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Daily Archives: December 28, 2022
AlphaZero – Chess Engines – Chess.com
Posted: December 28, 2022 at 10:33 pm
In 2017 the chess world was shaken to its core when Stockfish (the world's strongest chess engine) was defeated in a one-sided match. It was not defeated by a human but by an unknown computer program that seemed to be otherworldlyAlphaZero.
Let's learn more about this powerful chess entity. Here is what you need to know about AlphaZero:
AlphaZero was developed by the artificial intelligence and research company DeepMind, which was acquired by Google. It is a computer program that reached a virtually unthinkable level of play using only reinforcement learning and self-play in order to train its neural networks. In other words, it was only given the rules of the game and then played against itself many millions of times (44 million games in the first nine hours, according to DeepMind).
AlphaZero uses its neural networks to make extremely advanced evaluations of positions, which negates the need to look at over 70 million positions per second (like Stockfish does). According to DeepMind, AlphaZero reached the benchmarks necessary to defeat Stockfish in a mere four hours.
AlphaZero runs on custom hardware that some have referred to as a "Google Supercomputer"although DeepMind has since clarified that AlphaZero ran on four tensor processing units (TPUs) in its matches.
In December 2017, DeepMind published a research paper that announced that AlphaZero had easily defeated Stockfish in a 100-game match. AlphaZero would go on to defeat Stockfish in a second match consisting of 1,000 games; the results were published in a paper in late 2018.
Unfortunately, AlphaZero is not available to the public in any form. The match results versus Stockfish and AlphaZero's incredible games have led to multiple open-source neural network chess projects being created. Leela Chess Zero, Leelenstein, Alliestein, and others try to emulate AlphaZero's learning and playing style. Even Stockfish, the conventional brute-force king, has added neural networks.
In 2020 DeepMind and AlphaZero continued to contribute to the chess world in the form of different chess variants. When DeepMind and the AlphaZero team speak, the chess world listens!
From the moment it stepped onto the scene, AlphaZero has changed chess by spawning a new generation of neural network chess engines, by contributing to chess variants, and through its transcendent games.
As mentioned, AlphaZero defeated the world's strongest chess engine, Stockfish, in a one-sided 100-game match in December 2017 (scoring 28 wins, 72 draws, and zero losses). The public was given 10 example games from this match, and the chess world's reaction was borderline disbelief.GM Peter Heine Nielsen likened watching AlphaZero's games to seeing a superior species landing on earth and showing us how to play chess:
Other grandmasters shared Nielsen's sentiment, including the legendary GM Garry Kasparov, who told Chess.com, "It's a remarkable achievement.... It approaches the 'Type B,' human-like approach to machine chess dreamt of by Claude Shannon and Alan Turing instead of brute force."
Others questioned the results because of the disparity of hardware used in the first match. Some also found it unfair that Stockfish was not allowed to use its opening book and its endgame tablebase.
GM Hikaru Nakamura stated: "I don't necessarily put a lot of credibility in the results simply because my understanding is that AlphaZero is basically using the Google supercomputer, and Stockfish doesn't run on that hardware; Stockfish was basically running on what would be my laptop."
Roughly one year after the first match, DeepMind published a new paper that announced an updated version of AlphaZero had defeated Stockfish in a 1,000-game match. This time, the current version of Stockfish (version 9 at the time) was used, Stockfish was able to use a strong opening book in many of the games, the time controls were adjusted (with Stockfish having large time advantages), and Stockfish was run on the same type of hardware used in the Top Chess Engine Championships (TCEC).
The results didn't change muchAlphaZero defeated Stockfish again with a score of 155 wins, 839 draws, and 6 losses.
In 2019 and 2020 GM Vladimir Kramnik was able to spend some time with AlphaZero and the DeepMind team to explore chess variants andco-wrote a paper with DeepMind about the exploration of new chess variants, including sideways pawns, no castling, torpedo chess (where pawns can always move forward one or more squares).
In September 2020 Chess.com hosted a roundtable discussion with Kramnik and members of the DeepMind team where they discussed variants and other topics. You can watch the full video here:
Many of these chess variants (and more) have been added to Chess.com. This article outlines the new chess variants and how to play them. If you want to check out any of these variants for yourself, simply head over to Chess.com/variants or hover your mouse over the "Play" button in the menu bar and select "Variants":
After you select "Variants," you are directed to the Chess Variants Page. All you have to do is select a variant and press "Play."
In this first game example, we see some of the magic that AlphaZero shocked the world with in the first match. AlphaZero gambits a pawn in the opening and immediately goes on the attack. After 19...Kxh6 Stockfish is up a piece, but the king is not safe, and the entire queenside is undeveloped:
AlphaZero keeps up the pressure, but its compensation for the piece is mostly unclear to us mortals. Only in hindsight can we tell that a couple of Black's pieces (most notably the a8-rook and queen's knight) will never really be part of the game. After 36.Qe6, the position has crystallized, and AlphaZero wins convincingly:
This second game example is from the second AlphaZero-Stockfish match. AlphaZero puts on a positional clinic and tortures Stockfish with the bishop pair in the endgame after 45. Bxe4. Here is the full game:
In the following video, GM Robert Hess covers this fantastic game in great detail:
You now know what AlphaZero is, what it has accomplished, and more. If you are interested in seeing what you can learn from AlphaZero's play, check out this great series of video lessons by Chess.com's IM Danny Rensch.
