https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/feedPJ Media is a leading news site covering culture, politics, faith, homeland security, and more. Our reporters and columnists provide original, in-depth analysis from a variety of perspectives.en-usSun, 08 Mar 2026 06:20:23 -0400<![CDATA[In the world of slogans, all choices are simple, but in reality, all choices are complicated. Take the anticipated attack on Gaza. It&#8217;s not clear that delaying the Gaza ground offensive benefits the besieged. Evidence from history, including modern sieges in the Balkans, Ukraine, Syria, and Iraq, suggests that time torments the trapped city. &#8220;These are battles of will, as it were, between a besieging army and a population cut off from medical supplies, food or arms&#8230; extreme social isolation, boredom, stress, anxiety, lack of mobility&#8221; can inflict unbearable stress on large groups of people.]]>Thu, 26 Oct 2023 06:39:38 -0400<![CDATA[Richard Fernandez]]><![CDATA[Hamas]]><![CDATA[Israel]]>https://pjmedia.com/richard-fernandez/2023/10/26/belmont-club-a-bellyful-of-war-n1737745<![CDATA[A man with an Israeli flag was arrested for his own safety at a pro-Palestinian rally in Sydney. &#8220;He was arrested to prevent a breach of the peace for his safety, he was removed and released,&#8221; NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Tony Cooke said. He added that the man &#8220;was able to collect his flag from Sydney City Command.&#8221;]]>Tue, 10 Oct 2023 07:29:14 -0400<![CDATA[Richard Fernandez]]><![CDATA[Israel]]>https://pjmedia.com/richard-fernandez/2023/10/10/the-forever-war-2-n1733704<![CDATA[When Gavin Newsom chose Laphonza Butler to replace Dianne Feinstein as Senator for California, he may have selected less as a person than a set of intersecting categories. He had already pledged to name a black woman long before he knew who the individual was. Potential replacements mentioned included figures like Oprah Winfrey, Secretary of State Shirley Weber, and Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly Mitchell. Who was less important than what. When the decision was finally made, the Office of the Governor of California tweeted: &#8220;Butler will make history as the first Black lesbian to openly serve in Congress,&#8221; not as herself but as a symbol.]]>Wed, 04 Oct 2023 04:00:51 -0400<![CDATA[Richard Fernandez]]>https://pjmedia.com/richard-fernandez/2023/10/04/life-as-a-rubber-stamp-n1731742<![CDATA[More foreign influence-peddling is alleged to be occurring in Washington, D.C. Anne Applebaum writes, &#8220;three Iran experts who have worked closely with Robert Malley, the Biden administration’s special envoy on Iran, were members of an influence network formed and guided by Tehran.&#8221; The Atlantic says:]]>Fri, 29 Sep 2023 22:13:19 -0400<![CDATA[Richard Fernandez]]><![CDATA[Corruption]]>https://pjmedia.com/richard-fernandez/2023/09/29/the-city-under-the-capitol-n1730865<![CDATA[Why is Rome still on our minds? Kelsey Lewis Vincent asks. Because Rome was an archetype, a template of traditional imperium before the American fried chicken empire model rivaled it. For two thousand years it dominated the imagination. Rome is why we watched &#8220;The Gladiator.&#8221;]]>Sat, 09 Sep 2023 22:47:04 -0400<![CDATA[Richard Fernandez]]><![CDATA[USA]]>https://pjmedia.com/richard-fernandez/2023/09/09/julius-caesar-versus-harlan-sanders-n1725833<![CDATA[It turns out that masks work for some people, but as a factor in the epidemiological model, it has little explanatory power. A doctor can prescribe a mask for a patient, but a bureaucrat should not for a population.]]>Thu, 07 Sep 2023 00:00:44 -0400<![CDATA[Richard Fernandez]]><![CDATA[COVID-19]]>https://pjmedia.com/richard-fernandez/2023/09/07/navigating-terra-incognita-n1725018<![CDATA[When economic, social, health and environmental imperatives jostle for top spot in virtue, how can they be ranked? Some have recently advocated the return of face-mask mandates. &#8220;We can certainly stop it making as many mutations by stopping it infecting as many people &#8211; if we block its transmission, if we wear a mask, if we get vaccinated, if we do social distancing,&#8221; a health expert said. But is it without cost? &#8220;Buy a mask and let his family go hungry, or buy food and go out into the crowded city without one – that is the stark choice facing Hayatullah Khan, an Afghan labourer whose daily earnings have fallen below $1.50 during the coronavirus pandemic,&#8221; one journalist observed about poor countries. Yet for some there are no resource conflicts: tax the billionaires and give Hayatullah Khan a free mask, free food, or, preferably, both. Welcome to Woke economics, where payments are made in intentions and virtue pays for everything.]]