In comparison to their counterparts in other industrialized nations, American students are falling behind. The rather sobering results revealed a 13-point decline for U.S. students when compared to the 2018 exam.

In stark contrast, 28 countries and economies managed to either maintain or improve their 2018 math scores, with countries such as Switzerland and Japan leading the way—and leaving the United States in the dust. These considerably more successful nations share a number of common characteristics, including, most notably of all, shorter school closures during the pandemic, as noted in the report.

Obviously concerned by the findings, the Defense Department has called for a new initiative to provide support for education in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). As The Hechinger Report reported, China, the United States’ biggest rival, has eight times the number of college graduates in these disciplines compared to the United States, while Russia, another major foe, has four times the number of engineers. This alarming disparity, noted the Hechinger Report piece, has prompted concerns beyond the realm of education. The United States’ mathematical failings pose a direct threat to its technological supremacy.

Other commentators have gone a step further. Falling math scores, they suggest, should be viewed as a national security threat. They’re right.

Mathematics plays a critical role in various fields such as the physical sciences, technology, business, financial services, and infrastructure. For instance, geometry, algebra, and trigonometry are fundamental parts of architectural design. Moreover, math plays a significant role in medicine, AI, and quantum computing. Math serves as the foundation for virtually all scientific and industrial research and development. Essentially, mathematics can be seen as the underlying operating system that makes the world go round.

Which begs the trillion-dollar question: What can be done?

The math problem is an education problem. To correct the problem, the manner in which math is taught must change—radically and rapidly.

Other countries have different approaches to comprehending, appreciating, and teaching math. Take the aforementioned Russia, for example.

Chris Dooly, a youth mentor and writer, has discussed the concept of “Russian Math.” Although it lacks a concrete definition, he writes, educators and historians generally agree that it revolves around the idea of developing proficiency in mathematics through an understanding of abstract mathematical concepts. Instead of just focusing on rote learning, this type of math is more holistic in nature, factoring in the overall mental development of students. Math instruction is used to enhance children’s intellect and character.

The Russian method emphasizes not only finding the answer to a math problem, but, unlike the approach in the United States, also understanding the very essence of the problem, Mr. Dooly explains. Moreover, the Russian method de-emphasizes standardized testing and instead prioritizes the establishment of a strong mathematical foundation through class discussions and engaging conversations. Tests are important, but actually understanding why math matters and what the answers really mean is considerably more important.

The Russian approach emphasizes the need to foster a comprehensive understanding of mathematics and the process of problem-solving, rather than relying solely on rote memorization. From a young age, students are introduced to mathematics, starting with basic arithmetic and geometry. The curriculum is designed, first and foremost, to foster rigorous problem-solving abilities and cultivate critical thinking skills.

As critics of the U.S. education system have noted, the country’s obsession with standardized testing is geared more toward funding rather than the growth and progress of students. The allocation of federal funding, which is determined at the highest level of government, heavily relies on test scores and graduation rates. Consequently, schools depend on these metrics to secure equal or increased federal funding for the following year. If education, in its purest form, is supposed to enlighten students, then the United States’ approach to teaching math is doing the very opposite.

Other countries—such as the Netherlands, for example, where math scores are exceptional—offer courses that incorporate real-world math and cover topics such as financial algebra and mathematical modeling. In Ireland, where I was educated, the practical application of mathematical concepts to real-life scenarios is a common practice. In truth, across most of Europe, this approach to teaching math is prevalent. By focusing on mathematical concepts that are both relevant and relatable, students get a firmer grasp of what is being taught, simply because they can apply the lessons to their own lives.

The United States must move beyond its unhealthy obsession with rote learning, which is nothing more than a superficial understanding of a topic. It must focus on helping American children to develop an understanding, appreciation, and love for math. This move is necessary. In many ways, the country’s future depends on it.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Preparedness, the aptly titled team, will be overseen by Aleksander Madry, a machine-learning expert and Massachusetts Institute of Technology-affiliated researcher. Mr. Madry and his team will focus on various threats, most notably those of “chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear” variety. These might seem like far-fetched threats—but they really shouldn’t.

As the United Nations reported earlier this year, the risk of countries turning to nuclear weapons is at its highest point since the Cold War. This report was published before the horrific events that occurred in Israel on Oct. 7. A close ally of Vladimir Putin’s, Nikolai Patrushev, recently suggested that the “destructive” policies of “the United States and its allies were increasing the risk that nuclear, chemical or biological weapons would be used,” according to Reuters.

Merge AI with the above weapons, particularly nuclear weapons, cautions Zachary Kallenborn, a research affiliate with the Unconventional Weapons and Technology Division of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), and you have a recipe for unmitigated disaster.

