November 05 2024

FLASH…MIDNIGHT VOTE IN DIXVILLE NOTCH, NH A 3-3 TIE…
1. Leadership Crisis Overshadows Election: Confidence in U.S. Institutions at Historic Lows
2. U.S. Apartment Vacancy Rates Stabilize, Amid High Demand
3. Hitachi Warns of Looming Transformer Shortage Amid Global Infrastructure Push
4. Banned TSMC Tech Found in Chinese AI Chips
5. Iran Threatens 'Crushing Response' to Israel
November 5, 1872: Susan B. Anthony casts a vote, prompting arrest

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FLASH…MIDNIGHT VOTE IN DIXVILLE NOTCH, NH A 3-3 TIE…

The tally — the first result of this election — was announced 12 minutes after midnight. In a hamlet where 66.67 percent of the registered voters are Republicans (the other two are independents) and where Nikki Haley swept the primary with all six votes, the general election ended in a tie: three votes for Kamala Harris, and three for Donald J. Trump.

Article Source: NYT

1. Leadership Crisis Overshadows Election: Confidence in U.S. Institutions at Historic Lows

The biggest single crisis facing the United States on the eve of the election does not come from Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. It does not come from our enemies abroad. It does not come from our dissensions at home. It does not come from unfunded entitlement commitments. It does not come from climate change. Our greatest and most dangerous crisis is the decay of effective leadership at all levels of our national life, something that makes both our foreign and domestic problems, serious as they are, significantly more daunting than they should be. Average confidence in institutions ranging from higher education to organized religion rests at historic lows, with fewer than 30% of respondents telling Gallup pollsters that they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in major American institutions. Only small business, the military, and the police inspire majorities of the public with a high degree of confidence; less than a fifth of Americans express “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers, big business, television news, and Congress.  Much of the country’s political and intellectual establishment responds defensively to numbers like this, blaming falling confidence on the corrosive effects of social media or the general backwardness and racism of the American public. The East German communist hacks Bertolt Brecht satirized also blamed their failings on the shortcomings of the masses: “The people have lost the confidence of the government and can only regain it through redoubled work.” While social media is problematic, and not every citizen of the United States is a model of enlightened cosmopolitanism, America’s core problem today is not that the nation is unworthy of the elites who struggle to lead it.

Article Source: Walter Russell Mead, Tablet

2. U.S. Apartment Vacancy Rates Stabilize, Amid High Demand

The biggest apartment construction boom in four decades flooded the market with new supply over the past two years. Apartment owners had to contend with a surge in empty units. That is starting to change. The vacancy rate, or the share of apartment units that are empty, stopped rising for the first time in three years last quarter, as demand for apartments rose to its highest levels since 2021, according to CoStar. The more than 1.2 million new apartment units that were built during the past two years are filling up. If that demand is sustained, if the economy remains strong and if housing prices remain near record highs, landlords likely will have more pricing power starting sometime next year. That could allow building owners to raise rents more than they have recently. Some 672,000 new apartment units will have been completed by the end of this year, but only about half that number is expected in 2025, and even fewer in 2026, CoStar said.

Article Source: WSJ

3. Hitachi Warns of Looming Transformer Shortage Amid Global Infrastructure Push

The world’s largest producer of transformers has warned its industry is “overwhelmed” and unable to meet exploding demand for grid equipment, threatening delays to vital infrastructure projects that would boost the share of renewable energy across the globe. Andreas Schierenbeck, chief executive of Hitachi Energy, a rapidly growing division at the heart of Japan’s third-most valuable public company, said transformer manufacturers would be hard-pressed to boost output quickly enough to meet demand to upgrade grids, with supplies strained by the growing needs of data centres used for generative artificial intelligence.

Article Source: FT

4. Banned TSMC Tech Found in Chinese AI Chips

Some of the world’s most-guarded semiconductor technology has ended up in China’s Huawei Technologies’ new artificial-intelligence chips, showing the limits of the U.S.’s broad attempts to thwart such hardware linkups. Core circuitry produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. was found in Huawei’s Ascend 910B chips, according to people familiar with the matter and TechInsights, a Canada-based research firm that conducts product teardowns which have hit Washington’s radar before.  The Huawei AI chip is one of China’s top homegrown alternatives to Nvidia’s high-end offerings that remain off-limits to buyers in China. Some of the technology originates from TSMC, the world’s largest contract-chip manufacturer, whose market capitalization of roughly $1 trillion exceeds that of Tesla and Walmart.  The episode underscores the tall task of stifling China’s tech supply chain, despite a thicket of U.S. export controls and sanctions. Huawei, which has been bolstered by billions of dollars in state support in recent years, has become one of China’s tech national champions and sits at the forefront of the country’s AI ambitions. Core to the Biden administration’s strategy is impeding China’s efforts in AI, which carry national-security implications because of their potential military applications. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security said it remained committed to “ensuring compliance” for the China-related export controls with advanced chips and noted it was aware of recent reports of potential violations.  The TSMC circuitry in question should be inaccessible to Huawei, which has faced U.S. sanctions since September 2020 over national-security concerns.

Article Source: WSJ

5.   Iran Threatens 'Crushing Response' to Israel

A. Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday threatened “a crushing response” to Israeli strikes on his country, as the Pentagon said it would deploy additional resources to the region in the coming months. Tehran initially appeared to play down the damage caused by Israeli strikes inside Iran late last month, raising hopes that it might de-escalate the situation rather than pursue a new cycle of retaliation. But in recent days, Iranian officials have changed their tone. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has the authority as commander in chief to order strikes on Israel. In a statement posted online, he said on Saturday that Israel and the United States would “definitely receive a crushing response” for actions against Iran.  

B. Another factor in Iran’s response is the U.S. election, the Iranian official said. Iran doesn’t want to influence the U.S. election with its attack, the official said, adding the response would come after Tuesday’s voting but before a new president is inaugurated in January. Iran prefers Kamala Harris over Donald Trump, according to U.S. intelligence agencies.

November 5, 1872: Susan B. Anthony casts a vote, prompting arrest

On November 5, 1872, 48 years before American women gain the right to vote with the 19th Amendment, pioneering women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony illegally attempts to cast a vote in the presidential election. Anthony, who had devoted five decades of her life to women’s suffrage, gets arrested two weeks later for the shenanigan—and is tried and convicted the following year.

Sources

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/05/us/politics/dixville-notch-election-vote-results.html

2. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/america-crisis-leadership-walter-russell-mead

3. https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/americas-empty-apartments-are-finally-starting-to-fill-up-32011d11?st=csFWdw&reflink=article_copyURL_share

4. https://on.ft.com/48wWntg

5. https://www.wsj.com/tech/mystery-surrounds-discovery-of-tsmc-tech-inside-huawei-ai-chips-7d922a01?st=SABJck&reflink=article_copyURL_share

6. A https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/02/world/middleeast/israel-lebanon-iran-hezbollah.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
B https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-tells-region-strong-and-complex-attack-coming-on-israel-2804179f?mod=middle-east_news_article_pos4