Bride of China’s Frankenstein.

Nobody was in the driver’s seat.

“There are a bunch of newsletters out there I have read. News Items is the one I want to read.” — Jane Metcalfe, Chair of the Board of Directors, Human Immunome Project, co-founder Wired Ventures and Wired magazine.

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1. One reason the war in Ukraine grinds on is that Russia’s economy is now dependent on it. “It is absolutely imperative for Russia to continue to rely on the military industry, because it [has] become the driver of economic growth,” said Alexander Kolyandr, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. “For a while, it will be next to impossible for Russia to reduce military spending.” Russia’s arms industry has enjoyed billions of dollars in stimulus in recent years to boost production lines and keep them running at breakneck speed 24 hours a day. The influx of cash has boosted wages—partly to compete with military payouts—and fueled rising living standards for thousands of Russians in the country’s poorer backwaters.,,,If the war does end in Ukraine, some of Russia’s neighbors worry its war economy might be refocused on them. In the Baltics, Estonian military planners grimly discuss the possibility of war spilling into NATO territory. In Kazakhstan, analysts carefully watch for signals that Russia could make a move into the north of the country, where a large ethnic Russian population still lives. These fears stem partly from the belief that the Kremlin would rather keep the tens of thousands soldiers fighting on some other front line rather than bring battle-hardened and often traumatized men back home. After the end of World War II, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin viewed returning veterans as a threat and sent many to the gulags to rid himself of the domestic pressures they could cause. (Source: wsj.com)

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2. As the Trump administration tries to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has been threatening to upend the talks by striking Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, according to officials briefed on the situation. The clash over how best to ensure that Iran cannot produce a nuclear weapon has led to at least one tense phone call between President Trump and Mr. Netanyahu and a flurry of meetings in recent days between top administration officials and senior Israeli officials. Mr. Trump said on Sunday that there could be “something good” coming about his effort to limit Iran’s nuclear program in the “next two days.” Others familiar with the negotiations said that at best there would be a declaration of some common principles. (Source: nytimes.com)

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