Mr. Kallenborn has sounded the alarm, repeatedly and unapologetically, on the unholy alliance between AI and nuclear weapons. Not one to mince words, the researcher warned, “If artificial intelligences controlled nuclear weapons, all of us could be dead.”

He isn’t exaggerating. Exactly 40 years ago, as Mr. Kallenborn, a policy fellow at the Schar School of Policy and Government, described, Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet Air Defense Forces lieutenant colonel, was busy monitoring his country’s nuclear warning systems. All of a sudden, according to Mr. Kallenborn, “the computer concluded with the highest confidence that the United States had launched a nuclear war.” Mr. Petrov, however, was skeptical, largely because he didn’t trust the current detection system. Moreover, the radar system lacked corroborative evidence.

Thankfully, Mr. Petrov concluded that the message was a false positive and opted against taking action. Spoiler alert: The computer was completely wrong, and the Russian was completely right.

“But,” noted Mr. Kallenborn, a national security consultant, “if Petrov had been a machine, programmed to respond automatically when confidence was sufficiently high, that error would have started a nuclear war.”

Furthermore, he suggested, there’s absolutely “no guarantee” that certain countries “won’t put AI in charge of nuclear launches,” because international law “doesn’t specify that there should always be a ‘Petrov’ guarding the button.”

“That’s something that should change, soon,” Mr. Kallenborn said.

He told me that AI is already reshaping the future of warfare.

Artificial intelligence, according to Mr. Kallenborn, “can help militaries quickly and more effectively process vast amounts of data generated by the battlefield; make the defense industrial base more effective and efficient at producing weapons at scale, and may be able to improve weapons targeting and decision-making.”

Take China, arguably the biggest threat to the United States, for example, and its AI-powered military applications. According to a report out of Georgetown University, in the not-so-distant future, Beijing may use AI not just to assist during wartime but to actually oversee all acts of warfare.

This should concern all readers.

“If the launch of nuclear weapons is delegated to an autonomous system,” Mr. Kallenborn fears that they “could be launched in error, leading to an accidental nuclear war.”

“Adding AI into nuclear command and control,” he said, “may also lead to misleading or bad information.”

He’s right. AI depends on data, and sometimes data are wildly inaccurate.

Although there isn’t one particular country that keeps Mr. Kallenborn awake at night, he’s worried by “the possibility of Russian President Vladimir Putin using small nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict.” Even limited nuclear usage “would be quite bad over the long-term” because “the nuclear taboo” would be removed, thus “encouraging other states to be more cavalier with nuclear weapons usage.”

“Nuclear weapons,” according to Mr. Kallenborn, are the “biggest threat to humanity.”

“They are the only weapon in existence that can cause enough harm to truly cause human extinction,” he said.

As mentioned earlier, throwing AI into the nuclear mix appears to increase the risk of mass extinction. The warnings of Mr. Kallenborn, a well-respected researcher who has dedicated years of his life to researching the evolution of nuclear warfare, carry a great deal of credibility.

A resident of the Tenderloin, a drug-infested neighborhood overrun with crime, Stallcup describes himself as a witness to a “zombie apocalypse” and “fentanyl genocide.” Every morning, he must navigate his way through sidewalks littered with needles, human waste, and even dead bodies. He describes “Frisco” as “a fourth world country within a first world country.”

“Living in San Francisco has been a wild ride,” Stallcup tells me. He has “personally witnessed the city go from being a cultural capital to the technological capital to the fentanyl capital. After the massive tech exodus, led by Elon Musk, San Francisco lost billions in tax revenue.”

According to Stallcup, “Local leaders who gained an appetite from tech tax money soon found themselves desperate to quench their newfound appetite for money. The only other way for them to achieve this was to enable the homeless-industrial complex by allowing fentanyl to plague our community and corrupt various nonprofits and organizations.”

For Stallcup, his mornings and nights begin and end in an eerily similar manner: opening and closing his eyes to the sounds of people screaming for their lives and ambulances speeding by, sirens blaring.

“Sleep,” he says, “is very difficult to come by, especially living in the Tenderloin, where my apartment building has been broken into multiple times.”

“It’s traumatic, to say the least, a fight for survival,” he adds. Quite literally, a fight for survival. On more than one occasion, Stallcup has had to fight off burglars with his own bare hands.

Stallcup’s apartment building is surrounded by bodies (dead and barely alive), inordinate amounts of litter, tents, and an array of drug-related accouterments.

“Every morning, I go out and count the bodies,” he says, “sometimes giving them a small love tap just to see if they are alive.”

