Category Archives: Analysis

ISIS top command dominated by ex-officers in Saddam’s army

The Associated Press reports: While attending the Iraqi army’s artillery school nearly 20 years ago, Ali Omran remembers one major well. An Islamic hard-liner, he once chided Omran for wearing an Iraqi flag pin into the bathroom because it included the words “God is great.”

“It is forbidden by religion to bring the name of the Almighty into a defiled place like this,” Omran recalled being told by Maj. Taha Taher al-Ani.

Omran didn’t see al-Ani again until years later, in 2003. The Americans had invaded Iraq and were storming toward Baghdad. Saddam Hussein’s fall was imminent. At a sprawling military base north of the capital, al-Ani was directing the loading of weapons, ammunition and ordnance into trucks to spirit away. He took those weapons with him when he joined Tawhid wa’l-Jihad, a forerunner of al-Qaida’s branch in Iraq.

Now al-Ani is a commander in the Islamic State group, said Omran, who rose to become a major general in the Iraqi army and now commands its 5th Division fighting IS. He kept track of his former comrade through Iraq’s tribal networks and intelligence gathered by the government’s main counterterrorism service, of which he is a member.

It’s a common trajectory.

Under its leader, Iraqi jihadi Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State group’s top command is dominated by former officers from Saddam’s military and intelligence agencies, according to senior Iraqi officers on the front lines of the fight against the group, as well as top intelligence officials, including the chief of a key counterterrorism intelligence unit.

The experience they bring is a major reason for the group’s victories in overrunning large parts of Iraq and Syria. The officers gave IS the organization and discipline it needed to weld together jihadi fighters drawn from across the globe, integrating terror tactics like suicide bombings with military operations. They have been put in charge of intelligence-gathering, spying on the Iraqi forces as well as maintaining and upgrading weapons and trying to develop a chemical weapons program. [Continue reading…]

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Iraqi premier tests authority in anti-graft push after protests

Bloomberg reports: Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar Al-Abadi, backed by the nation’s top Shiite cleric, vowed to investigate corruption and proposed abolishing key government posts in a move that will test his authority in the fractured country.

Abadi, in a seven-point plan that has to be ratified by parliament, said the positions of vice presidents and deputy prime ministers should be eliminated immediately as part of a push to improve performance and tackle corruption. Nouri al-Maliki, Abadi’s predecessor and one of the country’s three vice presidents, said he supports the plan, which was also approved by the cabinet.

Thousands of Iraqis took to the streets on Friday to protest what they describe as widespread corruption in OPEC’s second-biggest producer. While the plunge in oil prices and the battle against Islamic State militants are depleting the government’s coffers, many Iraqis say corruption is compounding the nation’s economic woes.
“Abadi chose the right time to take these decisions,” Hameed Fayad, a political science professor in Baghdad University, said by phone. “The real battle will be in parliament in the coming weeks, but in the end, the religious authority and people’s word will have the upper hand.”

Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, urged the prime minister on Friday to tackle corruption and fire any official “who tries to hinder reform, no matter what their position is.” [Continue reading…]

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Expanding U.S. role in Iraq strains awkward alliance with Iran

The Washington Post reports: The expanding U.S. military campaign against the Islamic State group in Iraq relies in part on an uneasy, arms-length partnership with Shiite militias backed by Iran — organizations that were once relentlessly effective killers of U.S. troops.

Now, as the campaign enters its second year, there are signs that this awkward alliance may be fraying: militia threats of renewed attacks on U.S. personnel, a greater U.S. effort to bolster Sunni forces that are traditional adversaries of Iran and accusations that the U.S. air campaign has at times targeted Shiite forces.

The shared desire to defeat the Islamic State appears to be enough so far to keep the militias and the Americans working in common cause. But officials and experts said both sides know that their broader regional objectives are in conflict. [Continue reading…]

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Obama challenges AIPAC on Iran deal

The New York Times reports: President Obama had a tough message for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, the powerful pro-Israel group that is furiously campaigning against the Iran nuclear accord, when he met with two of its leaders at the White House this week. The president accused Aipac of spending millions of dollars in advertising against the deal and spreading false claims about it, people in the meeting recalled.

