Background Briefing: November 14, 2022
After a 3 Hour Meeting with Xi Jinping, Biden Declares No New Cold War With China
We begin with President Biden’s declaration after a three hour meeting with China’s Xi Jinping that there will be no new Cold War with China and speak with Orville Schell, who was formerly the dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley and currently is the Arthur Ross Director of the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations. His books include Mandate of Heaven: The Legacy of Tiananmen Square and the Next Generation of China’s Leaders, Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-first Century, and most recently My Old Home: A Novel of Exile. We discuss whether Xi’s statement that a statesman “should also think about and know how to get along with other countries and the wider world” is a retreat from “wolf warrior” diplomacy.
With Election Deniers Making Up a Third of the New Congress, Could They Elect Trump as Their Speaker?
Then with Congressman Jamie Raskin warning on CBS’s Face the Nation that election deniers will make up a third of the new House and could elect Donald Trump as their speaker, we speak with Darrell West, the vice president of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of a number of books including Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust, Divided Politics, Divided Nation: Hyperconflict in the Trump Era and, most recently, Power Politics: Trump and the Assault on American Democracy.
The Collapse of the FTX Cryptocurrency Exchange and the 75% Loss in the Value of Bitcoin
Then finally we examine the collapse of FTX cryptocurrency exchange and the 75% loss in the value of Bitcoin from where it was a year ago with Molly White, a software engineer and cryptocurrency critic. In addition to her longer-form critical writing about the topic, she maintains the website Web3IsGoingGreat.com, where she catalogs only some of the many disasters happening in cryptocurrency, decentralized finance, NFTs, and other blockchain-based projects.