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Germany May Go After An Olympics That Could Coincide With The 100th Anniversary Of The Hitler Games – Sports Talk Florida
Posted: at 10:31 pm
Germany May Go After An Olympics That Could Coincide With The 100th Anniversary Of The Hitler Games Sports Talk Florida
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Home | Virgin Galactic
Posted: at 10:29 pm
GEORGE WHITESIDES
SPACE ADVISORY BOARD CHAIR
George T. Whitesides is the Chair of the Space Advisory Board, where he is responsible for bringing together aerospace leaders to advise the Virgin Galactic senior management team on the journey towards regular commercial spaceflight, developing the next generation vehicles and exploring new opportunities. Previously, George served as the Chief Space Officer of Virgin Galactic, spearheading the development of future technologies, including high speed, point-to-point travel and orbital flight, after stepping down as CEO in 2020.
George joined Virgin Galactic in 2010 as Chief Executive Officer. During Georges 10 years with the Company, he built the company from 30 people to a workforce of over 900, successfully guiding Virgin Galactic through its human space flight R&D and flight test program, culminating in two space flights. These historic flights saw the first humans launched into space from US soil since the retirement of the Space Shuttle, as well as the first woman to fly on a commercial space vehicle. George led the transition of operations from Mojave, California to Spaceport America, New Mexico, and oversaw the companys successful public listing making it a multi-billion dollar company and creating the worlds first publicly traded human spaceflight venture.
Prior to Virgin Galactic, George served as Chief of Staff for NASA. Upon departure from the American space agency, he received the Distinguished Service Medal, the highest award the agency confers.
Georges volunteer service includes Caltechs Space Innovation Council, Princeton Universitys Advisory Council for Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and the Antelope Valley Economic Development & Growth Enterprise. He is a fellow of the UK Royal Aeronautical Society and an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
He previously served as Vice Chair of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, chair of the Reusable Launch Vehicle Working Group for the FAAs Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee, a member of the Board of Directors of Virgin Galactic, a member of the Board of Trustees of Princeton University, co-chair of the World Economic Forums Global Future Council on Space Technologies, and the Board of Virgin Unite USA. George has testified on American space policy before the United States Senate, the United States House of Representatives, and the Presidents Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy. An honors graduate of Princeton Universitys School of Public and International Affairs, George later earned a masters degree in geographic information systems and remote sensing from the University of Cambridge, and a Fulbright Scholarship to Tunisia. George is a licensed private pilot and certified parabolic flight coach.
He resides in California with his wife Loretta and two children.
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Russias Lavrov closes door on EU and turns to ‘like-minded’ allies
Posted: at 10:28 pm
Russia Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday said there will be no more joint projects with the European Union and said Moscow will instead turn to "like-minded" allies for future diplomatic partnerships.
"Thank God, the world is not just the European Union for us and we have lots of friends and like-minded nations elsewhere," he told Russia state-owned media outlet TASS.
The ministers comments come as Russian President Vladimir Putin has increasingly looked to bolster ties with China and Iran in recent months, turning to the latter for arms as its looks to shore up economic ties with Beijing.
Lavrov accused the EU of waging a "hybrid war" against Moscow since Russias deadly invasion of Ukraine in February.
RUSSIA REJECTS UKRAINE 'PEACE SUMMIT' PROPOSAL: 'DIPLOMACY 404'
In this photo released by the Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov pauses during his and Brazilian Foreign Minister Carlos Franca's joint news conference following their talks in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2021. (Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service via AP)
"Naturally, there will be no more business as usual with such counter-parties. We do not intend either to knock on closed doors or initiate any joint projects," he added.
The Russian foreign minister accused the EU of following in the footsteps of the U.S. and NATO and said, "They have been following the anti-Russian lead of the hegemon across the ocean almost in full obedience."
Lavrov has repeatedly accused the U.S. and its Western allies of waging war against Russia by providing Ukraine with defensive and humanitarian aid including financial support to help Kyiv restore its energy infrastructure which Russia began targeting ahead of winter.
Putin made headlines on Christmas day when he suggested that Moscow was open to negotiating with Ukraine, telling Russian media "We are ready to negotiate with everyone involved about acceptable solutions, but that is up to them - we are not the ones refusing to negotiate, they are."
PUTIN CLAIMS RUSSIA IS READY TO NEGOTIATE; UKRAINE ACCUSES KREMLIN OF TRYING TO AVOID RESPONSIBILITY
But Kyiv rejected these comments noting that Russia was only open to discussing "ultimatums" that would include allowing it to keep the nearly 20 percent of Ukrainian territory that Russia currently occupies, including Crimea.
These accusations were supported by Lavrov Tuesday when he said Kyiv must accept Moscows demands or face a continued war, reported Reuters.
"Our proposals for the demilitarization and denazification of the territories controlled by the regime, the elimination of threats to Russia's security emanating from there, including our new lands, are well known to the enemy," he said citing Moscow's top propagandist claims.
FILE - A Ukrainian soldier fires a mortar at Russian positions in Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Thursday, Nov. 10, 2022. A top adviser to Ukraine's president has cited military chiefs as saying 10,000 to 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in the country's nine-month struggle against Russia's invasion. (AP Photo/Libkos, File)
"The point is simple: Fulfill them for your own good. Otherwise, the issue will be decided by the Russian army," Lavrov added.
Despite the foreign ministers threat Russia has made little advancements in Ukraine and has lost territory over the last few months.
The UK defense ministry has assessed that the most intense fighting remains around the Donetsk town of Bakhmut where Russia has made little headway.
The defense officials noted that its dwindling supply of missiles has prompted its troops to increasingly lay mines along the front lines in a defensive posture.
A Ukrainian BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launcher fires a rocket, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, during intense shelling on Christmas Day at the frontline in Bakhmut, Ukraine, December 25, 2022. (Reuters Photo)
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Russian President Vladimir Putin told his forces last week that it was their duty to hold the territory they have occupied, though Crimea remains the only region fully occupied.
