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Finally, the legislation would introduce unnecessary confusion into the Lanham Act by establishing requirements that are, in some cases, unhelpfully specific, and in other cases concerningly broad and vague. The legislation targets only one sector even though its goal is to address an economy-wide problem that requires all stakeholders to work together in good faith to stop bad actors. The bill also "requires each third-party seller to use images that the seller owns or has permission to use." IA members already prohibit sellers from using images that they do not have rights to use, but the unlawful use of copyrighted images is already covered by the DMCA, and adding copyright protections into a trademark law could create confusion between the two statutes with no added benefit. The bill also fails to precisely define the term "electronic commerce platform." The definition of that term is so vague that it would include websites well beyond online marketplaces including social media platforms, discussion communities, cloud services, video chat services, and even email service providers. If the scope of the bill is intended to be that broad, it would be difficult for many of the impacted companies to comply with several of the enumerated obligations.

However, thus far, terrorist groups seem to have exhibited only limited desire and even less progress in going atomic. That lack of action may be because, after a brief exploration of the possible routes, they — unlike generations of alarmists — have discovered that the tremendous effort required is scarcely likely to be successful.34

Obtaining a Finished Bomb: Assistance by a State

The American public’s fear of terrorism persists in spite of the fact that the actual risk of terrorism for those in the United States is extremely low. Over the past half-century, the chance that an American would be killed by a terror attack on U.S. soil is roughly 1 in 3.5 million, with under ninety deaths per year between 1970 and 2007. Even in 2001, a year when terrorism was uniquely dangerous in the United States, terrorism accounted for less than 0.14 percent of deaths in the country. In contrast, the risk of death from other hazards like cancer (1 in 540), car accidents (1 in 8,000), drowning in a bathtub (1 in 950,000), and flying on a plane (1 in 2.9 million) are all greater than terrorism (Mueller 2006).

Thus far, 9/11 stands out as an extreme outlier: scarcely any terrorist act, before or after, in war zones or outside them, has inflicted even one-tenth as much total destruction. That is, contrary to common expectations, the attack has thus far been an aberration, not a harbinger.8 And al-Qaeda central, the group responsible for the attack, has, in some respects at least, proved to resemble President John Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald—an entity of almost trivial proportions that got horribly lucky once. The tiny group of perhaps 100 or so does appear to have served as something of an inspiration to some Muslim extremists. They may have done some training, may have contributed a bit to the Taliban's far larger insurgency in Afghanistan, and may have participated in a few terrorist acts in Pakistan. In his examination of the major terrorist plots against the West since 9/11, Mitchell Silber finds only two—the shoe bomber attempt of 2001 and the effort to blow up transat- lantic airliners with liquid bombs in 2006—that could be said to be under the "command and control" of al-Qaeda central (as opposed to ones suggested, endorsed, or inspired by the organization), and there are questions about how full its control was even in these two instances, both of which, as it happens, failed miserably.9 And, although some al-Qaeda affiliates have committed substantial damage in the Middle East, usually in the context of civil wars, their efforts to carry out terrorism in the West have been rare and completely ineffective.10 Even under siege, it is difficult to see why al-Qaeda could not have carried out attacks at least as costly and shocking as the shooting rampages (organized by other groups) that took place in Mumbai in 2008 or at a shopping center in Kenya in 2013. Neither took huge resources, presented major logistical challenges, required the organization of a large number of perpetrators, or needed extensive planning.

However, there is of course no guarantee that things will remain that way, and the 9/11 attacks inspired the remarkable extrapolation that, because the terrorists were successful with box cutters, they might soon be able to turn out weapons of mass destruction— particularly nuclear ones—and then detonate them in an American city. For example, in his influential 2004 book, Nuclear Terrorism, Harvard's Graham Allison relayed his "considered judgment" that "on the current path, a nuclear terrorist attack on America in the decade ahead is more likely than not."11 Allison has had a great deal of company in his alarming pronouncements. In 2007, the distinguished physicist Richard Garwin put the likelihood of a nuclear explosion on an American or European city by terrorist or other means at 20 percent per year, which would work out to 91 percent over the eleven- year period to 2018.12

