www.whitehouse.gov - Wed, 20 Mar 2024 posted:

President Biden launched the historic Summit for Democracy in 2021 to strengthen democratic institutions, protect human rights, and accelerate the fight against corruption, both at home and abroad.  

At the first Summit, approximately 100 participating governments made over 750 commitments on a wide array of deliverables, including in the areas of advancing technology for democracy, media freedom, countering the misuse of technology, and improving financial transparency, gender equity and equality, and rule of law.  The second Summit built on these efforts, convening government stakeholders, youth voices, civil society, and the private sector to demonstrate the power of cross-sectoral collaboration and amplify the importance of including diverse voices in these spaces.  This year, the Republic of Korea hosted the third Summit for Democracy in Seoul under the theme “Democracy for Future Generations.”  

The U.S. delegation in the ROK, led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, highlighted U.S. efforts to strengthen democratic resilience, respect for human rights, and good governance globally.  The Biden-Harris Administration has requested $11.8 billion in Democracy, Human Rights and Governance (DRG) foreign assistance, of which $5.8 billion has already been appropriated for Fiscal Years 2022 and 2023.  The Administration intends to provide the remaining $6 billion over the next two years, subject to the availability of appropriations.  During the Summit, the United States held a high-level, multi-stakeholder event on combatting the proliferation and misuse of commercial spyware, which not only threatens democratic institutions but also poses risks to global security.

Under President Biden’s leadership, the United States has taken concrete steps to advance previous commitments and initiatives launched over the past three years, which include:

Advancing Technology for Democracy:

• In March 2023, President Biden signed the ground-breaking Executive Order Prohibiting the Use of Commercial Spyware that Poses Risks to National Security to prohibit U.S. Government use of commercial spyware that poses risks to national security and has been misused by foreign actors to enable human rights abuses.
  
  

• In July 2023, the Department of Commerce imposed export controls on four commercial spyware entities, building on an initial tranche of Entity List designations in November 2021.
  
  

• In October 2023, the U.S. Government worked with 59 other countries at the Human Rights Council in Geneva to issue a joint statement on Heightened Risks Associated with Surveillance Technologies & the Importance of Safeguards.
  
  

• In February 2024, the State Department announced a new visa restriction policy for individuals involved in or financially benefiting from the misuse of commercial spyware.
  
  

• In February 2024, the Department of Commerce imposed export controls on a company that has enabled foreign governments to conduct mass web-monitoring, censorship, and surveillance of perceived political opponents and human rights defenders.
  
  

• In February 2024, the United States joined the United Kingdom and France-led Pall-Mall Declaration, which brought together international partners and stakeholders to address the proliferation and irresponsible use of commercial cyber intrusion tools and services.
  
  

• In March 2024, the Treasury Department imposed unprecedented financial sanctions targeting five commercial spyware entities and their leadership that have enabled the misuse of commercial spyware. This was the first time that the U.S. Government sanctioned actors involved in the misuse of commercial spyware.
  
  

• In March 2024, the U.S. Government convened members of the investor community – during which the investors revealed voluntary principles and commitments – to discuss the role of trusted capital in advancing technology while promoting the values of free and open societies, including guarding against the misuse of commercial spyware and encouraging safe AI development.
  
  
• Since its launch at the first Summit for Democracy, the U.S. Government has contributed more than $46 million to the Surge and Sustain Fund for Anti-Censorship Technology , including $31 million in 2023 alone, to support 30 million users of circumvention tools such as virtual private networks (VPNs) each month.
  
  

Supporting Free and Independent Media

• USAID’s International Fund for Public Interest Media – announced at the second Summit for Democracy – has committed nearly $9 million in 32 grants across 16 countries to independent media outlets in urgent need of support and to strengthen their long-term sustainability.  The U.S. Government’s initial seed funding of $20 million has leveraged an additional $32 million from 15 governments, philanthropies, and corporate entities.
  
  
• The State Department launched two programs under its Journalism Protection Platform to combat impunity for violence against journalists and strengthen holistic security for journalists and independent media outlets, including those operating in exile.
  
  

Fighting Corruption

• In December 2023, the United States assumed the presidency of the UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) Conference of the States Parties (COSP).  At COSP, the United States secured consensus to adopt the U.S.-led Atlanta Declaration, which holds governments accountable to their UNCAC obligations and announced a new Presidential Proclamation restricting entry into the United States for those who enable corruption.
  
  
• In 2023, the Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on more than 130 individuals and entities engaged in corruption, spanning 17 countries, while the State Department issued public visa restrictions on more than 90 individuals from around the world for their involvement in significant corruption. 
  
