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The federal government says it will not allow Canada to become a dumping ground for diverted Chinese steel or aluminum after the United States announced it plans tariff hikes on imports from China.

U.S. tariffs on certain Chinese steel and aluminum products will climb to 25 per cent this year from as much as 7.5 per cent. The proposed higher tariff rate, announced this week, would apply to more than US$1- billion worth of steel and aluminum products.

“Canada is not and will not be a ‘back door’ for Chinese steel and aluminum,” Navpreet Chhatwal, communications adviser for Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, said in a statement.

"Canada has a robust, responsive trade-remedy system to prevent dumped and subsidized imports and is committed to protecting our workers and industry from unfair trade,” Ms. Chhatwal said.

Ms. Freeland’s office did not rule out any measures but said it is still analyzing the American action.

The White House justified the tariffs by saying China is off-loading unfairly produced steel and aluminum in the United States.

“China’s policies and subsidies for their domestic steel and aluminum industries mean high-quality, low-emissions U.S. products are undercut by artificially low-priced Chinese alternatives produced with higher emissions,” the White House said in a Tuesday statement.

Canadian international trade lawyer Lawrence Herman said Canada should act quickly to enact tariffs to ward off Chinese steel and aluminum that might be redirected from the U.S. to markets with lower trade barriers.

He said this country shouldn’t wait for Ottawa’s trade-remedy system to handle a complaint from Canadian industry over unfair imports.

“The trade-remedy process is a slow, cumbersome process,” he said. “It requires industry to file complaints, complaints are investigated. It takes a long time to get the Canadian International Trade Tribunal to issue an order to apply anti-dumping or countervailing duties. I don’t think trade remedies are the answer.”

The risk, Mr. Herman said, is that Chinese steel gets dumped in Canada or the Canadian market becomes a clearing house for the transshipment of steel from China through this country and then into the United States.

He said Canada should enact targeted tariffs based on the same rationale employed by the Americans.

Mr. Herman noted that Section 53 of Canada’s Customs Tariff Act allows Ottawa to take pro-active steps in response to any major increase of Chinese goods into our country that are subsidized imports and in breach of trade agreements.

The tariff announcement was released in the middle of a heated campaign between presidential contenders Joe Biden and Donald Trump, his Republican predecessor. Both have tried to show who’s tougher on China.

The Chinese economy has been slowed by the collapse of the country’s real estate market and past coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, prompting President Xi Jinping to try to jump-start growth by ramping up production of electric vehicles and other products, making more than the Chinese market can absorb.

"China’s factory-led recovery and weak consumption growth, which are translating into excess capacity and an aggressive search for foreign markets, in tandem with the looming U.S. election season, add up to a perfect recipe for escalating U.S. trade frictions with China,” said Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy at Cornell University.

The Chinese government was quick to push back against the tariffs announced by Mr. Biden, including on electric-vehicle imports, saying they “will seriously affect the atmosphere of bilateral co-operation.”

Canada's industry minister says Ottawa is "considering all measures" after the U.S. announced it would be hiking tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and other related goods.

François-Philippe Champagne wouldn't rule out Canada imposing similar tariffs during an interview with CBC News Network's Power & Politics on Friday.

"It's fair to say that everything is on the table to protect our industry and our workers," Champagne told host David Cochrane.

"We're working in sync with the United States of America."

President Joe Biden announced earlier this week that the U.S. would be slapping new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), advanced batteries, solar cells, steel, aluminum and medical equipment.

The tariffs are to be phased in over the next three years; those that take effect in 2024 are covering EVs, solar cells, syringes, needles, steel and aluminum and more.

There are currently very few EVs from China in the U.S., but American officials worry that low-priced models made possible by Chinese government subsidies could soon start flooding the U.S. market.

In a separate interview on Tuesday, Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, said "Canada has to" implement similar trade levies.

"Now that the Americans have put up a tariff wall, we can't leave the side door open here," Volpe told guest host John Paul Tasker.

Brian Kingston, president of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers Association, echoed Volpe's argument in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

"Canada cannot be out of step with the U.S. on China. We need aligned policies that strengthen the North American auto supply chain," he wrote.

Champagne insisted that Canada wouldn't be a route for China to gain access to the North American EV market.

"Canada has never been and will never be a backdoor [for] China in the North American market and our U.S. friends understand that," he said.

The federal government has partnered with provinces to attract investments from major automotive manufacturers to spur electric vehicle production in Canada.

The same day the U.S. announced its new tariffs, Asahi Kasei Corp., in partnership with Honda, announced the construction of a $1.6-billion electric vehicle battery plant in Port Colborne, Ont.

Volpe said domestic EV production could be held back if China floods the Canadian market with cheaper products.

"There's no logic for Canada to force our market to electrify and then turn the market over to the Chinese," he said.

China has maintained that the U.S. tariffs are a violation of international trade rules. It is not clear how the country will respond at this point.

Volpe suggested Beijing could retaliate by implementing export controls on its critical minerals that are used in EV battery manufacturing.

Champagne said it's important for Canada to shore up its own critical mineral production.

On Thursday, Canada and the U.S. announced they would be co-investing in critical mineral producers for the first time as they work to boost regional supplies.

Natural Resources Canada and the U.S. Department of Defense are together putting about $32.5 million into Fortune Minerals Ltd. — which is working on a project with bismuth and cobalt in the Northwest Territories — and Lomiko Metals Inc., focused on a graphite project in Quebec.

Canada's industry minister says Ottawa is "considering all measures" after the U.S. announced it would be hiking tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and other related goods.

François-Philippe Champagne wouldn't rule out Canada imposing similar tariffs during an interview with CBC News Network's Power & Politics on Friday.

"It's fair to say that everything is on the table to protect our industry and our workers," Champagne told host David Cochrane.

"We're working in sync with the United States of America."

President Joe Biden announced earlier this week that the U.S. would be slapping new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), advanced batteries, solar cells, steel, aluminum and medical equipment.

The tariffs are to be phased in over the next three years; those that take effect in 2024 are covering EVs, solar cells, syringes, needles, steel and aluminum and more.

There are currently very few EVs from China in the U.S., but American officials worry that low-priced models made possible by Chinese government subsidies could soon start flooding the U.S. market.

In a separate interview on Tuesday, Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, said "Canada has to" implement similar trade levies.

"Now that the Americans have put up a tariff wall, we can't leave the side door open here," Volpe told guest host John Paul Tasker.

Brian Kingston, president of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers Association, echoed Volpe's argument in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

"Canada cannot be out of step with the U.S. on China. We need aligned policies that strengthen the North American auto supply chain," he wrote.

Champagne insisted that Canada wouldn't be a route for China to gain access to the North American EV market.

"Canada has never been and will never be a backdoor [for] China in the North American market and our U.S. friends understand that," he said.

The federal government has partnered with provinces to attract investments from major automotive manufacturers to spur electric vehicle production in Canada.

The same day the U.S. announced its new tariffs, Asahi Kasei Corp., in partnership with Honda, announced the construction of a $1.6-billion electric vehicle battery plant in Port Colborne, Ont.

Volpe said domestic EV production could be held back if China floods the Canadian market with cheaper products.

"There's no logic for Canada to force our market to electrify and then turn the market over to the Chinese," he said.

China has maintained that the U.S. tariffs are a violation of international trade rules. It is not clear how the country will respond at this point.

Volpe suggested Beijing could retaliate by implementing export controls on its critical minerals that are used in EV battery manufacturing.

Champagne said it's important for Canada to shore up its own critical mineral production.

On Thursday, Canada and the U.S. announced they would be co-investing in critical mineral producers for the first time as they work to boost regional supplies.

