually means.
“What the MSM calls a “conspiracy theory” is often nothing more than an amalgam of incentives hiding in plain sight,” Ramaswamy tweeted. “Once you see that, the rest becomes pretty obvious.” To which Elon Muskretweeted, “Exactly.”
Exactly what is in plain sight? That there is a Super Bowl-Swiftian election interference plot? That a billionaire musician, her record company, the NFL, Travis Kelce, and Joe Biden all got together to fix the outcome of the NFL playoffs and the Super Bowl in order to support the Democrats and undermine Donald Trump?
The Swift-Kelce-NFL-Biden fever dream has been widely repeated and reported on, but it has zero merit, as we covered this morning. Swift has a history of supporting Democrats in places like Tennessee in 2018. In other words, like millions of people, she supports a political party. That is not a conspiracy, that’s called “voting.” Many other celebrities support Trump and Republicans. That is also called voting.
Yes, Travis Kelce does vaccine ads for a pharmaceutical company. Again, not a conspiracy against Trump, but the choice of a man who, like hundreds of millions of people, believes in the science of vaccines – and in making a buck. It’s no more complicated than that. This isn’t a plot for election interference, as folks like Ramaswamy allege; it’s a paranoid new deflection from the very real act of attempted election interference that was the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
But foreign election interference is troubling, and Canada’s inquiry merits attention. The independent “Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions” – catchy name, I know, so let’s go with the “Hogue Inquiry,” after the commissioner Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, who is overseeing it all — kicked off this week. It is looking into allegations that China and Russia interfered in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.
Just this morning, Global News reported that it had obtained a secret briefing note from Canada’s spy agency CSIS that says China attempted to interfere with the last two Federal elections. “We know that the PRC sought to clandestinely and deceptively influence the 2019 and 2021 federal elections,” Stewart Bell writes in his superb story today.
That’s exactly why Canada’s allies are watching this case so closely, especially in the US. “Much of the attention about foreign interference in American democratic processes has focused on Russia and its malicious online activities,” Stephanie Carvin, a Carleton University professor and former CSIS national security analyst, tells me. “But Canada presents an important case study in how other state actors, namely (but not exclusively) China, conduct such operations. This includes the harassment of dissidents, alleged interference in electoral nomination processes, and targeting of politicians. Western countries need to observe and learn from the experience of other countries, which may impact them one day.”
Despite the recent assurances from President Xi Jinping to President Joe Biden that China will not interfere in the election, FBI Director Christopher Wraywarned a House Committee on China this week that Beijing has a very sophisticated plan to disrupt the upcoming election and also hack critical infrastructure.
Other countries, like Russia and Iran, are playing copycat. “Unfortunately, malicious actors are learning from one another, and Western countries should expect more foreign interference in the future,” Carvin says. “I am particularly worried about artificially generated content ‘deepfakes’ that may alter perceptions of current events and politicians.”
Canada, the US, and its allies are arming up for a war on the heart of democracy: elections. “If there is a good news story here, it is that countries are not going through this alone,” Carvin tells me. “By working together, states can better inform themselves about what is happening around the world, to make their democratic institutions more resilient.”
Big picture? It might be best not to confuse Swiftian halftime entertainment with political election interference. Both are worth paying attention to, but they play in very different arenas.
Protesters attend a demonstration against the French government's pension reform plan in Paris.
What We’re Watching: French pension strikes, Nord Stream saboteurs, a centrist battle in the US, Canadian elections vs. China
French workers vs. Macron
“Pas question!” (no way!) is what over a million striking French workers told President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday as they tried to bring the country to a screeching halt over his controversial plan to raise the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64. In what was billed as the biggest strike to date against the pension reforms, protesters shut down schools, stopped transportation, and even blocked fuel deliveries. And they seem to have the people on their side – two-thirds of the French support their cause. But Macron has made the reform his No. 1 policy priority, seeing it as the only feasible way to ensure that the pension system stays solvent in a country with an aging population. And despite the pushback from the streets, Macron has the votes in parliament to ram through the changes. He’ll likely wait for the streets to die down a bit before he signs the reform bill – but sign it he will.
Nord Stream plot twist: Was it … Ukrainians?
It’s been five months since somebody blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia to Europe, and we still don’t know who did it. Was it Russia trying to freeze Europe into submission? Was it the US trying to isolate Russia? Or, was it, as Ian Bremmer theorized a few weeks ago, the Ukrainians trying to remove Russia’s leverage over Germany? Well, The New York Times on Tuesday reported that US officials have intelligence suggesting it was a “pro-Ukrainian group” – most likely including Ukrainian or Russian nationals – that had no official ties to the government of Volodymyr Zelensky. We’re watching to see where this latest plot twist leads, and whether the suspicion of Ukrainian involvement — official or not — affects both German and broader European unity in supporting Kyiv.
Check out Ian's response to yesterday's report here.
The centrist civil war
For years, public opinion polls have found that a majority of Americans want to see the emergence of a “third party” to challenge the two-party political dominance of Democrats and Republicans. A number of organizations have proposed, or offered themselves, as alternatives to the status quo. One is called “No Labels,” a “movement” of Democrats and Republicans who promise to look for bipartisan solutions to national problems. There is also “Third Way,” a self-described “national think tank that champions modern center-left ideas.” Third Way warned this week that a plan by No Labels to boost a “unity ticket” in the 2024 presidential election will take centrist votes away from Joe Biden and help re-elect Donald Trump, an outcome both groups say the nation must avoid. In other words, two groups that say they want to bridge the gap between the two parties are now arguing over which is more likely to elect the candidate they agree is too “extreme.” This is one more measure of the resilience of American polarization.
Trudeau probes Chinese meddling
Well, this is awkward. Canadian PM Justin Trudeau has appointed an independent investigator to assess allegations that the Chinese government interfered in Canada’s 2019 and 2021 elections … to help his party win. The reports are sketchy so far, and the interference was not so large that Beijing affected the electoral results. Still, Trudeau is in a tight spot. A fully transparent investigation could reveal details that are politically toxic to his government – particularly amid allegations that his office ignored reports of interference in 2019. But any evidence of soft-pedaling the probe could backfire in a similar way. For now, his government is projecting an air of total transparency in dealing with the story, but opposition leaders have already alleged a cover-up and are calling for a public hearing. Canada is hardly the only country concerned about alleged election meddling by China. Intelligence services in the US and Australia have voiced similar concerns, raising questions about how safe future elections will be.