News bits: AI influence in elections increases; Poll data; Supreme Court corruption

The rise of the dark side: The NYT reports about the increasing presence of AI in political campaigns worldwide:

In Toronto, a candidate in this week’s mayoral election who vows to clear homeless encampments released a set of campaign promises illustrated by artificial intelligence, including fake dystopian images of people camped out on a downtown street and a fabricated image of tents set up in a park.

In Chicago, the runner-up in the mayoral vote in April complained that a Twitter account masquerading as a news outlet had used A.I. to clone his voice in a way that suggested he condoned police brutality.

What began a few months ago as a slow drip of fund-raising emails and promotional images composed by A.I. for political campaigns has turned into a steady stream of campaign materials created by the technology, rewriting the political playbook for democratic elections around the world.

Increasingly, political consultants, election researchers and lawmakers say setting up new guardrails, such as legislation reining in synthetically generated ads, should be an urgent priority. Existing defenses, such as social media rules and services that claim to detect A.I. content, have failed to do much to slow the tide.  

As the 2024 U.S. presidential race starts to heat up, some of the campaigns are already testing the technology. The Republican National Committee released a video with artificially generated images of doomsday scenarios after President Biden announced his re-election bid, while Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida posted fake images of former President Donald J. Trump with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former health official. The Democratic Party experimented with fund-raising messages drafted by artificial intelligence in the spring — and found that they were often more effective at encouraging engagement and donations than copy written entirely by humans.

The article goes on to point out that sophisticated AI content is appearing more frequently on social networks because those sources are unwilling or unable to police it. Weak, ineffective oversight of social media content allows unlabeled AI material to do irreversible damage. Explaining fakery, lies and slanders to millions of users after they see it is too little, too late, and from what I can tell, it's probably not even possible.

So, we all know what is going to happen in the good 'ole broken US of A with its broken government and a morally rotted major political party that depends heavily on deceit, irrational manipulation and brazen crackpot conspiracy blither for its power. Nothing to regulate AI is going to happen. 

For radical right Republicans and their radical candidates, their 2024 campaigns will be loaded with AI-generated images, voices and rhetoric designed to deceive, distract, demoralize, confuse and slander democrats, democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties. For both major parties, AI content will be better at fund raising, so both are disincentivized to regulate AI. We're in a race to the bottom. The two parties consolidate power and win, while the public interest and democracy lose.

And, there's this fun observation by Josh A. Goldstein, a research fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology: “If people can’t trust their eyes and ears, they may just say, ‘Who knows?’ This could foster a move from healthy skepticism that encourages good habits (like lateral reading and searching for reliable sources) to an unhealthy skepticism that it is impossible to know what is true.”

Hannah Arendt referring to the effects of

totalitarian propaganda decades before AI came on the scene

________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

The 2024 presidential Binden v. DJT election update: Poll data continues to indicate that the Repubs will nominate DJT. The Indictment has not hurt him yet. Playing the innocent, persecuted martyr seems to go over well with the MAGA cult. The Hill writes about polling data from April and June:

Although Biden has low approval, about 42% at present (about 43% among registered or likely voters) it seems likely he will be the Dem nominee unless something derails him or Newsome or Michelle Obama runs. These days, approval of a president below 50% seems to be the new normal.

________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

A WaPo opinion piece by Jennifer Rubin discussed a phone interview with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) regarding the corruption of the Supreme Court. Central to the opinion was analysis of Sam Alito's defense of his own blatant corruption in situations just like what Clarence Thomas claims are not corrupt. The weakness of Alito's defense of himself is arrogant and deeply insulting. Alito really thinks we are stupid. The opinion opines: 

The senator ticked off the problems with Alito’s argument: factual omissions (e.g., the standard for exempt gifts does not include transportation); Alito’s lame effort to turn an airplane into a “facility” to jam it into an exempt-gift category (“It doesn’t pass the laugh test,” Whitehouse said); Alito’s plea that he couldn’t possibly have known Singer had a financial stake ($2 billion) in the outcome of a case before the court (although it was widely reported in the media); and the insistence that yet another billionaire was a “friend,” which somehow absolved him from his obligation to report gifts of “hospitality.” And, Whitehouse argued, it strains credulity that Alito (like Justice Clarence Thomas) could be confused about reporting requirements when there is a Financial Disclosure Committee expressly set up to help judges navigate these issues.