It’s “Groundhog Day” meets “The Road.” Early in the morning, white vans come by his place and stack the bodies on multiple layers of metallic trays. Welcome to modern-day America.

“This humanitarian crisis,” says Stallcup, “is a fentanyl genocide.”

He’s right. It is. In San Francisco, a person dies of a fentanyl overdose every 10 hours.

“Theft, rape, and murder is rampant,” Stallcup tells me, “with mom-and-pop shops under attack every day.” Grocery stores are ransacked dry. Cars and apartments are broken into regularly.

Who’s to blame? I ask.

“I truly believe that I am witnessing the collapse of the Western civilization,” he replies, and he believes that it’s because of corruption and people “who profit from the chaos.”

Stallcup is particularly critical of the city’s mayor, London Breed. And for good reason. Her leadership skills have been seen as, for lack of a better word, anemic.

Stallcup isn’t the only disillusioned San Franciscan. As I write this, a number of major retail stores, including the likes of Whole Foods, Old Navy, and Nordstrom, are shutting up shop and moving elsewhere. In fact, since 2019, according to a recent San Francisco Standard report, nearly 50 percent of the stores in the city’s downtown shopping district have closed.

Who can blame them?

According to Fox News, even the city’s richest neighborhoods are being plagued by “smash and grabs, robberies, burglaries, and open-air drug use.” As Tracy McCray, San Francisco Police Officers Association president, noted, “The problems in the Tenderloin have escaped the Tenderloin.”

They most certainly have. To compound matters, gangs of youths, baseball bats in hand, are reportedly tormenting mothers and nannies, mugging them on their daily school run.

Last month, in Noe Valley, once a “charming, family-friendly neighborhood,” 11 phone robberies occurred. These robberies, according to the Telegraph, “are believed to have been carried out by the same gang who are targeting women picking up children from school.”

One woman was allegedly assaulted with a baseball bat, while another woman was punched in the face.

It’s hard to believe that, less than two years ago, San Francisco was named the 15th safest city in the world—yes, 15th. Today, as is clear to see, the city has become increasingly unsafe for all citizens. Viewed as a “liberal city,” San Francisco is, first and foremost, a U.S. city. Its demise should sadden all readers, regardless of their politics.

Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.

“Fringe forces of the far left,” he noted, “are plotting to take away our freedom to be stuck in traffic jams, to crawl along clogged ring roads and trawl the streets in search of a parking spot.”

The name of this “chilling global movement?” he asked, sarcastically and somewhat contemptuously: The “15-minute city.”

Wainwright believes that these cities are simply part of a “mundane planning theory.” He’s wrong.

A few days after Wainwright’s piece was published, three academics called 15-minute cities (FMCs) “the hottest conspiracy theory of 2023.” In a truly elitist manner, they poked fun at those who dared to question the motive behind FMCs.

One needn’t be a card-carrying QAnon member to have fears over these Trojan-like creations. Before going any further, it’s important to get our definitions in order. As the political scientist Kelly M. Greenhill has noted, not all conspiracy theories are wacky, and not all conspiracy theories are wrong. Take the Watergate conspiracy theory, for instance, or the fact that Edith Wilson made most of the executive decisions after her husband, President Woodrow Wilson, suffered a stroke.

Quite often conspiracy theories turn out to be accurate.

Also known as smart cities, FMCs are places where everything imaginable, from your place of work to your favorite pizzeria, is accessible either by foot or bike (not by car, though; they’ll be verboten) in 15 minutes or less. What’s so bad about this?

On first inspection, very little. We are, after all, creatures of comfort. We live in a world where the mantra “too long, didn’t read (TL;DR)” now reigns supreme. We crave convenience; we crave expediency. However, expediency isn’t always a good thing; sometimes it’s downright dangerous. This is especially true when people, either consciously or otherwise, trade their freedom for ease of access to certain services.

While FMCs may make it easier for citizens to get from A to B, these creations will also make it easier for those in power to spy on us, harvest our data, and enable Big Brother to become Bigger Brother.

As I write this, FMCs are being actively championed by the World Economic Forum (WEF), the group behind the “Great Reset” and the idea of owning nothing, having absolutely no privacy, and being very happy. This fact alone should concern all readers.

Want to discuss the WEF?

To many, I’m sure FMCs sound incredibly cool. But don’t be fooled by the name. FMCs are actually “smart cities.” As I’ve noted elsewhere, the word “smart” is really just a synonym for surveillance. These ultra-modern, tech-saturated monstrosities use hundreds of thousands of sensors to vacuum up copious amounts of personal data. FMC policies are currently being rolled out in cities such as Barcelona, Spain; Bogotá, Colombia; Melbourne, Australia; Paris; and the dystopian wasteland known as Portland, Oregon. What do these cities have in common? Surveillance technology.

