New Objectives for CFIUS: Foreign Ownership, Critical Infrastructure, and Communications Interception

Global economic integration creates new risks for national security. Foreign ownership of telecommunications service providers is an area of expanding concern. Foreign ownership could multiply opportunities for espionage by increasing foreign entities\u27 access to U.S. communications and networks as well as increasing the complexity of defenders\u27 tasks. Foreign ownership could make law enforcement communications interception more difficult. Foreign ownership could also increase the ability of a potential opponent to disrupt critical infrastructure and the services the foreign-controlled entities provide. These concerns create interest in improving existing processes for managing the risks associated with foreign ownership--such responsibility principally lies with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States ( CFIUS )--and in developing new methods or authorities to mitigate risk. This Article analyzes how to manage and preserve communications interception capabilities and defend against potential service disruptions or intelligence activities in a period of integrated, global telecommunications enterprises where foreign ownership of, or participation in, national networks, is increasingly routine

New Objectives for CFIUS: Foreign Ownership, Critical Infrastructure, and Communications Interception

Global economic integration creates new risks for national security. Foreign ownership of telecommunications service providers is an area of expanding concern. Foreign ownership could multiply opportunities for espionage by increasing foreign entities\u27 access to U.S. communications and networks as well as increasing the complexity of defenders\u27 tasks. Foreign ownership could make law enforcement communications interception more difficult. Foreign ownership could also increase the ability of a potential opponent to disrupt critical infrastructure and the services the foreign-controlled entities provide. These concerns create interest in improving existing processes for managing the risks associated with foreign ownership--such responsibility principally lies with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States ( CFIUS )--and in developing new methods or authorities to mitigate risk. This Article analyzes how to manage and preserve communications interception capabilities and defend against potential service disruptions or intelligence activities in a period of integrated, global telecommunications enterprises where foreign ownership of, or participation in, national networks, is increasingly routine

Coordinate Confusion in Conformal Cosmology

A straight-forward interpretation of standard Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) cosmologies is that objects move apart due to the expansion of space, and that sufficiently distant galaxies must be receding at velocities exceeding the speed of light. Recently, however, it has been suggested that a simple transformation into conformal coordinates can remove superluminal recession velocities, and hence the concept of the expansion of space should be abandoned. This work demonstrates that such conformal transformations do not eliminate superluminal recession velocities for open or flat matter-only FRLW cosmologies, and all possess superluminal expansion. Hence, the attack on the concept of the expansion of space based on this is poorly founded. This work concludes by emphasizing that the expansion of space is perfectly valid in the general relativistic framework, however, asking the question of whether space really expands is a futile exercise.Comment: 5 pages, accepted for publication in MNRAS Letter

Colorectal Cancer Screening With Sigmoidoscopy: Primary Care Issues

Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of death from cancer in the U.S., behind lung cancer. Numerous medical societies recommend routine screening for colorectal cancer with flexible sigmoidoscopy for people 50 and over. But who will perform the procedure, and who will pay for it? The case of flexible sigmoidoscopy illustrates the economic and practical issues of introducing a screening procedure into primary care practice. This Issue Brief investigates the role of primary care physicians in providing this service as part of routine care, and identifies attitudinal and financial barriers to overcome