Root Privileges

Month: March 2025

  • “Who are we?”

    From ‘‘The physics community has never split like this’: row erupts over plans for new Large Hadron Collider’, The Guardian, March 29, 2025:

    However, if the FCC were given the go-ahead, it could lock up funds for decades and end up dictating the direction that particle physics will have to take for much of the century, [DESY Hamburg researcher Jenny] List added. “We will be telling future generations exactly what to do scientifically, and so we need to ask ourselves today: who are we to decide what our grandchildren should research and not research?”

    What a powerful argument. And it cuts both ways, too: just as much as we must acknowledge the risks of “locking in” scientists to the FCC while starving other avenues of particle physics research of funds, there is also a well-defined risk in missing a window to fund the FCC while it’s open instead of waiting and losing a potentially one-time opportunity.

    In an ideal world, physicists may like to pursue as many avenues as possible (towards developing a unified and complete description of the physical universe). Of course, more avenues will be possible if they give up on the FCC and split the money they save to hundreds more of smaller projects. But I think it’s also possible to argue building the FCC will itself push physics research in many new directions, providing answers no other experiment can to inform and guide more research. The sword really does cut both ways.

    Even in terms of funding: while giving up on the FCC will ‘spare’ funds that could serve many smaller experiments well, there’s no telling if governments will make them just as available for the latter and, equally, if the political will among governments to fund an FCC-like machine will always exist. The language around the FCC’s budgeting is also confusing: its $30 billion (Rs 2.56 lakh crore) cost will be spent over decades, not in one shot, and a not insignificant chunk of these expenses will be in the form of people’s work-hours and components manufactured by industrial centres in various participating countries.

    Which is why I think the question “who are we to decide?” sounds like a cop-out. Fundamentally, who else is going to decide? Physicists need to make decisions now. It’s likely very difficult for anyone to say if the decision they make at this time will be the right one. All that’s clear is that they need to decide. In fact, we need to decide, going by what IIT Mandi physicist Nirmalya Kajuri wrote in The Wire Science in 2019:

    Irrespective of which way the debate swings, it has already shown that the few who communicate science can have a lopsided influence on the public perception of an entire field – even if they’re not from that field. The distinction between a particle physicist and, say, a condensed-matter physicist is not as meaningful to most people reading the New York Times or any other mainstream publication as it is to physicists. There’s no reason among readers to exclude [Sabine] Hossenfelder as an expert.

    However, very few physicists engage in science communication. The extreme ‘publish or perish’ culture that prevails in sciences means that spending time in any activity other than research carries a large risk. In some places, in fact, junior scientists spending time popularising science are frowned upon because they’re seen to be spending time on something unproductive. But debates like this demonstrate the rewards of science communication.

  • Happy Lord of the Rings Day

    I recently started reading a book entitled The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay. It is historical fiction, immaculately detailed, with three excellent protagonists surrounded by a band of almost as admirable allies navigating a middle-era Spain in which three powerful politico-religious factions are vying for greater power. The Lions is endlessly beautiful both for Kay’s writing and the stories he has decided to narrate as much as those he won’t. The time in which the book’s tales are set was no stranger to casual brutality, but The Lions rises above it by what women and men striving constantly to be their best selves are capable of even in the presence of profound injustice, and of course the price they must inevitably pay. But even so, The Lions makes for superb reading.

    A happy Lord of the Rings Day to you. 🙂 As I’ve written in many past editions of posts marking this occasion, Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen series surpassed JRR Tolkien’s novels and stories of Middle Earth — which was until then the high-water mark of epic fantasy to my mind — when I started reading the former. However, the Malazan series also surpassed, in some cases by distances I’d never imagined possible, all other works of fantasy I’d read until then. I finished reading it just as I completed my engineering studies and shortly after began a career as a journalist. And just a couple more years on, I had a sobering epiphany: I seemed to have lost my book-reading habit. Of course I regularly read shorter written material, from brief news reports to extended essays, but somehow I wasn’t been able to bring myself to read books of fiction — even of epic fantasy fiction, a genre I love very much.

    The Lions broke this spell. I’d recently visited a close friend’s home and asked him to recommend a good book of fiction. I half-expected to be told there was nothing left to read or, should my friend somehow be able to recommend a book, fully expected to not read it all. After rapidly going through a list of books he’d liked and which I’d already read, he dove into his bookshelf for a minute and returned with The Lions. Both he and another close friend recommended it highly, which was something special because these two people have high standards of fiction — as they should — as well as are ravenous consumers of creative work produced by others and published authors themselves. So I decided I’d give The Lions more of a shot than I’d given other books of late, and boy was I glad.

