Bibi one more time? Binyamin Netanyahu

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Officials from Huawei were arraigned in America yesterday charged with stealing trade secrets. The Chinese technology giant has drawn scrutiny the world over amid worries that its perceived coziness with the Chinese state makes its Internet hardware susceptible to spying. That might be true, but not in the way you might think. And what do the makers of autonomous vehicles look for in a testing ground? They want a place where there's no rush hour, Regulation is easy, the weather is good, and lots of people want a ride. They're flocking to retirement communities. But first in Israel. Last night, the Attorney General announced his intention to indict Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

Well, Netanyahu becomes the first sitting Prime Minister of Israel to be indicted pending a hearing for criminal offences.

Roger McShane is our middle east editor.

And it's happening less than 60 days before an election.

What exactly is Mr. Netanyahu alleged to have done?

So the potential charges stem from three cases. First, you have case 1000 where he's alleged to have received expensive gifts from wealthy patrons in return for political favors. Then you have case 2000 where he is said to have discussed colluding with a newspaper publisher, he was going to curb one of that paper's competitors. In return, that paper was going to tone down its negative coverage of him. And the most serious case is case 4000, in which he's accused of intervening in regulatory decisions in favor of a company called Bezic. And one of the websites that Bezik owns was going to provide glowing coverage in return.

Right. And how strong is the case against him?

The cases would seem to be pretty strong. They've been in the works for three years. Some of Mr. Netanyahu's closest aides have turned state witness. And you have an attorney general, Avakay Mandelblit, who was appointed by Netanyahu, who was once Netanyahu's cabinet secretary. The this isn't a man who seems to be out to get Netanyahu. He's quite deliberative. And I don't think he would take a shot at a sitting prime minister if he thought he was going to miss.

And what does Mr. Netanyahu have to say about all this?

So he says he's completely innocent. He says the investigations are going to collapse like a house of cards. He calls it a witch hunt. He says the reports of corruption are fake news.

This sounds a little bit familiar.

Yes, there are a lot of people who say that Netanyahu is adopting the rhetoric of Trump. In fact, Netanyahu was first to adopt this type of rhetoric. He's long been able to harness the politics of resentment for his own political gain. He sows division and stokes fear in order to whip up his supporters. And frankly, he's much better at it than Donald Trump.

What happens next, then? This pending a hearing stuff.

So legally, Netanyahu's lawyers will have a chance to dispute the decision. That seems unlikely to succeed. Then you'll get formal charges and then you'll get a trial. Politically, we're going to have an election on April 9th. And right now, Netanyahu's coalition of right wing and nationalist parties would still probably get a majority in the next Knesset. But a new party, a centrist party called Blue and White, is leading in the polls and is gaining it, it would seem. But a lot can change before election day and probably will.

Roger, thanks very much.

Thank you.

This news of the planned indictment comes just as Mr. Netanyahu was hoping to win another election and become Israel's longest serving prime minister. He spent a total of 13 years leading the country and is known for his grandiose speeches.

Together we've transformed a bludgeoned Jewish people left for dead into a vibrant, thriving nation defending itself with the courage of modern Maccabees.

Some of his critics say he has a belligerent foreign policy, has fostered prejudice among Israelis and that he's been intransigent on the issue of seeking peace with Palestinians. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the UN in 2015 blamed Mr. Netanyahu for undermining efforts toward a two state solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. So how has Mr. Netanyahu changed Israel during his long rule?

I think Bibi, more than reshaping Israel, has put Israel much more on a path towards being a divided, successful, yet very suspicious and almost xenophobic society.

Anshel Pfeffer has written a biography of Mr. Netanyahu and reports for the Economist from Israel.

Netanyahu is unique so far in being the only Prime Minister of Israel to have been born after the state's foundation. His formative years, both as a teenager and as a young man, were made in the United States and that in many ways formed the way he makes politics.

What can you tell me about his early life and how that shaped his politics later?

Well, he was brought up in a very political home. His father was an ideologue and a journalist working for the revisionist movement, which is the branch of the right wing branch of Zionism. And that was the atmosphere in which Netanyahu was brought up, in an atmosphere of very bleak nationalist politics.

And how did his political career start?