>Mon, 28 Aug 2023 19:05:43 -0400<![CDATA[Richard Fernandez]]><![CDATA[Woke]]>https://pjmedia.com/richard-fernandez/2023/08/28/the-woke-bazaar-n1722539<![CDATA[Countries are struggling with the problem of controlling innovation, in particular artificial intelligence. &#8220;Can States Learn to Govern Artificial Intelligence—Before It’s Too Late?&#8221; Foreign Affairs asks. &#8220;If governments are serious about regulating AI, they must work with technology companies to do so—and without them, effective AI governance will not stand a chance,&#8221; write Ian Bremmer and Mustafa Suleyman. Bremmer is a political scientist, while Suleyman is co-founder and former head of applied AI at DeepMind, an artificial intelligence company acquired by Google and now owned by Alphabet.]]>Sat, 19 Aug 2023 06:34:42 -0400<![CDATA[Richard Fernandez]]><![CDATA[AI]]><![CDATA[Conservatism]]>https://pjmedia.com/richard-fernandez/2023/08/19/runaway-ai-train-n1719991<![CDATA[During the 20th century, human institutions operated mostly within a set of givens. Surrounded by what, in comparison to the 21st, was a relatively low level of technology, political leaders acted out their ambitions on a stage little changed in many respects from ancient times. But we are entering the &#8216;golden age of technology&#8217;, according to the NYT, and that calculus has changed.  Jennifer Doudna known primarily for her work on Crispr, the gene-editing Swiss Army knife that has been called “a word processor” for the human genome says &#8230; &#8220;&#8216;I think we’re at an extraordinary time of accelerating discoveries.'&#8221; Paradoxically the public mood is pessimistic, not eagerly anticipatory. The NYT puts it down to bad vibes. &#8220;The pandemic has exhausted many Americans of medicine, and it has become common to process the last few years as a saga of defeat and failure.&#8221; Why is that?]]>Fri, 04 Aug 2023 21:39:13 -0400<![CDATA[Richard Fernandez]]><![CDATA[Technology]]>https://pjmedia.com/richard-fernandez/2023/08/04/politicians-and-technological-complexity-n1716413<![CDATA[Political polarization in the U.S. is a fact. &#8220;According to the Pew Research Center, members of both parties who have unfavorable opinions of the opposing party have doubled since 1994, while those who have very unfavorable opinions of the opposing party are at record highs as of 2023 &#8230; American Facebook users on the political right and political left shared almost no common interests.&#8221;]]>Mon, 17 Jul 2023 22:35:09 -0400<![CDATA[Richard Fernandez]]>https://pjmedia.com/richard-fernandez/2023/07/17/the-last-election-n1711156<![CDATA[&#8220;The only reason a man won Miss Netherlands is because the girls were stupid enough to play along with this charade and hand him the crown,&#8221; said Gina Bontempo, reacting to news that a biological male had won a women&#8217;s beauty contest. This follows news that Monroe Lace, also a biological male, won the Miss San Francisco title. Questions to which everyone knew the answers no longer have definite answers, as this exchange in the US Senate between John Kennedy and Kelley Robinson illustrates.]]>Tue, 11 Jul 2023 21:33:35 -0400<![CDATA[Richard Fernandez]]><![CDATA[transgenderism]]>https://pjmedia.com/richard-fernandez/2023/07/11/our-career-as-gods-n1709888<![CDATA[Meta has decided to launch its own social media app in a direct challenge to Twitter. The WSJ writes: &#8220;Let the battle begin. Facebook parent Meta Platforms on Wednesday announced the launch of Threads, a stand-alone microblogging app that takes direct aim at Twitter as user unrest in that platform has grown since Elon Musk took the company over in October.&#8221;]]>Wed, 05 Jul 2023 22:21:16 -0400<![CDATA[Richard Fernandez]]><![CDATA[Big Tech]]><![CDATA[Facebook]]><![CDATA[Twitter]]>https://pjmedia.com/richard-fernandez/2023/07/05/the-new-information-world-order-n1708533<![CDATA[There are two kinds of problems: those we know how to solve, like preventing hundreds from dying in overloaded people-smuggling boats off the coast of Greece, and those we don&#8217;t, like rescuing people from a sub 13,000 feet below the Atlantic. Willingness is lacking in the former, and technology in the latter. To some extent, the problems are apples and oranges. Solving the first requires basic law enforcement both of immigration policy and ship safety regulations; rescue, if necessary, involves mostly ordinary watercraft. Solving the second needs stuff we don&#8217;t ordinarily have, like sonar, ROVs, and advanced engineering &#8212; or may not have even invented.]]