    I don’t like the city of New Delhi in and of itself. But I have some great friends there and experiencing the city with them simply transforms the place. The world of The Lions is just like that: riven with the kind of cruelty and hardship that only small-minded, parochial power is capable of inflicting on those it deems lesser than themselves, yet brightened and enlivened by the story’s protagonists, the physician Jehane bet Ishak, the military leader Rodrigo Belmonte, and the counsellor of kings Ammar ibn Khairan. When I turn into a page that opens with even one of them, I become [gasp] hopeful. What a luxury!

    Whereas The Lord of the Rings is constantly pitching forward, The Lions allows the reader to rest and dwell every now and then — which is remarkable considering The Lions moves faster than the trilogy of books every does. Swept along, I started to wonder just as I crossed the book’s midpoint if I was beginning to recover my reading habit after more than a decade. As The Lions gently but surely built up to its crescendo, I even asked myself if the habit really went away or if I’d just been picking the ‘wrong’ books to read all this time. But just as I got within 150 pages of the book’s finish, I was brought to a crashing halt: I found myself having an increasingly tough time keeping on. I discovered a mind within my mind intent on keeping me from accessing my interest in reading the book. Its purpose seemed to be to have me stop reading right now, so that the people in The Lions could continue to remain where they were in the narrative without being consumed by the impending climax, where at least war — and the attendant prospect of death — lay, and still lies, in wait. But I know I must keep trying: Jehane, Rodrigo, and Ammar have already lived their lives and they would have continued to do so on their own exacting terms. If I am to claim to know them, I must not be afraid of following their lives to the end.

    Either it’s only a matter of time before fantasy fiction writers start featuring among the laureates of highfalutin literary awards or the literary world’s irrational prejudice towards stories of lived lives will continue to be laid bare for what it is. If only to me, The Lord of the Rings, the Malazan series, and The Lions of Al-Rassan are of a piece with any and all fiction, whether in prose or verse, in terms of humans or aliens, located somewhere or nowhere. There are differences, of course, but that is also a tautological statement. Differences abound between The Lions and The Lord of the Rings as much as they do between, say, Half of a Yellow Sun and Objects of Desire. Yet they all play on the same borderless field.

    Even magic needn’t make a difference. I used to think that it did when I first read The Lord of the Rings and realised how much better it was than anything else I’d read until then. But I’ve learnt that they’re not all that different, whether in kind or degree. Magic, if you’ve read the Malazan series but also if you’ve dabbled in the Elden Ring lore or played a Dungeons & Dragons campaign or two, can be found to be a thing of the world, this material world, occupying the space between you and me as surely as sunlight and birdsong. This is ultimately why I keep returning to The Lord of the Rings at least once a year, and why I find echoes of stories imagined much later by authors from different worlds in its old, familiar pages. Casting a spell to harm someone is no different from hitting them with a stick or bullying them when they’re helpless. Just as well, choosing not to do any of these things even when the incentive presents itself is equally virtuous.

    The Lord of the Rings first brought me to this borderless field: even if I’m not frolicking yet, I’m not going to leave either. Now, back to The Lions…

    Previous editions: 2024, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2014.

  • Williams’s success is… ours?

    A day before NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore were to return onboard a SpaceX crew capsule, Prime Minister Narendra Modi published a letter in which he said he had inquired after her when he met U.S. President Donald Trump and that even if “you are thousands of miles away, you remain in our hearts”.

    Union Minister of State Jitendra Singh declared “a moment of glory, pride and relief” when Williams, whom he called “this illustrious daughter of India”, splashed down in Florida Bay. He lauded her “for the courage, conviction and consistency with which she endured the uncertainties of space”.

    If one had only Singh’s note to read, one may not have realised another person, Barry Wilmore, endured what she had or that there were two other astronauts in the capsule when it descended. Yet Singh’s peers, including Jyotiraditya Scindia and Piyush Goyal, also published similar posts on their LinkedIn profiles extolling Williams alone. Scindia even thanked the other two astronauts “for rescuing our brave warriors of the space”. ISRO chimed in as well.

    Williams was born in Ohio to Indian and Slovene American parents; her father emigrated from India in 1958. As such, she lived, studied, and worked all in the US. While the extent to which she is “Indian” per se is debatable, self-identity is personal and ultimately for Williams to determine.

