Game on: the Tokyo Olympics

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host Shashank Joshi, filling in for Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. We all rely on that little blue dot on our phone's map to guide us, but the satellite signals that produce GPS are surprisingly feeble. We look at what happens when people mess with satellite navigation. And if you think you've been lazy during the pandemic, just look at cicadas. After 17 years underground, they're emerging in droves along America's east coast. But how do you study a group that only shows itself fewer than six times a cent? First up, though, after a year's delay, the 2020 Olympics are scheduled to begin in Tokyo on July 23rd. Yesterday, Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, appeared in Tokyo by video to reassure an uneasy public about the summer's Games.

I can only re emphasize this full commitment of the IOC to organize together.

Safe Olympic and Paralympic Games for everybody.

But in a survey released in Japan this week, more than 80% of respondents said the event ought to be delayed or cancelled entirely. Much of the country remains under a state of emergency during a wave of COVID infections.

On the whole, Japan has avoided the worst of the pandemic. So far, it's recorded fewer than 12,000 total deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, thanks in part to some stringent border controls that have been in place since last spring.

Noah Snyder is the Economist's Tokyo bureau chief.

But over two thirds of those fatalities have come this year. In 2021. The country's in the midst of what they're calling a fourth wave, fueled by more infectious strains, particularly the B117 first discovered in Britain. And some regional health systems have been under real strain in recent weeks.

What about vaccinations? How are they going to.

In a word, slowly. Less than 2% of Japan's population has been fully vaccinated. That's the lowest rate amongst the 37 members of the OECD, which is a club of mostly rich countries. And what's most striking is the source of the problem. It's neither supply. The European Union has authorized the export of more than 50 million doses to Japan. Nor is the problem really demand. Instead, it's really logistical snafus. And what some would say is an overabundance of bureaucratic caution. Call centers and websites have been glitchy and overwhelmed. The Health Ministry has stuck to some finicky rules requiring small scale local clinical trials for foreign vaccines, which has meant that only the Pfizer Biontech vaccine has been approved for use so far. And finally, Japan has a big staffing problem. They lack the manpower to administer the vaccines. Japanese law dictates that only red registered doctors and nurses can do so, and officials have been hesitant to change those rules.

Okay, so it sounds like there's not much immunity in the public. In light of that, what sort of COVID precautions are the organisers of the Games promising?

Well, the basic model that they're going for is a bubble of sorts. They've pointed to sort of other virus free sporting events like America's Masters golf tournament. They're hoping to isolate participants from the local population, keep them moving on official vehicles. Between the Olympic Village and comp competition sites, visitors are going to be barred from public transport. They're going to have to submit detailed travel plans and use smartphone tracking apps. Athletes and officials are going to undergo daily saliva antigen tests and vaccination won't be mandatory for participation. But the IOC says that 80% of those in the Olympic Village will be vaccinated by the start of the Games. Nonetheless, it's a massive task. Even without spectators, There are some 15,000 athletes and as many as coaches, staff, media, sponsors and others coming from some 200 countries to these Olympic Games.

And do experts think all of those measures are going to be enough.

Many doctors and public health experts here in Japan aren't convinced. There are events scheduled across the country in as many as 10 prefectures. So thousands of people are going to be moving around the country one way or another. And experts also worry that visitors could bring new and more transmissible strains of the virus to Japan. And what's more, that the convergence of people from different countries might provide ample opportunity for more mutations to form. And finally, there's a risk associated with what happens after the Games. Participants could bring the virus back to their home countries. And many of those participating come from countries that have less robust health systems or have managed to sort of avoid the worst of the virus so far. And finally, many local officials worry that the Olympics will mean diverting resources from their communities to athletes and visitors.

So, Noah, in light of all of that, why on earth is the International Olympic Committee so keen to go ahead with the Games?

Well, there's a high minded interpretation of the motives. There's a certain symbolism associated with pulling the Games off in these circumstances. Sense of unity or perhaps of defeating the virus itself. And of course, the athletes who participate are training for years for these events. And for some of them, this is really a once in a lifetime chance. But that said, the bottom line is really the bottom line. Money is a big factor here. The IOC makes most of its revenues from television broadcast contracts, and they are keen to see the Games go ahead, regardless of whether there are fans in the stands or not.

So the IOC is determined to press ahead the Japanese public. And it sounds to me, from what you've said, a lot of Japanese experts are dead set against it. Who gets the final say?