  
• USAID kickstarted implementation of the Countering Transnational Corruption Grand Challenge for Development, with an initial focus on reducing corruption in the supply of green minerals. USAID also initiated new activities to seed a new investigative journalism network in Southeast Asia, strengthen public accountability in Zambia, and address Kremlin-backed strategic corruption in Eastern and Central Europe.
  
  
• In September 2023, the State Department expanded its Transnational Anticorruption Partnership with the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ International Corruption Unit, which places regional anticorruption advisors in the field to build partners’ capacities to investigate and prosecute transnational corruption cases.  This program, part of the U.S. Democracies against Safe Havens initiative to tackle kleptocracy, has upskilled law enforcement agencies in over 30 countries, resulting in dozens of new actionable leads, cases initiated, and instances of cross-border cooperation to hold kleptocrats and money launderers accountable.    
  
  
• In the past year, the United States has made historic strides in preventing corrupt and other illicit actors from laundering funds through anonymous companies and advancing rulemaking processes to guard against dirty money in the residential real estate sector and investment advising industry.
  
  

Bolstering Human Rights and Democratic Reformers

• Since the first Summit, USAID’s Partnership’s for Democratic Development (PDD) has allocated $53 million to deepen relationships with democratic reformers and accelerate democratic development in nine countries.  PDD will provide up to $52 million in additional funding in the coming year, subject to availability of funds, to expand democratic reform and ensure PDD partner countries are given the support they need to make their democratic transformation a reality.
  
  

• Since announcing the Advancing Women’s and Girls’ Civic and Political Leadership Initiative at the first Summit, USAID has allocated over $15 million in nine focus countries to build and sustain women’s participation in political and civic engagement. USAID will provide up to $10 million in additional funding this year, subject to availability of funds.
  
  
• The Community of Democracies (CoD) is working towards the 2024 launch of the global Youth Democracy Network, announced by the United States at the second Summit for Democracy.  Ahead of the launch, the CoD YouthLeads, who will serve as the inaugural advisory board for the Network, are driving discussion on youth engagement in elections, including a new series of articles, “A Blueprint for Youth Electoral Engagement,” to showcase effective strategies and policies from around the globe that enhance youth participation in electoral processes.
  Defending Free and Fair Elections
  
  
• Following a commitment made at the first Summit for Democracy, USAID has worked with more than 30 leading international organizations and elections networks to launch the Global Network for Securing Election Integrity (GNSEI) to promote electoral integrity in the face of critical threats to democracy.  In 2024, GNSEI intends to develop and promote two electoral integrity priorities: one on principles to support democratic electoral reform processes and the other on safeguarding election management bodies’ independence in their interactions with other domestic agencies.
  
  

• In 2023, USAID launched the Defending Democratic Elections Fund, which is helping to pilot and scale up approaches to addressing critical long-standing and emerging electoral integrity issues — including on strengthening information integrity and resilience – particularly during the period in between elections, when resources have often been scarce. This past year, USAID provided nearly $16 million in additional support across 17 countries to tackle issues like campaign finance reform, and barriers to women’s political participation.
  
  
• The State Department contributed $25 million in new funding under the Political Accountability, Inclusivity, and Resiliency Support mechanism to promote political competition by building stronger connections between political parties and citizens.  
  
  

At the third Summit for Democracy, the United States reiterated and expanded upon its commitment to bolstering democratic resilience and advancing human rights at home and abroad.  Specifically, the U.S. delegation announced several new commitments and initiatives to further progress in the years ahead: 

• On March 18, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Poland signed the Joint Statement on Efforts to Counter the Proliferation and Misuse of Commercial Spyware, which was launched by an initial group of 11 like-minded countries at the second Summit for Democracy, expanding the coalition of countries committed to implementing robust guardrails against misuse of commercial spyware. The Joint Statement affirms the threat posed by the misuse of commercial spyware and countries commit to working within their domestic systems to establish robust guardrails to counter the proliferation and misuse of this sophisticated surveillance technology.
  
  
• The Biden-Harris Administration aims to provide financial support, working with Congress and subject to appropriated funds, to committed partners like the Platform for the Engagement of Civil Society, to coordinate the ongoing work of the Summit, including future convenings, and to build networks among the existing democratic renewal architecture.
  
  

• The United States, led by USAID, will convene a meeting to galvanize momentum for the next Summit gathering and to show our continued commitment to democratic renewal around the world on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly session in September 2024. 
  
  

• On March 17, USAID launched the Advancing Digital Democracy (ADD) Academy, building upon the ADD initiative announced at the second Summit for Democracy.  In partnership with multinational technology firms, the ADD Academy will offer essential skills training in cybersecurity, data privacy, cloud computing, and responsible AI, among other topics.   In the initial phase, ADD Academy intends to work with technology partners Cloudflare, Google, and Microsoft. 
  