All in all, the poorly reasoned argument amounted to what Whitehouse called “a painful exhibit for an actual ethics code.” A bill he co-authored with Judiciary Chairman Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), set to be marked up after July 4, would confirm that the code of ethics applicable to all judges applies to the high court, set up a process for screening ethics complaints and allow chief judges of the circuit to advise on how their circuits handle similar matters. This is “not remotely unconstitutional,” he noted. Whitehouse wryly remarked that the last thing the justices want is a comparison to circuit courts’ conduct. “The best way to show that a stick is crooked is to lay a straight stick alongside it,” he said.

Whitehouse has long maintained that the court’s unprincipled, outcome-oriented and partisan decision-making is very much linked to the ethics problems. “The ethics problem is not just relevant to expensive gifts and fancy vacations,” he told me. The ethics issues “don’t occur in a vacuum,” he said. They point to “a bigger enterprise whose purpose is to capture the court.”

It is good to see pro-corruption arguments side-by-side with facts that show the arguments to be false. Whitehouse makes a good argument that Supreme Court corruption does not occur in a vacuum, but reflects the bigger authoritarian radical right effort to capture the Supreme Court. An obvious question is whether the authoritarian effort already has captured the court. Look to me like it has.

________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________

Defense against the dark arts in Australia: ABC News reports on a draft bill that would punish online misinformation, including accidental misinformation:

Online platforms spreading misinformation could face millions of dollars in penalties under new proposed government legislation that bolsters the power of Australia's media watchdog.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) would be armed with the ability to require digital platforms to keep certain records about matters regarding misinformation and disinformation and turn them over when requested.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said this would "essentially mean that the regulator is able to look under the hood of what the platforms are doing and what measures they are taking to ensure compliance".

According to the draft bill, misinformation is defined as unintentionally false, misleading or deceptive content.

That bit about fining accidental misinformation seems a bit of an overreach, but in general something like this is what it will take to address deceit and misinformation online. Companies will not do it on their own. 

Neuroscience bit: Getting closer to understanding the mind?

We're still trying to figure it out, but

maybe we're finally closing in on 

some serious understanding

Explanation in non-science language

A fascinating article in Sci Tech Daily discusses a proposed mechanism to explain how the brain-mind works. They call their proposed mechanism cytoelectric coupling. Translated into American, what they mean by that is that neurons in close proximity to each other in the brain, or in neural pathways, (and spinal cord and maybe some other brain cells too?), are linked by small electric fields. The coupling of cells gives rise to coordinated weak electrical field pulses in the brain. The weak field pulses apparently have little to do with neurons talking to each other via chemicals released into synapses, which is a different form of communication between neurons. What is happening is that structures in and near neurons change as nearby weak electrical fields pass through. The electrical fields manifest as waves of electricity that constantly pulse through at least parts of the brain where neurons are linked in neural pathways.

The big deal here is that although neuroscientists have been aware of weak electrical fields potentially affecting cells close to each other, there has never been proof that the fields cause specific changes in nearby neurons and those changes are a manifestation of the working of the conscious or sentient human mind. 

Before this paper, it was unknown if the weak electrical fields existed simply because small pulses of electricity travel through neurons to synapses where most or all the interneuron communicating was believed to happen. The bulk of what constitutes the working of the mind was believed to be in the chemicals traversing synapses between linked neurons. Until now, there was no basis to believe there was a cause and effect relationship between intracellular structure changes and the weak electric field pulses. 

Thus there are two different forms of communication between neurons, one at synapses and the other between precisely positioned neurons and their weak electrical fields. Presumably, both together are responsible for how the human mind thinks and perceives inputs from sensory organs and neurons.