It's a tricky question. The way that the contracts for Olympic host cities are written. They give the IOC the exclusive right to call off the Games. There's no exception for global pandemics written into the contract. So if the Tokyo metropolitan government decided to cancel the Games unilaterally to pull out of the contract, the IOC would probably have the right to seek damages in court. And no one really knows how that would play out. Japanese officials are hesitant to do so for diplomatic reasons as well. They kind of dread the impression it might create if Japan bailed from the competition now. But China pulled off the Winter Olympics in Beijing in early 2022. So far, the Japanese government has insisted that they too plan to move forward and want to see these Games through. Suga Yoshihide, the Japanese prime minister, has sort of taken to repeating a single phrase, almost like a Mantra. In his appearances, he says Japan is going to put on a safe and secur. Whether they can or not is an open question. But a whole lot from the fate of his premiership to the course of the pandemic around the world now rides on that promise.

Noah, thank you very much.

Thank you for having me.

Turn right at the next street.

Nowadays, it might be hard to imagine driving anywhere without some form of sat nav. Systems like America's GPS enable everything from the navigation systems of cars, planes, ships, and yes, even Pokemon Go. All of this is possible thanks to satellites which orbit 20,000 kilometers above the Earth. They broadcast precisely where they are and exactly what time it is. The world has become a increasingly reliant on global navigation satellite systems. But the critical technology isn't completely reliable.

People tend to think of satellite navigation systems as providing a blue dot on a map on your phone, but they're actually doing a lot more than that.

Benjamin Sutherland writes about security for the Economist.

All sorts of critical infrastructure rely on precise timing. Signals from these satellites, telecommunications networks, data centers, financial transactions have to be timestamped. But all of those things are at risk of jamming.

Benjamin, what's the flaw in these systems?

The problem is that because they're running on solar power, the transmitters in these satellites, the signals are incredibly weak. We're looking at transmitters with about the power of a refrigerator light bulb. So the fact that those signals can be read and understood by GPS receivers in your phone is really a miracle of engineering. But it also means that these signals are incredibly easy to jam. You can have a malfunctioning microwave oven that's knocking out GPS signals for a square kilometer.

Okay, so if I was looking to jam a satellite, how would I go about doing it?

One thing is there's a booming trade in personal privacy devices. A lot of them plug into a cigarette lighter in a vehicle. People use them so that they're not being tracked by their employer or a spouse. They're cheap, a lot of people have them. But they're also poorly calibrated. So even if they're designed to knock out GPS signals for a short distance, often they're knocking out signals a lot farther away. And you can have cell towers getting knocked out temporarily because someone stopped at a red light nearby. They've got one of these jammers in their car. The cell tower can typically keep going for a certain amount of time using its internal clock. But were that to continue for hours, the system basically can't operate. There's also natural jamming from highly charged particles from the sun. If you had an enormous ejection of these particles, that could even kill or knock out the satellites. But smaller amounts can scramble the signals and prevent devices from knowing where they are or knowing what time it is.

The examples you've given are all civilian examples. What about the military? Is their activity also contributing to this?

A lot of different armed forces are using jammers. They obviously have access to equipment that has a lot more range. Certainly hundreds of kilometers is common. North Korea not infrequently uses jammers to disrupt signals in Seoul, which is a few tens of kilometers to the south of its southern border. Last month, the Secure World foundation, which is an American think tank, came out with a report in which they talk about what appears to be Russian efforts to develop an orbital jammer which would use nuclear power. Were that to be developed, were it to be launched, you would be able to knock out not just GPS signals but all sorts of satellite signals in orbit without the need to actually blow up satellites. So that would be kind of the nightmare scenario.

Benjamin as defense editor, I often speak to militaries and they complain about spoofing. What does spoofing mean?

Spoofing is a more sophisticated attack. Spoofing involves using something called a software defined radio to carefully craft signals that fool a GPS receiver into thinking these are the legitimate signals. They're essentially counterfeit signals. They can throw navigation systems off and timing systems off because the equipment is basically ingesting the wrong signals, the fake signals. There's been a lot of reports of spoofing in the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf that have been attributed to Iran. And there's speculation that what is happening is that Iranians are actually attempting to lure ships passing through the narrow strait into Iranian waters for a PR coup or perhaps an opportunity to capture the ship and say that it was encroaching on Iranian space.

Is there anything that countries can do to make it more difficult to spoof signals?

