A deeper tech concern is at the core of the U.S.-Huawei spat

Over the past few months, the U.S. government has launched an assault against Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei for three publicly acknowledged reasons: Huawei, as the Justice Department alleges, was involved in sanctions-busting with Iran. The company also allegedly stole U.S. technology and even awarded its employees bonuses to do so. And third, because Huawei is a Chinese company and Chinese law mandates that it follow the orders of its security services, anything Huawei installs in equipment used by a U.S. ally could pose a security risk to the United States. But, in the three-dimensional chess game that is U.S.-China relations, underlying this battle is another conflict with China over technology and U.S. concerns that it is losing the fight. This battle centers on the rollout of 5G telecommunications technology that is expected to reshape not only modern economies but modern warfare, too. And so far, China appears to be ahead — very far ahead. This matters because 5G will produce enormously faster broadband speeds — upward of 10 gigabits per second — with no lags. This web of connectivity could facilitate the introduction of highways with driverless cars, advanced automation on factory floors and a brave new world where machines effortlessly exchange oceans of data. It could also transform warfare with integrated military operations that would make today’s joint operations look like children playing in a kindergarten sandbox. Imagine squadrons of pilotless fighters, drones and smart missiles along with a coordinated cyberattack. Tragically for the United States, China’s efforts to roll out its 5G network have lacked any of the catalyzing drama associated with the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik, the world’s first satellite, in 1957. According to a report last year by Deloitte, since 2015, China has outspent the United States by an estimated $24 billion in wireless communications infrastructure. Density is key to 5G. A successful network needs more cell towers than 4G. That means more small cells on telephone polls and street lamps. According to the Deloitte report, China Tower, the world’s leader in building these relay stations, has invested $17.7 billion since 2015, beating all its U.S. rivals combined. Nationwide, China today has 1.9 million wireless sites compared to 200,000 in the United States. For every 10 square miles, China has 5.3 sites, while the United States has a paltry 0.4. Chinese telecommunications firms are on track to begin standalone 5G service in 2020, five years


ahead of their U.S. counterparts. Faced with this disparity, the Deloitte reports warns that "China and other countries may be creating a 5G tsunami, making it near impossible to catch up.” To get ahead, China has leveraged its systemic differences with the United States. A few decades ago, American analysts scoffed at China’s continued use of communist-era “Five-Year Plans” to manage its economy. Not anymore. According to Deloitte, China’s most recent plan earmarks $400 billion for 5G-related investments, dwarfing anything similar in the United States. China’s government has forced its three big telecommunications providers to work together to build 5G, something the U.S. government could not do. China also has strong-armed leading Chinese Internet platform companies — such as Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, JD.com and ride-sharing company Didi Chuxing — into taking a nearly $12 billion stake in one telecom provider, China Unicom, to subsidize its 5G rollout. China has harnessed the full weight of its national government to ensure that Chinese firms are at the forefront of standards-setting negotiations worldwide. In a report released in November, the Eurasia Group consulting firm estimated that, while China was on the sidelines of the standards setting for 3G and 4G, Chinese firms could end up holding upward of 40 percent of the standard essential patents for standalone 5G. China is not the only country ahead of the United States in 5G. Japan has far more sites per 10 square miles — 15.2 — than both China or the United States. Germany has made similar progress to China’s — with nearly 10 times more sites per 10 square miles than in the United States. But, despite some of President Trump’s claims, neither Japan nor Germany are considered threats to the United States. At root, the issue here is trust. U.S. moves against Huawei are driven by a fear that the Chinese Communist Party not only rejects the values of a Western liberal economic system but also is at war with those values across the globe. What’s more, U.S. officials worry that the Communist Party has conscripted Huawei in this battle, both as a weapon to dominate cutting-edge technology and as an agent that can conduct espionage on the West. Despite Huawei’s protestations that American worries about espionage are unwarranted, its executives routinely cross the line between state and private actors. Take Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s chief financial officer, who was detained in Vancouver in December


Your hunt for a home should include research on the neighborhood’s long-term transit plan

option under consideration. “Until the project is more defined, there is no way to know what the impact will be and how it will affect home values,” Rubin wrote in a recent email. The impact on entire neighborhoods is also up in the air. Spokane and other Indian Spring residents I interviewed said they fear that losing all or part of the local YMCA and its amenities will seriously reduce the value of their neighborhood. The YMCA is a huge draw for families,” said Spokane. The YMCA is located immediately inside the Beltway off the Colesville Road exit. “I took swimming lessons in the same pool where my children take lessons.” The Maryland Transit Opportunities Commission, an organization comprised of concerned citizens from Montgomery County, Southern Maryland, Baltimore County, Prince Georges County and Howard County, is opposed to the expansion project. The organization’s core belief is that investing in additional passenger rail lines is the optimal way of decreasing congestion on highways and increasing property values. “Any transportation policy affects real estate values,” said Benjamin Ross, chairman of the commission and author of “Dead End: Suburban Sprawl and the Rebirth of American Urbanism.” “Current trends are people want to move closer in. They want shorter commutes. Investing in rail transportation makes more sense.” Not everyone is opposed to the Beltway expansion. Some argue that relieving congestion on highways will entice people to move to the area and, thus, will increase home values. “Buyers live in D.C. while they are single and then move to the suburbs when they get married and start families,” said Carl Becker, a real estate broker with Premier Properties in Bethesda. “When I’m showing properties, buyers get on their phones and calculate the commute time to get to work.” According to Becker, buyers are looking in Virginia because traffic is too congested in Maryland. “Buyers are gravitating to Virginia because it’s easier to get to D.C.,” he said. “It’s hard to sell a home in Potomac or Darnestown now because of the traffic. It takes too long to get to work.” “I don’t like traffic either,” said Spokane, who is opposed to the expansion. “I drive on the Beltway every day. But I would rather have better public transit options whether or not my house would be impacted.” Some say that highways are an outdated mode of transportation. “It’s a throwback to the Eisenhower era of


Could this Congress and White House actually legislate a solution to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Maybe.

markets liquid enough that the flow of loanable funds to potential homeowners would be plenty robust without the government getting into the act? Not according to Mark Zandi and Jim Parrott, two analysts with serious cred in this space. They argue that it’s a myth to believe that “making long-term, fixed-rate … mortgages broadly available on terms most Americans can afford” would occur without government support. Absent the agencies, “investors in these loans would demand a return so high it would make long-term, fixed-rate mortgage loans too expensive for most American households.” The key political phrase there is “most households.” Democrats, including the new chair of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) — a powerful player in whatever happens next — want to be sure home loans are affordable for low-income families. Homeownership is the key source of wealth, for example, for low- and middle-income black families, and it stands near a 30-year low among African Americans. To be clear, ongoing housing segregation by race and the egregious lack of enforcement against it is a key factor in this outcome, but low-income housing advocates are clear that without the government backstop, home loans would be a lot costlier to those with lower incomes. On the Republican side, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), chair of the Senate Banking Committee, recently released the outline of a plan that, according the Wall Street Journal, “appears to incorporate many policy goals championed by top Democrats, such as House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters of California.” His plan emphasizes “preserving the popular 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage” and promoting “access to affordable housing.” At this point, many readers are probably thinking, with reason: “This all sounds like a great way to reflate a housing bubble, help a lot of people buy homes they ultimately can’t afford, and set the stage for another bailout.” In fact, the reason Fan and Fred, formerly private companies, are still mostly government-owned — more than 10 years after the financial crisis — is because they were bailed out, to the tune of $190 billion. The key needle to thread here is thus achieving the housing finance goals both sides appear to seek. This means ending the agencies’ role as the dominant players in the secondary insurance market, as such dominance defines “too big to fail.” It’s also where the White House could jam the bipartisan effort. Some in the


Climate change will alter the color of the oceans, new research finds

mixing to recycle nutrients from deep waters back to the surface.” Dutkiewicz said various scientific models suggest that there is likely to be a decrease in the overall amount of phytoplankton in the oceans over time. But she said that it could be decades before scientists can begin to document precisely the role climate change plays in that evolution. In the interim, Dutkiewicz said, paying close attention to changes in the oceans' color can offer the first clues of the changes that are underway. Dutkiewicz and her team built a climate model that projects changes to the oceans, including their optical properties, throughout the century. And in a world that warms by 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit), it found that multiple changes to the color of the oceans would occur. The model projects that currently blue areas with little phytoplankton could become even bluer. But in some waters, such as those of the Arctic, a warming will make conditions more ripe for phytoplankton, and these areas will turn more green. The world has already warmed more than 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since the 19th century, and at the current pace, scientists predict, warming could accelerate in coming decades if nations don’t take serious steps to cut carbon dioxide emissions. A United Nations-backed panel of scientists said last year that it will require “unprecedented” action over the coming decade for the world to limit warming and stave off the most catastrophic consequences of climate change. For years, the government has maintained satellites that monitor the kind of light, or radiance, that is coming from the Earth’s surface. Dutkiewicz said those instruments will probably provide early signals of how climate change is altering the oceans and their color. “The satellites are going to be the sentinels,” she said. “It’s going to tell us not only the amount of phytoplankton in the ocean are changing. It’s going to tell us that the type of phytoplankton in the ocean is changing.” And why does that matter? Phytoplankton are the base of the food web, Dutkiewicz said, and they are extremely diverse. If certain kinds begin to vanish from the ocean, she said, “it will change the type of fish that will be able to survive.” Those kinds of changes could reverberate up the food chain. “Changes in community structure at the base of the marine food web may be the best


