The World: A Brief Introduction

  enter on the basis of skills: In 2017, 137,900 people were granted lawful permanent resident status in the United States due to employment-based preferences: priority workers, professionals with advanced degrees or exceptional ability, employment creation (investors and so on). U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics, 2017 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, 18.

  naturalized American citizens: In 2017, 987,000 people filed a petition for naturalization. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics, 2017 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, 52.

  major source of innovation and talent: Jennifer Hunt and Marjolaine Gauthier-Loiselle, “How Much Does Immigration Boost Innovation?,” National Bureau of Economic Research, NBER Working Paper 14312, September 2008; J. David Brown et al., “Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Innovation in the U.S. High-Tech Sector,” IZA Institute of Labor Economics Discussion Paper No. 12190, February 2019.

  Almost 45 percent of companies: New American Economy Research Fund, “New American Fortune 500 in 2019: Top American Companies and Their Immigrant Roots,” July 22, 2019.

  compete with and replace workers: The best exposition of this view can be found in George J. Borjas, We Wanted Workers: Unraveling the Immigration Narrative (New York: W. W. Norton, 2016).

  highest it has been since World War II: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2018, www.unhcr.org/5d08d7ee7.pdf.

  nearly doubled over the past decade: In 2008, there were 42 million forcibly displaced persons worldwide, which ballooned to 70.8 million in 2018. The refugee population—excluding Palestinians—has nearly doubled since 2012, from 10.5 million to 20.4 million. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2018; United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2008 Global Trends: Refugees, Asylum-Seekers, Returnees, Internally Displaced and Stateless Persons, www.unhcr.org/4a375c426.pdf.

  Eighty-five percent of the world’s refugees: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2018, 18.

  60 percent of all current refugees: Excluding Palestinians, of the 20.4 million refugees around the world 6.7 million originated in Syria, 2.7 million in Afghanistan, and 2.3 million in South Sudan. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2018, 3.

  Refugees are defined: 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, Article I, Section A, Paragraph 2.

  Turkey, Pakistan, Uganda, and Sudan: In 2018, Turkey hosted 3.7 million refugees, while Pakistan hosted 1.4 million, Uganda 1.2 million, and Sudan 1.1 million. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2018, 3.

  defined in a 1998 UN document: Francis M. Deng, “Report of the Representative of the Secretary-General Mr. Francis M. Deng, Submitted Pursuant to Commission Resolution 1997/39, February 11, 1998,” https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/251017.

  The Internet, Cyberspace, and Cybersecurity

  Nearly 300 billion email messages: Radicati Group, “Email Statistics Report, 2019–2023,” February 2019.

  billions of sensors and devices: Ericsson estimates that by 2022 there will be around twenty-nine billion connected devices, of which eighteen billion will be related to the Internet of Things. Ericsson, “Internet of Things Forecast,” www.ericsson.com/en/mobility-report/internet-of-things-forecast.

  same human rights online as off: In 2016, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution that “affirms that the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online, in particular freedom of expression.” The full resolution is available at undocs.org/A/HRC/32/L.20.

  United States and China agreed: The full clause reads, “The United States and China agree that neither country’s government will conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, including trade secrets or other confidential business information, with the intent of providing competitive advantages to companies or commercial sectors.” White House, “Fact Sheet: President Xi Jinping’s State Visit to the United States,” September 25, 2015.

  prevailing view in the United States: Dustin Volz, “China Violated Obama-Era Cybertheft Pact, U.S. Official Says,” Wall Street Journal, November 8, 2018; David E. Sanger and Steven Lee Myers, “After a Hiatus, China Accelerates Cyberspying Efforts to Obtain U.S. Technology,” New York Times, November 29, 2018; Ken Dilanian, “China’s Hackers Are Stealing Secrets from U.S. Firms Again, Experts Say,” NBC News, October 9, 2018.

  U.S. government in 2011 called for the internet: White House, “International Strategy for Cyberspace: Prosperity, Security, and Openness in a Networked World,” May 2011, 8, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/internationalstrategy_cyberspace.pdf.

  internet already appears to be fragmenting: Adam Segal, “When China Rules the Web: Technology in Service of the State,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2018.

  described as the “splinternet”: For more on the fragmentation of the internet and the creation of several distinct internets, see Scott Malcomson, Splinternet: How Geopolitics and Commerce Are Fragmenting the World Wide Web (New York: OR Books, 2016); “Lost in the Splinternet,” Economist, November 5, 2016.

  all shut down social media: Max Fisher, “Sri Lanka Blocks Social Media, Fearing More Violence,” New York Times, April 21, 2019.

  Improving global governance: For those interested in the challenges cyber threats pose to policy makers and approaches to responding to these threats, see Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake, The Fifth Domain: Defending Our Country, Our Companies, and Ourselves in the Age of Cyber Threats (New York: Penguin Press, 2019).

  carried out such cyberattacks: Sanger, Confront and Conceal, 141‒225.

  disrupt North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs: David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, “Trump Inherits a Secret Cyberwar Against North Korean Missiles,” New York Times, March 4, 2017.

  one of the most sophisticated cyber arsenals: David E. Sanger, David D. Kirkpatrick, and Nicole Perlroth, “The World Once Laughed at North Korean Cyberpower. No More,” New York Times, October 15, 2017.

