News has leaked that U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) uses China’s APSTAR-7 satellite for transmitting some of its communications, which means some American military communications are passing through Chinese satellites. There are probably two reasons for this. In the first place, the U.S. military is a massive bandwidth user. The various …
Chinese advances on the cultural and informational fronts have not gone unnoticed in Washington. While U.S. international broadcasting continues to struggle with budget cuts, Chinese TV (CCTV) this year launched itself on the Washington scene with sparkling new office facilities close to Capitol Hill, and the Chinese news agency Xinhua …
Regulating the Internet is something Americans have resisted here at home. Now that fight is going global. The United Nations—of course—has an agency that oversees international telecommunications. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) was founded in 1865, when the telegraph was its main concern. Now it’s trying to expand its influence …
The recent layoff of Voice of America (VOA) employees in Russia comes at a time when U.S. international broadcasting is also losing ground to bureaucratic overkill. Despite a continually expanding budget, many mission-critical broadcasting services are being cut, personnel are being let go, and broadcasters are being required to do …
By now most people are familiar with the ongoing debate about how far government should be able to go in monitoring Internet communications. Such was the topic of a recent discussion at the Voice of America building in Washington, D.C. Judging by the remarks of the event’s panelists, especially those …