So Mr. Obama told the Aipac leaders that he intended to hit back hard.

The next day in a speech at American University, Mr. Obama denounced the deal’s opponents as “lobbyists” doling out millions of dollars to trumpet the same hawkish rhetoric that had led the United States into war with Iraq. The president never mentioned Aipac by name, but his target was unmistakable.

The remarks reflected an unusually sharp rupture between a sitting American president and the most potent pro-Israel lobbying group, which was founded in 1951 a few years after the birth of Israel. [Continue reading…]

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The Gaza Strip’s last safety net is in danger

Sara Roy writes: Not long ago, I had a conversation with an official I know from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The official told me about a conversation he had with a senior Israel Defense Forces officer. In that conversation, my UN colleague asked the IDF official to describe Israel’s policy toward Gaza. The answer was just seven words long: “No development, no prosperity, no humanitarian crisis,” by now a common refrain within Israel’s military and political establishment.

As shocking as this statement is, it offers a remarkably accurate reflection of Israel’s near 50-aear policy in Gaza. While Israel did allow a limited degree of prosperity during the first years of the occupation, it has, nonetheless, aimed to prohibit any form of economic development in the territory—and, hence, the emergence of a Palestinian state. This approach has been especially ruinous for Gaza over the last decade, during which Israel imposed a strangling blockade that eliminated virtually all exports, shrank the manufacturing sector by as much as 60 percent, and reduced Gaza’s GDP by 50 percent, according to the World Bank. Israel has further launched three major military assaults on Gaza since the end of 2008—the latest and largest of them last summer (Operation Protective Edge)—leveling neighborhoods, destroying infrastructure, and inflicting immeasurable damage on the tiny strip and its nearly 2 million inhabitants. [Continue reading…]

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Russia slides back to the Middle Ages

The Daily Beast reports: After Russia vetoed a United Nations Security Council draft resolution last week, many Russians started to panic.

Their beloved country, famous for groundbreaking novels and poetry, for fabulous nature, perfect ballet — for sending the first man into space! — looked like the odd man out on the global scene.

The resolution in question would have set up a tribunal to investigate and try those responsible for shooting down a Malaysian airliner, MH17, over Ukraine last year. All 298 people aboard were killed, and Moscow-backed rebels are widely thought to have launched the missile that blew up the plane.

So when 11 of the 15 members of the Security Council voted for the resolution, three abstained, and only Russia voted no, the move met with near-universal condemnation.

In the aftermath, many in Moscow began to wonder how far backward Russia is going to slide.

“The veto at the UN is a bright, clear sign of wild, medieval times coming to a once-great country,” independent political observer Sergei Porkhomenko posted on Facebook. He invited Russians to comment on a page discussing the new “medieval morals”; hundreds did, and examples poured in: [Continue reading…]

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Anti-Houthi forces take strategic city in Yemen, Emirati troops killed

Reuters reports: Fighters backed by an Arab military coalition seized the key city of Zinjibar in southern Yemen on Saturday, residents and militia sources said, dealing another major blow to the dominant Houthi group.

The capital city of Abyan province on the Arabian Sea had been a major focus of forces battling the Iranian-allied Houthis. It is the fourth regional capital they have won since taking control of the port of Aden last month.

Three soldiers from the United Arab Emirates were reported killed while taking part in the Saudi-led military campaign against the Houthis, UAE state news agency WAM said on Saturday. [Continue reading…]

IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly reports: The impasse in Yemen’s conflict appears to have been broken by the deployment of a powerful Emirati armoured formation: a logistical triumph that has helped pro-government forces push out of the southern port city of Aden and capture Al-Anad Air Base 48 km to the northwest.

The military deployment has not been announced by the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) or covered by the country’s media, but its scale has become increasingly apparent as more photographs and videos have emerged from southern Yemen since 12 July, when Oshkosh M-ATV mine-resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles were spotted in Aden for the first time during the battle to secure the city’s airport.

