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| Presented By Facebook |
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| Axios AM |
| By Mike Allen ·Aug 18, 2021 |
| Happy Wednesday! Smart Brevity™ count: 1,189 words ... 4½ minutes. Edited by Zachary Basu. 📈 Please join Axios' Dan Primack and Courtenay Brown today at 12:30 p.m. ET for an event on IPOs, and how companies go public. Guests include Nasdaq President Nelson Griggs and famed venture capitalist Bill Gurley. Register here. |
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| 1 big thing: What Biden knew |
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| Taliban fighters patrol Kabul today. Photo: Rahmat Gul/AP |
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| You saw this one coming: The more talk of an intelligence failure, the more likely that intel world would strike back. - Sure enough, we now have a spate of leaks asserting that the intelligence agencies provided prescient reads on Afghanistan.
"Classified assessments by American spy agencies over the summer painted an increasingly grim picture of the prospect of a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and warned of the rapid collapse of the Afghan military," The New York Times reports (subscription). - The front-page headline: "Contradicting Biden, Reports Warned of Rapid Collapse."
- "By July," The Times adds, "many intelligence reports grew more pessimistic, questioning whether any Afghan security forces would muster serious resistance and whether the government could hold on."
And it's not just the intel agencies. "Generals and diplomats" gave similar warnings, reports a Wall Street Journal front-pager ("Biden Knew Risks of a Hasty Withdrawal"): - Biden's "decision to bring home U.S. troops ... was made against the recommendations of his top military generals and many diplomats, who warned that a hasty withdrawal would undermine security in Afghanistan, several administration and defense officials said."
- "In a series of meetings leading up to his decision," The Journal continues, "military and intelligence officials told Mr. Biden that security was deteriorating in Afghanistan, and they expressed concerns both about the capabilities of the Afghan military and the Taliban's likely ability to take over major Afghan cities."
What's next: National security adviser Jake Sullivan promised at a White House briefing yesterday that there'll be an after-action: - "[W]e will conduct an extensive 'hotwash,' as we say," Sullivan said. "We will take a look at every aspect of this from top to bottom. But sitting here today, I'm spending every hour I have focused on ... getting all of these people out."
The "hotwash" results will be public: "[O]f course, we intend, after we've had the opportunity to run that analysis, to share that with people." The bottom line ... As President John F. Kennedy said at a news conference four days after the botched Bay of Pigs invasion attempt in Cuba in 1961: "[V]ictory has 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan." |
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| 2. 😱 20 years of getting Afghanistan all wrong |
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| Satellite view shows crowds lining Kabul airport's runway on Monday. Photo: Maxar Technologies via Reuters |
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| When I saw that the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction had released (by coincidence) a new "Lessons Learned" report, I thought: Great! I'll scan the list and find an illuminating one to write about. - My heart sank when I read the seven takeaways in "What We Need to Learn: Lessons from Twenty Years of Afghanistan Reconstruction." (The 11th in a series, BTW.)
It's like we never knew or learned anything: - "The U.S. government continuously struggled to develop and implement a coherent strategy for what it hoped to achieve."
- "The U.S. government consistently underestimated the amount of time required to rebuild Afghanistan, and created unrealistic timelines and expectations that prioritized spending quickly."
- "Many of the institutions and infrastructure projects the United States built were not sustainable."
- "Counterproductive civilian and military personnel policies and practices thwarted the effort."
- "Persistent insecurity severely undermined reconstruction efforts."
- "The U.S. government did not understand the Afghan context and therefore failed to tailor its efforts accordingly."
- "U.S. government agencies rarely conducted sufficient monitoring and evaluation to understand the impact of their efforts."
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| 3. Stock-mentum: S&P doubles in 17 months |
 Date: FactSet. Chart: Axios Visuals The S&P 500 closed at 4,479.71 on Monday, marking a 100% gain from its March 23, 2020 closing low of 2,237.40, Sam Ro writes in Axios Markets. The S&P closed at all-time highs on 49 days this year — the most since 1995. |
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| A message from Facebook |
| Internet regulations are as outdated as dial-up |
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| Facebook supports updated regulations, including four areas where lawmakers can make quick progress: - Reforming Section 230.