Julian Edelman began the season with a PED suspension and ended it as Super Bowl MVP

knee surgery last year after tearing his ACL in the preseason, admitted to the offense, telling reporters during training camp, “I’m definitely accountable for that.” The performance-enhancing drug suspension has been largely (but not entirely) absent in the discussion of Edelman’s excellence and, in some corners, his long-shot Hall of Fame candidacy. Try to imagine the difference in tone if theoretically a World Series MVP had been popped for PEDs and missed 40 games. It’s not even possible — MLB players busted during the season can’t play in the postseason. Baseball drug cheats are met with pitchforks. Football drug cheats are met with shrugs. They aren’t even really considered cheats. Or consider the way those busted for drug offenses are treated at the Olympics. Every Russian in PyeongChang last year was booed. At the 2016 Rio Olympics, American sprinter Justin Gatlin, who had once been banned two years for taking amphetamines, was jeered every time his name was announced. In Atlanta, the only reason anybody regarded Edelman as a villain is because he played for the Patriots. Baseball record books are viewed as a sacred part of the game, while football record books are less relevant than who’s on your fantasy team. The Steroid Era in baseball is associated with artificially rearranging those records, while in football, nobody much cares about what goes in the record books. The Olympics, at least on a competitive level, underneath corporate polish and exploitative practices by IOC and local officials, are perceived as an unadulterated distillation of athletic measurement, and drugs pollute that purity. Fans view football players as gladiators with cartoonish physiques who wear armor to play their game. And if one of them gets benched for PED use, well, is his backup available on the fantasy waiver wire? However tainted or untainted, Edelman has built a unique legacy out of a Horatio Alger career path. He played quarterback at Kent State, and his quickness and toughness convinced the Patriots to draft him in the seventh round in 2009. He struggled to find playing time at first. In 2011, Coach Bill Belichick used him as a part-time defensive back. “He was trying to get himself established,” said Slater, Edelman’s roommate at the time. “We just kept telling each other we got to keep working hard. We got to keep believing we can do this, and maybe one day it will work out for


Heedless of government shutdown, zoo’s naked mole-rat pups became bigger

This story has been updated. During the government shutdown, much remained the same among the millions of inanimate objects in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution. But living creatures were another story, and change came to some of the animals at the National Zoo. Life in the naked mole-rat colony brimmed with biological milestones, according to an account released Friday by the zoo. Now 6 weeks old, the four pups have thrived since their birth in December to the queen of the naked mole-rats. “They have doubled in size,” the zoo said. Arriving in this world at about the size of jelly beans, during the days of the shutdown they achieved the size of baby carrots, the zoo said. Seemingly unconcerned with rules suspending official activities, the creatures have apparently followed, instead, the laws of mole-rat development. They have weaned, the zoo said, and get around on their own. Meanwhile, it added, more offspring may be in the offing. martin.weil@washpost.com


Border security vs. retirement security. Which matters more to you?

President Trump is obsessed with a wall, and he claims it’s necessary to make the U.S. border with Mexico safer. He shut down the government for 35 days to make his point. But there’s a bigger crisis looming. Many Americans don’t have enough money saved for retirement. And the social safety net a lot of these folks will have to rely on — Social Security — is facing a shortfall, that if not fixed, will result in lower benefit payments. The reserves for the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, which pays retirement and survivor benefits, will be unable to pay full benefits in 2034, according to the last year’s report from trustees for the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. The Disability Insurance Trust Fund, which pays disability benefits, will no longer be able to pay full benefits in 2032. This is the crisis Congress should be fighting over not a wall, steel barrier or fence on the Mexican border. “Both Social Security and Medicare face long-term financing shortfalls under currently scheduled benefits and financing,” the trustees said. Without a fix, Social Security will only have enough continuing tax income to pay out 77 percent of scheduled. The Disability Trust Fund is a little better shape, which will have enough to cover only 96 percent of scheduled benefits when its reserves are depleted in 2032. “Lawmakers have a broad continuum of policy options that would close or reduce the long-term financing shortfall of both programs," the trustees said urging lawmakers to take action as soon as possible so a number of solutions can be considered. “Earlier action will also help elected officials minimize adverse impacts on vulnerable populations, including lower-income workers and people already dependent on program benefits,” the trustees said. Out-of-pocket health-care costs likely to take half of Social Security income by 2030, analysis shows Nearly six in 10 retirees (57 percent) rely on Social Security as their major source of income, according to a 2018 Gallup poll. While more people are saving in a workplace plan it’s still not enough. “Social Security remains the bedrock of seniors' financial security,” wrote Lydia Saad, a senior editor at Gallup. “To date, non-retirees' 401(k) or other retirement plans have not emerged as a complete substitute.” Fewer than half — 46 percent — retirees reported last year that a 401(k) or other retirement savings account was a major retirement income source


No, Amnesty International does not say 60 percent of migrant women in Mexico have been raped

research. “You’re correct that the statistic wasn’t originally ours, though it was cited in the 2010 report,” said Robyn Shepherd, a spokeswoman for Amnesty International. “While the 2010 report is outdated, we do know that sexual violence is still far too prevalent, and we have continued to focus on this issue in the ensuing years.” Sometimes, the 60 percent figure is mentioned in conjunction with another, even higher estimate, that 80 percent of migrant women are raped, attributed to a 2014 report by Fusion. The Fusion report says 80 percent of Central American girls and women crossing Mexico en route to the United States are raped along the way, claiming the information came from directors of migrant shelters. But the report adds: “The actual figures are impossible to know.” The phrase “raped along the way” in the Fusion piece “is problematic and inaccurate; it should say ‘sexual assault,’“ said Erin Siegal McIntyre, one of the reporters of the Fusion piece. “In my brief experience working in TV, this kind of error happened a lot. Looking at the piece now, I’m kind of stunned to see ‘rape’ in the lead and not ‘sexual assault.’“ McIntyre said she originally heard the 80 percent figure from a shelter director, read it in a book published in 2010, and then asked male and female migrants, shelter directors, social workers, lawyers, police and so forth whether that figure “sounded fair.” Anecdotal estimates are not a substitute for detailed, documented interviews with migrants, though those can be difficult to obtain because of a reluctance to report sexual violence. The Mexican National Institute of Public Health (NIPH) in 2011 interviewed 750 migrants in Tapachula, Mexico, near the Guatemala border and reported that 8.3 percent of women surveyed said they were forced to have sex during their journey, 9.2 percent said they were sexually fondled or touched and 28.2 percent said they exchanged sex for goods or services. But this also was before much of the journey through Mexico had started. Another NIPH study published in 2013 René Leyva Flores, the main author of the reports, said NIPH is updating its research on the subject and hopes to publish updates shortly. This turns out to be a bad case of academic telephone. Each time the statistic was repeated in another paper, nuance was lost. A number that originally referred to any kind of sexual experience, whether wanted or


The Washington Post airs its first Super Bowl spot

opportunity to make this a milestone moment in our ongoing campaign.” The advertisement briefly showed several slain and missing journalists affiliated with The Post and other publications. They included freelance reporter Austin Tice, who has been missing in Syria for more than six years. Tice is believed to be alive, though his whereabouts are unknown. Another freelance journalist, columnist Jamal Khashoggi, was killed at the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. The CIA determined, with high confidence, that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered Khashoggi’s killing. A third journalist shown in the commercial, Marie Colvin, was an American war correspondent for the Sunday Times in London. She was killed in 2012 by Syrian forces while reporting in Homs, Syria. Colvin is the subject of the 2018 film “A Private War,” and on Wednesday, a U.S. court ordered the Syrian government to pay $302 million in damages to Colvin’s family. Ryan said The Post purchased the spot when it became available last week. A Post spokeswoman declined to say how much the advertisement cost to produce, or how much money The Post paid for the slot. CNBC reported that CBS is charging a record $5.25 million for a 30-second slot. Some advertisers begin planning their ads months before the big game, but The Post’s commercial was produced in one week. Choosing Hanks as the narrator was a nod to his role as former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee in the 2017 Steven Spielberg film “The Post,” about the paper’s decision to publish the Pentagon Papers. Previous Post advertisements that ran on TV were used to sell subscriptions. But this commercial has a different goal. “This was a chance for a broader message about the role journalists play in our everyday lives and the risks they take to bring us the facts,” Ryan said. During the 2017 Academy Awards, the New York Times debuted its first ad campaign in more than a decade. Agency Droga5 created a commercial that hinges on the phrase “The truth is,” presenting a series of conflicting statements and ending with bold type that reads: “The truth is more important now than ever.” It, too, did not include any information about buying a subscription. An ongoing ad campaign for CNN carries the tagline “Facts first.” Immediately after The Post’s ad aired , the video was published on its website and social media channels. maura.judkis@washpost.com