Natural Resources Canada and the U.S. Department of Defense are together putting about $32.5 million into Fortune Minerals Ltd. — which is working on a project with bismuth and cobalt in the Northwest Territories — and Lomiko Metals Inc., focused on a graphite project in Quebec.

Canada's industry minister says Ottawa is "considering all measures" after the U.S. announced it would be hiking tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and other related goods.

François-Philippe Champagne wouldn't rule out Canada imposing similar tariffs during an interview with CBC News Network's Power & Politics on Friday.

"It's fair to say that everything is on the table to protect our industry and our workers," Champagne told host David Cochrane.

"We're working in sync with the United States of America."

President Joe Biden announced earlier this week that the U.S. would be slapping new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), advanced batteries, solar cells, steel, aluminum and medical equipment.

The tariffs are to be phased in over the next three years; those that take effect in 2024 are covering EVs, solar cells, syringes, needles, steel and aluminum and more.

There are currently very few EVs from China in the U.S., but American officials worry that low-priced models made possible by Chinese government subsidies could soon start flooding the U.S. market.

In a separate interview on Tuesday, Flavio Volpe, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, said "Canada has to" implement similar trade levies.

"Now that the Americans have put up a tariff wall, we can't leave the side door open here," Volpe told guest host John Paul Tasker.

Brian Kingston, president of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers Association, echoed Volpe's argument in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

"Canada cannot be out of step with the U.S. on China. We need aligned policies that strengthen the North American auto supply chain," he wrote.

Champagne insisted that Canada wouldn't be a route for China to gain access to the North American EV market.

"Canada has never been and will never be a backdoor [for] China in the North American market and our U.S. friends understand that," he said.

The federal government has partnered with provinces to attract investments from major automotive manufacturers to spur electric vehicle production in Canada.

The same day the U.S. announced its new tariffs, Asahi Kasei Corp., in partnership with Honda, announced the construction of a $1.6-billion electric vehicle battery plant in Port Colborne, Ont.

Volpe said domestic EV production could be held back if China floods the Canadian market with cheaper products.

"There's no logic for Canada to force our market to electrify and then turn the market over to the Chinese," he said.

China has maintained that the U.S. tariffs are a violation of international trade rules. It is not clear how the country will respond at this point.

Volpe suggested Beijing could retaliate by implementing export controls on its critical minerals that are used in EV battery manufacturing.

Champagne said it's important for Canada to shore up its own critical mineral production.

On Thursday, Canada and the U.S. announced they would be co-investing in critical mineral producers for the first time as they work to boost regional supplies.

Natural Resources Canada and the U.S. Department of Defense are together putting about $32.5 million into Fortune Minerals Ltd. — which is working on a project with bismuth and cobalt in the Northwest Territories — and Lomiko Metals Inc., focused on a graphite project in Quebec.

By Tinglong Dai, Bernard T. Ferrari Professor of Business, Johns Hopkins University

In June 2019, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden tweeted: “Trump doesn’t get the basics. He thinks his tariffs are being paid by China. Any freshman econ student could tell you that the American people are paying his tariffs.”

Fast-forward five years to May 2024, and President Biden has announced a hike in tariffs on a variety of Chinese imports, including a 100% tariff that would significantly increase the price of Chinese-made electric vehicles.

For a nation committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, efforts by the U.S. to block low-cost EVs might seem counterproductive. At a price of around US$12,000, Chinese automaker BYD’s Seagull electric car could quickly expand EV sales if it landed at that price in the U.S., where the cheapest new electric cars cost nearly three times more.

As an expert in global supply chains, however, I believe the Biden tariffs can succeed in giving the U.S. EV industry room to grow. Without the tariffs, U.S. auto sales risk being undercut by Chinese companies, which have much lower production costs due to their manufacturing methods, looser environmental and safety standards, cheaper labor and more generous government EV subsidies.

Tariffs have a troubled history

The U.S. has a long history of tariffs that have failed to achieve their economic goals.

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 was meant to protect American jobs by raising tariffs on imported goods. But it backfired by prompting other countries to raise their tariffs, which led to a drop in international trade and deepened the Great Depression.

Biden speaks at a podium with people standing behind him holding United Steelworkers signs.

President George W. Bush’s 2002 steel tariffs also led to higher steel prices, which hurt industries that use steel and cost American manufacturing an estimated 200,000 jobs. The tariffs were lifted after the World Trade Organization ruled against them.

The Obama administration’s tariffs on Chinese-made solar panels in 2012 blocked direct imports but failed to foster a domestic solar panel industry. Today, the U.S. relies heavily on imports from companies operating in Southeast Asia – primarily Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. Many of those companies are linked to China.

Why EV tariffs are different this time

Biden’s EV tariffs, however, might defy historical precedent and succeed where the solar tariff failed, for a few key reasons:

1. Timing matters.

When Obama imposed tariffs on solar panels in 2012, nearly half of U.S. installations were already using Chinese-manufactured panels. In contrast, Chinese-made EVs, including models sold in the U.S. by Volvo and Polestar, have negligible U.S. market shares.

Because the U.S. market is not dependent on Chinese-made EVs, the tariffs can be implemented without significant disruption or price increases, giving the domestic industry time to grow and compete more effectively.

By imposing tariffs early, the Biden administration hopes to prevent the U.S. market from becoming saturated with low-price Chinese EVs, which could undercut domestic manufacturers and stifle innovation.

2. Global supply chains are not the same today.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in global supply chains, such as the risk of disruptions in the availability of critical components and delays in production and shipping. These issues prompted many countries, including the U.S., to reevaluate their dependence on foreign manufacturers for critical goods and to shift toward reshoring – bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. – and strengthening domestic supply chains.

The war in Ukraine has further intensified the separation between U.S.-led and China-led economic orders, a phenomenon I call the “Supply Chain Iron Curtain.”

In a recent McKinsey survey, 67% of executives cited geopolitical risk as the greatest threat to global growth. In this context, EVs and their components, particularly batteries, are key products identified in Biden’s supply chain reviews as critical to the nation’s supply chain resilience.

Ensuring a stable and secure supply of these components through domestic manufacturing can mitigate the risks associated with global supply chain disruptions and geopolitical tensions.

3. National security concerns are higher.

Unlike solar panels, EVs have direct national security implications. The Biden administration considers Chinese-made EVs a potential cybersecurity threat due to the possibility of embedded software that could be used for surveillance or cyberattacks.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has discussed espionage risks involving the potential for foreign-made EVs to collect sensitive data and transmit it outside the U.S. Officials have raised concerns about the resilience of an EV supply chain dependent on other countries in the event of a geopolitical conflict.

BYD targets EV sales in Mexico

While Biden’s EV tariffs might succeed in keeping Chinese competition out for a while, Chinese EV manufacturers could try to circumvent the tariffs by moving production to countries such as Mexico.

This scenario is similar to past tactics used by Chinese solar panel manufacturers, which relocated production to other Asian countries to avoid U.S. tariffs.

Chinese automaker BYD, the world leader in EV sales, is already exploring establishing a factory in Mexico to produce its new electric truck. Nearly 10% of cars sold in Mexico in 2023 were produced by Chinese automakers.

Given the changing geopolitical reality, Biden’s 100% EV tariffs are likely the beginning of a broader strategy rather than an isolated measure. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai hinted at this during a recent press conference, stating that addressing vehicles made in Mexico would require “a separate pathway” and to “stay tuned” for future actions.

Is Europe next?

For now, given the near absence of Chinese-made EVs in the U.S. auto market, Biden’s EV tariffs are unlikely to have a noticeable short-term impact in the U.S. They could, however, affect decisions in Europe.

The European Union saw Chinese EV imports more than double over a seven-month period in 2023, undercutting European vehicles by offering lower prices. Manufacturers are concerned. When finance ministers from the Group of Seven advanced democracies meet in late May, tariffs will be on the agenda.