Financial secrecy came onshore as well, and in a big way. In 2019, the Hudson Institute ranked the United States as the world’s second worst financial-secrecy haven between Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.3 Three years after that, the Tax Justice Network called the United States the world’s number-one enabler of financial secrecy.4 Changes in post-Mao China and the Cold War’s end drove the demand for financial secrecy higher as Chinese and ex-Soviet elites began paying Western lawyers, bankers, and accountants to help hide and launder ill-gotten gains. One estimate put the sum illicitly siphoned out of Russia between 1994 and 2011 at a staggering US$211.5 billion.5 Few appreciate how these trends have grown the financial-secrecy system to such gargantuan proportions, which the economist James S. Henry estimates at more than $50 trillion.6

That the problem posed by the financial-secrecy system has gone largely unnoticed should not be surprising. The system is designed to be opaque to both law enforcement and the public. Only recently have headline-making insider leaks such as the Panama Papers (2016) and Paradise Papers (2017, and possibly a result of hacking rather than leaking) begun to lay bare the system’s workings. Millions of documents became available detailing the offshore dealings of companies such as Apple, Facebook, McDonald’s, and Walt Disney as well as people such as British royals and Wilbur Ross, who was U.S. commerce secretary from 2017 to 2021. The totality of these papers shows massive tax avoidance, the concealment of kleptocratic loot, and the systemic avoidance of the rule of law. In late 2021, the leaking of the Pandora Papers offered evidence of tax avoidance by a slew of individuals ranging from the former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, the latter among thirty-five current or former national leaders alongside about four-hundred lower-ranking officials. It is a safe bet that these leaks, large as they seem, have given us only a keyhole view into a much bigger industry.

Accepting secrecy’s “enablers” and the full spate of its instruments is also undermining the West’s ability to compete with authoritarian powers and protect Western political institutions.17 Kleptocrats in Russia or China can move money anonymously into the West, buying assets and building networks that facilitate political interference and compromise Western nations’ security and democratic institutions. The sheer scale of global financial secrecy, moreover, has made possible a golden age of money laundering that aids kleptocrats in converting stolen wealth into new sources of power. These can include corrupted Western officials, private armies of mercenaries, and phalanxes of enablers recruited from Western professional ranks.18

Beneath the surface of our financial system lies an unseen world worth trillions of dollars. This vast and expansive realm, both offshore and onshore, is undermining capitalism and democracy from the inside. Raymond Baker calls it the financial-secrecy system, and among today’s grave threats to democracy it is one of the least acknowledged.1 Made up of millions of hidden accounts, secret trusts, disguised entities, artificial trades, opaque ownerships, and more, this parallel world could not differ more starkly from what the average citizen of a Western democracy experiences as the financial system. Rather than being a space under intense scrutiny and observation, monitored by everything from the latest banking algorithms to the beady eyes of tax officials, this hidden dimension is where those wealthy enough to gain access to it go to hide their wealth and avoid taxes. Rather than serving as an asset to Western capitalism and democracy, this secret world and its covert dealings are acting on both as a quiet poison.

Or perhaps the poison is no longer so quiet: This parallel world has now grown so large that it is visibly cracking the political order from which it sprang. Financial secrecy has swollen in recent years as elites have abandoned their duty to pay their fair share. A metastasizing culture of tax avoidance by corporations and the wealthy has weakened national values, institutions, and goals across the West while fueling levels of inequality that wreck national cohesion, drive spiraling resentment, and stoke anger. This is empowering the enemies of democracy at home and abroad, be they domestic populists who vow to crush the abusive system, or authoritarian kleptocrats and criminals who manipulate the system to cover their own misdeeds.

Tracing how US real estate became the asset of choice for sanctioned Russian tycoons, African autocrats, drug lords, and uberrich Americans requires going back to the darkest days of the early 21st century. The PATRIOT Act—passed in the aftermath of 9/11, when fears about money being spirited to terrorist cells were white-hot—contained a suite of policies to prevent suspect funds from entering the United States. American banks were required to scrutinize transactions and flag suspicious activity.

The law’s money-laundering provisions were intended to go much further, forcing other industries—particularly real estate—to shore up their dirty money defenses. But shortly after the law’s passage, the Treasury Department announced a temporary exemption for real estate deals. Bush administration officials declared that they wanted to further study the law to make sure it wouldn’t inadvertently hamstring the industry. Months passed, then years, then decades. Today, this exemption remains firmly in place, and American real estate agents and firms are still under no legal ­obligation to check the sources of their clients’ wealth or report even the most obvious red flags. Not surprisingly, the world’s elites have taken full advantage.