The collective madness behind Britain’s latest Brexit plan

But it was just too much bleak practical reality for the Brexiteers. So when she brought it to the House of Commons almost three weeks ago, lawmakers smashed it into a million pieces, with a historic government defeat. After she reeled for a couple of weeks, Tuesday night saw May finally regain some sort of initiative: She grabbed hold of an amendment floating around by Conservative lawmaker Graham Brady and tried to use it to her advantage. It was a very strange and pointless amendment. It said, in a not legally binding manner, that Parliament would back the Brexit deal if “alternative arrangements” were found for the backstop. What were these alternative arrangements? How do you promise to keep a border open while simultaneously not promising to keep a border open? Brady couldn’t say. Neither could the prime minister or any other member of her government. They had no idea what they were doing. They just needed some words, any words, that could win majority support in the Commons. The fact that the specific words they chose made no sense was an advantage: If the amendment had made sense, someone would have taken offense at its implications. This is the logic of fairy tale politics. The most common idea among Brexiteers is that they will use “high-tech solutions” to remove the need for checks at the border. But the technology they are wishing for does not exist anywhere on Earth. It is science fiction. Not only did Brady’s proposition have no meaning, it was common knowledge before it was voted on that it could not be delivered. The E.U. has closed the talks on the withdrawal agreement. It has made it quite clear that they cannot be reopened. And even if they could, the backstop took nearly two years to negotiate. There are only two months left before Britain leaves the E.U. That’s not enough time to do whatever it was lawmakers voted for Tuesday night. That’s what made the debate so truly pitiful. It was a return to the world of fairy tales and hallucinations, of the kind of quasi-religious nationalist politics that have fueled the Brexit project from the start. British politicians were confronted with reality and given a chance to fix the problems with Brexit instead of pretending there weren’t any, and they once again fled back into mythmaking. The country is now on the verge of


The Defense Department needs transgender service members

Bryan Bree Fram is a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force and a board member of SPART*A. The views are their own and do not reflect those of the Air Force or the Defense Department. The guests who attend the State of the Union show us a vibrant cross-section of the country. Among the guests this year: a number of transgender members of the armed services. Their presence is a reminder that the military is in danger of losing talented people, through a policy of the Defense Department’s own devising. The d epartment insists that its planned transgender policy isn’t a ban. Its reasoning? The new rules allow transgender people who don’t transition with hormone replacement therapy or surgery to serve “in their biological sex.” This is a dodge that puts service members in an impossible position and denies the military the full talents of people who want to serve. I know from painful experience. I’m one of the examples that Defense Department officials can hold up to insist that they aren’t trying to kick us out. I came out publicly as transgender, with the incredible support of my commanders and colleagues at the Pentagon, on the day then-Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced open service. Since then, I’ve been promoted to lieutenant colonel and placed in a command position, where it has been the honor of my career to lead some of the Air Force’s best and brightest. I’ve also represented thousands of transgender service members before senior leadership at the Defense Department, members of Congress and the public. Sharing their honorable and distinguished service has been a joy, because it shows how eliminating the ban improved their performance. Not only were they no longer sacrificing their integrity, but also being authentic and getting the care deemed necessary by their doctors allowed them to flourish. The new policy that determines our continued ability to serve is very similar to “don’t ask, don’t tell.” That policy allowed lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals to serve as long as they did not act on their sexual orientation. Both policies do irreparable harm. There are many transgender people in the military who haven’t come out yet or haven’t transitioned because they face very real threats of physical violence or harm to their careers. To explain why some transgender people need medical care and some don’t, consider this close, but imperfect, analogy: Being transgender is


Trump is stumbling his way to a vainglorious Middle East retreat

Iraqi President Barham Salih measured his words in a telephone interview from Baghdad on Monday. He didn’t want to worsen a quarrel with President Trump over U.S. access to an air base in western Iraq. But Iraqi politics is fragile, and ill-considered statements by U.S. presidents can have big consequences. “I appreciate what the U.S. has done to help Iraq,” Salih told me. “We honor that sacrifice. But this success in Iraq is precarious and should not be unduly burdened. It could easily unravel.” Short translation of this diplomat-speak: Mr. President, don’t shoot yourself in the foot. If you describe al-Asad Air Base as if it’s an American facility, it offends Iraqis — and adds to Iraqi domestic political pressure against any continued U.S. military presence there. Trump lurches from blunder to blunder on the Middle East. His latest statements about rebasing U.S. forces in Iraq were so glib and insensitive to local politics that you have to wonder if the president even understood the mistakes he was making. Sometimes, Trump’s conduct suggests a behavioral syndrome in which he seems to have no real comprehension that his comments offend others and increase his social isolation. The Iraq gaffe followed a much more serious mistake in judgment in December, when Trump suddenly announced he was pulling about 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria at a time when their commanders said their job of destroying the Islamic State wasn’t finished. Despite opposition from virtually every corner of the U.S. government, Trump pushed ahead, and officials say the withdrawal will be completed by the end of April. When you ask U.S. officials what future security arrangements will exist in northeast Syria, you get a mishmash of answers, none of which adds up to a coherent policy. The United States asked French and British forces if they might stay, but they balked, so right now, Turkish, Russian and Iranian forces are positioning to fill the vacuum. Trump last weekend invented a new solution: Everything would be fine, because he was moving Special Operations forces to Iraq. “We have a base in Iraq, and the base is a fantastic edifice. . . . We spent a fortune on building this incredible base. We might as well keep it,” he told Margaret Brennan on CBS’s “Face the Nation” in an interview that aired Sunday. Trump explained (if that’s the right word for his chain of illogic) that


Stewart Adams, British pharmacist who helped create ibuprofen, dies at 95

1939, he was poised to fulfill his compulsory national military service. But Boots insisted his training in pharmacology would be better served in helping the wounded who returned home. After the Boots research department at University College Nottingham was bombed by the Luftwaffe in May 1941 — killing 45 people in the college alone and over 150 more in the city — Dr. Adams’s research team moved to a small house outside the city, where their kitchen became their lab. It was there that he and Nicholson began the research that would ultimately result in ibuprofen. First, though, his priority was producing penicillin, vital in treating the wounded. He recalled cultivating millions of doses of penicillin — at the time considered a new “wonder drug” — which he put in quart milk bottles for hospitals around Britain. When he and Nicholson began trying to create a new nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug for rheumatoid arthritis sufferers, they went through years of trial and error. Four compounds failed clinical trials because of negative side effects. They patented their fifth compound, Brufen, in 1962. It passed clinical trials at the Northern General Hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1966, and three years later was available in Britain as a prescription treatment for rheumatic diseases. After Dr. Adams’s Moscow hangover test, Boots marketed the drug as a general painkiller. It became an over-the-counter medication in Britain in 1983 and in the United States one year later. “Getting the drug approved by the two countries with the toughest regulatory authorities — the U.K. and the U.S. — was a goal I wanted to achieve,” Dr. Adams told the Telegraph. “For me, that was the most exciting time of all.” Dr. Adams formally retired from Boots in 1983 but stayed on as a consultant for 10 more years. Queen Elizabeth II made him an Officer of the British Empire in 1987 for his services to science. In 1950 he married Mary Harvey, a fellow Boots scientist who later worked as a geography teacher. She died in 2010. Survivors include two sons, Chris Adams, a lawyer, and David Adams, dean of the medical school at the University of Birmingham. While proud of his achievements, Dr. Adams was one of the first to warn that painkillers should be used in moderation and that, used in excess, they could become counterproductive, causing the very headaches they were created to relieve. newsobits@washpost.com


Combating malaria by modifying mosquitoes could save thousands of lives. It’s also risky.

over generations. All these risks can be studied. Small-scale deployments can offer hints about the effects of large interventions. We can consider ways to monitor, control and even reverse the introduced genetic changes, possibly by means of “kill switches” that allow the destruction of modified mosquitoes. One technique under study involves giving the engineered mosquitoes either a critical dependence on, or an acute vulnerability to, some otherwise benign substance. Withholding the substance, in the first case, or providing it, in the second, would kill the mosquitoes while harming nothing else. We might also use gene drives to reverse the original changes. A very different set of complicated risks arise from human reactions to these experiments. Advocates of these technologies are terrified about a backlash like the one that has hit genetically modified foods. In 2002-2003, in the midst of a famine, several African countries at least initially refused to allow the distribution of genetically modified foods. In November, the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity ultimately approved a cautious approach to moving forward with deployment of this technology. Researchers would have to show that engineered insects posed no threat, and any distribution of modified mosquitoes would have to be preceded by the “free, prior and informed consent” of people who live in affected areas. One good start to building confidence would be to open up research by making broadly available results and data from research into genetic modification of mosquitoes. Individual firms might lose some control and some advantages, but the field could gain enormously from decreased mistrust. Firms, researchers and government funders (including, for example, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is interested in the extraordinary new DNA editing technique called CRISPR, with or without gene drives) should be required to describe publicly what they want to do, how and why. (With CRISPR, researchers can cheaply and easily edit specific “letters” of the DNA of the initial target mosquito. And supplemented with gene drive, CRISPR can be used to change all copies of that DNA stretch in each of that mosquito’s descendants — including “normal” versions of the gene it inherited from its other parent.) Securing meaningful consent could be a tricky business. Oxitec’s releases of genetically modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in Brazil, Panama and the Caymans were made with government permission, the company says. But when it wanted to do a test release


No trade deal can dictate our relationship with China

Department’s advanced research agency, because it represented unfair competition? Or if trading partners argued that U.S. support for private clean-energy companies, such as the subsidies provided by the Obama administration, was an unfair trade practice? Much of our current information technology and communications infrastructure comes directly or indirectly out of Bell Labs, which was financed out of the profits of a government-regulated and -protected monopoly. Would the United States have responded constructively to demands from other countries to dismantle the Bell system? A focus on resisting the Chinese economic threat will likely not only be ineffective but may also be counterproductive if it diverts private and public energy from more productive pursuits. I remember well from the early Clinton administration that the great symbol of efforts to constrain unfair Japanese practices was Kodak’s case against Fuji, the Japanese photographic film company that attracted massive attention from Kodak’s senior management and U.S. policymakers. Perhaps if Kodak had instead focused on the digital photography ideas its scientists had developed, it would still be a significant company. Where we can mobilize international support, we should, of course, push China to live up to its trade obligations and seek to modify rules in the World Trade Organization where they do not cover problematic practices. But in reality, our competitive success over the next generation will depend much more on what happens in our economy and society than at any international negotiating table. Will our national investment in applied scientific research continue to languish to the point where even the most brilliant young scientists cannot get their first research grants until they are in their 40s? Will public officials who surely know better continue to allow creationism to be taught as serious science in U.S. public schools in a century with so much progress in life sciences? Will public policy concern itself with the strength and competitiveness of U.S. information technology companies as well as with their marketing practices? Will a national effort be made to improve the dismal performance of U.S. students at every level in international comparisons of mathematical and scientific achievement? These questions and others like them, much more than any trade negotiation, will determine how the United States competes over the next generation. The Russian and the Japanese challenges pushed us forward as a nation in very constructive ways. So can the Chinese challenge if we seize the opportunity it represents.


