No consent of the governed: Andrew Cuomo on the brink

Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. For all the Western tech firms without a presence in China, LinkedIn seems like a standout exception. But how it keeps on the right side of the censors is murky. Leading to just the kind of self-censorship that the Communist Party aims for. And mixed martial arts is huge in Chechnya, in particular with its tough-guy leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who runs his own MMA gyms. It all plays well on social media, but it may just be a way to train loyal, brutal fighters and burnish an autocrat's ugly image.

First up, though: For the sake of the state, the governor should resign. Governor Cuomo should do the right thing, resign, and leave space for future leadership in New York.

He has to leave.

There's nowhere for him to turn.

No one is left in Andrew Cuomo's corner. But the Democratic governor of New York State seems determined to keep his job.

Politics and bias are interwoven throughout every aspect of this situation.

On Tuesday, New York's attorney general concluded an investigation into sexual harassment allegations against the governor. Multiple prosecutors in the state are now weighing criminal charges. The New York State Assembly, which has the power to remove Mr. Cuomo, had already been investigating similar allegations and how his government handled COVID-19. In the wake of the attorney general's report, a majority of the assembly is now in favor of impeachment. For the moment, Mr. Cuomo is fiercely clinging on to power, but it's unclear how long that'll work.

Andrew Cuomo is a huge figure in American politics. He's the son of a loved liberal champion who also served as governor. He's been elected 3 times as governor of New York State. Until recently, the media and in fact a lot of politicals were speculating that he'd be a strong contender for president in the most recent cycle, as well as in 2024.

Rosemary Ward is the New York correspondent for The Economist.

So the scandal has rocked New York state politics, and it's also pulled in national media and politicians. It's become a global story, frankly.

And how did the investigation into Mr. Cuomo come about in the first place?

One of his former staffers tweeted an accusation at the end of last year, and by early this year, multiple women, including former and current staffers, journalists, political consultants, had come forward with stories of being touched inappropriately by the governor, groped, kissed, and also being present when he said inappropriate things. He often asked uncomfortable questions about their sex lives. He denied any improper behavior, but as more and more women came forward with their accusations, he gave in to pressure and asked his ally, Letitia James, New York's attorney general, to launch a formal investigation of the claims against him, and she put in place an independent team to look into it.

And they have now reached their conclusions. That report is out. What's in it? What's the outcome here?

Well, they did a lot of work on it. They interviewed 179 people. They obtained thousands of documents, emails, photos. Letitia James presented the findings in a press conference on Tuesday.

These interviews and pieces of evidence reveal a deeply disturbing yet clear picture.

She concluded that Mr. Cuomo's administration created a toxic and hostile work environment for women. In total, the report detailed disturbing harassment allegations from 11 women.

The Independent's investigation found that Governor Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women, many of whom were young women, by engaging in unwanted groping. Kisses, hugging, and by making inappropriate comments. Further, the governor and his senior team took actions to retaliate against at least one former employee for coming forward with her story, her truth.

If there was any doubt about the truth of the many allegations made against him, this report substantiated those claims and removed any doubt.

And what has Mr. Cuomo said about what's in this report?

Shortly after Letitia James released her report, he released a highly produced, pre-taped, 14-minute denial.

My attorney, who is a nonpolitical former federal prosecutor, has done a response to each allegation, and the facts are much different than what has been portrayed.

He disputed the allegations against him. He said he never touched anyone inappropriately or made inappropriate sexual advances.

I am 63 years old. I've lived my entire adult life in public view. That is just not who I am.

A photo montage of him hugging his family, politicians, men and women, rolled in the background as he was talking, and then After he released that statement, his lawyer released an 85-page report rebutting all the accusations. About a quarter of the report included photographs of not only Mr. Cuomo hugging and kissing family and friends, but also of Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and other politicians on both sides of the aisle hugging people. And the message was clearly that Everyone hugs, including Mr. Cuomo, and there's nothing necessarily sexual about it.

And how were those creative denials received?

Women's groups and Republicans kept up their calls for Mr. Cuomo's resignation. And after the report was published, many more Democrats joined them. When the allegations first emerged, President Joe Biden, a close ally to Mr. Cuomo, said that the governor should resign if an investigation confirmed the allegations. And then it did. So will you now call on him to resign, given the investigators said the 11 women were credible?

I stand by that statement.

Are you now calling on him to resign?

Yes.

In fact, all the Democrats in New York's congressional delegation urged him to quit. So the report really removed any support Mr. Cuomo might have had.

So what happens now, do you think?