While Russia is assessed to have control over Luhansk, Ukrainian forces have begun to push the front lines eastward into the region where areas are now contested.
Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk are not fully occupied.
Caitlin McFall is a Reporter at Fox News Digital covering Politics, U.S. and World news.
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Russias Lavrov closes door on EU and turns to 'like-minded' allies
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Russia – United States Department of State
Posted: at 10:28 pm
Russia - United States Department of State Skip to contentCurrent Travel Advisories
Level 4: Do Not Travel
Russia recognized the United States on October 28, 1803, and diplomatic relations between the United States and Russia were formally established in 1809. Diplomatic relations were interrupted following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. On December 6, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson instructed all American diplomatic representatives in Russia to refrain from any direct communication with representatives of the Bolshevik Government. Although diplomatic relations were never formally severed, the United States refused to recognize or have any formal relations with the Bolshevik/Soviet governments until 1933. Normal diplomatic relations were resumed on November 16, 1933. On December 25, 1991, the United States recognized the Russian Federation as the successor to the Soviet Union and established diplomatic relations on December 31, 1991.
In response to Russias ongoing violations of Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity, including Russias occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea, the United States suspended bilateral engagement with the Russian government on most economic issues. The United States continues to investigate allegations of mistreatment of or discrimination against U.S. investors in Russia and to urge Russia to improve its investment climate, adherence to the rule of law, and transparency. In Russia, the U.S. Embassy Political-Economic Section, on behalf of the U.S. Commercial Service, continues to assist U.S. firms interested in developing market opportunities that do not violate sanctions.
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Russia’s Lavrov: Either Ukraine fulfils Moscow’s proposals or our army …
Posted: at 10:28 pm
Dec 27 (Reuters) - Moscow's proposals for settlement in Ukraine are well known to Kyiv and either Ukraine fulfils them for their own good or the Russian army will decide the issue, TASS agency quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying.
"Our proposals for the demilitarization and denazification of the territories controlled by the regime, the elimination of threats to Russia's security emanating from there, including our new lands, are well known to the enemy," the state news agency quoted Lavrov as saying late on Monday.
"The point is simple: Fulfil them for your own good. Otherwise, the issue will be decided by the Russian army."
Moscow has been calling its invasion in Ukraine a "special military operation" to "demilitarise" and "denazify" its neighbour. Kyiv and its Western allies call it an imperial-style aggression to grab land.
In September, Moscow proclaimed it had annexed four provinces of Ukraine - Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson - after holding so-called referendums that were rejected as bogus and illegal by Kyiv and its allies.
On Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow was open to negotiations and blamed Kyiv and its Western backers for a lack of talks, a stance Washington has previously dismissed as posturing amid persistent Russian attacks.
Lavrov told TASS that when it comes to how long the conflict will last, "the ball is in the regime's court and Washington behind it."
There is no end in sight to the war, which has entered its 11th month and which has killed thousands, displaced millions and turned cities into rubble.
Kyiv has ruled out conceding any land to Russia in return for peace, and publicly demands Russia relinquish all territory. Moscow has insisted it is pursing "demilitarisation" and "denazification" but in reality its aims have not been fully defined.
Additional reporting by Oleksandr Kozhukhar in Kyiv; Writing by Lidia Kelly and Ron Popeski; Editing by Sandra Maler
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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Russia's Lavrov: Either Ukraine fulfils Moscow's proposals or our army ...
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Russias Cyberwar Foreshadowed Deadly Attacks on Civilians
Posted: at 10:27 pm
But for anyone involved in fending off Russia's cyberattacks on Ukraine over the past eight years, Russia's preference for civilian over military targets has long been apparent, says Viktor Zhora, a senior cybersecurity-focused official in Ukraine's State Services for Special Communications and Information Protection, or SSSCIP. Zhora, whose cybersecurity firm worked on incident response for Russia's breach of Ukraine's Central Election Commission in 2014 before he joined the government, lists the Kremlin's biggest cyberattacks on his country over the past eight years: that election-focused intrusion, designed to both cripple Ukraine's electoral body and spoof its results; cyberattacks on electric utilities that caused blackouts in late 2015 and 2016; data-destroying attacks that hit the country's treasury, railways, and Ministry of Finance; and finally, the NotPetya worm that carpet-bombed Ukrainian networks in 2017 before spreading globally to cause more than $10 billion in damage.
Given that every one of those attacks targeted civilian institutions, it was all too predictable that Russia's physical war would fall back to the same pattern, Zhora argues. Without any significant successes on the battlefield, we see that Russia switched to purely terroristic tactics, says Zhora. They continue to attack our civilian infrastructure, and in this way, its more or less similar to their trends in cyberwarfare.
Zhora notes that those cyberattacks on civilians haven't stoppedthey've only fallen off the radar as vastly more destructive, lethal physical attacks have eclipsed them. The Ukrainian government, he says, has counted hundreds of breaches this year of the countrys energy, telecom and finance sectors.
The purpose of all of that civilian targeting, both cyber and physical, is in part an attempt to weaken Ukrainians' resolve as a country, says Oleh Derevianko, founder of the Ukrainian cybersecurity firm ISSP. They want to create a situation where people are not satisfied with what's going on and exert pressure on the government to engage into negotiations, says Dereviankoadding that the strategy has badly backfired, instead unifying Ukrainians against the Russian threat more strongly than ever. But he argues that on some level, too, Russian forces may also be responding to pressure to simply do something to contribute to the war effort. "They need to report some success to their chain of their command," says Derevianko. They're frustrated on the battlefield, so they attack civilians.