  “digital Geneva Convention”: President Emmanuel Macron of France launched the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace in November 2018, which called for the development of common principles for securing cyberspace. So far, sixty-six countries have signed on to the document, but China, Russia, and the United States have not.

  international rules and norms: For more on the attempt to craft global rules, see Adam Segal, The Hacked World Order: How Nations Fight, Trade, Maneuver, and Manipulate in the Digital Age (New York: PublicAffairs, 2017).

  strong disagreement on these issues: Laurens Cerulus and Mark Scott, “Europe Seeks to Lead a New World Order on Data,” Politico, June 7, 2019.

  Deterrence is often discussed: For a discussion on cyberattacks, cyber warfare, and the difficulty in deterring or responding to such attacks, see David E. Sanger, The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age (New York: Crown, 2018); Fred Kaplan, Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016); and Jason Healey, ed., A Fierce Domain: Conflict in Cyberspace, 1986–2012 (Washington, D.C.: Cyber Conflict Studies Association, 2013).

  Global Health

  global health is considerably better: For those interested in learning more about global health, I recommend Randall M. Packard, A History of Global Health: Interventions into the Lives of Other Peoples (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016); and Angus Deaton, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2013).

  Health-related costs and crises: Daniels and Donilon, Emerging Global Health Crisis, 15.

  close to 10 percent of global economic output: Health spending globally reached $8 trillion in 2016, or 8.6 percent of the
global economy. Global Burden of Disease Health Financing Collaborator Network, “Past, Present, and Future of Global Health Financing: A Review of Development Assistance, Government, Out-of-Pocket, and Other Private Spending on Health for 195 Countries, 1995–2050,” Lancet, April 24, 2019.

  18 percent of its gross domestic product: The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reports that U.S. health-care spending reached $3.5 trillion in 2017, representing 17.9 percent of U.S. GDP. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, “National Health Expenditures 2017 Highlights,” www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/Downloads/highlights.pdf.

  expect to reach his or her seventy-second birthday: Life expectancy at birth for the world’s population reached 72.6 years in 2019. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, “World Population Prospects 2019: Highlights,” 2.

  expect to reach his or her eightieth birthday: For instance, life expectancy at birth is over 80 years in Chile, Costa Rica, Slovenia, Portugal, Germany, Greece, Finland, Belgium, Denmark, Austria, the United Kingdom, France, South Korea, Canada, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Ireland, Australia, Israel, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Japan, and Switzerland. Notably, it is only 78.6 years in the United States. OECD Health Statistics, “Life Expectancy at Birth,” data.oecd.org/healthstat/life-expectancy-at-birth.htm.

  more than double what it was a century ago: James C. Riley, “Estimates of Regional and Global Life Expectancy, 1800–2001,” Population and Development Review 31, no. 3 (September 2005): 537–43.

  average woman lives several years longer: Current female life expectancy is estimated at 75 years, compared with male life expectancy of 70.2 years. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, “World Population Prospects 2019: Highlights,” 29.

  fifty million children’s lives were saved: World Bank, Levels and Trends in Child Mortality: Estimates Developed by the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (IGME)—Report 2015 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank Group, 2015).

  Polio cases have decreased: Polio cases have dropped from an estimated 350,000 cases in 1988 to 33 reported cases in 2018—a 99 percent drop. As a result, the World Health Organization estimates that more than 18 million people are able to walk today who would otherwise have been paralyzed. World Health Organization, “Fact Sheet: Poliomyelitis,” July 22, 2019, www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/poliomyelitis.

  people dying from AIDS-related causes: UNAIDS, “Global HIV & AIDS Statistics—2019 Fact Sheet,” www.unaids.org/en/resources/fact-sheet.

  Incidence of both malaria and measles: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Financing Global Health 2016: Development Assistance, Public and Private Health Spending for the Pursuit of Universal Health Coverage (Seattle: IHME, 2017), 39.

  Life expectancy in several African countries: Life expectancy is under fifty-five years in Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, Chad, Nigeria, and Côte d’Ivoire. World Bank Database, data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN.

  average life expectancy for sub-Saharan Africa: Life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole is 61.1 years, over ten years below the global average of 72.6. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, “World Population Prospects 2019: Highlights,” 29.

  represents a sharp improvement: In 1960, the region had a life expectancy of just over forty years. World Bank Database, data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?locations=ZG.

  much easier for diseases to spread: Lance Saker et al., Globalization and Infectious Diseases: A Review of the Linkages (Geneva: UNICEF/UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Program for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, 2004); Tong Wu et al., “Economic Growth, Urbanization, Globalization, and the Risks of Emerging Infectious Diseases in China: A Review,” Ambio 46 (2017): 18–29; Douglas W. MacPherson et al., “Population Mobility, Globalization, and Antimicrobial Drug Resistance,” Emerging Infectious Diseases 15, no. 11 (2009): 1727–32.