The M-ATV is used by Emirati and Saudi special forces, but the vehicles in southern Yemen are crewed by men wearing civilian clothing, raising the possibility that they are Yemenis who have been trained and equipped by the Saudi-led coalition that has been bombing Yemen since late March in an attempt to reinstall President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

By the end of July it had become apparent that the UAE had deployed regular military forces. Two BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles were filmed by an Al-Jazeera news crew on 28 July and a Leclerc armoured recovery vehicle was photographed in Aden about the same time.

While these vehicles could potentially have been landed by the C-17 airlifters that the UAE confirmed were flying into the international airport, albeit on humanitarian rather than military missions, it subsequently became apparent that they were part of what must be an amphibious landing on a scale not seen in the Middle East since the liberation of Kuwait in 1991. [Continue reading…]

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Meet two Indonesians who are training to join ISIS

The Los Angeles Times reports: When Rahmat and Afrian talk about Islamic State, their eyes widen, their speech slows, and their expressions soften into smiles.

The two friends, both 33, say they plan to join the Islamist militant group in Syria, 4,500 miles away from their middle-class homes in Medan, Indonesia’s fourth-largest city, as soon as they can save enough money to fund the trip.

“The Islamic State is like a dream come true for me and all Muslim people,” said Rahmat, a perfume trader wearing a Quicksilver T-shirt and a G-Shock watch, who, like many Indonesians, goes by one name. “Now is the time to return to Islamic glory, like we experienced in the old days.” [Continue reading…]

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The religious roots of domestic terror

Stuart Wexler writes: From Charleston to Chattanooga to Lafayette, a series of mass murders has reignited debates over the nature of terrorism and how it is covered by the media—over whether these are terrorist acts to begin with, and—the latest wrinkle—whether or not they might be acts of religious terrorism.

In many ways the controversy has become part of a culture war. Those on the Left argue that an implicitly racist media too often dismisses mass violence by white men as the byproduct of mental derangement; Islam is seen an acceptable predicate for terrorism, but not white supremacy. Those on the Right argue that liberals, especially those in the Obama administration, are too quick to sugarcoat acts of Islamic terrorism as mere extremism devoid of religious impulse—jeopardizing security in the name of political correctness.

But if Americans want to understand and possibly even prevent domestic terrorism in the future, then they may have to abandon neat labels and presuppositions and start to deal in nuance. [Continue reading…]

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The worst predicted impacts of climate change are starting to happen

Rolling Stone reports: istorians may look to 2015 as the year when shit really started hitting the fan. Some snapshots: In just the past few months, record-setting heat waves in Pakistan and India each killed more than 1,000 people. In Washington state’s Olympic National Park, the rainforest caught fire for the first time in living memory. London reached 98 degrees Fahrenheit during the hottest July day ever recorded in the U.K.; The Guardian briefly had to pause its live blog of the heat wave because its computer servers overheated. In California, suffering from its worst drought in a millennium, a 50-acre brush fire swelled seventyfold in a matter of hours, jumping across the I-15 freeway during rush-hour traffic. Then, a few days later, the region was pounded by intense, virtually unheard-of summer rains. Puerto Rico is under its strictest water rationing in history as a monster El Niño forms in the tropical Pacific Ocean, shifting weather patterns worldwide.

On July 20th, James Hansen, the former NASA climatologist who brought climate change to the public’s attention in the summer of 1988, issued a bombshell: He and a team of climate scientists had identified a newly important feedback mechanism off the coast of Antarctica that suggests mean sea levels could rise 10 times faster than previously predicted: 10 feet by 2065. The authors included this chilling warning: If emissions aren’t cut, “We conclude that multi-meter sea-level rise would become practically unavoidable. Social disruption and economic consequences of such large sea-level rise could be devastating. It is not difficult to imagine that conflicts arising from forced migrations and economic collapse might make the planet ungovernable, threatening the fabric of civilization.”

