Zuckerberg wants out; JP Morgan and Wagner; Insulate foreign policies from politics

Zuckerberg wants out of politics (if possible)

“Mark Zuckerberg Is Done With Politics”

• In stark contrast to his active participation in politics in his 20s, “Mr. Zuckerberg has expressed cynicism about politics after years of bad experiences in Washington.”

  • “[H]e regretted hiring employees at his philanthropy who tried to push him further to the left on some causes.”

  • “Privately, Mr. Zuckerberg now considers his personal politics to be more like libertarianism,” opposing regulations. He and his wife have also been agahst about the anti-seminitism on campus.

• The article reads more like Zuckerberg, formerly left-leaning, is now taking a right-turn. He complains about Biden admin’s pressures on Covid-19 communications and made a phone call to Trump, allegedly, to repair the relationship.

• Zuckerberg grew disenchanted with politics as Chan Zuckberg Initiative (CZI), a philanthropic organization that espoused many progressive political agendas, became more of a liability. Activists accused him of not doing enough through the Trump presidency, while his Meta was under close scrutiny.

JP Morgan and HSBC financially helped Prigozhin and the Wagner Group

“Yevgeny Prigozhin secretly used JPMorgan and HSBC for Wagner payments”

• “JPMorgan Chase and HSBC unwittingly processed payments for companies in Africa controlled by the deceased Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin”

• Prigozhin “was able to establish a transnational criminal empire in natural resources in part by secretly hijacking the payments systems of western financial institutions.”

  • ‘hijacking’ would be an overstatement as these banks were simply used by the front of the Wagner Group, a Sudanese mining company, for payments to Chinese suppliers.

• “There is no evidence that these banks were aware they were handling transactions commissioned by Wagner Group front entities.”

• Analysts say that “Prigozhin and Wagner would not have been able to establish a foothold in Africa without benefiting from the legitimate financial system.”

US-Korea-Japan trilateral foreign policy cooperation to be ‘insulated’ from domestic politics.

S. Korea, US, Japan eye secretariat to insulate alliance from politics

• The diplomats of the three countries “agreed on Monday to advance the creation of a trilateral secretariat to institutionalize cooperation and insulate it from potential disruptions caused by leadership changes in any of the three countries.”

  • the exact wording: “The three ministers agreed to strengthen efforts to institutionalize trilateral cooperation, ensuring its continuity regardless of changes in the political circumstances of each country.”

• The agreement originates from the vice-ministral level meeting in May.

  • “However, neither Seoul nor Washington provided additional details about a secretariat.”

• Blinken implied that the elections in US and Japan could alter the cooperation structure of the three countries, which justifies the ‘institutionalization’ of the framework.

• Korean media seems to have toned down the ‘political insulation’ part of this arrangement. For example. MBC coverage

• Really curious to know if there’s actually so precious a framework to be ‘protected from pesky domestic politics’ here. And if there is, what is it like in real policy terms? They never pin down what exactly they want to do with this ‘trilateral cooperation.’ Nor have they ever addressed what kind of purposes the existing framework does not serve effectively.