Biden’s move might encourage similar protective actions elsewhere, reinforcing the global shift toward securing supply chains and promoting domestic manufacturing.

By Tinglong Dai, Bernard T. Ferrari Professor of Business, Johns Hopkins University

In June 2019, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden tweeted: “Trump doesn’t get the basics. He thinks his tariffs are being paid by China. Any freshman econ student could tell you that the American people are paying his tariffs.”

Fast-forward five years to May 2024, and President Biden has announced a hike in tariffs on a variety of Chinese imports, including a 100% tariff that would significantly increase the price of Chinese-made electric vehicles.

For a nation committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, efforts by the U.S. to block low-cost EVs might seem counterproductive. At a price of around US$12,000, Chinese automaker BYD’s Seagull electric car could quickly expand EV sales if it landed at that price in the U.S., where the cheapest new electric cars cost nearly three times more.

As an expert in global supply chains, however, I believe the Biden tariffs can succeed in giving the U.S. EV industry room to grow. Without the tariffs, U.S. auto sales risk being undercut by Chinese companies, which have much lower production costs due to their manufacturing methods, looser environmental and safety standards, cheaper labor and more generous government EV subsidies.

Tariffs have a troubled history

The U.S. has a long history of tariffs that have failed to achieve their economic goals.

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 was meant to protect American jobs by raising tariffs on imported goods. But it backfired by prompting other countries to raise their tariffs, which led to a drop in international trade and deepened the Great Depression.

Biden speaks at a podium with people standing behind him holding United Steelworkers signs.

President George W. Bush’s 2002 steel tariffs also led to higher steel prices, which hurt industries that use steel and cost American manufacturing an estimated 200,000 jobs. The tariffs were lifted after the World Trade Organization ruled against them.

The Obama administration’s tariffs on Chinese-made solar panels in 2012 blocked direct imports but failed to foster a domestic solar panel industry. Today, the U.S. relies heavily on imports from companies operating in Southeast Asia – primarily Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. Many of those companies are linked to China.

Why EV tariffs are different this time

Biden’s EV tariffs, however, might defy historical precedent and succeed where the solar tariff failed, for a few key reasons:

1. Timing matters.

When Obama imposed tariffs on solar panels in 2012, nearly half of U.S. installations were already using Chinese-manufactured panels. In contrast, Chinese-made EVs, including models sold in the U.S. by Volvo and Polestar, have negligible U.S. market shares.

Because the U.S. market is not dependent on Chinese-made EVs, the tariffs can be implemented without significant disruption or price increases, giving the domestic industry time to grow and compete more effectively.

By imposing tariffs early, the Biden administration hopes to prevent the U.S. market from becoming saturated with low-price Chinese EVs, which could undercut domestic manufacturers and stifle innovation.

2. Global supply chains are not the same today.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in global supply chains, such as the risk of disruptions in the availability of critical components and delays in production and shipping. These issues prompted many countries, including the U.S., to reevaluate their dependence on foreign manufacturers for critical goods and to shift toward reshoring – bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. – and strengthening domestic supply chains.

The war in Ukraine has further intensified the separation between U.S.-led and China-led economic orders, a phenomenon I call the “Supply Chain Iron Curtain.”

In a recent McKinsey survey, 67% of executives cited geopolitical risk as the greatest threat to global growth. In this context, EVs and their components, particularly batteries, are key products identified in Biden’s supply chain reviews as critical to the nation’s supply chain resilience.

Ensuring a stable and secure supply of these components through domestic manufacturing can mitigate the risks associated with global supply chain disruptions and geopolitical tensions.

3. National security concerns are higher.

Unlike solar panels, EVs have direct national security implications. The Biden administration considers Chinese-made EVs a potential cybersecurity threat due to the possibility of embedded software that could be used for surveillance or cyberattacks.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has discussed espionage risks involving the potential for foreign-made EVs to collect sensitive data and transmit it outside the U.S. Officials have raised concerns about the resilience of an EV supply chain dependent on other countries in the event of a geopolitical conflict.

BYD targets EV sales in Mexico

While Biden’s EV tariffs might succeed in keeping Chinese competition out for a while, Chinese EV manufacturers could try to circumvent the tariffs by moving production to countries such as Mexico.

This scenario is similar to past tactics used by Chinese solar panel manufacturers, which relocated production to other Asian countries to avoid U.S. tariffs.

Chinese automaker BYD, the world leader in EV sales, is already exploring establishing a factory in Mexico to produce its new electric truck. Nearly 10% of cars sold in Mexico in 2023 were produced by Chinese automakers.

Given the changing geopolitical reality, Biden’s 100% EV tariffs are likely the beginning of a broader strategy rather than an isolated measure. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai hinted at this during a recent press conference, stating that addressing vehicles made in Mexico would require “a separate pathway” and to “stay tuned” for future actions.

Is Europe next?

For now, given the near absence of Chinese-made EVs in the U.S. auto market, Biden’s EV tariffs are unlikely to have a noticeable short-term impact in the U.S. They could, however, affect decisions in Europe.

The European Union saw Chinese EV imports more than double over a seven-month period in 2023, undercutting European vehicles by offering lower prices. Manufacturers are concerned. When finance ministers from the Group of Seven advanced democracies meet in late May, tariffs will be on the agenda.

Biden’s move might encourage similar protective actions elsewhere, reinforcing the global shift toward securing supply chains and promoting domestic manufacturing.

- Total credit demand in China fell in April for first time since 2005 - China has increasingly hidden negative data in recent years

A series of research reports from Chinese brokerages on the country’s recent bad credit data disappeared from social media over the weekend, highlighting the increasing difficulty of getting reliable information about the world’s second-largest economy.

At least seven research reports from mainland brokerages and securities firms that had been posted to WeChat by analysts were unavailable for viewing on Monday. The link to six of the reports now leads to an error message saying the content couldn’t be viewed after complaints about unspecified violations of rules governing public accounts.

A report from China Merchants Securities Co. was deleted from a WeChat account where the brokerage’s fixed-income analyst Zhang Wei usually posts research, according to a screenshot of the posting viewed by Bloomberg News.

Reports from analysts at Zheshang Securities Co., Guosheng Securities Co., GF Securities Co., China International Capital Corp., Shenwan Hongyuan Securities Co. and Soochow Securities Co. were also unavailable for viewing or had been taken down before Monday morning.

None of the seven companies responded to requests for comment.

China has increasingly hidden negative data over the past few years, making it harder for investors to accurately judge what is happening in the economy. The nation’s exchanges are set to switch off a live feed of foreign money flows into stocks as early as Monday, the latest example of closely-watched information being removed.

The data released over the weekend showed that total credit demand fell in April for the first time since 2005. That unexpectedly bad result was driven by weak demand from companies and households to borrow, and also by local governments across the country pulling back on selling bonds.

The data released over the weekend showed that total credit demand fell in April for the first time since 2005. That unexpectedly bad result was driven by weak demand from companies and households to borrow, and also by local governments across the country pulling back on selling bonds.

China’s the top securities newspapers attempted to put a positive spin on the data. A front-page article

in China Securities Journal on Monday suggested the credit data would stabilize and pick up once the government started issuing more bonds.

The central government said it will start selling ultra-long bonds from Friday, although that likely won’t immediately turn around the falling demand for mortgage loans from households or the weak demand from companies to borrow money.

- Total credit demand in China fell in April for first time since 2005 - China has increasingly hidden negative data in recent years

A series of research reports from Chinese brokerages on the country’s recent bad credit data disappeared from social media over the weekend, highlighting the increasing difficulty of getting reliable information about the world’s second-largest economy.