SSSCIP's Zhora, on the other hand, goes further: He believes that Russia's attacks on civilians may not be a means to an end, but rather Russia's true goal. He says Russia isn't merely trying to defeat the Ukrainian military, win a war, or conquer the Donbas, but instead to defeat and destroy the Ukrainian people.
The intention is to wipe out the whole nation, says Zhora. He says that motivation to directly attack Ukraine's population can be seen in the history of the two countries' relations far earlier than any recent war or cyberwar, stretching back as far as the Holodomor, the man-made famine that starved to death millions of Ukrainians in the early 1930s as Soviet officials ordered Ukrainian grain to be confiscated or locked in warehouses to rot.
Its a continuation of genocide, Zhora says. Its one more chance to try to wipe out the Ukrainian people, to restore the Soviet Union, to change the global order.
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What is ‘Satan II,’ Russia’s new nuclear missile?
Posted: at 10:27 pm
Russian President Vladimir Putin has a new saber to rattle a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile designed to update the Kremlins nuclear quiver, and reportedly almost ready for deployment.
The missile called the RS-28 Sarmat by Russia and ominously dubbed the Satan II by NATO is designed to carry up to 15 nuclear warheads, five more than the outgoing Soviet-era R-36M Satan.
The missile is liquid-fueled, and categorized as a super-heavy ICBM one with enough lifting capacity to deliver multiple warheads arranged in a so-called multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicle. In other words, one missile can theoretically hit as many as 15 nearby targets.
The missile is designed to be fired from the existing R-36M silos with minimal modification.
When the missile was put through its paces during a test in April striking mock targets at a range of 3,000 miles Dmitry Rogozin, head of the state Roscosmos agency overseeing the missiles construction, called the Sarmat a superweapon.
The Kremlin claims its design which includes a shorter boost phase during the rockets launch and supposedly novel trajectories will make it harder for US missile defenses to intercept the Sarmat in the event of a thermonuclear war.
The missile is also equipped to carry hypersonic munitions in its warhead, according to Russian reports effectively making the ICBM a cruise-missile launch platform.
Putin claimed in April that the Sarmat is capable of overcoming all modern means of anti-missile defense, and that Russias enemies should think twice before issuing threats.
But the Sarmat, which Putin claims is coming soon, is already years behind schedule.
The missile was first announced in 2014 with a planned deployment date of 2020. But problems with the missiles engines delayed proper testing, Russian news agency Interfax reported.
Testing began in earnest in 2018, and by 2020, the Kremlin announced the weapon would be deployed by 2022. After Aprils test launch, Roscosmos claimed the missile would see service no later than the fall of 2022, according to Interfax.
As of last month, however, the missile was still in testing.
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Second sudden death of top official reported in Russia’s military supply chain in less than a week – Fox News
Posted: at 10:27 pm
Second sudden death of top official reported in Russia's military supply chain in less than a week Fox News
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Mexicos Dying Democracy: AMLO and the Toll of Authoritarian Populism
Posted: at 10:24 pm
When Mexican President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador took office four years ago, he promised to deliver what he branded a Fourth Transformation, the next in a series of defining junctures in Mexican history: the War of Independence in the early 1800s, the liberal movement of President Benito Jurez later that century, and the Revolution of 1910. To make Mexico great again, he said he would fight deeply ingrained corruption and eradicate persistent poverty. But in the name of his agenda, Lpez Obrador has removed checks and balances, weakened autonomous institutions, and seized discretionary control of the budget. Arguing that police forces cannot stop the countrys mounting insecurity, he has supplanted them with the Mexican military and endowed it with unprecedented economic and political power. Today, the armed forces carry out his bidding on multiple fronts and have become a pillar of support for the government. Lpez Obrador, or AMLO as he is known, seems intent on restoring something akin to the dominant-party rule that characterized Mexican politics from 1929 to 2000, but with a militarized twist.
Despite these questionable moves, the president and his party, Morena, remain popular. His supporters applaud the return of a strong and unencumbered leader, capable of enacting change in a country that is clamoring for more social justice for the many and less entitlement for the few. But his presidency, and the countrys trajectory, worry scholars, activists, opposition parties, and members of civil society who fought to dismantle the hegemony of the former Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which was in power for 71 years, and now seek to defend Mexicos transition to multiparty democracy. These critics contend that Lpez Obrador is polarizing the populace and jeopardizing the countrys fledgling democracy with his routine attacks on civil society organizations, his stated desire to take apart key institutions, and his use of the bully pulpit to lambaste the media and members of the opposition.
His playbook is like those of strongmen in other countries, who argue that they have too many constraints on their power to effect foundational change, promote participatory politics, and rid the country of immoral and rapacious elites. Yet as Western scholars have lamented the rise of autocrats in Hungary, Nicaragua, Poland, Turkey, Venezuela, and even the United States, they have often overlooked Mexicos prominence in the growing list of countries where democracy is being subverted by elected leaders.
Lpez Obradors personalistic style of governing is a form of democratic backsliding. His rhetoric and policy decisions have put democratic norms and institutions at risk. He has reshaped the Mexican political ecosystem so quickly and fluidly that defending democracy has become extremely difficult, for civil society groups as well as opposition parties. Lpez Obrador is eroding, in word and in deed, the democratic norms and rules that Mexico has developed since the PRI lost its grip on the political system. He denies the legitimacy of his opponents by deeming them traitors to the country. He tolerates criminality and violence to justify the militarization of the country. And he has displayed a willingness to curtail the civil liberties of critics, including those in the media. Reports of Mexican democracys death may be exaggerated; it is not dead. But it is grievously ill. And Lpez Obradors leadership is affecting U.S.-Mexican relations in a way that could turn back the clock on three decades of economic integration, revive the previous mistrust between the two countries, and halt collaboration on issues of binational concern, including security, immigration, and climate change. The Biden administration does not seem to fully understand the dangers that loom ahead as Mexico becomes a more insecure, more militarized, and less democratic country.