National Zoo says its ‘daredevil’ infant gorilla has a broken leg

The National Zoo’s infant gorilla has a broken leg, and zoo officials aren’t sure how it happened. Moke, a western lowland gorilla born April 15, fractured his femur. In a statement, primate curator Meredith Bastian noted that the youngster “can be a bit of a daredevil.” “We do not know how Moke broke his leg,” Bastian said. “It is entirely possible that he landed the wrong way during one of his many jumps.” The moment the fracture occurred wasn’t seen, leaving zoo officials to speculate. The femur runs between the hip and knee and in humans is the body’s longest and strongest bone. Zookeepers noticed something amiss on Jan. 27, when Moke began favoring his left leg. After further observation, they decided to anesthetize the limping infant to learn more about his injury. It was also necessary to anesthetize his mother because zookeepers couldn’t examine Moke while his mother was in a position to object. “It would not have been safe,” the zoo said. On Jan. 29, radiographs on the infant’s lower left thigh revealed the fracture. Zoo officials said the fracture was “not significantly displaced — the two pieces are not separated from one another.” Jennifer Zoon, a spokeswoman for the zoo, said the break is just above the knee. Zookeepers said they had three options for handling the injury: Place the leg in a cast, insert a plate or let Moke be, while trying to limit his movement. The zoo went for the third option, which comes with the benefit of no more anesthesia. Zoo officials said Moke will be watched closely, with particular attention paid to signs of pain or physical changes, such as swelling. Zoon said keepers opted not to put a cast on his leg based on the location and nature of the fracture. Plus, she said, it’s likely that “he or his parents would not tolerate the cast and pick at it.” Describing Moke as being as playful as ever, the zoo said it was “cautiously optimistic” that healing would occur without any need for further intervention. The “good news is that the break is not through the growth plate — a good indicator that this injury will not affect his growth,” according to the zoo’s statement. Zoon said keepers have also put extra hay where Moke could potentially climb. If he “takes a tumble,” she said, “he will fall softly on the hay.”


Paleo and veganism have given birth to peganism. But is this new diet any good for you?

While Americans are still in varying states of awareness about the keto, paleo and Whole 30 diets, along comes another new eating regimen, labeled “pegan.” This hybrid of “paleo” and “vegan” was introduced in a 2014 blog post by physician and author Mark Hyman. After Hyman included the pegan diet in his February 2018 diet book, “Food: What the Heck Should I Eat” in February 2018, searches related to the pegan diet spiked, landing it on a number of trend lists for 2019. While the pegan diet is more moderate—and potentially easier to follow—than either of its dietary parents, it does restrict many nutritious foods for reasons that aren’t quite supported by science. Here are the pros and cons. The pros: Lots of plants and healthy fats The pegan diet is at its core a plant-based diet, which research shows is good for personal and planetary health. If you want to go pegan, plan to shop for a variety of deeply colored fruits and vegetables — they’ll make up about 75 percent of your diet. That’s definitely one of the diet’s selling points, says registered dietitian Wesley Delbridge, a spokesman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. “Most Americans aren’t getting enough fruits and vegetables,” he says, adding that upping produce also increases fiber intake, helping us get the 25 to 35 grams we need daily. “That has many health benefits, including heart health and reduction of cancer, especially colon cancer.” Chicago-based registered dietitian Christine Fitzgerald likes the diet’s plant-based focus. “I do think that we’re not eating enough plants, fruits and vegetable and getting the fiber in,” she says. “I think for people who like the plant-based way of eating, but feel overwhelmed and can’t completely commit to a plant-based diet, this gives them some options.” However, she’s concerned that the pegan diet limits fruits to low-glycemic berries, because, it claims, other types of fruit spike blood sugar. “What if you don’t like berries? We can do other things to reduce the impact on blood sugar, like pairing fruit with protein,” she says. The diet also emphasizes fatty fish and flaxseed — sources of omega-3, another dietary element Delbridge says Americans don’t get enough of, as well as nuts, avocados, olives and associated oils, which provide healthy unsaturated fats. The diet also allows some saturated fat from grass-fed or sustainably raised meat, butter and ghee, along with organic coconut


Monarch population is up 144 percent at Mexico wintering grounds

The population of monarch butterflies wintering in central Mexico is up 144 percent over last year, experts said last week. The data presented by Andrew Rhodes, Mexico’s national commissioner for protected natural areas, was cheered but scientists quickly warned that it does not mean the butterflies that migrate from Canada and the United States are out of danger. This winter, researchers found the butterflies occupying 14.95 acres of pine and fir forests in the mountains of Michoacan and Mexico states. That is an increase from 6.12 acres a year ago. They arrive in such numbers that their population is measured by how much surface area they cover. This year’s is the biggest measurement since the 2006-2007 period, Rhodes said. A low of just 1.66 acres was recorded in 2013-2014. Jorge Rickards, director of World Wildlife Fund in Mexico, which participates in the monitoring, cautioned that the butterflies like other insects see their annual populations rise and fall and the monarchs have had a declining trend. This year’s number was positive, but there is no guarantee it will continue. Rhodes said the first monarchs crossed into Mexico more than a week later than usual on Oct. 20, owing to rain and cold along the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas. “Once in Mexican territory, the butterflies occupied an area that gives us a lot of hope for the future,” Rhodes said. Scientists said the approximately 15-acre coverage should be seen as a minimum for the viability of the migrating monarchs in the future. Ryan Norris, an ecology professor from the University of Guelph in Ontario, said it would be dangerous to think the improved coverage in their wintering grounds meant the butterflies were out of the woods. “It buys us time, but that’s the best it does,” said Norris, who was in Mexico City for scientific meetings about monarchs. Norris saw little connection between this year’s increase and the concerted conservation efforts along the butterflies’ migration route, especially in Mexico, where the government, with the help of local communities, has nearly eliminated illegal logging inside the butterflies’ protected area west of Mexico City. “It was a Goldilocks year this year,” he said. “Not too hot, not too cold, it was perfect.” Chip Taylor, director of Monarch Watch and an ecology professor at the University of Kansas, who runs a monarch tagging program, echoed that caution. “It’s not going to be replicated next year,


European leader Donald Tusk warns there’s a ‘special place in hell’ for Brexiteers who don’t know what they’re doing

LONDON — Good for Donald Tusk. Just when Brexit renegotiations were getting a bit dull, the president of the European Council livened things up by suggesting there was “a special place in hell” for “those who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan of how to carry it safely.” That got everyone’s attention, especially in London. Tusk was speaking at a news conference in Brussels following a morning meeting with the Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar. The two were discussing how to preserve an open border in Ireland after Britain leaves the European Union on March 29. Brexit is in trouble, as the British Parliament, in a crushing humiliation, voted down the deal struck between Prime Minister Theresa May and her European counterparts. Now May is headed back to Brussels on Thursday to ask the Europeans to help her get the deal through Parliament by changing what is called the Irish backstop, an insurance policy agreed by both sides that would keep the border open between Northern Ireland (part of the United Kingdom) and Ireland (part of the E.U.). In the news conference, Tusk said he was trying to forge ahead with the British but also warned that European leaders were preparing for the “possible fiasco” of a no-deal Brexit. Britain is hurtling toward crashing out of the European Union in 51 days with no deal — and no trade agreements, no transition period. This could cause serious economic havoc. The Europeans have hoped that Britain would, could, might ultimately decide not to divorce, but reconcile. Tusk has stressed that in the past. But on Wednesday, he seemed ready to move on. “I have always been with you with all my heart, but the facts are unmistakable,” Tusk said. “At the moment the pro-Brexit stance of the U.K. prime minister and the leader of the opposition rules out this question. Today there is no political force and no effective leadership for remain.” But Tusk was firm when it came to protecting the Good Friday peace accord, which ended 30 years of sectarian violence in Ireland and relies on an open border to ease tensions and bolster good will. “There is no room for speculation here. The E.U. is first and foremost a peace project. We will not gamble with peace or put a sell-by date on reconciliation,” Tusk said. Regarding the special place in hell line, a representative