Well, Netanyahu became into the public eye at a relatively young age as the brother of Israel's great hero in 1976, Colonel Jonathan Netanyahu, who was killed in the famous Entebbe raid. His brother was the only Israeli soldier killed in that raid. He was one of the commanders of that raid and that thrust the family into the public spotlight. Over the next few years. As part of the commemoration of the dead brother, they set up a think tank and Bibi became a speaker on issues of counterterrorism. And at the young age of 32, he was offered to become the number two at Israel's embassy in Washington. And five years later, when he left diplomacy to become a full time Likud politician, he already had quite a high name recognition in Israel. He had a very polished television performance which not that many Israeli politicians had at that time.

Tell me about that. How did he come to have that?

Polish Mohsen Netanyahu's diplomatic and political roles before becoming Likud leader were involved in presenting Israel's case to the world. His main political role was deputy foreign Minister, and his brief was mainly public diplomacy. That was the time of the first Gulf War. And the scene that everyone remembers from that period is NETANYAHU Sitting in CNN's local studio in Jerusalem.

As you can see, Deputy Foreign Minister.

Benjamin Netanyahu is here with us during this raid.

So Netanyahu and the interviewer were both sitting wearing gas masks during an air raid. I must say that this is the.

Darnest way to conduct an interview. And during his periods in power, when's he had the most impact?

The main period in which Netanyahu really has formed current Israel has been the last 10 years in which he's been in power. He's won three consecutive elections in that time. And it's been a decade for many aspects, a great decade for Israel. Israel's had uninterrupted economic growth. Its foreign relations have burgeoned with countries from Africa to the Far east to Latin America. Even Sunni Arab countries in the Middle east, which don't have diplomatic relations with Israel, have improved their, under the surface ties with Israel. They have a joint interest, together with Netanyahu, in confronting Iran. For the first time in my lifetime, many other states in the region recognize that Israel is not their enemy. They recognize that Israel is their ally.

How have Mr. Netanyahu's views towards the Palestinians evolved over the course of his political career?

His views towards the Palestinians have not evolved in the course of his political career. If you read a book Netanyahu wrote 26 years ago, a Place among the nations, he explains there, and this was even before the Oslo process began, he explains there that the best solution for Israel is never to compromise with the Palestinians. Allow them at the most to live in semi autonomous enclaves in the west bank and Gaza, never to allow them a full state and to continue Israeli security control over the entire region. And as we've seen over the last 10 years, with Netanyahu in power, he, he has paid lip service to the two state solution. But in reality, he's done nothing to go towards that solution, certainly not since Donald Trump entered the White House.

So a lot of things have gone his way. But we're looking to an uncertain future here with this indictment. If this is the end of his political career, what do you think his legacy will be?

Slowly building and continuing to enhance Israel's prosperity and military power and its relationships both in the region and across the world. Now, if Netanyahu is forced to resign, that legacy will still remain. The other legacy of toxifying relations between the different communities within Israel will certainly need detoxifying once he leaves.

Angel Pfeffer, thanks for joining us.

Thank you for having me, Jason.

A global campaign has been taking place against Huawei, a Chinese technology giant. Mike Pence, America's vice president, has been urging his country's allies to shun the firm's gear. The United States has also been very clear with our security partners on the threat posed by Huawei and other Chinese telecom companies, as Chinese law requires them to provide Beijing's vast security apparatus with access to any data that touches their network or equipment. Australia has already banned Huawei's equipment. Japan has passed laws that seem designed to target the firm. In December, Canadian police arrested Meng Wanzhou, daughter of Ren Zhengfei, Huawei's founder, at America's request. She and Huawei are charged with evading American sanctions on Iran. An extradition hearing is due to take place next week, and yesterday, officials from the firm were formally charged in America with stealing trade secrets. Mr. Run denies any suggestion his company presents a security risk to other countries.

We will never undertake any spying activities, and we will never accept anyone's instructions.

To install a backdoor. If we take any such actions, then.

I'll shut the company down.

Meanwhile, the children of China have seemingly come to Huawei's defense. In a glossy and widely shared video, they chorus their approval. Which phone is the most beautiful in the world? THEY SING Everyone says it's Huawei. The battery is durable, Its appearance is good. China's chips are the most precious. Huawei wins glory for our country. Why are so many governments concerned about Huawei and are their fears justified? Tim Cross is the Economist's technology editor.