    In the last half year, however, many news reports in the mainstream press have referred to her as being of “Indian origin” or as “Indian-American”. Labels like this are poorly defined, if at all; writers and authors typically use them on the basis of a pulse or a sentiment. Are they accurate? It might seem that it does not matter whether a minister refers to Williams as a ‘woman of India’, that there is no price to pay. But there is.

    In and of themselves, the pronouncements about Williams are not problematic. They become that way when one recalls what has been given to her, and by whom, that has been denied to many others, some arguably more deserving. An example from recent memory is wrestlers Vinesh Phogat and Sakshi Malik, whose peaceful protest to reform India’s professional wrestling administration was quelled violently by police acting on orders of the Union government. They were not “India’s daughters” then.

    The year after, in 2024, when Phogat was disqualified from participating in the finals of the 50-kg wrestling event at the Paris Olympics, the immediate reaction was to allege a conspiracy, blame her for not trying hard “enough”, and to ask whether she had let Indians down even though the prime minister had “let” her participate despite her role in the protests.

    There was no meaningful discussion or dialogue in government circles about systematically averting the circumstances that saw Phogat exit the Olympics, instead it seemed to grate that she had come so close to a monumental success yet still missed out.

    The chief minister of Haryana, a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party at the Centre, celebrated Phogat’s return to India as if she had had a podium finish, arranging for merriment on the streets of her home state. It was an attempt to paper over his peers’ accountability with sound and fury.

    Williams occupies a similar liminal space: as Phogat had lost yet not lost, Williams was not Indian yet Indian — both narratives twisting the lived realities of these women in the service of a common message: that India is great. Williams’s feats in the space and spaceflight domains have been exceptional, but neither more than other astronauts who have gone to space on long missions nor because India had any role in facilitating it.

    Presumably in response to an excellent article by Chethan Dash at The Times of India, Singh said on March 19 that the government had not arranged for India’s own astronaut-designates — the four men in the shortlist to pilot Gaganyaan’s maiden crewed flight — to have conversations with the press and the public at large, at a time when an exceptional number of people were interested in Williams’s life and work. The government had clearly missed an invaluable opportunity to build interest in the Indian space programme. Its excuse did not wash either: that the astronauts had to not be “distracted”.

    The loud and repeated bids to coopt Williams’s success as India’s by extension has been disingenuous, a continuing pattern of crusting the shell with as many jewels as possible to hide the infirmity within.

    Featured image: Astronauts Joan Higginbotham and Sunita Williams work at the Space Station Remote Manipulator System onboard the ISS, December 12, 2006. Credit: NASA.

  • Who funds quantum research?

    An odd little detail in a Physics World piece on Microsoft’s claim to have made a working topological qubit:

    Regardless of the debate about the results and how they have been announced, researchers are supportive of the efforts at Microsoft to produce a topological quantum computer. “As a scientist who likes to see things tried, I’m grateful that at least one player stuck with the topological approach even when it ended up being a long, painful slog,” says [Scott] Aaronson.

    “Most governments won’t fund such work, because it’s way too risky and expensive,” adds [Winfried] Hensinger. “So it’s very nice to see that Microsoft is stepping in there.”

    In drug development, defence technologies, and life sciences research, to name a few, we’ve seen the opposite: governments fund the risky, expensive part for many years, often decades, until something viable emerges. Then the IP moves to public and private sector enterprises for commercialisation, sometimes together with government subsidies to increase public access. With pharmaceuticals in particular, the government often doesn’t recoup investments it has made in the discovery phase, which includes medical education and research. An illustrative recent example is the development of mRNA vaccines; from my piece in The Hinducriticising the medicine Nobel Prize for this work:

    Dr. Kariko and Dr. Weissman began working together on the mRNA platform at the University of Pennsylvania in the late 1990s. The University licensed its patents to mRNA RiboTherapeutics, which sublicensed them to CellScript, which sublicensed them to Moderna and BioNTech for $75 million each. Dr. Karikó joined BioNTech as senior vice-president in 2013, and the company enlisted Pfizer to develop its mRNA vaccine for COVID-19 in 2020.

    Much of the knowledge that underpins most new drugs and vaccines is unearthed at the expense of governments and public funds. This part of drug development is more risky and protracted, when scientists identify potential biomolecular targets within the body on which a drug could act in order to manage a particular disease, followed by identifying suitable chemical candidates. The cost and time estimates of this phase are $1billion-$2.5 billion and several decades, respectively.