How Trump’s comments on Iran are imperiling the fight against ISIS in Iraq

Iraq’s top Shiite religious authority added his voice Wednesday to the chorus of criticism of President Trump’s plan to have U.S. troops stationed in Iraq “watch” neighboring Iran, raising fresh concerns that the idea is imperiling the fight against the Islamic State. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani broke tradition by commenting directly on Trump’s proposal — a move that is likely to put pressure on Iraq’s leadership to address the U.S. president’s comments, which have rankled both allies and foes. “Iraq . . . refuses to be a station used to harm any other country,” said Sistani, an extremely influential figure who typically delivers his opinions privately through intermediaries or through a representative during Friday prayer sermons. Several political factions that are usually at odds, including those backed by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and a coalition representing several Iran-aligned militias, have called for fast-tracking a bill that would recommend severely limiting the number and activity of U.S. forces in Iraq when parliament reconvenes next month. Any change to the approximately 5,200-strong U.S. military presence in Iraq could have dire consequences for years. According to a report released this week, the Pentagon has concluded that Iraqi security forces will need “years, if not decades” to be able to fight the Islamic State or any other terrorist threat without American support. Iraqi security forces, including military and police, still require help with complicated intelligence gathering, even basic infantry techniques, the report issued by the Defense Department inspector general found. “The [Iraqi security forces] will likely rely on the Coalition for years to fill [Iraqi security forces] gaps in intelligence capabilities and deficiencies in ‘command and control, leadership, physical resilience, and ability to execute basic minor infantry tactics.’ " The sobering reality about the capabilities of Iraq’s security apparatus comes as the Islamic State has been able to stage sustained but low-level attacks in rural areas despite losing all of the territory it once controlled. After Iraqi forces backed by U.S. airstrikes and American advisers on the ground reclaimed the city of Mosul in 2017, U.S. military officers and diplomats praised the newfound professionalism of the Iraqi security forces. Just three years earlier, the majority of Iraq’s army and police capitulated in the face of the Islamic State blitz. The United States spent $1.6 billion in the two years that followed 2014 collapse to rebuild the Iraqi military into a force capable of reclaiming territory.


Trump ties troop withdrawals in Afghanistan to progress in peace talks

which the militants agreed they would not allow al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups to operate on Afghan territory and the United States would agree to withdraw its forces. Khalilzad said the draft was only a preliminary step in discussions that eventually would move to talks on a complete cease-fire and a political road map for the future agreed on between the Taliban and the Afghan government. President Ashraf Ghani has sharply objected to any talks that do not include the government, and his senior aides accused Khalilzad of “disrespect” and of trying to replace him with a more malleable successor. In a brief mention, Trump said that he had “accelerated our negotiations to reach a political settlement in Afghanistan. The opposing side is also very happy to be negotiating,” he said. “As we make progress in these negotiations, we will be able to reduce our troops’ presence and focus on counterterrorism.” “We do not know whether we will achieve an agreement — but we do know that after two decades of war, the hour has come to at least try for peace.” The “other side,” he said, “would like to do the same thing. It’s time.” Trump repeated familiar inaccuracies and exaggerations in congratulating himself on his policies in the Middle East. He has frequently described the situation in Iraq and Syria as “a mess” with the Islamic State ascendant. “When I took office,” he said, using an acronym for the militant group, “ISIS controlled more than 20,000 square miles in Iraq and Syria. Today we have liberated virtually all of that territory from the grip of these bloodthirsty killers.” The fight against the Islamic State was, however, well underway during the Obama administration. According to the Defense Department, the militants controlled at least 34,000 square miles of territory in both countries at its peak in late 2014. About half of that total had been liberated by the end of 2016, including all Iraqi cities except for western Mosul, and the northeastern section of Syria. The battle for Raqqa, the militants’ de facto capital in Syria, began in October 2016. Trump also said in his address that the United States had spent “more than $7 trillion” on wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan. A figure that he has used in the past, it has been widely discounted as including projections of veterans’ care for the next 35 years. karen.deyoung@washpost.com


El Chapo’s trial produced many fantastic accusations. Why are they reported as fact?

a president took a bribe from a drug lord? It fits into a narrative we often want to believe. Even the current president, Andrés Manuel Lopéz Obrador, denounced during his campaign “the cartel that steals the most: the Los Pinos cartel,” in reference to the presidential palace. Hyperbole, to be sure, but the sentiment is not an unpopular one. The judge in the Guzmán trial, Brian M. Cogan, at first noted that questioning should take into account the rights of those “individuals and entities” who are not directly involved in the Guzmán case, and save them from any public embarrassment. He later rejected “embarrassment” as a reason to stop political accusations from being hurled. But substance went out the window, too. Journalists have noted that a former vice president of Colombia, Óscar Naranjo — who also had served as a police chief — was accused by one cooperating witness in an interview with Drug Enforcement Administration agents of accepting payment for protection. He denied the accusation, but it should be noted that when an allegation is made to the DEA in a field office — as Mike Vigil, a former DEA chief of international operations, told me when we were discussing the trial — it has to be written up in a DEA report, regardless of whether the agents believe it has substance. When it comes to the Guzmán trial and some of its more sensational revelations, it’s best to maintain skepticism on some fronts. Vigil, who knows Mexico well from his time as a DEA agent and has remained on top of developments in the Guzmán case, dismissed the recent rape-of-minors allegations, saying the accuser, identified in media reports as Alex Cifuentes, was just spreading a rumor common in smear campaigns in the criminal underworld. Vigil was not defending Guzmán, but he was defending the truth, which at times has been elusive in this trial. Random accusations made through the media do not help investigations into human trafficking. While it’s also certainly possible that top officials were corrupted, Guzmán likely didn’t need Peña Nieto’s, or any other president’s, help. At most, as the head of Mexico’s armed forces, the former president could have told his generals and admirals that Guzmán was no longer a top priority. But it’s not possible the DEA, not to mention their counterparts in the Mexican marines, would have just let Guzmán drop off the


Federal judge orders Chemical Safety Board to require disclosure of chemical emissions from accidents

In a lawsuit filed after Hurricane Harvey, a federal judge has ordered the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board to force the disclosure of chemical emissions resulting from accidents. More than 1,000 industrial chemical accidents take place every year. The biggest include the explosions that killed 15 people at a fertilizer plant in West, Tex., and the explosions that took place at the Arkema chemical plant in the Houston area after unprecedented flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey. Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said that the Clean Air Act required the federal agency, known as the Chemical Safety Board, to investigate chemical fires, explosions, leaks and other accidents. But the board has not yet put regulations into place that require disclosure. Mehta observed that the agency has had more than 20 years — far in excess of any “unreasonable delay” — to promulgate a final regulation and ordered the board to come up with a regulation within 12 months. “The court will not grant it two full years to do what it should have done long ago,” Mehta wrote. The lawsuit was filed by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and other nonprofit environmental groups: Air Alliance Houston, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, and United Support and Memorial for Workplace Fatalities. PEER also represented former CSB managing director Daniel Horowitz, who was ousted last summer after being on administrative leave for three years. Horowitz has advocated for a stronger role for the board. “CSB has been collecting accident data for a while, just haphazardly and without a regulation,” Horowitz said in an email, adding that it would not “add that much workload” for the board. He said that the CSB created reporting forms and a database for the information when he was still managing director there. Horowitz said that the ruling was “a major victory for community groups seeking better information about industrial chemical accidents. Too often, the public and first responders have been left in the dark about the hazardous chemicals released during plant emergencies.” Last September, a group of first responders exposed to smoke from a chemical plant fire in Crosby, Tex., after Hurricane Harvey sued the owner of the plant for more than $1 million, saying that they vomited and gasped for air in the middle of the road in a scene the suit described as “nothing less than chaos.” The responders


Retailers to Trump: We’re set for a strong year. Don’t mess it up.

Retail is on track for another strong year in 2019 — barring, say, a ramped-up trade war or another government shutdown. The 35-day partial federal government shutdown has kept the industry from getting a complete view of consumer spending at the end of 2018. Still, the National Retail Federation on Tuesday estimated that 2018′s retail sales grew 4.6 percent over 2017, hitting a whopping $3.68 trillion. That figure topped the NRF’s forecast of at least 4.5 percent growth for the year. There’s reason to expect a repeat in 2019. Wages are increasing, consumer confidence is high, and unemployment is low. The NRF expects this year’s retail sales to increase 3.8 percent to 4.4 percent over last year, to more than $3.8 trillion. But industry experts are quick to qualify the good news. With so much uncertainty swirling around President Trump’s trade war, a volatile stock market and the government shutdown, it’s possible that sales could start to sag. Matthew Shay, the NRF’s president and chief executive, said Trump and other elected officials should be wary not to alarm shoppers during what could otherwise be a strong year for retail. “Consumers will spend as long as they’re confident about the future of the economy,” Shay said. “It’s timely in some ways that today is the same day the president will deliver the State of the Union later this evening.” Retailers have been front and center condemning Trump’s tariffs since early last fall. Big-box retailers like Walmart and Target cautioned that levies on Chinese goods could force them to raise prices. The Retail Industry Leaders Association, an industry lobbying group, argued that any tariffs on consumer goods were nothing more than a hidden tax. Those concerns aren’t going away. If tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods rise from 10 to 25 percent on March 1, customers could see price increases, and businesses could lose profits, said Jack Kleinhenz, the NRF’s chief economist. Kleinhenz said the precise impact of the shutdown is hard to measure. First-quarter spending could be affected by a backlog in tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service. But January sales can be tricky to splice anyway. Weather issues — like the polar vortex — could affect shopping habits, for example. The shutdown “doesn’t have, at this point, a large impact that we know of on spending,” Kleinhenz said. The NRF’s holiday figures fell in line with sales data