Essentially, they're saying that Huawei kit, and we're talking here about the stuff that goes in the back end of mobile phone networks and makes them all run behind the scenes, is a security risk, and that because it's Chinese and because the Chinese state is not above electronic spying of all kinds, that putting Huawei gear into your smartphone networks opens you up to either espionage from the Chinese or potentially, if things get really bad, to having your entire network disrupted or maybe even shut down by the Chinese government. We should say at this point, there's never been any direct evidence of these sort of backdoors, as they're called, existing in Huawei's kit, these sort of deliberate flaws in the programming that would let the Chinese in to do this stuff. But this is the worry that's been put repeatedly, again and again, to America's allies around the world.

Sami, what do you make of those allegations?

Well, I think it's certainly true that China has a track record of sort of pretty aggressive electronic spying. But I think what's interesting is the reaction that you've seen from some of America's traditional allies who haven't necessarily toed the party line on this.

By allies, you mean?

Well, so I'm thinking of particularly some of the members of what's called the Five Eyes, which is a sort of global electronic spying pact that includes America, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

So the very people who would know lots about electronic spying.

So, yes, and the biggest difference is Britain. So the Americans are worried about deliberate backdoors, that Huawei's gear has been nobbled in some way to allow the Chinese state to snoop around or even sort of damage things, or that the Chinese state will use various laws. It's got to lean on Huawei and force it to cooperate with whatever it wants to do. The Brits have a slightly different worry. They have been looking into Huawei's gear for many, many years at a government run lab run by the British electronic spying agency. And they, they've never found evidence for any of these backdoors. What they're worried about is not deliberate problems, but accidental ones, which is just that the firm's programming is pretty sloppy and that it leaves all kinds of holes through which hackers, and whether they're sort of state sponsored Chinese hackers or state sponsored Iranian ones, or just random freelance hackers, could get in and do pretty much anything they wanted to the network. And the difference being that this is because of sloppy coding and bad practices. It's accidental rather than deliberate.

Well, I guess most of the hacks that we've seen down the years have arisen from the accidental rather than the deliberate backdoor kind. Right?

That's right. In fact, one of the big recent ones, WannaCry, which was the ransomware that locked up computers around the world that used an accidental flaw, a bug in Microsoft Windows, and that did plenty of damage.

So the suggestion here is that essentially Huawei's code is sufficiently sloppy. It is itself a security risk, even if there's no intentional risk.

Yeah, essentially. And having just said that, there's no material difference between a bug and a backdoor, there is one big difference, of course, which is that you can fix bugs, and the company will probably agree to do that in a way that if it was being forced to add these back doors in it, it wouldn't. And it's for this reason that the Brits think, okay, there are some security worries with Huawei gear. But they can be managed and we can push them to do better and require them to do better. And provided they do that, we've got no problem with them being in our networks. And in fact, we might want them in our networks because then we have lots of different suppliers rather than relying on a smaller number. And Huawei have said that they will spend quite a lot of money, several billion dollars, on trying to address the problems that the Brits have brought up. Now, it remains to be seen whether they'll manage, but the Brits seem to be saying that they think the risks can be managed, while the Americans are saying they don't.

Well, there has been a suggestion that this is not exclusively a concern around securities, but one around essentially technological markets, that America in particular is just trying to squeeze Huawei out of the market by raising the specter of a security concern. What do you make of that?

Well, some people certainly say that. So Huawei's chairman has accused America of that directly. And it's certainly true that there's more to this than just a sort of slightly arcane discussion about computer security. And China is an aspiring superpower and it thinks that technology is one of the ways it's going to get there. And it's putting lots of money into everything from a domestic chip industry to pushing all these sort of national championship companies and so on. America is the incumbent superpower, and it also relies quite heavily on technology and sees it as a key strategic national interest. So there's all kinds of friction there swirling around. To what extent that influences any particular case, I think, is hard to say, but it's definitely pretty loud.

BACKGROUND MUSIC it seems, though, that the politics around this is threatening to eclipse the technological discussion.