According to a saying popular in Mexico in the 1970s, Not a leaf moves without the president knowing about it. That is how the country worked until Mexicos transition to electoral democracy in the 1990s. Then, power became more dispersed, incipient checks and balances were put in place, and autonomous institutions, independent from the presidency, were created. A highly imperfect, and in many ways dysfunctional, political system emerged. Over the past four years, however, Lpez Obrador has sought to re-create many of the political and institutional arrangements that characterized dominant-party rule. He is putting in place a strong presidency with ample discretionary powers, capable of dominating Congress, influencing the judiciary, determining economic policy, remaking the apparatus of the state according to the presidents personal preferences, and exercising metaconstitutional powers, such as issuing decrees that enable the armed forces to be in charge of public security or allow them to carry out public works without fulfilling legal requirements.
Lpez Obrador argues that he is cleaning house and combating corruption. He says he can do so only by being in full command of all levers of government. The fight against the model of economic liberalization and political competition that emerged in the 1990swhich the president derides as neoliberalhas led to bypassing Congress and the constitution, ignoring regulatory procedures, and channeling a growing number of government activities to his cronies and the military. Dismissing the state as a rheumatic elephant, Lpez Obrador has proceeded to undermine Mexicos civil service, regulatory bodies, and administrative institutions, either by breaking them up or by filling them with his own loyalists. The Human Rights Commission is led by Rosario Piedra, a militant member of Morena, who kowtows to the president while remaining silent on human rights violations committed by the military. The Energy Regulation Commission, an oversight body, has been staffed by men with personal and political ties to Roco Nahle, the minister of energy. Lpez Obrador has also let months go by without naming new members to the Competition Commission, a regulatory institution responsible for investigating and sanctioning monopolistic practices, which is currently understaffed and without a president. In decree after decree, Lpez Obrador has eviscerated the Mexican state, often in the name of fiscal austerity, while giving many plutocrats free rein and refusing to carry out fiscal reform that would tax his rich allies. He may disparage neoliberalism, but Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan would approve of his behavior.
In recent years, political movements across the ideological spectrum in many liberal democracies have called for bringing the state back inthat is, shoring up the capacity of the state to address inequality, regulate markets, combat climate change, and respond to global health emergencies. The reverse is taking place in Mexico, with significant social and political ramifications. The governments reluctance to design a fiscal rescue package or social welfare spending policies to soften the blow from the COVID-19 pandemic had devastating effects. As a result of what Lpez Obrador described as republican austerity, Mexico has suffered one of the worlds highest excess mortality rates during the pandemic, with over 600,000 Mexicans dying of COVID-19. The ranks of the poor have swelled by almost four million people since 2019, according to the National Council for Evaluation of Social Development Policy. During the first year of the pandemic, vaccines were scarce, hospitals were beyond capacity, over one million businesses collapsed, and immigration to the United States rose sharply. Today, fewer Mexicans have public health-care coverage than at any point over the last 20 years, and the education system lies in shambles as a result of government disinvestment and mismanagement. A study carried out by the School of Governance at the Monterrey Institute of Technology reports that since the pandemic began in 2020, over one million children abandoned school, and there was a historic reduction of enrollment for all grades.
These consequences all flow from Lpez Obradors style of governing. He has formulated ineffective policies using questionable assumptions, such as his belief that the most indebted state oil company in the worldPemexcan recover past levels of production and help the economy grow, instead of dragging it down. He has developed a personalistic method of carrying out policies, one that is prone to clientelism, including the distribution of cash to the poor, and based on an unreliable, politically motivated census developed by his party. And he has terminated initiatives in a haphazard and seemingly arbitrary way, for example, eliminating government-run trusts for science, technology, and educational evaluation. Arguing that a slew of government-run programs were corrupt, including childcare facilities, womens shelters, and environmental institutes, he proceeded to shut them down by decree and without evidence of malfeasance.
Lpez Obradors government claims to embody progressive values, but it contradicts them at every turn. It refuses to tax the rich, to prioritize the fight against climate change, and to support activists who decry the countrys growing number of femicides. An average of 11 women are killed every day in Mexico, in what the UN calls a femicide pandemic, but the government has cut funding for public shelters for the victims of gender-related violence. Lpez Obrador promises to put the poor first, but his governments budgetary allocations belie that assertion. He has done away with a broad swath of social safety nets, leaving the dispossessed in a more dire situation than when he assumed office. The 2021 National Poll on Health and Nutrition shows that as a result of cuts to the public health systemand the dismantling of prior national health coverage such as Seguro Popular, or Popular Insurancethe poorest segments of the population spend a greater percentage of their income on health care than they did under previous governments, and 66 percent of the uninsured have been forced to seek private care.
Lpez Obrador champions direct cash transfers to the poor, but new social programs have been plagued by financial irregularities, charges of corruption, and wasted resources. The Federal Auditing Commission has documented these failings in two of the most touted government initiatives: Planting Life, in which beneficiaries burned down trees in order to receive public funds to plant new ones, and Young Building the Future, in which funds were disbursed to nonexistent companies that hired nonexistent workers.
Meanwhile, federal budget cuts are starving institutions that have been fundamental to the construction of level-playing-field capitalism, such as the Competition Commission and the Federal Telecommunications Institute. Funding has also been slashed for independent bodies that have been particularly important to Mexicos path to democracy, including the National Electoral Institute, the Federal Transparency Institute, and the National Human Rights Commission. By flooding these institutions with partisan loyalists and delegitimizing their work by calling them instruments of the conservative, hypocritical elite, Lpez Obrador is harming their ability to carry out their roles as checks and balances on the government. Positioning himself as the sole representative of the will of the people, Lpez Obrador is rigorously adhering to the authoritarian populist playbook.