One month in, the battle to eat healthier is real but the results have been good

someone shout, “There’s my baby!” A man who looked to weigh about 400 pounds was lumbering toward me with open arms. As I stepped to the side, he grabbed the other four cartons, looked at me and said, “We found her, didn’t we?” Every shopping cart in sight had stopped rolling and all eyes were on these two fat dudes hogging all the eggnog. I wanted to put mine back. But I couldn’t. Like the man said, I found her. Now I was trying a nutrient-rich dish of organic jackfruit over brown rice with mushrooms, bell peppers and tomatoes. My taste buds didn’t revolt but they did recall how I used to wash food down with sodas and sweet juices and chase it all with a nice long swig of eggnog. “Could you at least put sugar in the tea?” the taste buds plead. Week 3: The shelves at GreenFare hold books on nutrition, such as “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease,” by Caldwell Esselstyn, which illustrates how a plant-based, oil-free diet can not only prevent the progression of heart disease but reverse its effects. There’s “The China Study,” by T. Colin Campbell, which shows that high consumption of animal-based foods is associated with more chronic disease, while people who ate primarily a plant-based diet were the healthiest. Gwyn Whittaker, the cafe owner, reminds me that comedian and political activist Dick Gregory had published a book about plant-based eating back in 1974, called “Dick Gregory’s Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cookin’ With Mother Nature.” And yet, despite the research, half of all deaths in the United States each year are caused by cancer, heart disease and respiratory disease — most of which are preventable with a plant-based diet and exercise. “A whole plant foods diet is the most powerful medicine there is,” Whittaker told me. “Our bodies respond very quickly to the removal of foods that cause illness; we watch blood pressure and cholesterol normalize within weeks on the Kickstart program. We see autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn’s disease disappear with this change in lifestyle.” I also noticed that professional athletes were going plant-based and getting a competitive edge with more intense workouts and better recovery. I’m not looking to run a marathon. But it would be nice to bound a few flights of stairs without getting winded. The new way of eating is quite simple: oatmeal and


Trump uses State of the Union to defiantly defend his immigration agenda, announce date of next summit with North Korea’s Kim

“USA! USA!” from some in the House chamber when he declared, “Members of Congress, the state of our union is strong.” “That sounds so good,” Trump said, to scattered laughter. 9:05 p.m.: Trump begins his remarks “We meet tonight at a moment of unlimited potential,” Trump said at the outset of his State of the Union, telling Congress that Americans hoped “we will govern not as two parties, but as one nation.” “We must choose between greatness or gridlock, results or resistance, vision or vengeance, incredible progress or pointless destruction,” he said. “Tonight, I ask you to choose greatness.” 9 p.m.: Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad in attendance Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad, a Yazidi activist and survivor of genocide, will attend the State of the Union tonight as the guest of Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.). In 2014, the world watched in horror the Yazidi, a religious and ethnic minority in Iraq, fell victim to the Islamic State. Thousands were displaced, while many were subjected to execution, torture, and rape. In 2016, Secretary of State John Kerry officially declared the atrocities as genocide. Murad was one of thousands of Yazidi women who were taken into captivity by the Islamic State and forced into sexual slavery. She escaped, and eventually made her way to Germany as a refugee. She embarked on a career as a human rights activist and in 2018, she shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Denis Mukwege, who helped rape survivors in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She is the first Iraqi to win the prize. By attending the State of the Union tonight, “My hope is that the American people will continue to support groups like us,” she told the Post through a translator. “Without the support of the international community and especially the U.S., the Yazidis and other minorities will not be able to survive in their region...Their existence depends on it.” Though ISIS has been beaten back in the region, the Yazidi’s plight is not over. Control of the territory remains in dispute, and thousands remain displaced, uncertain if it’s safe to return. “We should all share humanity,” she said. She emphasized the need for security, jobs, and infrastructure in the region. This has been a longtime issue for Fortenberry, who cosponsored 2016 House resolution that helped prompt the Obama administration to declare the slaughter of Yazidis a genocide. Tonight, he emphasized the


First he was hoarse. Then he couldn’t chew. How one man’s hunch led to the truth.

not your heart' A week after the incident in the Italian restaurant, Weller saw his primary care doctor. His ability to chew and swallow had returned, although he could consume only soft food. And if he wasn’t careful, he would choke, sometimes aspirating what he was eating. His fatigue had worsened to the point that he was unable to walk across his average-sized yard without stopping several times to rest. And his gait was off: When he walked, Weller said his feet flapped. His doctor ordered a chemical stress test and an echocardiogram, a test that uses sound waves to check cardiac function. “The cardiologist told me it’s not your heart — it’s fine,” Weller recalled. “You’re going to have to look elsewhere.” Weller, who was feeling increasingly desperate, decided to see what he could unearth online. While taking azithromycin for possible strep, he had read the warning label. It cautioned that the drug should not be taken by people who have myasthenia gravis because it can aggravate the disorder. Weller had never heard of myasthenia gravis (MG), a chronic neuromuscular autoimmune disorder that causes weakness in the muscles responsible for breathing and movement. But he had felt dramatically worse after taking the drug — and it turned out he hadn’t even had strep. His search led him to the Mayo Clinic website and a description of symptoms that sounded awfully familiar: muscle weakness, fatigue, shortness of breath, difficulty chewing and swallowing, and gait disturbances. Symptoms typically improve with rest. Weller discovered that he had nearly every MG symptom listed except the most common: double vision and droopy eyelids known as ptosis. The disorder, caused by a transmission error between nerves and muscles, can be diagnosed through a blood test. The test measures the level of an antibody that disrupts normal communication at the neuromuscular junction — the place where nerve cells connect with the muscles they control. Weller called the Mayo Clinic but was unable to wrangle an appointment with the neurology department in Rochester, Minn. — a six-hour drive he was not eager to make in the winter. He decided to see what he could accomplish locally. He was scheduled to see his family doctor in mid-December, but the appointment was canceled at the last minute. He arranged instead to see a nurse practitioner. Then he compiled a list of symptoms — numbering more than a dozen —


The Technology 202: Lawmakers fret about China’s investment in 5G

Ctrl + N The race to be the first country to convert to 5G wireless networks is on -- and the U.S. and China both want to win. Lawmakers on both sides are already making it a top priority this Congress to ensure the U.S. moves swiftly to deploy next-generation wireless networks so China doesn't beat it to the punch. The stakes are high: The country that first widely adopts 5G -- which will bring far faster download speeds and the ability to run billions more devices on mobile networks, including self-driving cars-- will gain a competitive edge on the world stage. So much so, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said, that 5G has the potential to usher in a fourth industrial revolution. And losing that potential edge to China would be unthinkable, said Wicker, the chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. “Failing to win the race to 5G would not only materially delay the benefits of 5G for the American people, it would forever reduce the economic and societal gains that come from leading the world in technology,” Wicker said at the committee’s first hearing of the year, which was focused on 5G. The hearing highlighted the sense of urgency in Washington to work with industry on facilitating the 5G rollout, With their eyes on winning this digital arms race against China, lawmakers also said they’re focused on ensuring that industry adopts key safeguards against cyberthreats and considers consumer privacy as 5G services are expected to allow technology to grow ever more pervasive. Lawmakers heard a sobering account of China’s coordinated strategy to make widespread 5G a reality. Michael Wessel, a U.S.-China Economic & Security Review commissioner, told lawmakers that China is poised to invest at least $400 billion at this point into its 5G development. China is also increasingly trying to exert its influence over international standard-setting groups such as the Global International Telecommunications Union to benefit Chinese companies. China chairs more of the organization’s committees than any other country, Wessel said, stoking concerns among lawmakers. “We have no comparable plans here in the U.S.,” Congress is renewing its attention on 5G as the Trump administration signals that executive action is coming on next-generation wireless, which is among the “cutting-edge industries of the future “Within the coming weeks we could expect to see action designed to preserve American R&D leadership in artificial intelligence, 5G, and


the first deliverables from the National Quantum Initiative Act,” an administration official told me in a statement Wednesday. For their part, lawmakers could consider legislative proposals like the Airwaves Act, which was introduced in the last Congress to require the Federal Communications Commission to hold auctions over the next three years to grant licenses for certain spectrum bands that would enable 5G. That bill, which stalled in Congress, would have also allocated funding from the auctions to ensure that 5G is expanded in rural areas that have been previously left behind in such transitions. 5G is in its early stages of deployment in certain parts of the United States. In Silicon Valley, companies are eagerly investing in new technologies that will rely on faster wireless networks -- such as artificial intelligence or augmented reality. The United States knows firsthand how much is at stake in this global race against China. “Ten years ago, no one imagined Uber or countless other companies that are dependent upon the 4G platform,” said Brad Gillen, the executive vice president of CTIA, an industry group representing wireless companies. “We are just scratching the surface.” But China’s coordinated approach makes it a formidable opponent in the dash to herald the next era of wireless More concerning is how those companies could influence the market outside China The United States is warning European allies to not use Chinese equipment for 5G networks, according to a Tuesday report from Reuters. The Trump administration has weighed an executive order that would give the commerce secretary the authority to block U.S. deals involving foreign telecommunications equipment. “China’s innovation efforts are broad and deep,” Wessel warned the committee. “China wants to be a global innovation leader and is doing all it can legally and illegally to achieve its goals.” BITS: Germany’s competition watchdog told Facebook that its Whatsapp and Instagram services cannot combine data they collect with a user’s main Facebook account unless that user gives voluntary consent, The decision would severely restrict the social network’s current data collection practices. Facebook plans to appeal the decision, according to the BBC. Though the restrictions only apply to Facebook’s services in Germany, it could prompt other countries to consider similar rules. Facebook has one month to challenge the ruling before it becomes legally effective. “If the order is upheld, the company must develop technical solutions to ensure it complies within four months. If