At least seven research reports from mainland brokerages and securities firms that had been posted to WeChat by analysts were unavailable for viewing on Monday. The link to six of the reports now leads to an error message saying the content couldn’t be viewed after complaints about unspecified violations of rules governing public accounts.

A report from China Merchants Securities Co. was deleted from a WeChat account where the brokerage’s fixed-income analyst Zhang Wei usually posts research, according to a screenshot of the posting viewed by Bloomberg News.

Reports from analysts at Zheshang Securities Co., Guosheng Securities Co., GF Securities Co., China International Capital Corp., Shenwan Hongyuan Securities Co. and Soochow Securities Co. were also unavailable for viewing or had been taken down before Monday morning.

None of the seven companies responded to requests for comment.

China has increasingly hidden negative data over the past few years, making it harder for investors to accurately judge what is happening in the economy. The nation’s exchanges are set to switch off a live feed of foreign money flows into stocks as early as Monday, the latest example of closely-watched information being removed.

The data released over the weekend showed that total credit demand fell in April for the first time since 2005. That unexpectedly bad result was driven by weak demand from companies and households to borrow, and also by local governments across the country pulling back on selling bonds.

The data released over the weekend showed that total credit demand fell in April for the first time since 2005. That unexpectedly bad result was driven by weak demand from companies and households to borrow, and also by local governments across the country pulling back on selling bonds.

China’s the top securities newspapers attempted to put a positive spin on the data. A front-page article

in China Securities Journal on Monday suggested the credit data would stabilize and pick up once the government started issuing more bonds.

The central government said it will start selling ultra-long bonds from Friday, although that likely won’t immediately turn around the falling demand for mortgage loans from households or the weak demand from companies to borrow money.

- Total credit demand in China fell in April for first time since 2005 - China has increasingly hidden negative data in recent years

A series of research reports from Chinese brokerages on the country’s recent bad credit data disappeared from social media over the weekend, highlighting the increasing difficulty of getting reliable information about the world’s second-largest economy.

At least seven research reports from mainland brokerages and securities firms that had been posted to WeChat by analysts were unavailable for viewing on Monday. The link to six of the reports now leads to an error message saying the content couldn’t be viewed after complaints about unspecified violations of rules governing public accounts.

A report from China Merchants Securities Co. was deleted from a WeChat account where the brokerage’s fixed-income analyst Zhang Wei usually posts research, according to a screenshot of the posting viewed by Bloomberg News.

Reports from analysts at Zheshang Securities Co., Guosheng Securities Co., GF Securities Co., China International Capital Corp., Shenwan Hongyuan Securities Co. and Soochow Securities Co. were also unavailable for viewing or had been taken down before Monday morning.

None of the seven companies responded to requests for comment.

China has increasingly hidden negative data over the past few years, making it harder for investors to accurately judge what is happening in the economy. The nation’s exchanges are set to switch off a live feed of foreign money flows into stocks as early as Monday, the latest example of closely-watched information being removed.

The data released over the weekend showed that total credit demand fell in April for the first time since 2005. That unexpectedly bad result was driven by weak demand from companies and households to borrow, and also by local governments across the country pulling back on selling bonds.

The data released over the weekend showed that total credit demand fell in April for the first time since 2005. That unexpectedly bad result was driven by weak demand from companies and households to borrow, and also by local governments across the country pulling back on selling bonds.

China’s the top securities newspapers attempted to put a positive spin on the data. A front-page article

in China Securities Journal on Monday suggested the credit data would stabilize and pick up once the government started issuing more bonds.

The central government said it will start selling ultra-long bonds from Friday, although that likely won’t immediately turn around the falling demand for mortgage loans from households or the weak demand from companies to borrow money.

The firm says that once it has sold off its remaining assets it will have as much as $16.3bn to cover the debts, which stand at around $11bn.

The company's new reorganisation plan says almost all of its customers will get at least the total amount they lost when FTX collapsed in November 2022.

In March this year, FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison for defrauding customers and investors of the now-bankrupt firm.

"We are pleased to be in a position to propose a chapter 11 plan that contemplates the return of 100% of bankruptcy claim amounts plus interest for non-governmental creditors," said the company's FTX's new chief executive, John Ray.

The plan still needs to be approved by a US bankruptcy court.

FTX said it has been gathering the funds to pay its debts by selling assets investments held by Alameda Research or FTX Ventures businesses.

Alameda was a crypto trading firm controlled by Bankman-Fried.

FTX added that a jump in crypto prices since the company failed had not given its finances a major boost. It said almost all of the Bitcoin and other digital currencies believed to have been held by the exchange at the time of its collapse were missing.

The price of the biggest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, has risen by around 270% since the firm filed for bankruptcy more than a year and a half ago.

FTX was one of the world's largest crypto platforms before its downfall.

Bankman-Fried enjoyed celebrity status and his platform attracted millions of customers.

After reports that it was in trouble, customers withdrew billions of dollars from FTX, triggering the company's implosion and laying bare the extent of Bankman-Fried's crimes.

This is the alternative Invidious link for the embedded article.

By Mayank Kejriwal, Research Assistant Professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering, University of Southern California.

Many people understand the concept of bias at some intuitive level. In society, and in artificial intelligence systems, racial and gender biases are well documented.

If society could somehow remove bias, would all problems go away? The late Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, who was a key figure in the field of behavioral economics, argued in his last book that bias is just one side of the coin. Errors in judgments can be attributed to two sources: bias and noise.

Bias and noise both play important roles in fields such as law, medicine and financial forecasting, where human judgments are central. In our work as computer and information scientists, my colleagues and I have found that noise also plays a role in AI.

Noise in this context means variation in how people make judgments of the same problem or situation. The problem of noise is more pervasive than initially meets the eye. A seminal work, dating back all the way to the Great Depression, has found that different judges gave different sentences for similar cases.

Worryingly, sentencing in court cases can depend on things such as the temperature and whether the local football team won. Such factors, at least in part, contribute to the perception that the justice system is not just biased but also arbitrary at times.

Other examples: Insurance adjusters might give different estimates for similar claims, reflecting noise in their judgments. Noise is likely present in all manner of contests, ranging from wine tastings to local beauty pageants to college admissions.

Noise in the data

On the surface, it doesn’t seem likely that noise could affect the performance of AI systems. After all, machines aren’t affected by weather or football teams, so why would they make judgments that vary with circumstance? On the other hand, researchers know that bias affects AI, because it is reflected in the data that the AI is trained on.

For the new spate of AI models like ChatGPT, the gold standard is human performance on general intelligence problems such as common sense. ChatGPT and its peers are measured against human-labeled commonsense datasets.

Put simply, researchers and developers can ask the machine a commonsense question and compare it with human answers: “If I place a heavy rock on a paper table, will it collapse? Yes or No.” If there is high agreement between the two – in the best case, perfect agreement – the machine is approaching human-level common sense, according to the test.

So where would noise come in? The commonsense question above seems simple, and most humans would likely agree on its answer, but there are many questions where there is more disagreement or uncertainty: “Is the following sentence plausible or implausible? My dog plays volleyball.” In other words, there is potential for noise. It is not surprising that interesting commonsense questions would have some noise.

But the issue is that most AI tests don’t account for this noise in experiments. Intuitively, questions generating human answers that tend to agree with one another should be weighted higher than if the answers diverge – in other words, where there is noise. Researchers still don’t know whether or how to weigh AI’s answers in that situation, but a first step is acknowledging that the problem exists. Tracking down noise in the machine

Theory aside, the question still remains whether all of the above is hypothetical or if in real tests of common sense there is noise. The best way to prove or disprove the presence of noise is to take an existing test, remove the answers and get multiple people to independently label them, meaning provide answers. By measuring disagreement among humans, researchers can know just how much noise is in the test.