His actions have damaged not only Mexicos democracy but also its economy. Domestic and foreign investment have dwindled as the government botched its response to the pandemic; rolled back reforms that had helped boost growth, such as investment in renewable energy; and created regulatory uncertainty, thanks to the presidents adversarial attitude toward the parts of the private sector that do not comply with his clientelistic system. Between 2019 and 2021, when bad economic conditions worsened with the COVID-19 crisis, Mexicos GDP shrank more than that of any other Latin American country. And the prospects for a recovery are dim, given global inflation and investor distrust in Lpez Obradors economic leadership.
For years, Lpez Obrador decried what he called the mafia in power and railed against greedy oligarchs and their accomplices operating within the structure of the state. But instead of tackling social inequality at its source by strengthening the states capacity to promote growth and more fairly redistribute its gains, Lpez Obrador has simply reproduced the crony-capitalist model that defined the Mexican economy since the PRI seized control in 1929. His government has maintained and developed strategic alliances with some of the wealthiest members of Mexicos business community, earning the praise and support of influential figures such as the telecommunication magnates Carlos Slim and Ricardo Salinas Pliego. Both have been the beneficiaries of discretionary government contracts in the banking, telecommunications, and construction sectors. By revising the Mexican tradition of mixing state capitalism and oligarchy, Lpez Obrador and his party are emulating the PRIs vision of governance as a system for distributing the spoils.
First as an opposition leader and later in his 2018 presidential campaign, Lpez Obrador decried the governments growing use of the Mexican military to combat drug trafficking and cartel-related violence, a practice that began in the 1990s and escalated under Lpez Obradors two immediate predecessors, Felipe Caldern and Enrique Pea Nieto. One of Lpez Obradors most popular campaign slogans was abrazos, no balazos (hugs, not bullets), and he promised to return the armed forces to the barracks. He garnered significant support among left-wing and progressive voters precisely because he vowed to redesign the failed security strategy that Caldern and Pea Nieto pursued. Both previous presidents had given the armed forces expansive powers, which led to an explosion in human rights violations but no significant reduction in homicides or other types of crime. Lpez Obrador vowed to address the root causes of violence by channeling more public resources to the poor and keeping the military off the streets.
But in a surprising about-face, shortly after assuming office, Lpez Obrador started to backtrack on his vow to demilitarize the country. Pressured by prominent generals who viewed his stance as unrealistic, Lpez Obrador argued that because the police force was corrupt and inefficient, the army would have to maintain and even broaden its role. He pushed through a constitutional reform in 2019 that established a new militarized force called the National Guard that was to take over public security for five years. But from the start, Lpez Obrador undermined what was supposed to be civilian control and oversight by naming Luis Rodrguez Bucio, a recently retired general, as head of the new body and staffing it largely with active members of the armed forces.
Instead of reining in Mexicos army, Lpez Obrador has unleashed it. Over the past three years, the armed forces have taken on unparalleled political and economic roles. The military is now operating outside civilian control, in open defiance of the Mexican constitution, which states that the military cannot be in charge of public security. As a result of presidential decrees, the military has become omnipresent: building airports, running the countrys ports, controlling customs, distributing money to the poor, implementing social programs, and detaining immigrants. According to the National Militarization Index created by the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics, a research institute based in Mexico City, during the past decade, the military has gradually taken over 246 activities that used to be in the hands of civilians. The armed forces have been allocated larger and larger amounts of federal money, and many projects under their control have been reclassified as matters of public security, thus removing them from public scrutiny under Mexicos National Transparency Law. Admittedly, Lpez Obrador inherited armed forces that were increasingly given roles traditionally carried out by the police. But he has made things far worse by eliminating any semblance of civilian oversight or accountability. He has placed the National Guard under the direct control of the defense ministry, doing away with even the pretense of civilian control.
As he tries to win the loyalty of the military, Lpez Obrador has ignored its history of acting with impunity and violating human rights. He parades with generals at his side and invites them to his morning press conference. At most public events, he surrounds himself with top brass, referring to them as el pueblo bueno (the good people) and claiming that they are incorruptible. But the history of the Mexican military is stained by its complicity with drug traffickers and criminals, beginning with the 1997 arrest of General Gutirrez Rebollo, who was convicted of working with one of Mexicos top drug lords. The Zetas, one of the most savage criminal groups in Mexico, was originally made up of members of the military who moved into the drug trade and conducted lucrative criminal operations. And in 2020, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Los Angeles detained General Salvador Cienfuegos, Mexicos former minister of defense, and the U.S. government charged him with drug trafficking. In a reversal that remains unexplained, Washington later returned him to Mexico after negotiations between the Mexican government and the Trump administrations attorney general, William Barr. Upon his arrival, Cienfuegos was rapidly exonerated by Mexican authorities, and two of his top collaborators remain in key military positions, including Luis Crescencio Sandoval, head of the ministry of defense.
Lpez Obrador in Mexico City, February 2021
The armed forces were also involved in the disappearance of 43 students in the town of Ayotzinapa in 2014, when the young men were kidnapped by local police and their allies in the drug trafficking trade in the region. Criminal gangs who pursued and ultimately killed the students were aided by members of the armys 27th Battalion, including a general who was indicted in September 2022.
