1/ From targeting former U.S. intelligence officers to stealing trade secrets from the private sector, China is putting the U.S. on the defensive in an escalating espionage war. bit.ly/30AN73D
2/ China has been seeking to turn American spies for decades. But the rules of the game have changed.
3/ Chinese spycraft efforts are now online. Using the tools of social-media allows Chinese intelligence officers to reach out to their targets en masse with less risk of getting caught.
4/ The recent cases of American spies being charged with espionage-related acts for China are an alarming sign for the U.S. intelligence community.
5/ U.S. officials have been warning companies and research institutions not just of the strings that might be attached to Chinese money, but of the danger of corrupted employees turned spies.
6/6 As the U.S. and China struggle for global dominance, China’s targeting of American spies to gain government and trade secrets only accelerates the competition. bit.ly/30AN73D
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1/ 55 years ago today, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated while on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis.
Writers and thinkers ever since have tried to understand King’s legacy, which has been complicated and confused over half a century: theatlantic.com/projects/king/
2/ Seven days diverted the course of a social revolution and changed America forever.
Our new podcast “Holy Week” tells the story of the fiery, disruptive period following King’s assassination: theatlantic.com/podcasts/holy-…
3/ “The sound bites evoking King are stretched like skin over the bones of existing debate. The figure celebrated looks nothing like the leader who lived—and who was killed—but like a granite-chiseled modern founding father,” Vann R. Newkirk II writes. theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
Writer Deborah Copaken reflects on lessons learned from her decade-long friendship with Nora Ephron, who “teaches me, by example, how to navigate the postreproductive half of my life.”
1/ The first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The first Black person in Salem, Massachusetts, to formally teach white students. The longest-serving first lady.
To mark #WomensHistoryMonth, we’re sharing essays from women in history whose work appears in our pages:
2/ Charlotte Forten Grimké was an educator and abolitionist who wrote with forceful moral urgency. She was the first Black woman to appear in the pages of The Atlantic.
3/ If you know anything about Helen Keller, it's about her experience as a deaf and blind person in America. But Keller’s “writing about other subjects is incandescent,” @elcush once noted.
“For the past three years,” @AdrienneLaF writes, “I’ve been preoccupied with a question: How can America survive a period of mass delusion, deep division, and political violence without seeing the permanent dissolution of the ties that bind us?” on.theatln.tc/7ue6Tlk
In recent years, Americans have contemplated whether we’re moving toward a second Civil War. But what the country is experiencing now—and may continue to experience for a generation or more—is something different: a new phase of domestic terror.
Political violence is all around us, @AdrienneLaF writes. Today, it is “characterized by radicalized individuals with shape-shifting ideologies willing to kill their political enemies.”
Lounging around can free up time for things beyond your to-do list, @IsabelFattal writes. Here’s a reading list about do-nothing time—why we need it, how much of it we need, and the possibilities it creates: on.theatln.tc/MgWZv0U
@IsabelFattal Jason Heller and his wife have an agreement: One day a week, they do absolutely nothing.
In a society obsessed with productivity, this is harder than it should be—but it’s worth it: on.theatln.tc/AgE8VfK
@IsabelFattal Last August, Arthur C. Brooks argued that absolute idleness is harder—but more rewarding—than it seems: on.theatln.tc/nXSPfYm
As we mark the first anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, revisit George Packer’s October 2022 cover story. He traveled to Ukraine and spoke with people who had rallied to save their nation and defend the values Americans claim to hold. on.theatln.tc/CUB5r7V
"Here, all the complex infighting and chronic disappointments and sheer lethargy of any democratic society ... dissolved, and the essential things—to be free and live with dignity—became clear," Packer writes. on.theatln.tc/CUB5r7V
“It almost seemed as if the U.S. would have to be attacked or undergo some other catastrophe for Americans to remember what Ukrainians have known from the start,” he continues. on.theatln.tc/CUB5r7V