Saudi Arabia ‘curtailed and undermined’ investigation into Khashoggi’s killing, U.N. expert says

ISTANBUL — The U.N. human rights expert leading an independent inquiry into the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi said Thursday that Saudi Arabia had “seriously curtailed and undermined” Turkey’s attempts to investigate Khashoggi’s killing in the Saudi Consulate in October. The expert, Agnes Callamard, released preliminary findings of her team’s inquiry Thursday after a week-long fact-finding mission to Turkey that ended Sunday. “Evidence collected during my mission to Turkey shows prime facie case that Mr. Khashoggi was the victim of a brutal and premeditated killing, planned and perpetrated by officials of the State of Saudi Arabia,” she said in a statement. The comments by Callamard, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, added weight to Turkey’s repeated assertions that Saudi Arabia had thwarted the work of Turkish investigators by limiting their access to Saudi diplomatic facilities and refusing to reveal the location of Khashoggi’s remains. “Woefully inadequate time and access was granted to Turkish investigators to conduct a professional and effective crime-scene examination and search required by international standards for investigation,” Callamard said. In the year before his death, Khashoggi had contributed columns to The Washington Post that were sometimes critical of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s day-to-day ruler. On Oct. 2, after Khashoggi entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to pick up documents that would allow him to remarry, he was killed and dismembered by a team of Saudi agents who were waiting for him inside the mission, according to Turkish and Saudi prosecutors. The CIA concluded with medium-to-high confidence that Mohammed ordered Khashoggi’s killing because he was a high-profile critic. Saudi officials have rejected that assertion, saying the team of Saudi agents in Istanbul had disobeyed orders to bring Khashoggi home alive and planned his murder on its own. Callamard said she initiated her investigation on her own because the United Nations had been unwilling to pursue an international criminal investigation. Her four-person team has no authority to bring criminal charges and will present the findings of its investigation to the U.N. Human Rights Council in June. In Turkey, Callamard’s team met with senior Turkish officials, including Istanbul’s chief prosecutor and the head of Turkish intelligence. The team was “given access to some crucial information about Mr. Khashoggi’s murder, including to parts of the chilling and gruesome audio material obtained and retained by the Turkish Intelligence agency,” Callamard’s statement said. She did


Brexit: Theresa May meets again in Brussels with skeptical E.U. leaders

issues. “Both sides have made significant concessions to arrive at a deal,” Juncker said in the statement. The two sides agreed to restart discussions about aspirations for their post-divorce relationship — a relatively minor step that diplomats nevertheless painted as a significant change, in a measure of the low expectations for the discussions. Tusk’s comments a day earlier contained some spice, but he was articulating widely held frustration across the European Union that British lawmakers appear unable to settle on any single plan that meets their own red lines. May told reporters after the meetings that Tusk’s language “caused widespread dismay in the United Kingdom. The point I made to him was that we should both be working to ensure that we can deliver a closer relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union in the future, and that’s what he should be focusing on.” E.U. leaders have repeatedly asked May to propose a concrete plan that would usher Britain out of the bloc without imposing a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, which could risk inflaming the dormant conflict there. The plan that E.U. and British negotiators dreamed up together to keep the border open — an insurance policy known as the backstop that could risk leaving Britain trapped half inside, half outside the European Union — has been toxic in the British Parliament. May and Brexiteers within her party have demanded a way to avoid getting stuck permanently halfway out the door. But E.U. policymakers say they cannot countenance anything that would jeopardize the Irish border. Without a deal in place or an extension of the talks, Britain is due to crash out of the European Union without a safety net March 29. An uncontrolled departure could set off economic and social chaos on both sides of the English Channel, and worried E.U. leaders are stepping up preparations to deal with the fallout. One element that had a small potential to change the long-term dynamic of the discussions was a letter late Wednesday from British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who offered opposition support to the divorce deal if May can guarantee a close, long-term relationship with the European Union. Corbyn wants Britain to remain in a customs union, probably meaning that it would remain closely aligned with E.U. rules and regulations and could be hard-pressed to secure independent free trade deals, as many Brexit advocates


Why do so many bars have pinball and video games? Because people want more than just drinks.

Kontrol and Brooklyn’s Barcade, which introduced the idea of mixing craft beers and vintage Donkey Kong cabinets. The idea, explains Barcade co-founder and CEO Paul Kermizian, was to build an arcade around “the games we enjoyed as kids, but adding beer to the mix.” The first Barcade, packed with machines from the “golden age” of video games, circa 1979 to 1983, opened in 2004; there are now seven locations, with branches in Detroit and Los Angeles on the way. “It’s funny that [bars with arcades] are hot,” Kermizian says. “We’ve been doing this for 15 years. We didn’t expand until 2011 — we were waiting for it to fizzle.” Barcade’s biggest hits include such standards as Donkey Kong and Centipede, which provide an element of nostalgia for gamers in their 30s or 40s. But, Kermizian says, the current popularity of arcade bars is about more than good memories. Younger millennials and Generation Z, he notes, “had very different experiences” with gaming. Instead, Kermizian says, “the arcade experience is still captivating, whether the games are young or old.” It’s being in the center of a room with 50 to 60 games, lights flashing, sound effects and music bursting from the consoles. That buzzing arcade atmosphere was what Pizzeria Paradiso’s management team was looking for when it decided to shake up and “activate” its basement-level bar Birreria. “We wanted to bring more vibrancy,” owner Ruth Gresser says. “We recognize that people are going out for more than just food and drink.” That’s a somewhat surprising shift for Gresser, who opened the first Pizzeria Paradiso in 1991 and has historically been resistant to even having TVs in her restaurants (the Dupont Circle location is still distraction-free). But the Georgetown basement bar was retrofitted as an arcade in January 2018, with Skee-Ball, shuffleboard, pinball and video games to become “a bit of a playroom,” Gresser says. Beer sales in the Game Room have increased, as have the hours of operation, and the idea was so successful that when the newest Paradiso opened in December in Spring Valley, near American University, she made sure there were pinball and video-game machines to appeal to college students — as well as nearby families. Thompson admits that Punch Bowl Social is “engineered for millennials,” with a variety of sought-after “experiences” and buzzy menu items (such as a fried bologna sandwich, topped with whole potato chips, or green chorizo


The Daily 202: The State of the Union offered a taste of the Trump presidency that might have been

have shattered Virginia Democrats’ expectations that they could take control of both houses of the General Assembly this fall. A surreal scene -- The Washington Post’s Editorial Board, which endorsed Northam in his primary race and general election, calls on the governor to resign: -- Every vote counts! Remember that coin toss to determine the winner of a Virginia House seat? It could come back to haunt Democrats if Northam, Fairfax and Herring all step aside. FOLLOW THE MONEY: -- Republican operative Paul Erickson, the boyfriend of Russian agent Maria Butina and the manager of Pat Buchanan's 1992 presidential campaign, was indicted on charges related to an alleged investment fraud scheme. -- Newly uncovered details show that “As he was working to build a relationship with Papadopoulos in 2016, Millian also offered to serve as a conduit to the Trump campaign for a Belarusan author in Florida with connections to the Russian government, according to emails obtained by The Washington Post. The author, Mikhail Morgulis, who said he never ended up hearing from anyone in the campaign, later claimed that he rallied Russian Americans to back Trump. The new details deepen the persistent mystery surrounding Millian, two years after he was identified as one of the unnamed sources in a campaign dossier Steele compiled for Democrats about Trump’s ties to Russia.” -- The investigation of the president’s inaugural committee has raised questions about why Imaad Zuberi, a venture capitalist who donated more than $600,000 to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, rapidly transformed himself into a Trump supporter. -- A Ukrainian-Russian developer said Trump wanted $20 million in 2006 for his name to be used on a tower in Moscow. -- Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is in talks to testify before the House Financial Services Committee about the controversial deal to ease sanctions on the businesses controlled by Vladimir Putin pal Oleg Deripaska -- Documents from Trump’s D.C. hotel show T-Mobile executives have booked at least 52 nights at the hotel since it requested approval for a mega-merger with Sprint. THE IMMIGRATION WARS: -- The bipartisan committee working to craft a deal on border security edged closer to a compromise that would avert a government shutdown next week. But there is no guarantee Trump will back it. -- Nancy Pelosi predicted the government would not shut down again. -- Figures from the Pentagon indicate Trump’s deployment of troops to the border could cost


Pickup trucks, small SUVs, cost-cutting boost GM profit; Toyota profit decreases despite strong sales