Science language explanation

STD writes:

“Cytoelectric Coupling”: A Groundbreaking 

Hypothesis on How Our Brains Function

Brain waves act as carriers of information. A recently proposed “Cytoelectric Coupling” hypothesis suggests that these wavering electric fields contribute to the optimization of the brain network’s efficiency and robustness. They do this by influencing the physical configuration of the brain’s molecular framework. [translation: changing the structures in and around neurons]

In order to carry out its multifaceted functions, which include thought, the brain operates on various levels. Information like objectives or visuals is depicted through synchronized electrical activity among neuronal networks. Simultaneously, a combination of proteins and other biochemicals within and surrounding each neuron physically execute the mechanics required for participation in these networks.

“The information the brain is processing has a role in fine-tuning the network down to the molecular level,” said Earl K. Miller, Picower Professor in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT, who co-authored the paper in Progress in Neurobiology with Associate Professor Dimitris Pinotsis of MIT and City —University of London, and Professor Gene Fridman of Johns Hopkins.[1]

“The brain adapts to a changing world,” Pinotsis said. “Its proteins and molecules change too. They can have electric charges and need to catch up with neurons that process, store, and transmit information using electric signals. Interacting with the neurons’ electric fields seems necessary.”

A major focus of Miller’s lab is studying how higher-level cognitive functions such as working memory can rapidly, flexibly, and yet reliably emerge from the activity of millions of individual neurons. Neurons are capable of dynamically forming circuits by creating and removing connections, called synapses, as well as strengthening or weakening those junctions. But, that merely forms a “roadmap” around which information could flow, Miller said.

The specific neural circuits that collectively represent one thought or another, Miller has found, are coordinated by rhythmic activity, more colloquially known as “brain waves” of different frequencies.

Fast “gamma” rhythms help transmit images from our vision (e.g. a muffin), while slower “beta” waves might carry our deeper thoughts about that image, (e.g. “too many calories”). Properly timed, bursts of these waves can carry predictions, enable writing in, holding onto, and reading out information in working memory, Miller’s lab has shown.

If the brain carries information in electric fields and those electric fields are capable of configuring neurons and other elements in the brain that form a network, then the brain is likely to use this capability. The brain can use fields to ensure the network does what it is supposed to do, the authors suggest.

“Cytoelectric Coupling connects information at the meso‐ and macroscopic level down to the microscopic level of proteins that are the molecular basis of memory,” the authors wrote in the paper.

The article lays out the logic inspiring Cytoelectic Coupling. “We’re offering a hypothesis that anybody can test,” Miller said.

Q: Is this very cool brain-mind stuff or what?

Footnote: 

1. The abstract of the paper:

We propose and present converging evidence for the Cytoelectric Coupling Hypothesis: Electric fields generated by neurons are causal down to the level of the cytoskeleton. This could be achieved via electrodiffusion and mechanotransduction and exchanges between electrical, potential and chemical energy. Ephaptic coupling organizes neural activity, forming neural ensembles at the macroscale level. This information propagates to the neuron level, affecting spiking, and down to molecular level to stabilize the cytoskeleton, “tuning” it to process information more efficiently.

Translation into non-science: 

Electric fields generated by neurons are causal down to the level of the cytoskeleton = electric fields cause specific changes in structures in neurons and that is part of what constitutes thinking and the human mind

Ephaptic coupling = the spreading of impulses along and across adjacent axons such that action potential propagating along one axon fires up an adjacent axon, i.e., a lot of stuff goes on outside of synapses; the electrical fields, if strong enough and/or positioned precisely, are able to influence the electrical excitability of neighboring neurons near-instantaneously (near speed of light)

Neural ensembles = neural pathways; a population of nervous system cells (or cultured neurons) involved in a particular neural computation

Ephaptic coupling between neurons  

in an olfactory bulb (smell sensor)

Acknowledgement: Thanks to Larry Motuz for bringing the STD paper to my attention.

Should Biden Pardon Trump?

THE DAILY DEBATE

Should Biden Pardon Trump?

A Pardon For Trump Would Be A Betrayal Of Biden's Base

By Jason Nichols

President Biden: Pardon Trump. It's What's Best For The Nation

By Jeff Charles

https://www.newsweek.com/

Nevertheless, there is a strong argument for President Biden to pardon Trump. Centrists are understandably frustrated and dismayed by the divisive political atmosphere in the country, and some have proposed a pardon for the federal documents case as a way of putting the nation on the path toward healing. Biden ran in 2020 as a uniter, and some claim that this would solidify his claim to that title. They also argue that a pardon would blunt the preposterous "weaponization of the federal government" claim. Others believe President Biden could bring the country together and win over independents by showing Donald Trump mercy.