The details behind measuring this disagreement are complex, involving significant statistics and math. Besides, who is to say how common sense should be defined? How do you know the human judges are motivated enough to think through the question? These issues lie at the intersection of good experimental design and statistics. Robustness is key: One result, test or set of human labelers is unlikely to convince anyone. As a pragmatic matter, human labor is expensive. Perhaps for this reason, there haven’t been any studies of possible noise in AI tests.

To address this gap, my colleagues and I designed such a study and published our findings in Nature Scientific Reports, showing that even in the domain of common sense, noise is inevitable. Because the setting in which judgments are elicited can matter, we did two kinds of studies. One type of study involved paid workers from Amazon Mechanical Turk, while the other study involved a smaller-scale labeling exercise in two labs at the University of Southern California and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

You can think of the former as a more realistic online setting, mirroring how many AI tests are actually labeled before being released for training and evaluation. The latter is more of an extreme, guaranteeing high quality but at much smaller scales. The question we set out to answer was how inevitable is noise, and is it just a matter of quality control?

The results were sobering. In both settings, even on commonsense questions that might have been expected to elicit high – even universal – agreement, we found a nontrivial degree of noise. The noise was high enough that we inferred that between 4% and 10% of a system’s performance could be attributed to noise.

To emphasize what this means, suppose I built an AI system that achieved 85% on a test, and you built an AI system that achieved 91%. Your system would seem to be a lot better than mine. But if there is noise in the human labels that were used to score the answers, then we’re not sure anymore that the 6% improvement means much. For all we know, there may be no real improvement.

On AI leaderboards, where large language models like the one that powers ChatGPT are compared, performance differences between rival systems are far narrower, typically less than 1%. As we show in the paper, ordinary statistics do not really come to the rescue for disentangling the effects of noise from those of true performance improvements. Noise audits

What is the way forward? Returning to Kahneman’s book, he proposed the concept of a “noise audit” for quantifying and ultimately mitigating noise as much as possible. At the very least, AI researchers need to estimate what influence noise might be having.

Auditing AI systems for bias is somewhat commonplace, so we believe that the concept of a noise audit should naturally follow. We hope that this study, as well as others like it, leads to their adoption.

This is the alternative Invidious link for the embedded article.

By Mayank Kejriwal, Research Assistant Professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering, University of Southern California.

Many people understand the concept of bias at some intuitive level. In society, and in artificial intelligence systems, racial and gender biases are well documented.

If society could somehow remove bias, would all problems go away? The late Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, who was a key figure in the field of behavioral economics, argued in his last book that bias is just one side of the coin. Errors in judgments can be attributed to two sources: bias and noise.

Bias and noise both play important roles in fields such as law, medicine and financial forecasting, where human judgments are central. In our work as computer and information scientists, my colleagues and I have found that noise also plays a role in AI.

Noise in this context means variation in how people make judgments of the same problem or situation. The problem of noise is more pervasive than initially meets the eye. A seminal work, dating back all the way to the Great Depression, has found that different judges gave different sentences for similar cases.

Worryingly, sentencing in court cases can depend on things such as the temperature and whether the local football team won. Such factors, at least in part, contribute to the perception that the justice system is not just biased but also arbitrary at times.

Other examples: Insurance adjusters might give different estimates for similar claims, reflecting noise in their judgments. Noise is likely present in all manner of contests, ranging from wine tastings to local beauty pageants to college admissions.

Noise in the data

On the surface, it doesn’t seem likely that noise could affect the performance of AI systems. After all, machines aren’t affected by weather or football teams, so why would they make judgments that vary with circumstance? On the other hand, researchers know that bias affects AI, because it is reflected in the data that the AI is trained on.

For the new spate of AI models like ChatGPT, the gold standard is human performance on general intelligence problems such as common sense. ChatGPT and its peers are measured against human-labeled commonsense datasets.

Put simply, researchers and developers can ask the machine a commonsense question and compare it with human answers: “If I place a heavy rock on a paper table, will it collapse? Yes or No.” If there is high agreement between the two – in the best case, perfect agreement – the machine is approaching human-level common sense, according to the test.

So where would noise come in? The commonsense question above seems simple, and most humans would likely agree on its answer, but there are many questions where there is more disagreement or uncertainty: “Is the following sentence plausible or implausible? My dog plays volleyball.” In other words, there is potential for noise. It is not surprising that interesting commonsense questions would have some noise.

But the issue is that most AI tests don’t account for this noise in experiments. Intuitively, questions generating human answers that tend to agree with one another should be weighted higher than if the answers diverge – in other words, where there is noise. Researchers still don’t know whether or how to weigh AI’s answers in that situation, but a first step is acknowledging that the problem exists. Tracking down noise in the machine

Theory aside, the question still remains whether all of the above is hypothetical or if in real tests of common sense there is noise. The best way to prove or disprove the presence of noise is to take an existing test, remove the answers and get multiple people to independently label them, meaning provide answers. By measuring disagreement among humans, researchers can know just how much noise is in the test.

The details behind measuring this disagreement are complex, involving significant statistics and math. Besides, who is to say how common sense should be defined? How do you know the human judges are motivated enough to think through the question? These issues lie at the intersection of good experimental design and statistics. Robustness is key: One result, test or set of human labelers is unlikely to convince anyone. As a pragmatic matter, human labor is expensive. Perhaps for this reason, there haven’t been any studies of possible noise in AI tests.

To address this gap, my colleagues and I designed such a study and published our findings in Nature Scientific Reports, showing that even in the domain of common sense, noise is inevitable. Because the setting in which judgments are elicited can matter, we did two kinds of studies. One type of study involved paid workers from Amazon Mechanical Turk, while the other study involved a smaller-scale labeling exercise in two labs at the University of Southern California and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

You can think of the former as a more realistic online setting, mirroring how many AI tests are actually labeled before being released for training and evaluation. The latter is more of an extreme, guaranteeing high quality but at much smaller scales. The question we set out to answer was how inevitable is noise, and is it just a matter of quality control?

The results were sobering. In both settings, even on commonsense questions that might have been expected to elicit high – even universal – agreement, we found a nontrivial degree of noise. The noise was high enough that we inferred that between 4% and 10% of a system’s performance could be attributed to noise.

To emphasize what this means, suppose I built an AI system that achieved 85% on a test, and you built an AI system that achieved 91%. Your system would seem to be a lot better than mine. But if there is noise in the human labels that were used to score the answers, then we’re not sure anymore that the 6% improvement means much. For all we know, there may be no real improvement.

On AI leaderboards, where large language models like the one that powers ChatGPT are compared, performance differences between rival systems are far narrower, typically less than 1%. As we show in the paper, ordinary statistics do not really come to the rescue for disentangling the effects of noise from those of true performance improvements. Noise audits

What is the way forward? Returning to Kahneman’s book, he proposed the concept of a “noise audit” for quantifying and ultimately mitigating noise as much as possible. At the very least, AI researchers need to estimate what influence noise might be having.

Auditing AI systems for bias is somewhat commonplace, so we believe that the concept of a noise audit should naturally follow. We hope that this study, as well as others like it, leads to their adoption.

Understanding hate as an emotional response can help you recognize your feelings about something or someone and be curious about where those feelings are coming from. This awareness will give you time to gather more information and imagine the other person’s perspective.

So what is hate and why do people hate? There are many answers to these questions.