Between now and 2040, cities all across the United States (and beyond) are predicted to spend trillions of dollars on the installation of additional cameras and biometric sensors. Sure, surveillance is bad now. But, as Randy Bachman famously hollered, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

By 2050, more than two-thirds of the world’s population will live in closely surveilled urban centers, like glorified rats in cramped cages. Contrary to popular belief, we no longer live in a panoptic society. When Jeremy Bentham, the English philosopher and social theorist, put forward the idea of this prison system, there was no internet. In truth, there weren’t even cars. We now live in a post-panoptic world—a digital panopticon, if you will—with huge social media platforms collecting personal user data before selling it to the highest bidder.

The companies running these platforms often work closely with government officials, identifying supposed sinners and punishing them in the swiftest of manners. As the writer Kylie Lynch has noted, these companies know absolutely everything about you; they have instant access to your browser history, your activity online, and now, rather worryingly, even your biometrics. Not surprisingly, these Big Tech companies will have a big impact on the FMCs of the future by providing the underlying digital infrastructure needed to monitor us and ensure mass compliance.

FMCs are wolves in sheep’s clothing. Don’t believe the countless stories telling you otherwise. It has become common for elitist, mainstream media outlets to poke fun at those who dare to question the “we have your best interests at heart” narratives. We’ve been burned too many times before.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Which begs the question: where was your smartphone made? Probably in China. This is problematic on so many levels.

Five of the 10 most popular phone brands in the world are Chinese: Huawei, Lenovo, LG, Oppo, and Xiaomi. Chinese phones are synonymous with affordability. They are also synonymous with spying.

For example, the cameras on phones manufactured by Vivo, a Chinese multinational technology company headquartered in Guangdong, a coastal province located in southeast China, have secretly recorded users’ activities and stolen their data. In addition to Vivo, other phone makers—like Oppo, Xiaomi, and Gionee—have been accused of harvesting users’ data and passwords.

Many Chinese-made phones come with apps like TikTok and WeChat already installed. Some phones, rather disturbingly, automatically download these apps, as well as other Beijing-backed Trojan horses. According to credible reports, these apps excel at siphoning off copious amounts of information about their users, including “data that has nothing to do with the actual function of the app and for whose collection there is no reasonable justification,” Deutsche Welle (DW) reported in 2020.

In other words, these are malware apps masquerading as something much more benign.

Some Chinese phones come with preinstalled spyware, allowing God knows who to follow a user’s every move. In 2020, Alcatel, a smartphone manufactured by Telephone Communication Limited (TCL), a Chinese electronics company, was implicated in a huge spyware operation. Alcatel phones, it must be noted, are readily available in major U.S. stores. Some of the other phones mentioned above might not be in your local Walmart, but they are easily purchased on sites like Amazon.

Of course, in this world of apparently unlimited choice, one doesn’t have to buy a Chinese phone. Plenty of other options exist. But the fact that communist China controls so much of the phone market should concern us all.

What if there was a “Made in America” phone, one truly capable of competing with the array of “Made in China” phones?

A Welcome Alternative

Some 30 years ago, it was common for U.S. companies to manufacture their phones at home. Alas, those days are long gone. Apple, one of the most popular brands in the world, now manufactures the vast majority of its phones in China, where cheap labor and violations of workers’ rights reign supreme. In Zhengzhou, home to Apple’s biggest iPhone factory, employees are reportedly beaten and berated. Apple may very well be a global tech leader, but it’s not exactly a U.S. company that screams decency.

Similarly, Google, another U.S. tech giant that appears to lack a moral compass, manufactures many of its phones in China (although, in recent times, the company has moved more of its production to Vietnam). Apple and Google are two of the country’s biggest companies. Still, when it comes to the actual manufacturing of their wildly-popular products, there’s very little, if anything, American about them.

All hope, however, is not lost. When it comes to the manufacturing of smartphones, one company has opted to shun the Far East in favor of the United States.

Purism, a San Francisco-based company founded by Todd Weaver, specializes in producing electronics, including stylish smartphones. One model, the Librem 5 USA, is the only smartphone in the world displaying the increasingly rare “Made in USA” stamp. This is not an advertisement for Purism. I am neither a spokesperson for the company nor endorsing any of its products. In truth, I only discovered the company a few weeks ago. But what’s wrong with shedding some light on a company that appears to care about making decent products catered to the American public?

