An article on the legal state of asteroid mining. This isn’t true, though: “Much like the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the United States has not signed the Moon Agreement but by custom it adheres to the treaty — at least until Donald Trump’s recent executive order, which explicitly rejects the idea that such agreements are binding to the USA.”
The US has never adhered in any way to the Moon Agreement. Up until now, it has just ignored it. The executive order simply makes explicit our non-recognition of it, to pre-empt those who've been recently claiming that it is customary international law.
Meanwhile, Michael Listner writes that we must return to the moon to preserve the rule of law in space. Well, that’s certainly a reason, but not the only (or even best) one.
A lot of people should, but they won’t. What hacks both he and Mueller turned out to be. It’s frightening that people like this can rise to the head of such a powerful agency.
The long hard road to decoupling from China. We cannot have globalization with countries that do not share our values of liberty and individualism. But we should more strongly embrace the China that works: Taiwan.
[Update a couple minutes later]
A bipartisan call for WHO to make Taiwan a member. That of course begs the question that WHO is an organization even worthy of our funding.