    Companies subsequently commoditise and commercialise these entities, raking in millions in profits, typically at the expense of the same people whose taxes funded the fundamental research. There is something to be said for this model of drug and vaccine development, particularly for the innovation it fosters and the eventual competition that lowers prices, but we cannot deny the ‘double-spend’ it imposes on consumers — including governments — and the profit-seeking attitude it engenders among the companies developing and manufacturing the product.

    Quantum computing may well define the next technological revolution together with more mature AI models. Topological quantum computing in particular — if realised well enough to compete with alternative architectures based on superconducting wires and/or trapped ions — could prove especially valuable for its ability to be more powerful with fewer resources. Governments justify their continuing sizeable expense on drug development by the benefits that eventually accrue to the country’s people. By all means, quantum technologies will have similar consequences, following from a comparable trajectory of development where certain lines of inquiry are not precluded because they could be loss-making or amount to false starts. And they will impinge on everything from one’s fundamental rights to national security.

    But Hensinger’s opinion indicates the responsibility of developing this technology has been left to the private sector. I wonder if there are confounding factors here. For example, is Microsoft’s pursuit of a topological qubit the exception to the rule — i.e. one of a few enterprises that are funded by a private organisation in a sea of publicly funded research? Another possibility is that we’re hearing about Microsoft’s success because it has a loud voice, with the added possibility that its announcement was premature (context here). It’s also possible Microsoft’s effort included grants from NSF, DARPA or the like.

    All this said, let’s assume for a moment that what Hensinger said was true of quantum computing research in general: the lack of state-led development in such potentially transformative technologies raises two (closely related) concerns. The first is scientific progress, especially that it will happen behind closed doors. In a June 2023 note, senior editors of the Physical Review B journal acknowledged the contest between the importance of researchers sharing their data for scrutiny, replication, and for others to build on their work — all crucial for science — and private sector enterprises’ need to protect IP and thus withhold data. “This will not be the last time the American Physical Society confronts a tension between transparency and the transmission of new results,” they added. Unlike in drug development, life sciences, etc., even the moral argument that publicly funded research must be in the public domain is rendered impotent, although it can still be recast as the weaker “research that affects the public sphere…”.

    The second is democracy. In a March 2024 commentary, digital governance experts Nathan Sanders, Bruce Schneier, and Norman Eisen wrote that the state could develop a “public AI” to counter the already apparent effects of “private AI” on democratic institutions. According to them, a “public AI” model could “provide a mechanism for public input and oversight on the critical ethical questions facing AI development,” including “how to incorporate copyrighted works in model training” and “how to license access for sensitive applications ranging from policing to medical use”. They added: “Federally funded foundation AI models would be provided as a public service, similar to a health care private option. They would not eliminate opportunities for private foundation models, but they would offer a baseline of price, quality, and ethical development practices that corporate players would have to match or exceed to compete.”

    Of course, quantum computing isn’t beset by the same black-box problem that surrounds AI models, yet what it implies for our ability to secure digital data means it could still benefit from state-led development. Specifically: (i) a government-funded technology standard could specify the baseline for the private sector to “match or exceed to compete” so that computers deployed to secure public data maintain a minimum level of security; (ii) private innovation can build on the standard, with the advantage of not having to lay new foundations of their own; and (iii) the data and the schematics pertaining to the standard should be in the public domain, thus restricting private-sector IP to specific innovations.[1]

    [1] Contrary to a lamentable public perception, just knowing how a digital technology works doesn’t mean it can be hacked.

  • On the US FAA’s response to Falcon 9 debris

    On February 1, SpaceX launched its Starlink 11-4 mission onboard a Falcon 9 rocket. The rocket’s reusable first stage returned safely to the ground and the second stage remained in orbit after deploying the Starlink satellites. It was to deorbit later in a controlled procedure and land somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. But on February 19 it was seen breaking up in the skies over Denmark, England, Poland, and Sweden, with some larger pieces crashing into parts of Poland. After the Polish space agency determined the debris to belong to a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was asked about its liability. This was its response:

    The FAA determined that all flight events for the SpaceX Starlink 11-4 mission occurred within the scope of SpaceX’s licensed activities and that SpaceX satisfied safety at end-of-launch requirements. Per post-launch reporting requirements, SpaceX must identify any discrepancy or anomaly that occurred during the launch to the FAA within 90-days. The FAA has not identified any events that should be classified as a mishap at this time. Licensed flight activities and FAA oversight concluded upon SpaceX’s last exercise of control over the Falcon 9 vehicle. SpaceX posted information on its website that the second stage from this launch reentered over Europe. The FAA is not investigating the uncontrolled reentry of the second stage nor the debris found in Poland.