Automakers Pickup trucks, SUVs boost GM profit General Motors on Wednesday reported a quarterly profit that exceeded Wall Street expectations, thanks to high-margin pickup trucks and small SUVs in the U.S. market and cost-cutting. All of the No. 1 U.S. automaker’s profit came from North America, where those lucrative models helped overcome an overall drop in the number of vehicles it sold. The company’s operations in China and South America combined added nothing to the company’s bottom line in the quarter. The stronger-than-expected fourth-quarter profit, driven by strong U.S. results, stood in contrast to the job cuts GM has begun to make in its salaried and hourly workforces. The Detroit automaker has received political blowback, including from President Trump, after announcing in late November it would not allocate new product to five plants in North America that mostly produce less-popular sedan models, indicating they will probably close. GM said on Wednesday that China’s $300 million in operating earnings in the fourth quarter was offset by other international markets. It sold fewer vehicles in China, its largest market by volume, and said weak currencies in South America had also affected results. On Wednesday, GM reported fourth-quarter net income of $2.1 billion, or $1.40 per share, vs. a loss of $5.2 billion, or $3.65 per share, a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, it earned $1.43 per share, above the $1.22 analysts polled by Refinitiv IBES had expected. It reported a fourth-quarter loss in 2017 to adjust for an overhaul of the U.S. tax system. Excluding those charges, the automaker had reported net income of $2.4 billion. — Reuters Toyota profit decreases despite strong sales Toyota’s fiscal third-quarter profit plunged to 180.9 billion yen ($12.6 billion), about a fifth of what the Japanese automaker earned the previous year, despite relatively solid sales, the Japanese automaker said Wednesday. Toyota Motor Corp.’s October-December profit in 2017 had totaled 941.8 billion yen, helped by perks from U.S. tax restructuring. Toyota, Japan’s No. 1 automaker, said profit for the latest quarter was also hurt by unrealized gains and losses in equity securities. Quarterly sales totaled 7.8 trillion yen ($71 billion), up nearly 3 percent from 7.6 trillion the previous year, according to the maker of the Camry sedan, Prius hybrid and Lexus luxury models. Toyota lowered its profit for the fiscal year through March to 1.87 trillion yen ($17 billion), down from 2.5 trillion yen in the


If you want interesting, affordable wines, look to Argentina

Anyone looking for value in wine, up and down the price range, should look to Argentina. The country produces wines of high quality at low prices, and the more expensive bottles — even those stretching into the triple digits as if they were grasping the Andes’ peaks — often perform as well as, if not better than, similarly priced trophies from more classic regions. Anyone interested in exploring wine beyond the simple buzz of the grocery store quaff should also look to Argentina. Although winemaking there dates back to the Spanish colonial era, Argentina’s modern story is still relatively young. Winegrowers are still exploring the heights of the Andean foothills in Mendoza, Patagonia to the south or Salta to the north, testing the extremes of altitude to produce the best wine possible. We consumers can, without spending a mountain of moola, use Argentina as our personal laboratory to explore the nuances of terroir and understand how two wines made from the same grape can taste subtly but distinctly different because they were grown on different soils, at different altitudes, just a few miles — or even meters — apart. And anyone exploring Argentina should begin with two names: Catena and Zuccardi. These family wineries, now in their fourth and third generations, respectively, have been setting the standard, especially in Mendoza, the country’s main wine region. Not only do they offer wines of great value, but they have been Sherpas, leading the region’s explorations up the Andes foothills to develop higher-elevation vineyards. Argentina’s wines burst onto the U.S. market in the 1980s, thanks to three people. Nicolas Catena, the third-generation head of a winery that fueled the tango bars of Buenos Aires, realized that he could improve the quality of his wines by planting vineyards at higher altitudes. He brought in Paul Hobbs, an up-and-coming winemaker from Napa Valley, to consult. They teamed up with Alfredo Bartholomaus, a Chilean-born importer based in the Washington area to create the Alamos brand of malbec, a successful brand that is still widely available in U.S. markets today. Laura Catena, Nicolas’s daughter, now manages the winery and is pushing the exploration of Mendoza’s altitudes, especially in the Uco Valley, south of the city. But it was her father’s intuition about the mountains that set the stage for things to come. Here’s Argentina’s secret: Every additional 100 meters (about 328 feet) of altitude decreases the average


MBS promised a bullet for Khashoggi. Congress must promise consequences for MBS.

THE PUBLICLY available evidence that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bears responsibility for the murder of Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi continues to mount. The latest piece is a 2017 conversation between the crown prince and a key aide in which he vowed to use “a bullet” to stop Khashoggi if he did not agree to return to the kingdom and stop criticizing the regime. That chilling statement, reported by the New York Times, was intercepted by U.S. intelligence agencies, which means it probably forms part of the basis for the Central Intelligence Agency’s judgment that Mohammed bin Salman ordered the attack against Mr. Khashoggi in Turkey last Oct. 2. There is much other incriminating data. Saudi authorities have acknowledged that the operation was organized and overseen by two of the crown prince’s closest aides, including Saud al-Qahtani. The Times reported that the prince had previously dismissed warnings from Mr. Qahtani that an operation against Mr. Khashoggi could cause an international uproar. U.S. intelligence also found that the two men exchanged numerous text messages immediately before and after the killing, according to the Wall Street Journal. And the team that traveled to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul included several members of Mohammed bin Salman’s personal bodyguard. The U.S. Senate drew the obvious conclusion in December when it unanimously adopted a resolution holding the crown prince responsible for the death of Mr. Khashoggi, who was also a legal U.S. resident. Yet the Trump administration continues to deny the facts and the legal mandate to act on them. On Friday, in response to a formal inquiry from members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the White House declined to issue a determination on the culpability of Mohammed bin Salman. “The president maintains his discretion to decline to act on congressional committee requests when appropriate,” CNN quoted an official as saying. Congress should not accept that response. Under the Global Magnitsky Act, a law governing the punishment of human rights abuses, the administration is required to respond to congressional inquiries about crimes such as the Khashoggi murder by identifying and sanctioning those responsible. The White House last year announced sanctions against 17 people for their roles in the killing, including Mr. Qahtani. But it was separately tasked by then-Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) with determining Mohammed bin Salman’s responsibility under the law. The deadline for replying was Friday.


The Pentagon’s cloud strategy to catch up to the commercial tech industry

An outdated, patchwork approach to managing computer systems has slowed the U.S. military’s adoption of artificial intelligence at a time when rival nations are investing deeply in those capabilities, U.S. military officials wrote in a strategy document released last week. The cloud strategy document, which Congress required it to produce as part of a recent spending bill, calls for a department-wide cloud-computing infrastructure that will bring the Pentagon’s systems up to par with the commercial technology industry. So-called “cloud-based” computer systems rely on databases and programs that are connected through the Internet rather than local hard-drives, something that has made those programs faster and more powerful. Cloud computing is already ubiquitous in the commercial technology industry. It powers the smart-phone apps consumers use every day, enables artificially-intelligent chat-bots like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, and makes possible a vast array of complex applications that large companies use to manage data and conduct business. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) Perhaps owing to its unique cybersecurity challenges, however, the Pentagon has proceeded with caution. Rather than build a single cloud network for all of its applications — an approach the CIA followed through a $600 million contract with Amazon Web Services — it has allowed specific agencies to set up their own clouds designed for narrowly-defined purposes. The cloud strategy document released last week unsparingly described how that patchwork strategy has hurt the Pentagon’s operations. Having so many data centers has created unnecessary security risks, officials said. And it has complicated the department’s ability to stay ahead of software and hardware updates, they wrote, something that could make computer systems more vulnerable to hackers. “The Department of Defense has multiple disjointed and stove-piped information systems distributed across modern and legacy infrastructure around the globe leading to a litany of problems that impact warfighters’, decision makers’, and DoD staff’s ability to organize, analyze, secure, scale, and ultimately capitalize on critical information,” the strategy document reads. And managing so many computer systems has been challenging for military agencies, which face a shortage of technology workers. “As DoD has continued to stand up independent clouds, we continue to dilute our already constrained cloud expertise," the document reads. Defense Department officials now say they want to move away from that approach and toward something more centralized. The strategy document released last week is the clearest official notice yet detailing how the Pentagon will


How does a Virginia herb company grow? By moving nature indoors.

serves 23,000 stores across the country, including 16 of the 20 largest food retailers. I see its “That’s Tasty” brand in my neighborhood Whole Foods. (I recently kept a bag of its basil alive for weeks in glass of water in my kitchen.) Heydon and his 1,200 employees have captured 35 percent of the retail fresh organic herb market. And they want more. The company, which lies two hours west of Washington, is disrupting agriculture from the bottom up, just as Amazon/Whole Foods, Instacart, FreshDirect and others are changing the way people buy groceries from the top down. (Amazon’s founder and chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, owns The Washington Post.) “This is the future,” Heydon says, standing in a football-field-size greenhouse amid thousands of trays of young basil, mint, cilantro and dill. “We are not changing nature — just bringing the growing indoors and optimizing the conditions. We are increasing the metabolism so we can grow more organic produce at a faster rate.” The Harrisonburg campus is one of its 11 indoor growing facilities across the United States, including Hawaii. Ninety-five company trucks delivered 13 million pounds of Shenandoah’s herbs to stores in 2018. Labor and delivery to stores are the company’s largest expenses. A big test is coming. The company is spending tens of millions to double the amount of produce it grows indoors, from 40 percent of its production currently to 80 percent by 2021. The move should allow Shenandoah to place growing facilities closer to customer distribution centers, cutting the delivery costs. The payoff could be worth it. Taking agriculture indoors raises the yield from 60 percent on crops planted to 90 percent. Profit margins, which the company was reluctant to detail, rise by 25 percent when crops are grown indoors, compared with in the field. Demand for fresh produce is soaring, as Americans pay more attention to diet. Heydon said the company expects its investment in expanding his indoor production to pay for itself within three years. The food grown in the Shenandoah Valley will be in the produce section in less than a month’s time. Shenandoah investors have put $62 million in the company in the past several years, including food and agriculture technology investors such as S2G Ventures, XPV Water Partners, Advantage Capital Partners and D.C.-based Middleland Capital and Arborview Capital. This is no Civil War-era farming community, which was decimated by Union Gen.