Unlike Apple and Google (and almost every other extremely profitable corporation in existence), Purism is a social-purpose company. In other words, it strives to put social good above profits. This, perhaps, explains why Purism’s phones are built around the idea of preserving a user’s privacy rather than violating it.

According to its website, whenever you pick up your phone and search for a term online, “you’re being controlled” by a market only too eager to use your “operating system and applications to collect as much information about you as possible.” To make matters worse, this “exploited information” is then traded between various companies. Purism’s phones, we’re told, prevent such violations from occurring. All the source code is available for public consumption. Moreover, as the site notes, users “can be sure there will be no secret backdoors, no unauthorized information being sent across the Internet, no need to register and be controlled by a company, no licenses to agree to.”

Will Purism ever be able to compete with giants like Apple or Oppo? Of course, not. But that’s not the point. Some things, like respecting users’ privacy, are considerably more important than accumulating hefty profits.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.

Article by John Mac Ghlionn from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.

As Bloomberg recently reported, “the skies over a scattering of Western U.S. cities will stay dark for the third consecutive Fourth of July.”

Why?

Unlike the celebrations (or lack thereof) of 2020 and 2021, which were directly impacted by COVID-19, 2022’s celebrations will suffer because of a shortage of fireworks.

Fourth of July is when family and friends gather to celebrate the country’s independence. They gather around the barbeque, enjoy some good food, and finish the evening with a firework display.

In Phoenix, however, according to local authorities, “Fabulous Phoenix Fourth, Light Up the Sky at the American Family Fields and After Dark in the Park will all be canceled this year due to supply chain issues affecting access to fireworks.” Phoenix is not alone. The Arizonian cities of Tempe and Chandler won’t have firework displays either.

Meanwhile, in College Park, Maryland, city officials recently announced they “can’t guarantee the usual 4th of July show” due to a lack of supplies. One of those supplies happens to be fireworks.

Digging Deeper

Americans are united by their love of fireworks. In 2019, for example, Americans spent a total of $1 billion on these minor explosives. Where do the fireworks come from? Well, like so many other products, they come from China. The United States’ number one competitor produces 90 percent of the world’s fireworks.

To be even more specific, as Julie Heckman, executive director of the American Pyrotechnics Association, told NPR: “Ninety-nine percent of the backyard consumer fireworks come directly from China,” and “70 percent of the professional display fireworks” are manufactured in major cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen.

There was a time, as the NPR piece noted, when a majority of the fireworks used by Americans were made by U.S. companies. Sadly, those days are gone, long gone. The firework shortage is a symptom of a much deeper, far more serious issue.

Walter Block, a well-respected American economist, recently noted that besides the shortage of fireworks, the United States is also running low on aluminum, avocados, bicycles, canned vegetables, chlorine, Christmas trees, computer chips, infant formula, peanut butter, and toilet paper. I could go on. No, really, I could. But you get the point.

Although the war in Ukraine is certainly playing a role in the shortages, it’s not enough to explain why the United States is in such a desperate way. As Block noted, Americans have experienced war before. They’ve also experienced “pestilence, disease, bad weather” and government regulations before.

However, not since the end of World War Two has massive shortages “disrupted the economy to anything like the degree we are presently experiencing,” he wrote. Ukraine is just one piece of a larger, perplexing puzzle.

Let’s take some products from Block’s rather extensive list. What country produces the most bicycles?

You guessed it, China.

The communist nation also produces more computer chips (one of the items in short supply) than the United States. China is also the world’s largest producer of toilet paper. Americans consume the most amount of peanut butter in the world—approximately 7 pounds of creamy and crunchy goodness per person each year—but China is the world’s largest producer of peanuts. Although it’s still possible to have Fourth of July celebrations without fireworks, it’s impossible to have peanut butter without peanuts.

What’s my point? The United States used to be the king of self-sufficiency. There was a time when important products were made in America. Again, though, those days are gone. In all likelihood, they’re never coming back. That’s because, today, China is the world’s manufacturing superpower, and the United States is its number one customer.

In fact, of all the 195 countries in the world, the United States is now the top importer of goods. Even in relatively stable times, there’s a lot to be said for self-sufficiency. In times of genuine crises, however—with the ongoing war, fears of a global recession, etc.—self-sufficiency is an absolute must.

Dependency breeds desperation and dependency on an arch rival breeds existential dread. China has become the world’s supermarket, and the United States is now its top customer.

About the Author

John Mac Ghlionn is a researcher and essayist. His work has been published by the New York Post, The Sydney Morning Herald, Newsweek, National Review, and The Spectator US, among others. He covers psychology and social relations, and has a keen interest in social dysfunction and media manipulation.