Archived link

Here is the report by the U.S. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (pdf)

When the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission released their final forensic report on the causes of the 2008 financial collapse on Wall Street – the worst collapse since the 1929-1932 collapse – it pointed to hidden leverage in off-balance sheet entities at the megabanks on Wall Street as a key driver of the crisis. It wrote:

“From 2000 to 2007, large banks and thrifts generally had $16 to $22 in assets for each dollar of capital, for leverage ratios between 16:1 and 22:1. For some banks, leverage remained roughly constant. JP Morgan’s reported leverage was between 20:1 and 22:1. Wells Fargo’s generally ranged between 16:1 and 17:1. Other banks upped their leverage. Bank of America’s rose from 18:1 in 2000 to 27:1 in 2007. Citigroup’s increased from 18:1 to 22:1, then shot up to 32:1 by the end of 2007, when Citi brought off-balance sheet assets onto the balance sheet. More than other banks, Citigroup held assets off of its balance sheet, in part to hold down capital requirements. In 2007, even after bringing $80 billion worth of assets on balance sheet, substantial assets remained off. If those had been included, leverage in 2007 would have been 48:1, or about 53% higher. In comparison, at Wells Fargo and Bank of America, including off-balance-sheet assets would have raised the 2007 leverage ratios 17% and 28%, respectively.”

Citigroup, of course, blew itself up in 2008 and received the largest bailouts in global banking history. By March of 2009, its stock was trading at 99 cents.

The crash of 1929-1932 had two key similarities to today’s banking structure: so-called universal banks that took deposits as well as operated giant trading casinos that took huge risks by speculating in stocks and manipulating markets; and the lack of competent regulation.

The Banking Act of 1933, known also as the Glass-Steagall Act, effectively dealt with that crisis for the next 66 years by barring deposit-taking banks from merging with Wall Street trading houses. The Bill Clinton administration repealed that legislation in 1999 at the urging of Sandy Weill, John Reed (and their sycophants in his administration) in order for the two men to recreate the disastrous 1929 universal bank model via the creation of Citigroup. The other big players on Wall Street followed in lockstep in short order.

In January of this year, Anat Admati, Professor of Finance and Economics at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and German economist Martin Hellwig, released an updated and expanded version of their 2013 book The Bankers’ New Clothes: What’s Wrong with Banking and What to Do about It. In it, the authors write:

> "Some of the risks that make JPMorgan Chase dangerous cannot actually be seen by looking at its balance sheet because the positions that give rise to them are not included there. These are risks from business units that JPMorgan Chase might own in part or that it sponsors, and to which it has provided guarantees to serve as a backstop if they should have funding problems. These units might be full-flown subsidiaries, or they might be mere ‘letterhead firms,’ vehicles without any drivers, that are established for legal or tax reasons only. The bank’s commitments to these units amount to almost a trillion dollars, but these potential liabilities of the bank are left off the bank’s balance sheet. Yet they are quite relevant to the financial health of JPMorgan Chase.”

JPMorgan Chase explains why it doesn’t consolidate its tax credit vehicles on its balance sheet as follows in its most recent annual report:

> “The Firm holds investments in unconsolidated tax credit vehicles, which are limited partnerships and similar entities that own and operate affordable housing, energy, and other projects. These entities are primarily considered VIEs [Variable Interest Entities]. A third party is typically the general partner or managing member and has control over the significant activities of the tax credit vehicles, and accordingly the Firm does not consolidate tax credit vehicles….”

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. According to financial data at the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), as of December 31, 2023, JPMorgan Chase held $3.227 trillion off-balance sheet, of which $528.5 billion is undefined and marked as “other.” To put that in perspective, $528.5 billion is the size of the assets of the seventh largest bank in the United States and yet the public has no idea what the $528.5 billion off-balance sheet at JPMorgan Chase is made up of or what kind of risks it presents.

In JPMorgan Chase’s 10-K public filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the period ending December 31, 2023, it reported total assets on its balance sheet of $3.875 trillion. (See page 46 at this link.) That’s versus the FFIEC data showing it has another $3.227 trillion off-balance sheet. Now ask yourself this: have you ever read in any mainstream media news outlet that the U.S. is harboring a $7.1 trillion bank that has admitted to five criminal felony counts since 2014?

JPMorgan Chase’s off-balance sheet hubris goes a long way in explaining why the bank’s federal regulators are demanding that it increase its capital by 25 percent. The bank’s Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, is huffing and puffing against a capital increase and holding all of those private meetings with bigwigs in Washington.

Raising additional concerns, for the first time ever Jamie Dimon dumped a large amount of his own stock in JPMorgan Chase this year, selling $150 million in February and another $32.8 million in April. If the bank is forced by its regulators to announce a big equity capital raise via a secondary offering of common stock, that could cause a plunge in its share price – raising more questions about the timing of Dimon’s unprecedented stock sales while sitting on inside information gleaned from what his bank regulators are telling him about its demands for an increase in capital.

JPMorgan Chase, of course, is not the only Wall Street megabank showing giant sums off-balance sheet. As of December 31, 2023 Bank of America shows $1.6 trillion off-balance sheet; and Citigroup’s Citibank, the “universal” bank that blew itself up in 2008, shows a mind-boggling $2.6 trillion off-balance sheet versus $1.7 trillion on its balance sheet. That data also comes courtesy of FFIEC.

JP Morgan Chase's off-balance sheet items can be seen here (jpg)

A cyberattack on the Ascension health system operating in 19 states across the U.S. forced some of its 140 hospitals to divert ambulances, caused patients to postpone medical tests and blocked online access to patient records

A cyberattack on the Ascension health system operating in 19 states across the U.S. forced some of its 140 hospitals to divert ambulances, caused patients to postpone medical tests and blocked online access to patient records.

An Ascension spokesperson said it detected “unusual activity” Wednesday on its computer network systems. Officials refused to say whether the non-profit Catholic health system, based in St. Louis, was the victim of a ransomware attack or whether it had paid a ransom, and it did not immediately respond to an email seeking updates.

But the attack had the hallmarks of a ransomware, and Ascension said it had called in Mandiant, the Google cybersecurity unit that is a leading responder to such attacks. Earlier this year, a cyberattack on Change Healthcare disrupted care systems nationwide, and the CEO of its parent, UnitedHealth Group Inc., acknowledged in testimony to Congress that it had paid a ransom of $22 million in bitcoin.

Ascension said that both its electronic records system and the MyChart system that gives patients access to their records and allows them to communicate with their doctors were offline.

“We have determined this is a cybersecurity incident,” the national Ascension spokesperson’s statement said. “Our investigation and restoration work will take time to complete, and we do not have a timeline for completion.”

To prevent the automated spread of ransomware, hospital IT officials typically take electronic medical records and appointment-scheduling systems offline. UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty told congressional committees that Change Healthcare immediately disconnected from other systems to prevent the attack from spreading during its incident.

The Ascension spokesperson's latest statement, issued Thursday, said ambulances had been diverted from “several” hospitals without naming them.

In Wichita, Kansas, local news reports said the local emergency medical services started diverting all ambulance calls from its hospitals there Wednesday, though the health system's spokesperson there said Friday that the full diversion of ambulances ended Thursday afternoon.

The EMS service for Pensacola, Florida, also diverted patients from the Ascension hospital there to other hospitals, its spokesperson told the Pensacola News Journal.

And WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee reported that Ascension patients in the area said they were missing CT scans and mammograms and couldn't refill prescriptions.

Connie Smith, president of the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, is among the Ascension providers turning to paper records this week to cope. Smith, who coordinates surgeries at Ascension St. Francis Hospital in Milwaukee, said the hospital didn’t cancel any surgical procedures and continued treating emergency patients.

But she said everything has slowed down because electronic systems are built into the hospital’s daily operations. Younger providers are often unfamiliar with paper copies of essential records and it takes more time to document patient care, check the results of prior lab tests and verify information with doctors’ offices, she said.