All of those arguments are logical. But they are wrong. If Biden pardoned Trump, it would backfire against the President and Democrats, confuse independents, lower morale in the Department of Justice, and not win over a single MAGA Republican.

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-pardon-betrayal-bidens-base-opinion-1808746

Former President Donald Trump is facing the historic circumstance of campaigning for a presidential election while under a Justice Department indictment. It has many on the Right calling foul, seeing it as evidence of a politicized justice system that's trying to win the presidential election for President Joe Biden by imprisoning his opponent.

Whether or not you agree with this sentiment, many of your fellow Americans do. And there's an easy way to diffuse this allegation: President Biden could immediately and preemptively pardon former President Trump. He should absolutely do this, as soon as possible.

Recent polling suggests that a significant chunk of Americans concur. A Harvard-Harris survey found that 53 percent of Americans would support a presidential pardon for Trump. Even more unexpected is that nearly a third of Democratic voters favored a pardon as well.

By pardoning Donald Trump, President Biden would demonstrate a commitment to moving forward and fostering national healing. Avoiding a highly divisive trial would allow the country to shift its focus away from the controversies surrounding the former president and toward addressing pressing issues.

https://www.newsweek.com/president-biden-pardon-trump-its-whats-best-nation-opinion-1808745

          What Snowy has to say about this:

Sure, Pardon Trump, IF he agrees not to run for President. Otherwise, no!       

WHAT SAY YOU??                                                                               

Neuroscience bit: Conservative vs. liberal brains and minds

From an October 2020 article in Scientific American:

Motivated reasoning, in which people work hard to justify their opinions or decisions, even in the face of conflicting evidence, has been a popular topic in political neuroscience because there is a lot of it going around. [Understatement alert!]

On the whole, the research shows, conservatives desire security, predictability and authority more than liberals do, and liberals are more comfortable with novelty, nuance and complexity. .... While these findings are remarkably consistent, they are probabilities, not certainties—meaning there is plenty of individual variability. The political landscape includes lefties who own guns, right-wingers who drive Priuses and everything in between.  

Understanding the influence of partisanship on identity, even down to the level of neurons, “helps to explain why people place party loyalty over policy, and even over truth,” argued psychologists Jay Van Bavel and Andrea Pereira, both then at New York University, in Trends in Cognitive Sciences in 2018. In short, we derive our identities from both our individual characteristics, such as being a parent, and our group memberships, such as being a New Yorker or an American. These affiliations serve multiple social goals: they feed our need to belong and desire for closure and predictability, and they endorse our moral values. And our brain represents them much as it does other forms of social identity.

Among other things, partisan identity clouds memory. In a 2013 study, liberals were more likely to misremember George W. Bush remaining on vacation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and conservatives were more likely to falsely recall seeing Barack Obama shaking hands with the president of Iran. Partisan identity also shapes our perceptions. When they were shown a video of a political protest in a 2012 study, liberals and conservatives were more or less likely to favor calling police depending on their interpretation of the protest’s goal.

“The biology and neuroscience of politics might be useful in terms of what is effective at getting through to people,” Van Bavel says. “Maybe the way to interact with someone who disagrees with me politically is not to try to persuade them on the deep issue, because I might never get there. It’s more to try to understand where they’re coming from and shatter their stereotypes.”

I figured out years ago that trying to persuade and change minds is futile at best. At worst, it's counterproductive and unpleasant. Although I do not hope to shatter anyone's stereotypes, I do try to reach a point of mutual understanding for why disagreement exists. That's about the best one can hope for with political disagreements.

The most important fight of the decade!!

 Forget Democrats vs Republicans.

Forget Liberals vs Conservatives.

Forget Christians vs Atheists.

Forget pro-lifers vs pro-choice. 

THIS IS THE BIG FIGHT:

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg agree to hold cage fight

Two of the world's most high-profile technology billionaires - Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg - have agreed to fight each other in a cage match.

Mr Musk posted a message on his social media platform Twitter that he was "up for a cage fight" with Mr Zuckerberg.