Yeah, I think that's right. And the arrest of Mrs. Meng in Canada is the prime example, I suppose. We've already seen in China, two Canadian citizens have been taken into custody on rather sort of nebulous sounding national security grounds. And everyone assumes this is in retaliation. There's a third Canadian citizen who was imprisoned for drug smuggling and he's now had his sentence changed to death. And then even on the American side, it's interesting because Donald Trump has made several remarks that seem to suggest that actually this whole Huawei deal might just be a bargaining chip in this broader argument about a trade war, which rather undermines all the people who've just been saying, oh, we have to let disinterested justice take its course, because the President isn't necessarily singing from the same hymn sheet.

Tim, thanks very much.

Thanks, Jason.

Normally when I'm covering technology, I'm writing about young people adopting a cool new thing, whether it was like Napster or something in 2000 or the iPhone or ipods.

Tom Standage is the Economist's deputy editor. He's been writing about technology for years.

So it's quite funny to write a story recently where I was writing about old people being the early adopters of a cutting edge technology, namely the self driving car. There's a startup called Voyage and it's testing autonomous cars in this enormous retirement community in Florida called the Villages. And it reckons that that is the perfect place to deploy this technology.

I know the Villages. Why is that? Well, I'm from Florida. Yes.

Oh, right.

Why is that a good testing ground for autonomous vehicles?

Well, there's a bunch of things. Firstly, you've got low speed limits and you've got very simple road layouts. So it's not like the kind of nightmare of doing an unprotected left hand turn with 55 mile an hour oncoming traffic. Secondly, people generally move to warm, sunny regions, so you're not going to have to worry about snow confusing your sensors. And then these roads are private property. And that makes the regulatory system much, much simpler. You haven't got this patchwork of federal and state regulation. You know that you're on private property and you know who the regulator you're dealing with is. So that simplifies things too.

Well, why will the people of a retirement community want this? Why will they want a, well, an unproven technology basically to get them around?

Well, when you're in a retirement community this big, you want to be able to go and see your friends, you want to be able to go to social clubs and this sort of thing, but you may not want the expense or hassle of owning a car and you may not be confident to drive anymore. You may be unable drive. So being able to just summon a vehicle whenever you like makes a lot of sense. And if you could do that more cheaply because it's an autonomous vehicle, that's great.

And so the idea here is if it works in this one retirement community, it could spread to others.

Yes, absolutely. So the Village is, by some measures it's the fastest growing city in the US or has been in some recent years. And the number of those sorts of communities is going to go up as America ages. And there are these forecasts that by 2060 the number of Americans over 65 is going to double to about 100 million. And what, what Voyage is saying is that they reckon the villages is going to be the first place in America where autonomous vehicles become the primary means of transport. If they're right, then obviously that's a very big market right there and you don't have to solve all these difficult problems about driving in downtown. A funny way of thinking about this also is the way that the cars fit into the communities. There has been outright hostility towards autonomous cars in some parts of America. People object to the way they drive because they drive in a very slow and cautious way. In a retirement community, as the CEO of Voyage put it me, it doesn't matter if you have an autonomous car driving like a granny, because everyone drives like a granny. So that kind of makes sense as well.

So the pilot schemes are going well then?

Well, they're quite small, so they've got six vehicles in Florida. And then there's another retirement community in San Jose where they've also been testing things and they've got, as autonomous cars generally do have safety drivers in the cars.

And so what about the people of the villages of these sort of test sites? Do they like it?

Apparently they have welcomed this because they can see that this would allow them to have mobility without the hassle and the cost of owning a car. And one of the things that has done is it's reached out, it's gone and done presentations in the various social clubs in the community to say, this is what's happening, this is what's coming, ask us whatever questions you want to. It's sort of working with the community. In some parts of America, I think people feel that autonomous cars are being done to them. They're sort of showing up on our roads and what are they doing here and so on. There was a nice story that Oliver Cameron, the CEO of the company, told me. He said that recently there was a 93 year old woman who had hailed a ride from one of the robot cars and he happened to be in the car so he could talk to people and see what they thought about it. And she said that she remembered going in a, in a horse drawn carriage when she was young. And so, you know, she's seen potentially the era of the horse drawn carriage giving way to the car and then potentially the beginning of the car giving way to the autonomous vehicle. You know, people say that old people live in the past, but these old people are potentially living in the future.

Tom, thanks very much.

Thank you.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. You can subscribe to the economist@exterator.com radio offer 12 issues for $12 or 12 pounds. See you back here on Monday.

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