It's hard to imagine how he remains in power. I mean, Trust in his administration has evaporated. Support from all his usual corners is gone. The New York State Assembly's Carl Heastie, the speaker of the assembly, has the power to bring articles of impeachment against the governor. Democrats have a supermajority in the state legislature, and they seem to be willing to explore that option. And there's no love lost between Mr. Cuomo and some lawmakers. He has been notoriously bullying towards many of them. So a lot of them are happy to see the back of him.

And if Mr. Cuomo somehow manages to weather this storm, what happens then?

Well, he still faces multiple investigations. The federal government is looking into the number of COVID-19-related deaths in state nursing homes, which he undercounted. Letitia James is also looking into whether or not he improperly used government staff to work on his best-selling book about how he was a wonderful leader during the the COVID-19 crisis. Mr. Cuomo has denied using his staff improperly to work on the book. As for the COVID-19 investigation, he says he didn't do anything that was untoward. But in short, his reputation is in tatters. And if he is impeached, or indeed if he resigns, the state should be able to carry on as normal. Unfortunately, New York is well used to governors resigning in disgrace. Eliot Spitzer famously stepped down after being caught in a prostitution sting. And his successor, David Paterson, decided not to run for reelection when he was accused of ethics violations. So New York will carry on, but the repercussions for Cuomo, that's another story.

Rosemary, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you, Jason.

Western tech firms have a rough time in China. YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have been altogether blocked since 2009. A year later, Google closed its operations there after a dispute with censors. One company that's so far managed is LinkedIn, a networking site for professionals that's owned by Microsoft. But staying on the right side of the censors presents some awkward choices for the platform and for its users.

For a foreign networking site in China, LinkedIn is incredibly popular. They're really the only foreign company of this kind with such scale. They have about 53 million Chinese users.

Don Wineland is The Economist's China business and finance editor.

So for LinkedIn, that's huge, and it makes up about 7% of the company's total revenue. Global users, and that's up from about 1% in 2014. So their growth has been quite rapid.

And what's different about the way LinkedIn runs things relative to other foreign companies?

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google— many different foreign internet services are blocked by the government in China. LinkedIn, on the other hand, has struck a deal where it's allowed to operate and people can use most of the functions, but they can't discuss sensitive topics. They can't post sensitive posts or add sensitive keywords to their profiles. If you post something sensitive, your profile will be blocked in China. This type of censorship has been going on for a while, but it appears to have been stepped up recently. We know that LinkedIn was called in by regulators earlier this year and criticized for its lax control over this type of stuff. So that may have prompted the company to start censoring more profiles. That part is a bit unclear.

But when you say sensitive posts and so on, what exactly are the rules? What are people working to here?

There are no written rules. Basically, sensitive is whatever is deemed sensitive by the Chinese internet regulators. And whatever that list contains, it probably changes quite often. So if you do mention something sensitive, your profile will be blocked in China. You'll receive a message from the company that says that you have violated the rules, and they won't tell you exactly what it is. Essentially, they prompt you to guess at what it could be and leave it up to you to delete it. I've spoken with several people that have had their profiles blocked. Many of them are scholars who have written about Taiwan or Xinjiang, and they guess that they've been blocked because their profiles make references to these sensitive topics. Of course, Taiwan is claimed by China, and in Xinjiang, there's a crackdown or persecution of a Muslim ethnic group there. So they're very sensitive words and could have tripped up the regulators.

And what does LinkedIn itself say about how it walks that line?

LinkedIn doesn't really say very much about this, and there's kind of a catch-22 to how LinkedIn operates in China. So it won't tell its users what what they can and cannot say. They won't tell journalists what is sensitive and what is not sensitive. When you ask the company what they're using to censor profiles, all they'll tell you is that they're trying to abide by Chinese law. But when you ask what Chinese laws they're looking at, they won't point to that either. So we really have very little to go off of in terms of what the company is using to do this type of censorship work. The scenario is a bit troubling because it pushes users to self-censor. If you don't know what the problem is, then you might just go and delete a whole bunch of stuff that could be causing the problem. And this is how Chinese censorship has worked for a long time. It's just very striking to see a Western company adopting those practices.

And how does all of this play into Microsoft's ambitions in China as the owner of LinkedIn?