Lpez Obrador is unwilling to limit the armed forces because he is governing with them, out of distrust for the civilian institutions of the state. He doesnt believe that the countrys civil bureaucracy will be unconditionally loyal to him; the military, on the other hand, he says, is fundamental and strategic to his transformative project, and that may assure its longevity beyond his six years in office. He is also trying to carry out massive public works projects to cement his legacy, and the military provides an attractive option for getting things done quickly. Lpez Obrador frequently refers to a supposed coup dtat that right-wing conspirators are allegedly preparing against him. He has clearly decided that a way of preventing that outcome is to have some of his most powerful potential enemiesincluding those in the militaryinside the tent pissing out, instead of outside the tent pissing in.
The militarization of Mexican politics will be Lpez Obradors most enduring and consequential policy decision. Future governments will be forced to either respect the enlarged power of the military or risk confronting it. Meanwhile, militarization is not producing the results Lpez Obrador promised. According to the U.S. military, drug cartels have expanded their territory and now control a third of Mexico. Violence continues in many parts of the country, with over 100,000 people becoming the victims of forced disappearances since 2007, when the military was assigned to wage the war on drugs. Organized crime has access to increasingly lethal weaponry such as rocket-propelled grenades, and attacks on civilians in cities are now everyday occurrences. Lpez Obradors term in office is on track to become the most violent in Mexicos recent history.
Since Mexicos democratic transition in 2000, the emphasis among reformers has been on building institutions that would assure accountability, transparency, and autonomy from the president and the ruling party. It was also important that opposition candidates have an equal chance in elections. Lpez Obrador seems intent on undermining these objectives and erasing the countrys hard-won (albeit incomplete) democratic gains.
Despite its many flaws, Mexicos electoral democracy had established basic rules for electoral competition that were largely respected. Fundamental to this system was the National Electoral Institute (INE), which is in charge of guaranteeing free and fair elections. For more than three decades, political scientists have viewed the INE, and its predecessor, the Federal Electoral Institute, as the jewel in the crown of Mexicos democratic transition. Yet since arriving in office, Lpez Obrador has taken aim at it. He associates it with the contentious election of 2006, in which he believes fraud prevented what should have been a victory for him, and the electoral authorities carried out only a partial recount of the vote. His stated goal is to replace the INE with a new entity overseen by his party, thus propelling the political system back to the era of PRI rule, when the party in power controlled every aspect of the electoral process.
Lpez Obradors constant verbal attacks on the INE and substantial cuts to its budget have been accompanied by his frequent use of referendums and consultas populares (popular consultations) intended to establish what he calls a true democracy. Whenever the president feels that his agenda is being stalled by constitutional limitations, he establishes a mechanism for obtaining popular support for decisions that would otherwise be stopped by the courts. In 2019 he promoted a popular consultation to see whether the people supported the construction of the new Maya train line, the Dos Bocas oil refinery, and other large-scale public works, but his party did not install enough voting booths countrywide to assure the level of participation required by constitutional rules for the consultation process. Nonetheless, Lpez Obrador used the yes vote to validate the advancement of his projects, even though they failed to comply with legal requirements such as conducting environmental impact studies. In addition, states governed by Morena had more voting booths than others did, thus skewing the result in favor of the president.
The implications are worrisome: if a badly organized instrument of direct democracy supports Lpez Obradors views, he embraces it, even if that entails bending the law to his bidding. He publicly pressures and threatens judges and ministers of the Supreme Court when they attempt to place legal obstacles in his path, including their refusal to support his punitive policy of automatic prison without bail for petty crimes. Alejandro Gertz Manero, the pliant attorney general, has also come to Lpez Obradors aid when the president wants his opponents jailed or indicted, as was the case with Jorge Luis Lavalle, a congressman who was put behind bars, without evidence, for allegedly taking bribes from Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction company.
This bullying and manipulation of the legal system makes it nearly impossible for opposition parties to sap support for Lpez Obrador. Plus, they are burdened by a history of bad governance and corruption while in office and remain weak, divided, and leaderless. Although the opposition was able to wrest voter support away from Morena in Mexico City during elections in 2021, the party made significant electoral inroads at the state level and now controls 21 out of 32 governorships. According to the most recent public opinion polls, it is poised to win the presidency again in 2024. Because Lpez Obrador is constitutionally limited to only one term in office, he will use the resources of the state to assure victory for a candidate he selects himself. Just like the PRI presidents of the past, Lpez Obrador will choose a successor who will remain true to his vision, even if it means abandoning basic democratic principles.
The only true thorn in Lpez Obradors side are Mexicos feminists, a singular political movement that he does not seem to understand, cannot control, and has not been able to suppress. Women in Mexico are angry, and rightly so, given the tide of femicide sweeping the country. Womens long-standing frustration with the governments lack of response to the murders has been intensified by a president who seems impervious to and disdainful of their demands. Despite keeping his promise to establish gender parity in his cabinet, Lpez Obrador has instituted policies and economic austerity that have been harmful to women. His government has closed publicly subsidized daycare centers, eliminated shelters for victims of domestic violence, defunded the National Womens Institute, and cut many national programs that protect women, especially those in indigenous communities. Today, Mexican feminists are more energized and more combative than ever, while they seek to reframe the public debate in favor of their rights and against increased militarization. Throughout his term, womens marches and public protests have been constant and have drawn enormous crowds. When they occur, Lpez Obrador erects steel barriers around the presidential palace, a defensive measure no past president has ever resorted to. In the polls, support for the president among women has been falling because of his budget cuts, his repeated public attacks on feminism, and his tendency to tear-gas the protesters when they march.
As part of his strategy to govern through fear and division, Lpez Obrador has chosen to pursue an openly anti-American stance. In contrast with the conciliatory, even friendly posture that he assumed toward U.S. President Donald Trump, Lpez Obrador has picked public fights with President Joe Biden on many issues, the most important being energy policy. Lpez Obrador has pushed through a series of laws that discriminate against energy production by foreign companies and U.S.-generated energy in favor of state-owned oil and gas companies, such as Pemex and Mexicos Federal Electricity Commission (CFE). U.S. and Canadian enterprises have assumed increasingly critical public stances, arguing that Mexico is violating commitments it made in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 2020.