    I’ve spotted a lot of people on the internet (not trolls) describing this response as being in line with Donald Trump’s “USA first” attitude and reckless disregard for the consequences of his government’s actions and policies on other countries. It’s understandable given how his meeting with Zelenskyy on February 28 played out as well as NASA acting administrator Janet Petro’s disgusting comment about US plans to “dominate” lunar and cislunar space. However, the FAA’s position has been unchanged since at least August 18, 2023, when it issued a “notice of proposed rulemaking” designated 88 FR 56546. Among other things:

    The proposed rule would … update definitions relating to commercial space launch and reentry vehicles and occupants to reflect current legislative definitions … as well as implement clarifications to financial responsibility requirements in accordance with the United States Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act.

    Under Section 401.5 2(i), the notice stated:

    (1) Beginning of launch. (i) Under a license, launch begins with the arrival of a launch vehicle or payload at a U.S. launch site.

    The FAA’s position has likely stayed the same for some duration before the August 2023 date. According to Table 1 in the notice, the “effect of change” of the clarification of the term “Launch”, under which Section 401.5 2(i) falls, is:

    None. The FAA has been applying these definitions in accordance with the statute since the [US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act 2015] went into effect. This change would now provide regulatory clarity.

    Skipping back bit further, the FAA issued a “final rule” on “Streamlined Launch and Reentry License Requirements” on September 30, 2020. The rule states (pp. 680-681) under Section 450.1 (b) 3:

    (i) For an orbital launch of a vehicle without a reentry of the vehicle, launch ends after the licensee’s last exercise of control over its vehicle on orbit, after vehicle component impact or landing on Earth, after activities necessary to return the vehicle or component to a safe condition on the ground after impact or landing, or after activities necessary to return the site to a safe condition, whichever occurs latest;

    (ii) For an orbital launch of a vehicle with a reentry of the vehicle, launch ends after deployment of all payloads, upon completion of the vehicle’s first steady-state orbit if there is no payload deployment, after vehicle component impact or landing on Earth, after activities necessary to return the vehicle or component to a safe condition on the ground after impact or landing, or after activities necessary to return the site to a safe condition, whichever occurs latest; …

    In part B of this document, under the heading “Detailed Discussion of the Final Rule” and further under the sub-heading “End of Launch”, the FAA presents the following discussion:

    [Commercial Spaceflight Federation] and SpaceX suggested that orbital launch without a reentry in proposed §450.3(b)(3)(i) did not need to be separately defined by the regulation, stating that, regardless of the type of launch, something always returns: Boosters land or are disposed, upper stages are disposed. CSF and SpaceX further requested that the FAA not distinguish between orbital and suborbital vehicles for end of launch.

    The FAA does not agree because the distinctions in § 450.3(b)(3)(i) and (ii) are necessary due to the FAA’s limited authority on orbit. For a launch vehicle that will eventually return to Earth as a reentry vehicle, its on-orbit activities after deployment of its payload or payloads, or completion of the vehicle’s first steady-state orbit if there is no payload, are not licensed by the FAA. In addition, the disposal of an upper stage is not a reentry under 51 U.S.C. Chapter 509, because the upper stage does not return to Earth substantially intact.

    From 51 USC Chapter 509, Section 401.7:

    Reentry vehicle means a vehicle designed to return from Earth orbit or outer space to Earth substantially intact. A reusable launch vehicle that is designed to return from Earth orbit or outer space to Earth substantially intact is a reentry vehicle.

    This means Section 450.1 (b) 3(i) under “Streamlined Launch and Reentry License Requirements” of 2020 applies to the uncontrolled deorbiting of the Falcon 9 upper stage in the Starlink 11-4 mission. In particular, according to the FAA, the launch ended “after the licensee’s last exercise of control over its vehicle on orbit”, which was the latest relevant event.

    Back to the “Detailed Discussion of the Final Rule”:

    Both CSF and SpaceX proposed “end of launch” should be defined on a case-by-case basis in pre-application consultation and specified in the license. The FAA disagrees, in part. The FAA only regulates on a case-by-case basis if the nature of an activity makes it impossible for the FAA to promulgate rules of general applicability. This need has not arisen, as evidenced by decades of FAA oversight of end-of-launch activities. That said, because the commercial space transportation industry continues to innovate, §450.3(a) gives the FAA the flexibility to adjust the scope of license, including end of launch, based on unique circumstances as agreed to by the Administrator.