  
• On March 18, the State Department released U.S. Guidance for Online Platforms on Protecting Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) Online, which highlights best practices online platforms can take to prevent, mitigate, and provide remedy for actions targeting HRDs online, building on joint guidance recently released by the U.S. and the EU through the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council.
  
  

• Through the Global Partnership for Action on Gender-Based Online Harassment and Abuse, which was announced during the first Summit, the United States and UK are developing a response framework for coordinated, evidence-informed action to prevent, disrupt, and reduce the spread of targeted online campaigns against women political and public figures and human rights defenders, which will be informed through a first-of-its-kind global conference on countering gendered disinformation held in Kenya on March 25-27, 2024. Complementing the goals of this framework, in January 2024 the State Department announced a new Global Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV) Rapid Response Fund for women politicians, political candidates, and civil society leaders who have experienced extreme forms and/or threats of TFGBV and need urgent access to flexible resources to meet their immediate needs.   
  
  

• On March 20, the United States released its second National Action Plan on Responsible Business Conduct, which outlines efforts to expand U.S. government guidance to and coordination with external stakeholders on responsible business conduct, strengthen federal procurement processes related to human rights, and promote access to remedy for those harmed by irresponsible business conduct.
  
  

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NoNotTheMindProbe posted:

Since the 1970's the oceans have absorbed 14,000,000,000 Hiroshima sized bombs worth of energy. 500,000,000 of those bombs were absorbed in 2023 alone. Another 500,000,000 bombs worth of energy will be pumped into the oceans this year. Not war related, just thought it was a cool fact.

FuzzySlippers posted:

I wonder what China would do if the US goes mad dog and nukes Russia for whatever crazy reason. The US can’t hold back many nukes especially with how many are likely to be ineffective. So if you’re China do you just let the Russian counter attack do its thing or also get in your punches to make sure the US can’t decide you’re next at some later time.

definitely some US subs will stay cold for counter attacks but it wouldn’t surprise me if China tracks them all so they might be able to reasonably expect to prevent any counterattacks. The environmental situation would already be proper hosed so why not a couple more megatons for the road.

also maybe dprk settles some old scores by lobbing a nuke at Japan in the confusion.

TheBuilder posted:

do you enjoy pointless mental exercises

Honky Mao posted:

The US plan is to win with the first strike so

Ardennes posted:

Yeah, how do you win a first strike against China/NK/Russia especially if China and Russia have a bunch of SLBM missiles (the Russians as many as the Americans), a bunch of mobile ground launchers (in all 3 cases), and Moscow has got its own ABM shield? Not to mention getting into fancier tech?

Hatebag posted:

yeah presumably russia/china have nukes on their hypersonic* missiles as well


* - latest fad

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

Ardennes posted:

They would be probably be more for tactical nuclear use but yeah they are there too. The fact that the US asked both Russia and China for arms control talks "without preconditions" says a lot and the fact the Russians rejected them says plenty as well.

Hatebag posted:

* - latest fad

JAY ZERO SUM GAME posted:

why would China bother with nukes

they would just randomly shut down infrastructure with cyber attacks. they wouldn’t be 100% successful, but they don’t have to be

no explosion, no easy attributable source without a long technical explanation that could be dismissed or argued over, with abundant finger pointing domestically and public anger at government for not fixing broken infrastructure. infrastructure repairs have been shown to be slow and expensive, with limited resources to be able to handle transformer repairs or major water works.

all of this perpetrated on a populace that is in general distrusting of one another, largely unwilling to pursue collective action, and prone to individual violence with a massive amounts of firearms

it would be chaos, with not a single shot fired (by China at least)

NoNotTheMindProbe posted:

Since the 1970's the oceans have absorbed 14,000,000,000 Hiroshima sized bombs worth of energy. 500,000,000 of those bombs were absorbed in 2023 alone. Another 500,000,000 bombs worth of energy will be pumped into the oceans this year. Not war related, just thought it was a cool fact.

JAY ZERO SUM GAME posted:

why would China bother with nukes

they would just randomly shut down infrastructure with cyber attacks. they wouldn’t be 100% successful, but they don’t have to be

no explosion, no easy attributable source without a long technical explanation that could be dismissed or argued over, with abundant finger pointing domestically and public anger at government for not fixing broken infrastructure. infrastructure repairs have been shown to be slow and expensive, with limited resources to be able to handle transformer repairs or major water works.

all of this perpetrated on a populace that is in general distrusting of one another, largely unwilling to pursue collective action, and prone to individual violence with a massive amounts of firearms

it would be chaos, with not a single shot fired (by China at least)

Google Translate posted:

Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan: "If we do not hand over the 4 villages that Azerbaijan wants in the Tavush region, Turkey will attack from Armavir and Azerbaijan will attack from Eskipara. We have no other choice."