Yes, there are some satellites that are being put up with systems with more sophisticated encryption which are an attempt to make the spoofing harder. But I spoke with an expert at the University of Tokyo who's developing an anti spoofing system for Japan's regional navigation system. And he said, we've been working on it for 15 years. But don't be fooled. This technology is not going to keep ahead of the technology of the spoofers. These software defined radios are cheap, they're sophisticated, people are publishing the algorithms and the software needed to do the spoofing. And he said the spoofers are basically going to keep ahead probably of the anti spoofing technologist community. So that's troubling.

Benjamin, what's at stake here? If the spoofers and the jammers win that arms race, what are the consequences?

Consequences would be dramatic. Cell towers would probably be able to keep operating for some experts say about eight hours, some say maybe 12, 14 hours, conceivably a day without GPS signals. But beyond that, the internal clocks are pretty soon going to be out of sync. And so the whole telecommunications network goes down. Your digital payments stop working, data centers, transportation systems, electricity grids would probably be able to keep operating for quite some time without these precise signals. But if they were to be down for a couple weeks, then they would get out of whack too, and it would be chaos.

Benjamin, thank you for joining us.

Thank you, Shawshank.

This week, New York City is opening back up from much of its Covid induced hibernation. The subway's back to 24 hours.

And.

Restaurants can open at full capacity. But it isn't only humans who are re emerging.

In around 15 states in the east of America, billions and billions of cicadas are beginning to swarm.

Beau Franklin reports for the Economist.

And this group is known as Brood 10, which emerges every 17 years. And they often seem to come out where people are in towns and suburbs and cities. And the males will emerge, shed their outer skin and climb a tree to wait for a mate. Gardens and paths will be full of these cicadas and shed skin, ready to be crunched on by passersby. They're not directly harmful to people, but their mating calls are really loud. And plenty of people squirm at the thought of crushing the bugs under their feet or an errant one flying into them.

They emerge once every 17 years. That's phenomenal procrastination. What do they do the rest of the time?

So they're not quite hibernating. The nymphs, as they're known, are underground, developing very slowly. And they feed on SAP from tree roots until their biological alarm clocks go off. And then when the soil temperature is warm enough and the weather conditions are right, they'll mature, emerge, mate, lay eggs if they're female, and die all within four to six weeks.

Okay, so over a decade of waiting and then it's all over in just over a month. What's behind that very long and lopsided life cycle?

Biologists think it's an example of a survival strategy called predator satiation. And this is where prey, such as the insects emerge in such massive quantities that predators like birds or rodents can't possibly eat them all in one go. And it may be that it helps the cicadas avoid syncing up with the two to three year life cycles of many of their predators.

But why are they all in the cities and towns?

So they're not just in the cities and towns. They're wherever there are trees. But female cicadas need to look for a healthy tree to lay their eggs, because they deposit them in the tree's branches, and then when the eggs hatch two weeks later, the larvae fall to the ground, tunnel into the tree's roots and suck on the sustenance. So it's really important to pick a tree that will live for the next 17 years, or the larvae perish. And they'll also do badly if the tree has old roots rather than young and succulent ones. So this might explain why cicadas tend to do well in suburban areas, towns, where trees tend to be young and healthy and face less competition for resources than in a forest or a thicket.

Bo these are bugs that scientists get to see fewer than six times a century. That sounds like a pretty big challenge to study.

That's right. So entomologists who are studying these bugs have been gathering Data on Brood 10 and known about them for over a century. But even though they can only gather data every 17 years, patterns are emerging and they can study them. And one pattern that's emerging is that climate change, with spring temperatures getting warmer, might be causing them to emerge earlier in the year. So the typical arrival of brood 10 has moved from late May in the first half of the 20th century to closer to the first two weeks of the month. But even though there's only the chance to study these bugs every 17 years, modern technology is making it easier to study them when they do turn up. Gene Kritzky, who's a biologist at Mount St. Joseph University, has developed an app called Cicada Safari where the public can download it to their phone. And then when they spot the bugs, they can upload their sightings and help map the creature's emergence and what their habitats are like. Even if you're grossed out by the sight of them or deafened by their calls, you should make the most of it, because you won't see as many for another 70 years.

It's in the diary. Beau, thanks very much.

Thanks, Sashank.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, leave us a rating and a review and you can subscribe to the economist@examiner.com intelligenceoffer the link is in the show Notes. See you back here tomorrow.