Eric Rignot, a climate scientist at NASA and the University of California-Irvine and a co-author on Hansen’s study, said their new research doesn’t necessarily change the worst-case scenario on sea-level rise, it just makes it much more pressing to think about and discuss, especially among world leaders. In particular, says Rignot, the new research shows a two-degree Celsius rise in global temperature — the previously agreed upon “safe” level of climate change — “would be a catastrophe for sea-level rise.”

Hansen’s new study also shows how complicated and unpredictable climate change can be. Even as global ocean temperatures rise to their highest levels in recorded history, some parts of the ocean, near where ice is melting exceptionally fast, are actually cooling, slowing ocean circulation currents and sending weather patterns into a frenzy. Sure enough, a persistently cold patch of ocean is starting to show up just south of Greenland, exactly where previous experimental predictions of a sudden surge of freshwater from melting ice expected it to be. Michael Mann, another prominent climate scientist, recently said of the unexpectedly sudden Atlantic slowdown, “This is yet another example of where observations suggest that climate model predictions may be too conservative when it comes to the pace at which certain aspects of climate change are proceeding.” [Continue reading…]

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Cutting emissions through biofuels will lead to water shortages – study

By Neil Edwards, The Open University

Climate change mitigation could actually increase water shortage in some areas rather than reduce it, according to new research. The source of the problem is clear: greater demand for biofuels, intended to reduce emissions from fossil fuels, requires massive increases in irrigation in productive but relatively arid American farmland.

The study, published in the journal PNAS, is alarming as it suggests one of the major strategies for dealing with global warming may lead to greater political strife. One of climate science’s most confident findings is that an increase in the average surface temperature will lead to greater extremes in amount of rainfall. That is likely to mean more damage from floods and storms in already vulnerable regions, and increased drought in areas that currently experience water shortage. Climate change mitigation strategies are, in theory, designed to avoid or reduce these consequences.

If the unhelpful impact of biofuels comes as a surprise to some, that will be because current models of energy systems typically ignore the fact that water is a limited resource. Links between different aspects of models are often missing or broken. Biofuels require land as well as water, using up valuable farmland that could be used to grow food. Meanwhile irrigation relies heavily on groundwater, a system that functions on longer timescales than most climate models as groundwater is only very slowly replaced.

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Iraqis fight corruption and unbearable heat

The New York Times reports: At noon, the light bouncing off the hot concrete seems to bleach everything, like an overexposed photograph. Standing for more than a minute in the sun sets off a full-body sweat.

Even after sunset, as the temperature coasts down from 122 degrees Fahrenheit, or 50 degrees Celsius, to perhaps 108, Baghdad’s heat can seem like a living thing. It clings to every contour of the body, squeezing tight.

Iraq has been hot even by its own standards. Taking all conditions into account, the Weather Channel calculated that the peak day in Baghdad this summer felt like 159 degrees. It was a data point most likely of little use to outsiders unable to imagine even 122 degrees, and of little comfort to Iraqis living in it.

They have taken to the streets all around the country, protesting in central squares and blaming government corruption for the chronic electricity shortages that shut down air coolers and fans all but a few hours a day. In Samawa, south of Baghdad, protesters surrounded the governor’s house on Sunday evening and demanded that he resign.

Perhaps recalling that Iraqis have overthrown two governments in midsummer, in 1958 and 1968, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has warned that without quick fixes, the government will face “revolutionary sentiments.” [Continue reading…]

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The Nusra Front’s internal purges

Aron Lund writes: On July 15, the Syrian al-Qaeda franchise known as the Nusra Front issued a statement explaining that it had expelled a former leader from the group. The man, a Syrian known as Saleh al-Hamawi, was among the Nusra Front’s founding members. A combination of personal and ideological tensions seem to have led to his marginalization and, finally, to his expulsion.

The Nusra Front is emerging from a two-year-old internal crisis. It remains trapped in a lethal four-front battle against the forces of President Bashar al-Assad, the extremist al-Qaeda splinter group known as the Islamic State, rival Syrian rebel factions, and the United States and its antiterrorist coalition, which initiated air strikes against the Nusra Front in September 2014.