Sancho Banana posted:

Sancho Banana posted:

https://twitter.com/ConflictTR/status/1769978083879068113?t=WmKcnCSvsC6T0R5wPWrlAw&s=19

Sancho Banana posted:

Is a turkish invasion a serious contingency? I think he knows Armenia would be totally outmatched against the Azeris, but doesn't want to look like a coward for handing over territory so easily, so he's pretending like Turkey would get in on a war to play up the threat even further.

Everything sucks.

Sancho Banana posted:

Is a turkish invasion a serious contingency? I think he knows Armenia would be totally outmatched against the Azeris, but doesn't want to look like a coward for handing over territory so easily, so he's pretending like Turkey would get in on a war to play up the threat even further.

Everything sucks.

Megamissen posted:

the board was stacked hard against them from the start but their recent diplomatic moves have not made thing easier for armenia

just a kinda sad situation

dead gay comedy forums posted:

So what was the plan there? Neoliberal super gambit?

dead gay comedy forums posted:

So what was the plan there? Neoliberal super gambit?

Regarde Aduck posted:

not online enough, thinks most people still have humanity, takes people at their word

Even Putin didn't seem aware of just how alien the west's elite have become

Like imagine talking face to face with someone like Ursula von der Leyen and not recognizing you were in the presence of a demon

Sancho Banana posted:

Is a turkish invasion a serious contingency? I think he knows Armenia would be totally outmatched against the Azeris, but doesn't want to look like a coward for handing over territory so easily, so he's pretending like Turkey would get in on a war to play up the threat even further.

Everything sucks.

dead gay comedy forums posted:

So what was the plan there? Neoliberal super gambit?

Danann posted:

Pashinyan gets a big house and permanent employment in the United States where he can make speeches about the evil rashists on the corpses of his supposed countrymen.

Danann posted:

Pashinyan gets a big house and permanent employment in the United States where he can make speeches about the evil rashists on the corpses of his supposed countrymen.

Livo posted:

Putting on my "crackpot tin foil & utterly insane techno thriller hat" for a moment about the discussion about nuclear war...

If China really, really wanted to use nuclear weapons in a first strike capacity (I think the CCP policy is officially "No first use of nukes" from memory, but indulge me) and for some bizarre reason, felt they had absolutely, no other choice but to use nukes in order to take Taiwan with no other countries interfering (they don't need nukes to physically land troops on Taiwan, I know), wouldn't they do a public demonstration against non nuclear US allies, to avoid a proper nuclear exchange? Something like set off a few nukes 30km above Japanese or Australian major cities for example? High enough for the general public to visibly see but not get badly hurt*, as there would be relatively little fallout at that altitude. There'd be mass panic and strong political demands in those countries to immediately accede to Chinese plans. Likewise the US public & government would be panicing over the risk of nuclear weapons landing on their own home soil, so they probably wouldn't give two shits about helping Taiwan, or retaliating for Japan/Australia: who cares what happens in non-American countries, only the US really counts, right?

The US probably won't retaliate with its own immediate nuclear strike for non-US targets, especially if they see only two or three nukes heading for non-nuclear armed countries. Also very unlikely if the CCP promptly contact them straight after launch with a "This is a very high altitude airburst warning only, no US cities or bases are targeted now, but they will be next, if you stand in our way by supporting or giving assistance to Taiwan or Taiwanese allies" message, followed by an immediate international broadcast of "Next time, we'll directly nuke the major cities & bases of anyone, including the US mainland itself, if you militarily help Taiwan. Leave them & us alone or face nuclear war!" I don't think the US government or people would give two shits about responding in kind to an "nuclear attack" on non-US countries, especially with no real casualties to speak of.

What could America even do in response? Have a single high altitude airburst from a stealth bomber over Beijing saying "Two can play at that game, we'll support Taiwan militarily but with no nukes, if you don't want a nuclear response, call off the invasion or failing that, stick to conventional weapons only, no WMDs." Not bloody likely! Destroy the Three Gorges Dam with conventional weapons? No-one was directly hurt apart from a nasty sun-burn, and this didn't even target US citizens, why help non-Americans just to risk nuclear war? Besides, Three Georges Dam bursting will definitely kill tens of thousands and the Chinese will absolutely respond in kind. Better just leave Taiwan to fend for itself then!



* Flash blindness, possible higher cancer risk, mass panic & accidents not withstanding, of course