>Thu, 22 Jun 2023 23:17:57 -0400<![CDATA[Richard Fernandez]]>https://pjmedia.com/richard-fernandez/2023/06/22/our-titanic-n1705689<![CDATA[The Times of London expose is reverberating through the Internet.  “It has become increasingly clear that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was involved in the creation, promulgation, and cover-up of the Covid-19 pandemic.” Although the story itself is behind a paywall, enough details are available in the editor&#8217;s tweet to piece together the gist of it.]]>Tue, 13 Jun 2023 22:24:05 -0400<![CDATA[Richard Fernandez]]><![CDATA[COVID Coverup]]>https://pjmedia.com/richard-fernandez/2023/06/13/the-missing-source-of-the-virus-was-a-man-n1703094<![CDATA[Details are lacking, but the widely reported decision of an AI to kill an operator standing in the way of its simulated US Air Force mission is a classic example of &#8220;perverse instantiation.&#8221; The original story went:]]>Sun, 04 Jun 2023 19:19:20 -0400<![CDATA[Richard Fernandez]]><![CDATA[AI]]>https://pjmedia.com/richard-fernandez/2023/06/04/surprised-by-peril-n1700536<![CDATA[The New Criterion looks back on Noam Chomsky&#8217;s intellectual career and shakes its head in disappointment. &#8220;One of the main reasons Noam Chomsky’s political views are taken seriously in universities and the media is because he has an awesome reputation for scientific accomplishment in the field of linguistics. He is among the ten most cited authors in the humanities—trailing only Marx, Lenin, Shakespeare, the Bible, Aristotle, Plato, and Freud—and the only living member of the top ten. Last year The New Yorker called him &#8216;one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century&#8217;.”]]>Mon, 22 May 2023 20:37:21 -0400<![CDATA[Richard Fernandez]]><![CDATA[Communism]]><![CDATA[Conservatism]]>https://pjmedia.com/richard-fernandez/2023/05/22/a-dead-cert-n1697323<![CDATA[Of course ghosts exist.]]>Wed, 19 Apr 2023 21:20:38 -0400<![CDATA[Richard Fernandez]]><![CDATA[AI]]>https://pjmedia.com/richard-fernandez/2023/04/19/on-the-matter-of-ghosts-n1688735<![CDATA[As Russia and Ukraine prepare for spring offensives, this year could prove the war&#8217;s most decisive yet. The weeks preceding an expected military event of this magnitude are often rife with rumor, much of it deliberately spread by the combatants themselves as disinformation. This is hallowed tradition. Following Soviet maskirovka doctrine, the campaign to destroy the German 6th Army at Stalingrad in 1942 was accompanied by misdirection. In those days it was relatively straightforward, consisting of signals deception, false messages, and fake units designed to convince the Germans to put their defenses in the wrong place.]]>Tue, 11 Apr 2023 06:47:27 -0400<![CDATA[Richard Fernandez]]><![CDATA[War in Ukraine]]>https://pjmedia.com/richard-fernandez/2023/04/11/chaos-vs-maskirovka-n1686113<![CDATA[Communism and other state-controlled economies have always wrestled with the problem of &#8220;useless mouths&#8221; If the state feeds, then who shall it feed? The easy answer: only those who work. Some Marxists felt that there was a reciprocal obligation to work. No work, no grub. &#8220;There can be no stronger or more pressing motive to work for the society in which all participate than this unshakable sense of communal service. But where this sense is lacking and physical disability or mental laziness engenders a shirker, then the collective pressure on that shirker, male or female, becomes severe indeed. There is as little tolerance of useless mouths in a communal society as there is in a beehive.&#8221;]]>Tue, 28 Mar 2023 19:49:22 -0400<![CDATA[Richard Fernandez]]><![CDATA[AI]]><![CDATA[Woke]]>https://pjmedia.com/richard-fernandez/2023/03/28/useless-minds-n1682354<![CDATA[Perhaps the reason there are so many &#8220;conspiracy theories&#8221; is because individuals are seeking to explain phenomena that they find difficult to understand or accept. The tide of homelessness, the perceived betrayal of the institutions etc. are like Egyptian pyramids risen suddenly on the plain. Conspiracy requires two essential ingredients to exist: mystery and mistrust. If you see a familiar kind of deer in the woods it doesn&#8217;t set your mind churning. But if you see something you never saw before &#8212; or didn&#8217;t even think possible &#8212; when no existing theory of causation seems to fit, then you get to thinking up new ones.]]>Mon, 20 Mar 2023 19:16:28 -0400<![CDATA[Richard Fernandez]]>https://pjmedia.com/richard-fernandez/2023/03/20/the-age-of-conspiracy-n1680004