Smith said union leaders feel staff and service cutbacks have made the situation even tougher. Hospital staff also have received little information about what led to the attack or when operations might get closer to normal, she said.

“You’re doing everything to the best of your ability but you leave feeling frustrated because you know you could have done things faster or gotten that patient home sooner if you just had some extra hands,” Smith said.

Ascension said its system expected to use “downtime” procedures “for some time” and advised patients to bring notes on their symptoms and a list of prescription numbers or prescription bottles with them to appointments.

Cybersecurity experts say ransomware attacks have increased substantially in recent years, especially in the health care sector. Increasingly, ransomware gangs steal data before activating data-scrambling malware that paralyzes networks. The threat of making stolen data public is used to extort payments. That data can also be sold online.

“We are working around the clock with internal and external advisors to investigate, contain, and restore our systems,” the Ascension spokesperson's latest statement said.

The attack against Change Healthcare earlier this year delayed insurance reimbursements and heaped stress on doctor’s offices around the country. Change Healthcare provides technology used by doctor offices and other care providers to submit and process billions of insurance claims a year.

It was unclear Friday whether the same group was responsible for both attacks.

Witty said Change Healthcare's core systems were now fully functional. But company officials have said it may take several months of analysis to identify and notify those who were affected by the attack.

They also have said they see no signs that doctor charts or full medical histories were released after the attack. Witty told senators that UnitedHealth repels an attempted intrusion every 70 seconds.

A ransomware attack in November prompted the Ardent Health Services system, operating 30 hospitals in six states, to divert patients from some of its emergency rooms to other hospitals while postponing certain elective procedures.

A cyberattack on the Ascension health system operating in 19 states across the U.S. forced some of its 140 hospitals to divert ambulances, caused patients to postpone medical tests and blocked online access to patient records

A cyberattack on the Ascension health system operating in 19 states across the U.S. forced some of its 140 hospitals to divert ambulances, caused patients to postpone medical tests and blocked online access to patient records.

An Ascension spokesperson said it detected “unusual activity” Wednesday on its computer network systems. Officials refused to say whether the non-profit Catholic health system, based in St. Louis, was the victim of a ransomware attack or whether it had paid a ransom, and it did not immediately respond to an email seeking updates.

But the attack had the hallmarks of a ransomware, and Ascension said it had called in Mandiant, the Google cybersecurity unit that is a leading responder to such attacks. Earlier this year, a cyberattack on Change Healthcare disrupted care systems nationwide, and the CEO of its parent, UnitedHealth Group Inc., acknowledged in testimony to Congress that it had paid a ransom of $22 million in bitcoin.

Ascension said that both its electronic records system and the MyChart system that gives patients access to their records and allows them to communicate with their doctors were offline.

“We have determined this is a cybersecurity incident,” the national Ascension spokesperson’s statement said. “Our investigation and restoration work will take time to complete, and we do not have a timeline for completion.”

To prevent the automated spread of ransomware, hospital IT officials typically take electronic medical records and appointment-scheduling systems offline. UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty told congressional committees that Change Healthcare immediately disconnected from other systems to prevent the attack from spreading during its incident.

The Ascension spokesperson's latest statement, issued Thursday, said ambulances had been diverted from “several” hospitals without naming them.

In Wichita, Kansas, local news reports said the local emergency medical services started diverting all ambulance calls from its hospitals there Wednesday, though the health system's spokesperson there said Friday that the full diversion of ambulances ended Thursday afternoon.

The EMS service for Pensacola, Florida, also diverted patients from the Ascension hospital there to other hospitals, its spokesperson told the Pensacola News Journal.

And WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee reported that Ascension patients in the area said they were missing CT scans and mammograms and couldn't refill prescriptions.

Connie Smith, president of the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals, is among the Ascension providers turning to paper records this week to cope. Smith, who coordinates surgeries at Ascension St. Francis Hospital in Milwaukee, said the hospital didn’t cancel any surgical procedures and continued treating emergency patients.

But she said everything has slowed down because electronic systems are built into the hospital’s daily operations. Younger providers are often unfamiliar with paper copies of essential records and it takes more time to document patient care, check the results of prior lab tests and verify information with doctors’ offices, she said.

Smith said union leaders feel staff and service cutbacks have made the situation even tougher. Hospital staff also have received little information about what led to the attack or when operations might get closer to normal, she said.

“You’re doing everything to the best of your ability but you leave feeling frustrated because you know you could have done things faster or gotten that patient home sooner if you just had some extra hands,” Smith said.

Ascension said its system expected to use “downtime” procedures “for some time” and advised patients to bring notes on their symptoms and a list of prescription numbers or prescription bottles with them to appointments.

Cybersecurity experts say ransomware attacks have increased substantially in recent years, especially in the health care sector. Increasingly, ransomware gangs steal data before activating data-scrambling malware that paralyzes networks. The threat of making stolen data public is used to extort payments. That data can also be sold online.

“We are working around the clock with internal and external advisors to investigate, contain, and restore our systems,” the Ascension spokesperson's latest statement said.

The attack against Change Healthcare earlier this year delayed insurance reimbursements and heaped stress on doctor’s offices around the country. Change Healthcare provides technology used by doctor offices and other care providers to submit and process billions of insurance claims a year.

It was unclear Friday whether the same group was responsible for both attacks.

Witty said Change Healthcare's core systems were now fully functional. But company officials have said it may take several months of analysis to identify and notify those who were affected by the attack.

They also have said they see no signs that doctor charts or full medical histories were released after the attack. Witty told senators that UnitedHealth repels an attempted intrusion every 70 seconds.

A ransomware attack in November prompted the Ardent Health Services system, operating 30 hospitals in six states, to divert patients from some of its emergency rooms to other hospitals while postponing certain elective procedures.

Archived link.

British Columbia’s public safety minister says he is confident that a cyberattack targeting government networks was led by a “state or state-sponsored actor.”

In the update delivered Friday, Mike Farnworth said he did not know and could not comment on what country may have been involved.

The “sophisticated” nature of the attack and methods used by the intruders to try and cover their tracks led government and private sector experts to conclude the attackers were state-backed, Farnworth said.

Earlier Friday, the head of B.C.’s Public Service, Shannon Salter, said the initial intrusion was detected on April 10 and confirmed the following day.

B.C. Premier David Eby was briefed about the incident on April 17, while the public service was directed to strengthen their passwords on April 19. Cabinet was not briefed until Wednesday of this week, the same day the cyberattack was publicly revealed.

Farnworth said the information was held back on the advice of cybersecurity experts for security reasons, as they worked to understand and secure against the attack.

"If you give that information out, or say there has been an intrusion or attack before that work is done, what you end up doing is leaving the system open for even greater compromising and even greater intrusion,” Farnworth said.

“So, the first priority is to make sure the system is secure … and then and only then are you able to provide information to the public. We follow the advice of the experts.”

Farnworth said the province was working with the Canadian Centre for Cybersecurity and Microsoft’s Detection and Response Team. Police are also involved and Farnworth said he has been in regular contact with the federal government over the incident.

The intrusion was not a ransomware attack, Farnworth said. He did not specify what the intruders may have been looking for, other than to suggest that governments are always a target.

The minister added that the province is confident in its information security, pointing to a staff of 76 people in the Ministry of Citizens Services tasked with cybersecurity. He added the province is also confident measures are in place to ensure remote work by government employees is secure.

“The reality is this is the world we live in, and it is constantly evolving and government places a high priority on making sure we are also evolving and keeping up with the changes that we are seeing,” he said.

On Thursday, BC United Official Opposition Leader Kevin Falcon said the government owes it to the public to provide more detail.

He pointed to the recent London Drugs cybersecurity incident, noting the company provided near-daily updates on the situation.