- Preventing foreign interference in our elections.
- Passing federal privacy law.
- Setting rules that allow people to safely transfer data between services.
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| 4. 💳 The future will be swipeless |
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| Photo: Mastercard |
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| Mastercard is banishing the decades-old magnetic stripe, Courtenay Brown writes in Axios Closer. - Why it matters: Mastercard will be the first major payments network to completely eliminate the ability to swipe your card at checkout — and instead will emphasize chips, which are more secure, and contactless payments.
The transition will begin in Europe in 2024 and the U.S. in 2027, when banks are no longer required to issue cards with stripes. |
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| 5. Why we're zoning out at the wheel |
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| Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios |
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| If you haven't bought a new car lately, you'll be surprised how many driving tasks are now automated — speed control, braking, lane-keeping and even changing lanes, Axios' Joann Muller writes from Detroit. - Why it matters: Carmakers keep adding more automated features in the name of safety. But now authorities fear assisted-driving technology itself is dangerous by making it too easy for us to zone out.
Federal regulators have taken a mostly hands-off approach to automated vehicle technologies. - Now the Biden administration is stepping up scrutiny. This week, NHTSA opened a formal investigation into Tesla Autopilot after a series of crashes involving emergency vehicles.
The bottom line: Fully autonomous vehicles are years away. |
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| 6. Scoop: Pelosi, Biden officials plot infrastructure path |
| Speaker Pelosi headlines a press event on the Emergency Rental Assistance Program in San Francisco last week. Photo: Nick Otto/AP Speaker Pelosi and top West Wing officials met for 90 minutes yesterday to strategize on winning passage of major infrastructure spending, Axios' Sarah Mucha reports. - Why it matters: President Biden's top legislative priority is facing sudden resistance from a divided House Democratic caucus.
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, counselor Steve Ricchetti and legislative affairs director Louisa Terrell joined the Zoom with Pelosi, back in her San Francisco district for the August recess. |
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| 7. Fleeing Texas Dems can be arrested |
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| Texas House Democrats hold a press conference in Washington on Aug. 6. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images |
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| The Texas Supreme Court ruled that Democrats who skipped town to block Republican voting restrictions can be arrested under the state's constitution, Axios' Rebecca Falconer writes. - The GOP-led Texas House hasn't had a quorum in more than a month. The state House speaker signed 52 civil arrest warrants for absent Democrats last week.
😷 Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has fought aggressively against mask and vaccine mandates, tested positive for COVID yesterday. His office said he was not experiencing symptoms and is fully vaccinated. - The news came one day after Abbott attended a packed, mostly maskless meeting of the Republican Club at Heritage Ranch.
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| 8. Charted: 8 of 10 worst California wildfires were in past 5 years ... |
 Data: CalFire. Chart: Will Chase/Axios ... including all of the top 5. |
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| 9. NASA's delayed lunar dreams |
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| Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios |
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| NASA's plans to land people on the surface of the Moon by 2024 are essentially out of reach, after an agency watchdog said spacesuits won't be ready "until April 2025 at the earliest," Axios Space author Miriam Kramer writes. - The Trump administration had moved up the deadline for a new Moon landing from 2028 to 2024, so that it would happen by the end of a notional Trump second term.
- The Biden administration kept the timeline in place, but experts never believed it was realistic.
Keep reading. |
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| 10. 📺 1 for the road: NFL nation |
 Data: Sports Business Journal. Chart: Axios Visuals 22 of the 25 most-watched TV broadcasts this year were sports — and 18 were football games, Kendall Baker writes in Axios Sports. - 15 were NFL games, three were college football games and four were Olympics, Sports Business Journal's Austin Karp reports (subscription).
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| A message from Facebook |
| Why Facebook supports reforming Section 230 |
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| The internet has changed a lot in the last 25 years — the last time comprehensive internet regulations were passed. Facebook supports updated regulations — like reforming Section 230, to set standards for the way larger tech companies enforce rules about content. |
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| 📬 Please invite friends, family, colleagues to sign up here for Axios AM and Axios PM. |
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