As the group struggles to define its identity, other senior Nusra Front figures may well face the same fate as Saleh al-Hamawi. [Continue reading…]

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Rafsanjani on future of Iran-U.S. ties, Saudi Arabia

Al Monitor reports: In an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor, Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of Iran’s most powerful politicians, spoke about the future of relations with the United States. He also hit back at domestic critics of Iran’s nuclear deal with six world powers, saying they are “making a mistake.” While acknowledging that Washington seems to want to “distance itself from the past,” Rafsanjani said that that approach needs to be proven in action and that the implementation of the deal would be a major step. The interview in his Tehran office on July 28 is the first Rafsanjani has conducted with a foreign media outlet since the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was struck.

A senior cleric and two-time president, Rafsanjani also spoke about regional crises, including Tehran’s tense relationship with Riyadh. Arguing that Iran “does not inherently have any issues with Saudi Arabia or other Arab countries,” he pointed to Saudi-Iranian engagement in the aftermath of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War despite Riyadh’s prior backing of Saddam Hussein. Rafsanjani emphasized that cooperation with Saudi Arabia and other regional states is “a priority in our constitution.” Of note, Rafsanjani headed crucial talks with Riyadh in the 1990s, along with then-Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Hassan Rouhani, ushering in important security coordination.

In the interview, Rafsanjani also referred to the order from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, to repair ties with Riyadh after the 1987 killing of hundreds of Iranian pilgrims in Mecca, seemingly hinting at the possibility of normalizing the regional situation “with a swift move.” He also revealed that late Saudi King Abdullah had pressed for him to attend the hajj pilgrimage on several occasions “toward the end of his life.” [Continue reading…]

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Why Iran isn’t Nazi Germany

Peter Beinart writes: Mike Huckabee’s sin was being too vivid.

Last week, after the Republican presidential hopeful said that by signing the Iran nuclear deal, President Barack Obama “would take the Israelis and basically march them to the door of the oven,” a parade of organizations and politicians accused him of inflammatory language and bad taste. But in both the United States and Israel, Huckabee’s core assumption—that the Iranian government is genocidally anti-Semitic—is mainstream. In January, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that “The ayatollahs in Iran, they deny the Holocaust while planning another genocide against our people.” Last month, Fox News host Sean Hannity called the Iran deal “the equivalent of giving Adolf Hitler weapons of mass destruction.” The fact that a nuclear attack on Israel would also kill Palestinians, argued Texas Senator Ted Cruz recently, would not deter Tehran because “they would view the murder of those Palestinians” as “perfectly acceptable collateral damage to annihilating millions of Jews.”

Far from being marginal or extreme, Huckabee’s claim—that Iranian leaders seek another Holocaust—sits at the emotional core of the debate over the nuclear accord with Tehran. But the closer you look, the weaker that claim is. [Continue reading…]

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Mikhail Gorbachev: U.S. military an ‘insurmountable obstacle to a nuclear-free world’

Der Spiegel: Mikhail Sergeyevich, during your inaugural speech as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in March 1985, you warned of nuclear war and called for the “complete destruction of nuclear weapons and a permanent ban on them.” Did you mean that seriously?

Gorbachev: The discussion about disarmament had already been going on for too long — far too long. I wanted to finally see words followed by action because the arms race was not only continuing, it was growing ever more dangerous in terms of the number of weapons and their destructive capacity. There were tens of thousands of nuclear warheads on different delivery systems like aircraft, missiles and submarines.

SPIEGEL: Did you feel the Soviet Union was under threat during the 1980s by the nuclear weapons of NATO member states?

Gorbachev: The situation was that nuclear missiles were being stationed closer and closer to our adversary’s borders. They were getting increasingly precise and they were also being aimed at decision-making centers. There were very concrete plans for the use of these weapons. Nuclear war had become conceivable. And even a technical error could have caused it to happen. At the same time, disarmament talks were not getting anywhere. In Geneva, diplomats pored over mountains of paper, drank wine, and even harder stuff, by the liter. And it was all for nothing.