  refugee populations have also become vulnerable: For instance, due to the ongoing war in Yemen and the displacement of its population, the UN reported nearly half a million cases of cholera in the country in the first six months of 2019. United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “Yemen: Over 460K Cases of Cholera Registered to Date This Year,” July 8, 2019.

  drug-resistant organisms: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States, 2013,” www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/threat-report-2013/pdf/ar-threats-2013-508.pdf.

  at least fifty million people died: Douglas Jordan, “The Deadliest Flu: The Complete Story of the Discovery and Reconstruction of the 1918 Pandemic Virus,” U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/reconstruction-1918-virus.html.

  noninfectious or what are termed noncommunicable diseases: For more on NCDs, see Thomas J. Bollyky, Plagues and the Paradox of Progress: Why the World Is Getting Healthier in Worrisome Ways (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2018); Daniels and Donilon, Emerging Global Health Crisis.

  In 1990, three of the top seven causes: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Rethinking Development and Health: Findings from the Global Burden of Disease Study (Seattle: IHME, 2016), 29.

  thirty-eight million—or 68 percent: World Health Organization, Global Status Report on Noncommunicable Diseases 2014 (Geneva: World Health Organization, 2014), xi.

  By 2030, NCDs are projected: United Nations, “Report to the Secretary-General: Prevention and Control of Non-communicable Diseases,” May 19, 2011.

  Global efforts in the health realm: For an overview of this issue, see David P. Fidler, “The Challenges of Global Health Governance,” Council on Foreign Relations Working Paper, May 2010, www.cfr.org/report/challenges-global-health-governance.

  it lacks the necessary authority: For more on the shortcomings of the WHO, see Laurie Garrett, “Ebola’s Lessons: How the WHO Mishandled the Crisis,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2015; Suerie Moon et al., “Will Ebola Change the Game? Ten Essential Reforms Before the Next Pandemic. The Report of the Harvard-LSHTM Independent Panel on the Global Response to Ebola,” Lancet 386, no. 10009 (2015).

  “attainment by all peoples”: World Health Organization, “Constitution of the World Health Organization,” Chapter 1, Article 1, apps.who.int/gb/bd/PDF/bd47/EN/constitution-en.pdf?ua=1.

  receive only a few cents on the dollar: In 2018, just 2 percent (or $778.3 million) of development assistance for health was allocated to NCDs, even though NCDs represented 62.1 percent of the global disease burden. Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Financing Global Health 2018: Countries and Programs in Transition (Seattle: IHME, 2019), 86.

  twice as many premature deaths: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Global Burden of Disease Database (2017), ghdx.healthdata.org/gbd-results-tool.

  Trade and Investment

  Trade at the international level: For a history of trade, see William J. Bernstein, A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008). For a wide-ranging discussion of trade, see Wolf, Why Globalization Works. For an accessible discussion of U.S. trade policy, see Douglas A. Irwin, Clashing over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019); and Craig VanGrasstek, Trade and American Leadership: The Paradoxes of Power and Wealth from Alexander Hamilton to Donald Trump (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

  trade is a good thing: For an accessible, cogent defense of trade, see Jason Furman, “Trade, Innovation, and Economic Growth” (remarks at the Brookings Institution, April 8, 2015); U.S. Council of Economic Advisers, “The Economic Benefits of U.S. Trade,” May 2015.

  export-oriented jobs tend to be relatively high paying:
Andrew B. Bernard et al., “Firms in International Trade,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 21, no. 3 (2007): 105–30; David Riker, “Do Jobs in Export Industries Still Pay More? And Why?,” Manufacturing and Services Economics Brief, no. 2 (International Trade Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 2010).

  This phenomenon is known: For more on how global supply chains or global value chains are reshaping trade, see Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Trade Policy Implications of Global Value Chains,” November 2015; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Making Trade Work for All,” OECD Trade Policy Papers, no. 202 (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2017).

  There is research indicating: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Making Trade Work for All,” 9.

  stolen valuable intellectual property: Chuin-Wei Yap et al., “Huawei’s Yearslong Rise Is Littered with Accusation of Theft and Dubious Ethics,” Wall Street Journal, May 25, 2019; Aruna Viswanatha, Kate O’Keeffe, and Dustin Volz, “U.S. Accuses Chinese Firm, Partner of Stealing Trade Secrets from Micron,” Wall Street Journal, November 21, 2018; Eric Rosenbaum, “1 in 5 Corporations Say China Has Stolen Their IP Within the Last Year: CNBC CFO Survey,” CNBC, March 1, 2019; Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, “Findings of the Investigation into China’s Acts, Policies, and Practices Related to Technology Transfer, Intellectual Property, and Innovation Under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974,” March 22, 2018.

  falling from more than 20 percent: A recent paper estimated that the average tariff level going into the first round of trade negotiations in 1947 was around 22 percent. Chad P. Brown and Douglas A. Irwin, “The GATT’s Starting Point: Tariff Levels Circa 1947,” NBER Working Paper 21782, December 2015. The World Trade Organization reported that the world average applied tariff in 2018 was 9 percent. World Trade Organization, World Trade Statistical Review 2019 (Geneva: World Trade Organization, 2019), 73.