Digital assets, including cryptocurrencies, pose a significant risk of illicit finance, because they can mask the identity of owners and cross borders almost instantly without regulated financial institutions serving as intermediaries. Crypto is increasingly used to launder money and evade sanctions. For example, fentanyl chemical producers in China have relied on crypto to sell their products to drug cartels. The risk posed by crypto was highlighted by Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, when its founder pleaded guilty to money laundering violations.

Anti-money laundering requirements should be extended to digital assets service providers, as the European Union has done in its Market in Crypto Assets regulation and as a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators has proposed in the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act. Digital assets service providers should be required to identify the beneficial owners of the accounts they offer and transactions they process and to block suspicious financial flows.

It was the first time that FinCEN—ever, in its 30-year history—had busted a trust company for violating money-­laundering­ prevention laws. And its investigation spotlighted not just the lapses of Kingdom Trust but an entire system that helps kleptocrats (who have looted their countries for private gain) and wealthy Westerners alike anonymously route their money through the US economy. It’s a system that’s evolved over decades—a race to the bottom led by states desperate to ensure a steady flow of revenue. It involves a sprawling network of trust companies, law firms, and real estate agencies that facilitate the transfer of suspect money. And it’s made the United States one of the world capitals of kleptocratic cash.

Today, there’s no need to stash your money in the Bahamas, Malta, or the Caymans when you can keep it in places like Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Thanks to favorable laws that make it an ideal refuge for the world’s wealth, America now sits at the center of the global offshore economy—an international pot of riches even larger than the GDP of China, by some estimates.

Due to the heightened anonymity of online transactions and the fact that most counterfeits come from overseas, holding counterfeit sellers accountable is often virtually impossible. The act recognises that some responsibility should fall on marketplaces that have the ability to monitor and terminate listings and third-party sellers. However, the act fails to recognise that marketplaces are not always positioned to know – in the absence of information uniquely known by brand owners – what every legitimate product looks like and how to distinguish real from counterfeit. Instead of fostering much-needed collaboration between brand owners and marketplaces, the act ties the hands of marketplaces by prohibiting them from requiring brand owners to share enough information for marketplaces to police listings effectively.

In order to accurately screen listings and sellers, marketplaces need access to information that is uniquely known by brand owners – what authentic products look like, what technology (such as Radio Frequency Identification) identifies authentic products, or what quantities of the product were released in various regions – to allow platforms to check for patterns and inconsistencies. For example, too much product coming out of sellers based in China would be evidence that the product is counterfeit, and listings could be targeted more specifically. Or platforms could compare distinguishing features of a verified image of a product to see if product listings do not match up.

Furthermore, while some marketplaces may already have proactive tools for screening, these programs are most effective when brands are participating and offering information. Many brands have so many products and variations that sites would need information about all of the products in granular detail to effectively screen products. Proactive automated screening will not have 100% success, and may lead to incidental false positives, including non-infringing fair uses that automated tools are not in a position to make determinations on, as well as stifle legitimate businesses, and occasionally miss counterfeit products.

Additionally, unless a listing is explicit about offering counterfeits or there are other fairly clear signals the product is a knockoff, screening is by no means a complete solution. In most cases listings will look facially valid as it doesn’t behoove a seller to suggest they’re selling fakes. That’s why confirmation or input from the brand owner remains critical to helping combat counterfeits, which SHOP SAFE undermines.

Anyone who has enforced IP rights can tell you that identifying counterfeit goods can be difficult - if not impossible unless you have a high level of expertise and familiarity with the brand and products that are being counterfeited. Trademark owners often hire employees and consultants who are solely focused on expertly identifying the subtle differences between genuine products and counterfeits in support of their enforcement efforts. These individuals work with a host of federal, state, and local agencies, including the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”), and state and local police departments, as well as district attorneys’ offices that have staff dedicated to enforcing criminal anti-counterfeiting laws.21