Mr Zuckerberg, the boss of Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta, then posted a screenshot of Mr Musk's tweet with the caption "send me location".

Mr Musk then replied to Mr Zuckerberg's response with: "Vegas Octagon."

The Octagon is the competition mat and fenced-in area used for Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) bouts. The UFC is based in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The exchanges have gone viral with social media users debating who would win the bout, while others have posted memes including mocked up posters advertising the fight.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65981876

I hope it's televised, don't you??  😏

Published

News bits: Schiff shafts Durham with truth; House Republicans attack enemies; Etc.

From the Republicans tried but failed to smear files: GOP propaganda and rhetoric is loaded with lies, smears and slanders aimed mostly at Democrats, liberals, and RINO Republicans. It turns out that most of the time when the matter is pressed, the evidence shows the propaganda and rhetoric to be actual lies, smears and/or slanders. The Daily Beast writes about a really big Republican lie that ran into a buzzsaw of inconvenient truth with no place to hide from it, despite trying to hide and deflect from it:  

Adam Schiff Gets John Durham to Admit Russia Helped Trump

When Republicans brought Special Counsel John Durham to the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, they thought it’d be an opportunity to score points on Democrats—particularly Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who spent years hyping up Donald Trump’s connections to Russia.

What they got instead was a viral moment when Schiff got Durham—the man tasked with concluding whether the FBI’s investigation of Russia’s connections to the 2016 Trump campaign was appropriate—took Durham to task.

Schiff, a former impeachment manager against Trump, questioned Durham about whether President Trump flaunted information that was released by Russian hackers during the 2016 election. Durham repeatedly insisted he had no knowledge of the matter [what a whopper of a lie]. But in the midst of the exchange, Durham clearly stated he doesn’t doubt the validity of evidence showing Russia was trying to help Trump—something many Republicans have vehemently denied.

“I don’t think there’s any question that Russians intruded into—hacked into the systems, they released information,” Durham said.

“And that was helpful to the Trump campaign, right?” Schiff asked.

After trying to deflect the question, Durham agreed the Russians had been helpful to the Trump campaign.

“And Trump made use of that, as I said, didn’t he, by touting those stolen documents on the campaign trail over a hundred times,” Schiff said.

Durham said he didn’t “really read the newspapers, or listen to the news.”

“So I don’t know that,” he said. 

“Were you totally oblivious to Donald Trump’s use of the stolen emails on the campaign trail more than a hundred times?” Schiff asked. “Did that escape your attention?” 

Durham responded that he wasn’t aware of that.

There is no basis in existing evidence to accord Durham any credibility. He doesn't read newspapers? What does read or listen to, Evie Magazine? Breitbart? Faux News? Nothing? Durham, like the rest of the radical right Republican elites, is a shameless liar. They all tell lots of whopper lies and slanders and get away with it.

________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________

The NYT writes about House Republicans openly attacking enemies: 

House Censures Adam Schiff Over His Role Investigating Trump

The G.O.P.-led House formally censured Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, on Wednesday over his role investigating former President Donald J. Trump, the first in what could be a series of votes seeking to punish those whom Republicans have deemed the party’s enemies.

The censure passed by a party-line vote of 213 to 209 with six Republicans voting “present.” The measure had the backing of Speaker Kevin McCarthy after its lead sponsor, Representative Anna Paulina Luna, Republican of Florida, altered its language to remove a multimillion-dollar fine some Republicans viewed as unconstitutional.

“Adam Schiff launched an all-out political campaign built on baseless distortions against a sitting U.S. president,” Ms. Luna said. The censure accused him of engaging in “falsehoods, misrepresentations and abuses of sensitive information” as he sought to unearth connections between Mr. Trump and Russia.

As usual, the Republicans use lies and slanders to attack enemies. That's all they've got, so that's what they use.

________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________

About the morality of democracy vs authoritarianism: Few or no dictators like to be called dictators. They prefer other labels, often some form of democrat. A day or two ago, president Biden called China's powerful dictator Xi Jinping a dictator. CNN reported on the dictator's instant backlash:

When President Joe Biden referred to his Chinese counterpart as a dictator late Tuesday in California, the response from Beijing was swift and angry.