To resolve the spat, the Biden administration pursued quiet diplomacy. John Kerry, the U.S. special envoy for climate change, has visited Mexico several times over the last two years, while other senior U.S. officials expressed concern, hoping that behind-the-scenes pressure might lead Lpez Obrador to reconsider his position and strike down measures that give electricity produced by the CFE an unfair edge over energy from private companies and cleaner sources such as wind and solar. The usual tools of diplomacy, however, proved of little use, as Lpez Obrador dug in and began to escalate his attacks on the United States, frequently asserting that Mexico is not a colony, decrying American interventionism in his countrys internal affairs, calling Mexican defenders of free trade treasonous, and proclaiming that the USMCA violated Mexicos sovereignty. To fire up his base, Lpez Obrador has turned a trade dispute into a political battle.
Bidens patience finally wore out, and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced in July that the administration would begin a process of dispute settlement consultations, a first step in what could lead to tariffs on a wide range of Mexican products. The Canadian government soon followed suit, challenging Lpez Obradors effort to establish government control over the countrys oil and electricity sector and backtrack on the liberalization of the energy sector that the trade agreement established. If Mexico refuses to relent, and if the arbitration panel finds it to be in violation of the USMCA, the country could face severe financial penalties and compensatory tariffs. Even though Biden still depends on Mexicos assistance with immigration and security issues, he seems to have decided it is time to stop an emboldened Lpez Obrador. Although Lpez Obrador has not openly threatened to exit the USMCA, his confrontational rhetoric and his unwillingness to reverse his nationalistic energy policies has generated concern in Washington and Ottawa.
For Mexico, leaving the agreement would be economic and political suicide. Mexicos inclusion in a free-trade zone with its richer neighbors to the north has turned the country into a manufacturing powerhouse and has functioned as a guarantor of stability by reassuring international investors that the Mexican government would play by the rules. As a result of NAFTA and later the USMCA, investors came to see Mexico not as an unstable Latin American basket case but as a North American player that, in the event of a crisis, had a lender of last resort. When Mexicos economy collapsed in 1994, U.S. President Bill Clinton bypassed Congress to provide a $20 billion loan to help the country recover. Had Mexico not been a NAFTA partner, it would not have received that assistance. And if Mexico withdraws from the USMCA, Washington would be unlikely to rescue Mexico from a similar crisis.
By rejecting the political and economic tenets of the North American neighborhood, Lpez Obrador is reviving views of Mexico as a country subject to pendular macroeconomic policy shifts and presidential whims, which produced crisis after crisis in the 1970s and 1980s. Even if he chooses not to withdraw from the USMCA, his erratic policymaking could lead to further disinvestment, capital flight, and a return to cyclical bouts of economic instability. In 2021, Mexico suffered record capital outflows of over $10 billion, caused by increased risk aversion among investors.
But Lpez Obrador knows that playing the anti-Yankee card can yield political benefits, despite polls showing that a majority of the country supports free trade. With the 2024 presidential elections not far off, he believes that his popularity with an energized political base matters more than the maintenance of a trilateral trade accord. Scoring political points and amassing political capital matters more to him than avoiding a return to what the Mexican poet Octavio Paz once called the countrys labyrinth of solitude, where Mexico would once again waste away, brought down by protectionism, nationalism, corruption, crime, and poverty.
More than a government, Lpez Obradors administration is a daily act of political theater. His is a performative presidency that spins a tale of a heroic fight against privileged elites, perverted feminists, and corrupt experts, all conspiring against the public. He claims that he alone represents the will of the pure, true people. His rhetoric is simple: he seeks a seismic shift, not a mere course correction. He isnt interested in renovating; he wants to burn down the house. Lpez Obrador believes that he embodies a moral revolution, unconstrained by the imperatives of democracy or the niceties of constitutional rule.
The core goal of Lpez Obradors presidency is the maintenance of personal popularity to assure that his party remains in power. His government is therefore uninterested in the material consequences of its policies and actions. It doesnt matter whether the critics think the performance is any good; all that matters is that the audience keeps applauding. As a political strategy, it has worked so far: recent polls show that over 60 percent of Mexicans approve of Lpez Obrador personally, regardless of the well-documented and easily observable adverse effects his rule has had on the economy, on crime, and on democratic consolidation.
His continued popularity does not bode well for Mexicos future. Stepped-up military involvement in domestic affairs is a threat to democracy and human rights. Lpez Obradors assault on the state will destroy or degrade the democratic institutions that Mexican reformers had managed to build over the last 30 years. His inward-looking policies will inhibit economic recovery and Mexicos entrance into competitive post-pandemic global markets. Crony capitalism will perpetuate a system based on favors, concessions, and collusion that will favor the powerful and hurt consumers and citizens.
Democracy relies on rules, procedures, and institutionsnot a leader endowed with mythical qualities. The cult of personality that the Mexican president has promoted and the polarizing ideas that he has injected into the public sphere have created an us against them environment. Mexican politics is increasingly fueled by fear and resentment instead of by debate, deliberation, and fact-based arguments, and public discourse has become unmoored from any sense of what is best for the country. Mexico has a long history of placing its destiny in the hands of an authoritarian president as it lurches from crisis to crisis. Now, Lpez Obrador is taking the country down a familiar path, not to a strong, healthy democracy but to a lawless, corrupt kleptocracy, supported by people who should know better.
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Mexicos Dying Democracy: AMLO and the Toll of Authoritarian Populism
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