    The world currently doesn’t have a specific international law or agreement dealing with accountability for space debris that crashes to the earth, including paying for the damages such debris wreaks and imposing penalties on offending launch operators. In light of this fact, it’s important to remember the FAA’s position — even if it seems disagreeable — has been unchanged for some time even as it has regularly updated its rulemaking to accommodate private sector innovation within the spirit of the existing law.

    Trump is an ass and I’m not holding out for him to look out for the concerns of other countries when pieces of made-in-USA rockets descend in uncontrolled fashion over their territories, damaging property or even taking lives. But that the FAA didn’t develop its present position afresh under Trump 2.0, and that it was really developed with feedback from SpaceX and other US-based spaceflight operators, is important to understand that its attitude towards crashing debris goes beyond ideology, encompassing the support of both Democrat and Republican governments over the years.

  • The idea of doing right by the US

    After US troops withdrew from Afghanistan after two decades in 2021, the Taliban returned to power. In its oppressive regime many groups of people, but especially women, girls, and minorities, have lost most of their civil rights. In this time, Afghanistan has also suffered devastating floods and an ongoing famine, and has mounted tentative attempts at diplomacy with countries it could count on to be sympathetic to Afghanistan’s plight, if not the Taliban’s. Separate from other goals, it seemed like a bid by the Taliban to improve Afghanistan’s ability to survive future disasters.

    But New Delhi’s willingness to so much as engage with Taliban-appointed diplomats — even while declining to acknowledge the political legitimacy of the Taliban government — has elicited strong words of caution from former diplomats.

    Similarly, when the International Cricket Council (ICC) allowed the Afghanistan men’s team to participate in the Champions Trophy tournament despite a rule that it won’t recognise any country without both men’s and women’s teams, Afghan refugee and taekwondo champion Marzieh Hamidi accused the body of tolerating “gender apartheid”, which is also understandable.

    These attempts by Afghanistan are reminiscent of a particular passage in my favourite work of fantasy, Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen. [Spoiler alert] The Crippled God, a vile new deity in the books’ world, petitions vociferously to be included in the world’s pantheon, side by side with all the other gods. The Master of the Deck, the mortal tasked with this decision, initially believes the answer to be easy: to decline admission. But the thought of doing so weighs heavily on him, until one day, on a bloody battlefield, a weary soldier points him to an obvious answer of another variety: to admit the Crippled God in the pantheon only to force it to play by the same rules all the other gods play by. [end alert]

    There’s something to be said for doing right by a weakened people ruled by an unelected, oppressive, and insular government. The Taliban idea of human rights is subservient to the group’s hardline religious beliefs, and the country’s people didn’t sign up for it.

    No matter how much control the Taliban aspires to exert on the affairs of Afghanistan, it can’t restrict the effects of climate change to beyond its borders. This is why the UN allowed Afghanistan’s representatives to participate as observers at the COP29 climate talks in November 2024 in Azerbaijan, even though the UN doesn’t recognise the Taliban government and had prohibited its participation altogether for three years until then. It was progress of a sort.

    Similarly, New Delhi may seek to admit an Afghan diplomat by arguing the merits of having a finger on the button and the ICC may allow the men’s cricket team to play by claiming doing so allows the Afghan people something to cheer for. How meritorious their arguments are in the real world is a separate matter.

    But can we apply the same sort of thinking to the US under Donald Trump, Sr.? As soon as he took office in his second term, Trump relaunched the process to free the US of commitments made under the Paris Agreement and to the World Health Organisation, cut funding for research into various diseases, drugs, and vaccines, and nixed support for DEI efforts, trans people, and reproductive rights. He returned to power by winning 312 votes in the electoral college and 49.8% of the popular vote, or 77.3 million votes. Kamala Harris received 75 million votes (48.3%).

    As with Afghanistan, does the rest of the world have a responsibility to stand by the people who opposed Trump, as well as the rights of those who supported him but couldn’t have expected the consequences of his actions for themselves? Or is the US beyond concession?

    Trump isn’t a terrorist but his protectionist agenda, authoritarian stance, and inflammatory rhetoric also endanger lives and livelihoods and isolate his compatriots in the international area. In fact, the questions arise because Trump’s actions affect the whole world, not the US alone, thanks to ways in which his predecessors have already embedded the country in multilateral collaborations to fight climate change, the spread of communicable diseases, plastic pollution, etc.