Microsoft has been in China for a long time, and it's had some pretty crazy ups and downs over the years. Of course, China is a huge market. They want to continue selling into this market, but they've also dealt with massive problems like pirated content. Their offices were raided by antitrust regulators a few years ago. Most recently, they've been the subject of a huge hack. So America and its allies have blamed the Chinese government for a big hack on Microsoft's Exchange email service. Despite the problems that Microsoft has had, it seems like LinkedIn is perfectly willing to continue running its business as it does for the market opportunity. We don't know exactly how much money LinkedIn makes from China. Microsoft doesn't disclose that information. But you can imagine from LinkedIn's perspective, China's very attractive. There's nearly a billion internet users. There's been a big increase in white-collar workers. So there's a lot of potential growth for the company.

But given the constraint that LinkedIn and all of its users are working to here, then censorship, or increasingly, as you say, self-censorship, looks even more likely.

The situation is not likely to change in China. I don't think the regulators are going to loosen up anytime soon. And in some ways, LinkedIn is actually beneficial to the Chinese government. So China is often blamed for not letting in foreign internet companies, but the government can point to LinkedIn and say, look, we, we've let in this one, so stop complaining. That said, it's hard to tell how long LinkedIn can go down this route. China's tightened its internet controls over the past couple years, and we don't know what the demands are going to look like on a company like this in the future. They could be increased.

Thanks very much for your time, Don.

Thank you very much.

One of them is a strongman. Ramzan Kadyrov is a thuggish autocrat whose decrees and whims dictate every aspect of life in Chechnya. The other is a very strong man. Khamzat Shimaev is a fearsome fighter who was born in Chechnya and has maintained strong ties with his homeland and its ruler. Each of them is lending his strength to the career of the other.

Hamzat Chimaev is a Chechen mixed martial arts fighter.

Josh Spencer writes for The Economist.

His nickname is the Boz, which is Chechen for wolf, and he fights as ferociously as his nickname might suggest.

Ladies and gentlemen, this fight is 3 rounds.

In his latest fight, he knocked out his opponent in just 17 seconds with one punch, and that match was streamed live on BT Sport.

Awesome!

Just like that!

Khamzat Chimaev!

Chimaev was one of the breakthrough MMA stars of last year. That actually led Dana White, the president of America's Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC, to call him one of the most special fighters he'd ever seen, if not the most special. But then he caught a brutal bout of COVID-19. He apparently told his manager that he believed he was going to die from the illness, and considered retiring because of it. He hasn't fought in almost a year as a result.

But he's going to be back at it.

Yes, so he announced last month that he is going to return to the ring in October. But it wasn't his coaches or his sponsors who convinced him to return. Reportedly, it was the strongman ruler of Chechnya, the Russian Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov. Ramzan Kadyrov controls almost every aspect of life in Chechnya. He controls how Chechens dress, he controls how they practice their religion, and anyone who disagrees with those views are quickly silenced.

And so why is it that Mr. Kadyrov would take such an interest in the return of Mr. Chumaev?

So Kadyrov's interest in Chumaev is more than just a way to control one of his subjects' lives. Kadyrov's actually a huge fan of combat sports. He builds gyms around Chechnya where his subjects fight each other, and he actually has his own MMA arena in the capital of Chechnya, Grozny. He has the best seat in the house and is one of the most enthusiastic members of the crowd. But MMA is not just this strongman's hobby, it's also strategic.

How do you mean?

So MMA is incredibly popular around the region, including in Chechnya, and many young Chechens will dream of becoming the next star fighter. So the return of a fighter like Chimaev will only inspire more Chechens to join Kadyrov's fight clubs, where these young Chechens will grow into highly trained and loyal warriors. Obviously not everyone can become Hamzat Chimaev, so those that don't may go on to join Kadyrov's private army. Interestingly, the gyms that Kadyrov builds are headed up by his right-hand man, who also happens to run the Chechen special forces. And some people think that the fight clubs are secret bases for these special forces.

But viewed from the outside, this is just someone who loves the sport championing a young Chechen star.

Sure, and that is true. I mean, he is incredibly proud of his stars, but there is an added benefit to having a famous MMA fighter fighter from your country in that it bolsters your image at home. Kadyrov is incredibly active on Instagram and regularly posts videos of his fighters, including Chimaev. He recently took Chimaev on a holiday around Chechnya where they posted photos in front of a sports car, sampled the local cuisine, and met a lion cub. He also posts videos of him sparring Chimaev. Showing off online with your strong homegrown fighters is, for Kadyrov, a positive distraction from his brutal actions at home, such as the persecution of people he deems weak, including gay people. These sorts of images and posts with Chimaev help Kadyrov whitewash his image, and he'll surely get more of them as Chimaev continues his career and returns to fight in October.

Josh, thanks very much for joining us.

Thank you, Jason.

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 at economist.com/podcast. Intelligence offer. The link is in the show notes. See you back here tomorrow.