Josh Meyer's Reports on Quartz
Medill National Security Zone's Josh Meyer is a regular contributor on national security topics to Quartz, a business-focused site with "bracingly creative and intelligent journalism with a broad worldview." We also cross-post his reports on National Security Zone.
It’s not exactly a new thing in international security circles, but it seems poised to become the next big thing: deviant globalization. The concept describes the convergence of all of the types of criminal activity that flourish in the teeming underworld of black market economies.
The idea began circulating after three Bay Area big thinkers—Nils Gilman, Jesse Goldhammer, and Steven Weber—wrote a book about it in March 2011 (“Deviant Globalization: Black Market Economy in the 21st Century“). But it generated little public attention or discussion then. At that time, global security experts didn’t yet understand the interconnectedness of so many forms of criminal and legitimate business activity, Gilman told Quartz. A Facebook page and Twitter account,@DeviantGlobalization, soon cropped up, but with very meager followings. A Nexis search generates two obscure hits. Continue reading →
Now that oil giant Total has agreed to pay $398 million in a US enforcement action, France has three multinationals on the list of the 10 biggest Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) cases ever. That’s according to Richard L. Cassin, founder and editor of the FCPA Blog, which keeps a running tally of the worst offenders.
The blog, which bills itself as “The World’s Biggest Anti-Corruption Compliance Portal,” bases its list solely on the dollar amounts of settlements with the US Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Securities and Exchange Commission. That’s because the US is essentially the only aggressive prosecutor of international bribery cases in the world, even if it does settle virtually all of its cases in voluntary “deferred prosecution agreements.”
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What’s driving the explosive growth in sales of fashionable bullet-resistant clothing for the rich and not so famous?
Colombian specialty clothier Miguel Caballero has no idea. He’s just glad he’s selling a lot more of his “personal ballistic protection apparel” than he used to. And he’s doing so in some unexpected places, including Uruguay, India, Panama and at Harrods in London. Continue reading →
With nine months to go before the 2014 Winter Olympics, the biennial sport of Olympics-bashing has begun in earnest. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is being criticized for cost overruns and the other usual problems. And as always, the host country, this time Russia, is taking heat for cronyism, corruption, environmental concerns and construction delays.
But this time there is another, bigger set of worries. At several recent gatherings around the world, experts have wrung their hands publicly about how the XXII Winter Games pose the biggest security threat of any games in memory.
The Olympics, which will run from February 7th to the 23rd, are going to be held right in the middle of one of the world’s hottest conflict zones, the North Caucasus. Sochi, the host city, is a lovely resort town on Russia’s Black Sea coast. But the region around it is a cauldron of ethnic hatred and anti-Russian separatist movements. And then there is all of the organized crime, Islamist militancy and terrorism. Continue reading →
It’s been said that soccer tells us all we need to know about life, parenting, even globalization.
Now a Singapore-based blogger says soccer can tell us which Middle East or North African government will be the next to blow. At the top of the list: Algeria and Saudi Arabia.
Over at his blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, James M. Dorsey looks at soccer as a lens through which to view the fault lines carving up the Middle East and North Africa. In Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and other countries, he says, soccer played a key role in allowing pent-up anger and frustration to percolate into organized protest that forced transitions from autocratic rule to more open societies. Continue reading →
Squeeze your employees, and you’ll pay the price. Seems obvious—but Ernst & Young has actual evidence. For its annual fraud report the firm surveyed 3,000 company board members, managers and their teams in 36 countries across the world, and found that employees feeling the double pinch … Continue reading →
Have some dirty money you need to launder? You may want to consider Argentina as an option. Lawmakers there are considering a measure that would give amnesty to anyone who wants to pull undeclared cash out of tax havens and deposit it in Argentinian banks.
The government of President Cristina Kirchner is behind the proposal, saying the country needs to do something drastic in order to prop up its investment-starved economy—especially its stalled energy and construction sectors. The idea has a certain logic. Continue reading →
Today’s brouhaha around Ryan Fogle, a junior US diplomat in Moscow whom Russian authorities detained and accused of spying, may have seemed to some like a joke, or else suspiciously like a bad frame-up.
Fogle was paraded in front of cameras at Russia’s state security service, the FSB, along with his alleged tools of tradecraft—which included two wigs, a wad of cash, a compass, and a “Dear Friend” letter intended for a potential Russian recruit—before being declared persona non grata and told to leave the country.
To say this doesn’t add up would be an understatement. The real story probably won’t be known for days, if not years. But here are five common misconceptions about the world of espionage that the Fogle case shows. Continue reading →
The rich, the powerful and the merely famous should be very afraid. First the journalists started going after their offshore accounts and tax havens, thanks to an unprecedented leak of millions of secret banking documents. Now the authorities are piling on.
The leaked files obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) document—with impressive precision and colorful anecdotes—how wealthy tax cheats, their lawyers and friendly governments manipulate offshore holdings, front companies, complicated cash transfers and shadowy shell companies. Those activities, in turn, have fueled corruption and sucked profits out of the coffers of as many as 170 developing and rich nations. Continue reading →
The good news out of today’s annual US Defense Department report on China is that the People’s Liberation Army is partnering up on joint military exercises with the US as never before, including on some humanitarian missions.
The bad news is that despite this veneer of collegiality, China continues to engage in a massive, and often successful, effort to steal US military technology and know-how through sophisticated espionage and cyber-intrusion efforts, according to the DoD.
Some top targets: engines for aircraft and tanks, solid-state electronics and micro-processors, guidance and control systems, and “enabling technologies such as cutting-edge precision machine tools, advanced diagnostic and forensic equipment, and computer-assisted design, manufacturing and engineering.” Continue reading →