Regardless of whether enforcement activities are occurring online or offline, U.S. trademark law puts the onus of identifying counterfeit goods on those who have the requisite expertise to accurately perform that task: brand owners and their agents. Brand owners are in the best position to know when a product being sold online is counterfeit; online services cannot have expertise in every trademark. For example, online services don’t know whether a particular seller is authorized by the brand owner or not, nor whether a listing for a product depicts a counterfeit product. Indeed, identifying counterfeits based on the quality, design and specifications of a product is often, if not exclusively, within the expertise of the brand itself. Further, since many online services never possess the counterfeit goods, they cannot examine the goods for obvious signs of counterfeiting, even if such signs were known to them. Nor would they know what to look for concerning any particular problem. And as hard as detecting counterfeiting is for large companies, that problem is even worse for small- and medium-sized companies, who cannot afford to build systems to police all possible counterfeiting on their sites.

IV. REMOVING PROTECTIONS FOR ONLINE SERVICE PROVIDERSIS NOT THE SOLUTION TO THE COUNTERFEITING PROBLEM.

Changing the secondary liability standards, as SHOP Safe does, will not address the true cause of counterfeiting—the actual infringer. A company that delivers the products consumers order from third parties may have no way to know whether the third-party seller of those products, in turn, bought them from a legitimate supplier. Cloud storage companies have no way to tell whether documents stored on their sites violate a third party’s trademark rights. But all could be subject to incredibly onerous obligations if this overbroad legislation becomes law.

Criminal networks in Europe are increasingly mixing illicit finances with seemingly legal businesses, and exploiting new technology to grow their operations and launder money faster than authorities can keep up, a new Europol report revealed.

Nearly 70% of criminal elements operating in the European Union use money-laundering techniques to garner revenue and hide assets, degrading the region’s financial stability and impeding its economic growth, according to the European Financial and Economic Crime Threat Assessment report released last week by the EU’s law enforcement arm, Europol. The increasing speed of deception is outpacing authorities which are struggling to uncover and prosecute financial crimes.

KYC = Know Your Customer regulations, AML = Anti-money laundering

When it comes to the benefits, it is worth asking tough questions. For instance, do KYC and anti-money laundering regulations adequately protect consumers, investors and the overall financial system from financial crime? How much do they deter would-be criminals? How much of the illicit flows are recovered thanks to such checks?

Food scarcity, however, is only one aspect of food security. Whether people have easy access to food resources is also important. So even in countries where plenty of food is available, a large share of the population might still go hungry.

As Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen notes, “Starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough food to eat.”

There is no global food shortage because we produce more than enough food to feed everyone in the world. We produce so much food globally yet one–third of it – 1.3 billion tons – is wasted. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), all that wasted food is enough to feed 1.26 billion people: almost twice the number of undernourished people across the globe.

So, if there’s enough food for everyone in the world, why do some countries face food shortages? It’s mostly due to a lack of access to food, technology and resilient food production systems.

Today the source of America’s agripower is rapidly dwindling. The world’s top exporter of corn, soy and wheat for much of the past seven decades, the US is now facing a future of persistent agricultural trade deficits. The shortfall for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 is estimated at $19 billion and is expected to balloon to almost $28 billion in fiscal 2024, according to Agriculture Department forecasts.

This is an historic reversal: Since 1974 the only other annual deficits were in 2019 and 2020, during President Donald Trump’s trade war with China. The trend is driven in part by a shift in Americans’ eating habits—for instance, households today consume more imported produce, such as Mexican avocados and Indian mangoes—but stagnating grain and oilseed exports are also a factor.​

Even if these plants did somehow collectively melt down, global nuclear meltdown would not come close to causing human extinction. There are 450 nuclear reactors currently operating. If each simultaneously released a Chernobyl-level amount of radioactive material, the average radiation dose per square mile over the earth would be far less than the dose per square mile which the whole of Ukraine suffered as a result of the actual Chernobyl accident. Clearly all human life was not wiped out in soviet-era Ukraine (the resulting mortality across the country was roughly 4000 people out of 51 million), so whilst this hypothetical scenario would be a profound tragedy, it would not come anywhere near causing human extinction. (In contrast to global nuclear war, which remains an existential threat. Warming will likely exacerbate the risk of nuclear war by inflaming geopolitical tensions – a strong argument against a passive, non-interventionist stance on climate mitigation. However, if the argument is really “climate change makes nuclear war more likely”, then that should be made clear, as disarmament would also be an effective preventative measure.)