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ISIS DIES IN THE WORLD AND LIVES ON THE WEB

As you read this, US-backed Syrian and Kurdish forces are killing or capturing the last few Islamic State militants holding out in a fingernail-shaped sliver of riverbank in eastern Syria. It's all that remains of the caliphate declared by the Islamist extremist group across a swath of Syria and neighboring Iraq in 2014.

Despite being on the back foot territorially, here are three ways that ISIS will continue to rile global politics:

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IS BREAKING UP BIG TECH POSSIBLE?

Elizabeth Warren is ready to take on Silicon Valley. The Democratic Senator from Massachusetts, a 2020 presidential contender, says companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook are so dominant that they hurt small businesses and stifle innovation. Her solution: break them up with some old-fashioned trust-busting. Given the growing backlash against Silicon Valley, her idea is likely to get a lot of attention. But there's plenty to unpack here, so let's take it one question at a time.

What is the argument for doing this?

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TRAGEDY IN THE SKY, POLITICS ON THE GROUND

In the days since the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max jet on Sunday, governments around the world have ordered airlines to ground that model until more is known about the causes of the accident. After all, it is the second time that Boeing's top-selling late model jet has gone down in less than six months.

This is first and foremost a human tragedy – and one that hit home for your Wednesday Signal author, who has friends and acquaintances who lost people in the crash. But the global response carries some strong political undercurrents.

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Geopolitics: (Of) the Final Frontier

The Space Force is really happening. President Trump recently signed a directive creating a new US Air Force unit dedicated to space defense. It's not quite the independent, sixth military branch Trump once touted, but its creation illustrates just how much the competition to dominate space is heating up.

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Imitation Game: How the West is Going China's Way

There's growing optimism that the US and China will soon wrap up a deal to end their $360 billion trade and tariffs spat. But even if China agrees to buy more US petroleum and soybeans or ease requirements that foreign companies hand over intellectual property, President Trump's negotiators are unlikely to get Beijing to bend on a more fundamental issue: the state's heavy hand in directing the economy and the advantages it gives many Chinese companies.

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A Western War of Words - And Worldviews

Last weekend, world leaders, security experts, and business executives flocked to the Hotel Bayrischer Hof in Munich for the 55th annual Munich Security Conference. What's the Munich Security Conference? Think of it a bit like Davos, but with policymakers in dark suits rather than billionaires in Gore-Tex.

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A US / European Rift Over 5G?

Speaking of trans-Atlantic rifts, we've written previously about the US pushback against Huawei, arguably the world's most geopolitically significant technology company. The Trump administration has been trying to convinceits European allies to ban the Chinese tech giant from their next-generation 5G information networks, citing national security risks. Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo even warned of consequences for countries that don't toe Washington's line on the issue.

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How To Kill The Internet: An Annotated Guide

Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to kill the internet. Well, sort of. Russia is taking steps that would enable the government to unplug the country from the world wide web and fall back on its own, internal Russian network. A Russian agency plans to perform tests on a prototype of the "RosNet" (our coinage) soon.

That would be a boon to Vladimir Putin's ongoing bid to tighten control over the online realm, an obsession rooted in the anti-Putin protests of 2011-2012, and the Snowden revelations about massive US online snooping in 2013. The system is meant to be a temporary emergency measure, according to the Russian press – in case of hostile cyberattacks, or serious internal protests.

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