“We know that for at least eight days they have known this was an issue,” Falcon said.

“And last night, they quietly released a statement in the midst of a Canucks playoff hockey game, which is part of their pattern of always being secretive about things and not transparent.”

Farnworth said once an investigation is complete into the incident, the province will undertake a “full review” of the incident and provide more information to the public.

Archived link.

On Jan. 6, 2021, QAnon conspiracy theorists played a significant role in inciting Donald Trump supporters to storm the Capitol building in D.C., hoping to overturn the 2020 election in favor of Trump.

Days later, Twitter suspended tens of thousands of QAnon accounts, effectively banning most users who promote the far-right conspiracy theory.

Now, a new study from Newsguard has uncovered that since Elon Musk acquired the company, QAnon has had a resurgence on X, formerly Twitter, over the past year.

QAnon grows on X

Tracking commonly used QAnon phrases like "QSentMe," "TheGreatAwakening," and "WWG1WGA" (which stands for "Where We Go One, We Go All"), Newsguard found that these QAnon-related slogans and hashtags have increased a whopping 1,283 percent on X under Musk.

From May 1, 2023 to May 1, 2024, there were 1.12 million mentions of these QAnon supporter phrases on X. This was a huge uptick from the 81,100 mentions just one year earlier from May 1, 2022 to May 1, 2023.

One of the most viral QAnon-related posts of the year, on the "Frazzledrip" conspiracy, has received more than 21.8 million views, according to the report. Most concerning, however, is that it was posted by a right-wing influencer who has specifically received support from Musk.

The Jan. 2024 tweet was posted by @dom_lucre, a user with more than 1.2 million followers who commonly posts far-right conspiracy theories. In July 2023, @dom_lucre was suspended on then-Twitter. Responding to @dom_lucre's supporters, Musk shared at the time that @dom_lucre was "suspended for posting child exploitation pictures."

Sharing child sexual abuse material or CSAM would result in a permanent ban on most platforms. However, Musk decided to personally intervene in favor of @dom_lucre and reinstated his account.

Since then, @dom_lucre has posted about how he earns thousands of dollars directly from X. The company allows him to monetize his conspiratorial posts via the platform's official creator monetization program.

Musk has also previously voiced his support for Jacob Chansely, a QAnon follower known as the "QAnon Shaman," who served prison time for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

The dangers of QAnon

QAnon's adherents follow a number of far-right conspiracy theories, but broadly (and falsely) believe that former President Trump has been secretly battling against a global cabal of Satanic baby-eating traffickers, who just happen to primarily be made up of Democratic Party politicians and Hollywood elites.

Unfortunately, these beliefs have too often turned deadly. Numerous QAnon followers have been involved in killings fueled by their beliefs. In 2022, one Michigan man killed his wife before being fatally shot in a standoff with police. His daughter said her father spiraled out of control as he fell into the QAnon conspiracies. In 2021, another QAnon conspiracy theorists killed his two young children, claiming that his wife had "Serpent DNA" and his children were monsters.

Of course, QAnon never completely disappeared from social media platforms. Its followers still espoused their beliefs albeit in a more coded manner over the past few years to circumvent social media platforms' policies. Now, though, QAnon believers are once again being more open about their radical theories.

The looming November 2024 Presidential election likely plays a role in the sudden resurgence of QAnon on X, as QAnon-believing Trump supporters look to help their chosen candidate. However, Musk and X have actively welcomed these users to their social media service, eagerly providing them with a platform to spread their dangerous falsehoods.

Archived link.

On Jan. 6, 2021, QAnon conspiracy theorists played a significant role in inciting Donald Trump supporters to storm the Capitol building in D.C., hoping to overturn the 2020 election in favor of Trump.

Days later, Twitter suspended tens of thousands of QAnon accounts, effectively banning most users who promote the far-right conspiracy theory.

Now, a new study from Newsguard has uncovered that since Elon Musk acquired the company, QAnon has had a resurgence on X, formerly Twitter, over the past year.

QAnon grows on X

Tracking commonly used QAnon phrases like "QSentMe," "TheGreatAwakening," and "WWG1WGA" (which stands for "Where We Go One, We Go All"), Newsguard found that these QAnon-related slogans and hashtags have increased a whopping 1,283 percent on X under Musk.

From May 1, 2023 to May 1, 2024, there were 1.12 million mentions of these QAnon supporter phrases on X. This was a huge uptick from the 81,100 mentions just one year earlier from May 1, 2022 to May 1, 2023.

One of the most viral QAnon-related posts of the year, on the "Frazzledrip" conspiracy, has received more than 21.8 million views, according to the report. Most concerning, however, is that it was posted by a right-wing influencer who has specifically received support from Musk.

The Jan. 2024 tweet was posted by @dom_lucre, a user with more than 1.2 million followers who commonly posts far-right conspiracy theories. In July 2023, @dom_lucre was suspended on then-Twitter. Responding to @dom_lucre's supporters, Musk shared at the time that @dom_lucre was "suspended for posting child exploitation pictures."

Sharing child sexual abuse material or CSAM would result in a permanent ban on most platforms. However, Musk decided to personally intervene in favor of @dom_lucre and reinstated his account.

Since then, @dom_lucre has posted about how he earns thousands of dollars directly from X. The company allows him to monetize his conspiratorial posts via the platform's official creator monetization program.

Musk has also previously voiced his support for Jacob Chansely, a QAnon follower known as the "QAnon Shaman," who served prison time for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

The dangers of QAnon

QAnon's adherents follow a number of far-right conspiracy theories, but broadly (and falsely) believe that former President Trump has been secretly battling against a global cabal of Satanic baby-eating traffickers, who just happen to primarily be made up of Democratic Party politicians and Hollywood elites.

Unfortunately, these beliefs have too often turned deadly. Numerous QAnon followers have been involved in killings fueled by their beliefs. In 2022, one Michigan man killed his wife before being fatally shot in a standoff with police. His daughter said her father spiraled out of control as he fell into the QAnon conspiracies. In 2021, another QAnon conspiracy theorists killed his two young children, claiming that his wife had "Serpent DNA" and his children were monsters.

Of course, QAnon never completely disappeared from social media platforms. Its followers still espoused their beliefs albeit in a more coded manner over the past few years to circumvent social media platforms' policies. Now, though, QAnon believers are once again being more open about their radical theories.

The looming November 2024 Presidential election likely plays a role in the sudden resurgence of QAnon on X, as QAnon-believing Trump supporters look to help their chosen candidate. However, Musk and X have actively welcomed these users to their social media service, eagerly providing them with a platform to spread their dangerous falsehoods.

Here is the archived version.

If people are naturally drawn to human rights, democracy, and freedom, then those concepts have to be poisoned.

The American extreme right and (more rarely) the extreme left benefit from the spread of antidemocratic narratives, they have an interest in silencing or hobbling any group that wants to stop, or even identify, foreign campaigns.

Senator Mark Warner, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that “we are actually less prepared today than we were four years ago” for foreign attempts to influence the 2024 election. This is not only because authoritarian propaganda campaigns have become more sophisticated as they begin to use AI, or because “you obviously have a political environment here where there’s a lot more Americans who are more distrustful of all institutions.” It’s also because the lawsuits, threats, and smear tactics have chilled government, academic, and tech-company responses.

One could call this a secret authoritarian “plot” to preserve the ability to spread antidemocratic conspiracy theories, except that it’s not a secret. It’s all visible, right on the surface. Russia, China, and sometimes other state actors—Venezuela, Iran, Hungary—work with Americans to discredit democracy, to undermine the credibility of democratic leaders, to mock the rule of law. They do so with the goal of electing Trump, whose second presidency would damage the image of democracy around the world, as well as the stability of democracy in America, even further.