SPIEGEL: At a meeting of the Warsaw Pact nations in 1986, you declared that the military doctrine of the Soviet Union was no longer to plan for the coming war, but rather to seek to prevent military confrontation with the West. What was the reason behind the shift in strategy?

Gorbachev: It was clear to me that relations with America and the West would be a lasting dead end without atomic disarmament, with mutual distrust and growing hostility. That is why nuclear disarmament was the highest priority for Soviet foreign policy.

SPIEGEL: Did you not also push disarmament forward because of the financial and economic troubles facing the Soviet Union in the 1980s?

Gorbachev: Of course we perceived just how great a burden the arms race was on our economy. That did indeed play a role. It was clear to us that atomic confrontation threatened not only our people but also all of humanity. We knew only too well the weapons being discussed, their destructive force and the consequences. The nuclear catastrophe at Chernobyl provided us with a rather precise idea of what the consequences of a nuclear war would be. Decisive for us were thus political and ethical considerations, not economic ones.

SPIEGEL: What was your experience with US President Ronald Reagan, who many saw as a driving force in the Cold War?

Gorbachev: Reagan acted out of honest conviction and genuinely rejected nuclear weapons. Already during my first meeting with him in November of 1985, we were able to make the most important determination: “Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” This sentence combined morals and politics — two things many consider to be irreconcilable. Unfortunately, the US has since forgotten the second important point in our joint statement — according to which neither America nor we will seek to achieve military superiority. [Continue reading…]

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Landmark discoveries that were later debunked

Shannon Hall writes: It begins with the smallest anomaly. The first exoplanets were the slightest shifts in a star’s light. The Higgs boson was just a bump in the noise. And the Big Bang sprung from a few rapidly moving galaxies that should have been staying put. Great scientific discoveries are born from puny signals that prompt attention.

And now, another tantalizing, result is gathering steam, stirring the curiosity of physicists worldwide. It’s a bump in the data gathered by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. If the bump matures into a clearer peak during the LHC’s second run, it could indicate the existence of a new, unexpected particle that’s 2,000 times heavier than the proton. Ultimately, it could provoke a major update to our understanding of physics.

Or it could simply be a statistical fluke, doomed to disappear over time. But the bump currently has a significance level of three sigma, meaning that this little guy just might be here to stay. The rule of thumb in physics is that a one-sigma result could easily be due to random fluctuations, like the fair coin that flipped tails twice. A three-sigma result counts as an observation, worth discussing and publishing. But for physicists to proclaim a discovery, a finding that rewrites textbooks, a result has to be at the five-sigma level. At that point, the chance of the signal arising randomly is only one in a million.

There’s no knowing if the LHC researchers’ new finding is real until they gather more data. And even bigger would-be discoveries — those with five-sigma results and better — have led physicists astray before, raising hopes for new insights into the Universe before being disproved by other data. When pushing the very limits of what we can possibly measure, false positives are always a danger. Here are five examples where seemingly solid findings came undone. [Continue reading…]

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Google’s search algorithm could steal the presidency

Wired: Imagine an election — a close one. You’re undecided. So you type the name of one of the candidates into your search engine of choice. (Actually, let’s not be coy here. In most of the world, one search engine dominates; in Europe and North America, it’s Google.) And Google coughs up, in fractions of a second, articles and facts about that candidate. Great! Now you are an informed voter, right? But a study published this week says that the order of those results, the ranking of positive or negative stories on the screen, can have an enormous influence on the way you vote. And if the election is close enough, the effect could be profound enough to change the outcome.

In other words: Google’s ranking algorithm for search results could accidentally steal the presidency. “We estimate, based on win margins in national elections around the world,” says Robert Epstein, a psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology and one of the study’s authors, “that Google could determine the outcome of upwards of 25 percent of all national elections.” [Continue reading…]

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