“The remarks seriously contradict basic facts, seriously violate diplomatic etiquette, and seriously infringe on China’s political dignity,” the spokesperson for the foreign ministry said.

I take that as more evidence that living under democracy is inherently more desirable to most people than the idea of living under authoritarians like dictators, theocrat or plutocrats. Authoritarians know this, so they deny, downplay or deflect from the fact that they are authoritarian. What was most important was that Xi's political dignity was infringed, not necessarily China's.

Setting aside the wisdom or stupidity of Biden's remark, plenty of evidence indicates that the human urge to live under democracy is widespread and universal or almost so. I take that as convincing evidence that at least in modern times, democracy is inherently more moral than various forms of dictatorship. It may not mean that democracies are always better in one or more ways than a comparable dictatorship, but that is a different issue. 

Belief in the superior morality of democracy over authoritarianism or dictatorship is a core moral belief that underpins my own political ideology, pragmatic rationalism. 

Qs: What is an argument(s) that supports some form(s) of authoritarianism as being more moral than some form of democracy? Or, is authoritarianism vs. democracy simply not a matter of ethics or morality?

________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________

Thoughts on democracy in India: A NYT opinion piece by Harvard history professor Maya Jasanoff opines:

Narendra Modi Is Not Who America Thinks He Is

On Thursday the White House will roll out the red carpet for Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India to “affirm the deep and close partnership between the United States and India” and “strengthen our two countries’ shared commitment to a free, open, prosperous, and secure Indo-Pacific.” A state dinner and Mr. Modi’s address to a joint session of Congress will crown months of fawning assessments of India by everyone from Bill Gates to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

Here is what Americans need to know about Mr. Modi’s India. Armed with a sharp-edged doctrine of Hindu nationalism, Mr. Modi has presided over the nation’s broadest assault on democracy, civil society and minority rights in at least 40 years. He has delivered prosperity and national pride to some, and authoritarianism and repression of many others that should disturb us all.

Since Mr. Modi took power in 2014, India’s once-proud claim to being a free democratic society has collapsed on many fronts. Of the 180 nations surveyed in the 2023 World Press Freedom Index, India sits at 161, a scant three places above Russia. Its position on the Academic Freedom Index has nose-dived since Mr. Modi took office, putting it on a course that sharply resembles those of other electoral autocracies. The Freedom in the World index has tracked a steady erosion of Indian citizens’ political rights and civil liberties. On the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, India has tumbled squarely into the ranks of “flawed democracies.”

A working paper from the Indian government dismisses such metrics as “perception-based.” Sadly, it is no “perception” that the government systematically harasses its critics by raiding the offices of think tanks, NGOs and media organizations, restricting freedom of entry and exit, and pressing nuisance lawsuits — most conspicuously against the opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, who was recently ejected from Parliament after his conviction on a ludicrous charge of having defamed everybody named “Modi.” It is no “perception” that Muslim history has been torn from national textbooks, cities with Islamic eponyms renamed and India’s only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir, stripped of its autonomy.  

As for India’s readiness to partner on efforts to combat climate change — one of the Biden administration’s highest hopes — the Indian government has cracked down on climate activists and just removed evolution and the periodic table from the curriculum for under-16-year-olds in its ongoing assault on science.  

Healthier ways to engage with India begin with understanding that Mr. Modi’s version of India is no less skewed than Donald Trump’s of the United States, even if Mr. Modi has been more successful at getting the media and global elite to buy into it.

Why does it too often look like democracy is weaker than authoritarianism? And why do various rising dictatorship look increasingly like the one now unfolding in the US? The tactics authoritarians use worldwide keep looking more like what the GOP is doing to America, Putin is doing to Russia, and what Viktor Orban has done to Hungary.

The US believes it needs good relations with India to help it fight a new Cold War with China. But India has become mostly authoritarian. Modi is going to do what he sees as in his and India's interest, whether or not it is in the US interest. Sure, the US can and should be on at least somewhat friendly terms with dictatorships. But to praise dictators like Modi as presiding over "free and open" countries undermines democracy. India is no longer free or open. It seems that democracy can no longer defend itself very well against the rising global tide of authoritarianism.