8. Lessons from the Modern Era: A Changing Global Order — Russia, China, Cybersecurity, and the Rise of Political Polarization (2013–2016)

Ukraine at a Crossroads — From Protests in Kyiv to the Seizure of Crimea

On November 21, 2013, Ukrainians began gathering in Kyiv’s Independence Square, known as the Maidan. President Viktor Yanukovych’s government had halted preparations for an agreement that would bring Ukraine closer to the European Union. Russia wanted Ukraine to maintain close economic ties with Moscow. For the students who gathered that night, the decision raised a question about their own futures. Who would have a say in the country they were about to inherit? Before dawn on November 30, riot police struck demonstrators with batons as they cleared the square. By the next day, far larger crowds had taken to the streets. People who had stayed home during a dispute over trade came out after seeing what had happened to the students.

When the President Took Credit, Who Got the Benefit?

Yanukovych’s name was already familiar to Ukrainians hearing about government spending. Officials promoted public programs as the president’s social initiatives. One survey in 2013 even asked citizens how much they personally had benefited from initiatives bearing his name. The evidence supports that practice of giving him public credit, though it does not establish that he put his name on every project. As the demonstrations continued through winter, protesters demanded answers about corruption. In February, dozens of protesters were killed in Kyiv. Yanukovych fled the capital, and on February 22 parliament declared that he had stopped carrying out his duties and called an early presidential election. That same day, ordinary Ukrainians finally got through the gates of his residence.

What the Gates Had Hidden

At Mezhyhirya, outside Kyiv, visitors walked past fountains and stepped onto a private golf course. The estate had once belonged to the state. Now families could see the extraordinary comforts their president had enjoyed there. Journalists examining documents from the property found records of lavish spending. Even the custodian’s gift list told a story. It recorded which officials had given Yanukovych presents, including a silver plate for serving caviar. For citizens asking where Ukraine’s money had gone, the estate made the controversy over waste and political favors painfully concrete. They could walk its grounds in an afternoon. Tracing who had paid the bills would take investigators much longer.

Six Days Later, Armed Men Entered Crimea’s Parliament

On February 27, armed men in uniforms without identifying insignia seized the parliament building in Crimea, Ukraine’s peninsula on the Black Sea. Russian forces took control of strategic sites. On March 16, with those forces in place, local authorities held a referendum and announced that voters had chosen to join Russia. Two days later, Russian president Vladimir Putin signed a treaty claiming Crimea as Russian territory. Ukraine rejected the seizure, and the United Nations General Assembly affirmed Ukraine’s borders and declared the vote invalid. In Kyiv, citizens had spent a winter demanding a voice in their government. In Crimea, people awoke to find that soldiers controlled their parliament and that their citizenship, laws, and future were suddenly in dispute.

Ukraine at a Crossroads — From Protests in Kyiv to the Seizure of Crimea

On the night of November 21, 2013, Ukrainian journalist Mustafa Nayyem posted a meeting time and place on Facebook. Anyone willing to protest should come to the independence monument in central Kyiv at 10:30. Dress warmly, he suggested, and bring umbrellas, tea, and friends. Hours earlier, President Viktor Yanukovych’s government had suspended preparations for an agreement that would strengthen Ukraine’s trade and political ties with the European Union. Russia had pressed Ukraine to turn away from the deal. By the time people gathered beneath the monument, a decision made in government offices had become a question for everyone in the square. Who would decide Ukraine’s future?

The Police Raid That Brought More People Out

Before dawn on November 30, riot police moved into Independence Square, known as the Maidan, and beat demonstrators, many of them students. Images of the raid spread, and the next day a much larger crowd filled central Kyiv. People who had stayed home during an argument over trade now had a reason of their own to march. They wanted the officers who had beaten the students held accountable. Protesters pitched tents and stayed through the winter. The deadliest day came on February 20, 2014, when dozens of protesters were shot dead near the square. Yanukovych soon fled Kyiv. On February 22, Ukraine’s parliament declared that he had stopped performing his duties and called an early presidential election.

Soldiers Without Insignia

Five days later, before dawn on February 27, armed men in uniforms without identifying insignia seized Crimea’s parliament and raised a Russian flag. Crimea was a Ukrainian peninsula on the Black Sea. It had its own regional government, and its port of Sevastopol hosted Russia’s Black Sea Fleet under an agreement with Ukraine. As Russian troops took control of key sites and surrounded Ukrainian military bases, local authorities scheduled a referendum. On March 16, residents were asked to vote on Crimea’s future while Russian forces controlled the peninsula. Anyone who wanted to keep Crimea’s existing arrangement within Ukraine faced a problem inside the voting booth. That choice did not appear on the ballot.

A Border Changed by Force

On March 18, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty claiming Crimea for Russia. Ukraine rejected the annexation. Nine days later, 100 countries in the United Nations General Assembly voted to affirm Ukraine’s borders and declare the referendum invalid. The resolution could not make the soldiers leave. By the end of March, Russia controlled Crimea, while most of the world continued to recognize it as Ukrainian territory. In four months, the question first raised beneath Kyiv’s independence monument had reached the floor of the United Nations. Could one country use its army to decide where another country’s borders belonged?

Obama’s Warnings to Russia: Clinton’s Reset Button to the Seizure of Crimea

On March 6, 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton handed Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a red button in Geneva. Just months after Russia’s war with Georgia had strained relations with Washington, Clinton wanted the two diplomats to press it together to signal a fresh start. Then Lavrov read the label. The Russian word on the button, peregruzka, meant “overload.” The word the Americans wanted was perezagruzka, meaning “reset.” Both diplomats laughed and pressed it anyway. The translation error made headlines. The deeper controversy was the timing of the gesture. What message did a fresh start send to Georgia, whose territory Russian troops still occupied?

The Red Line That Moscow Watched

President Barack Obama’s best-known “red line” came in 2012 and concerned chemical weapons in Syria, where Russia backed President Bashar al-Assad. In August 2013, a sarin gas attack killed civilians near Damascus. Obama sought congressional approval for a military strike, then put the strike on hold when Russia helped broker an agreement for Syria to surrender its declared chemical weapons. The agreement gave inspectors access to a deadly arsenal. It also left a question that followed Obama into his next confrontation with Moscow. Critics argued that Vladimir Putin had watched an American president issue a grave warning and then step back from using force. What Putin personally concluded remains uncertain.

Crimea Tests an American Warning

On February 28, 2014, as Russian forces moved to seize Crimea from Ukraine, Obama publicly warned, “There will be costs to any military intervention in Ukraine.” He left the kind of cost open. Within three weeks, Putin signed a treaty claiming Crimea for Russia. Obama imposed sanctions on senior Russian officials, and Washington and its European allies later widened the economic penalties. Those measures carried a price for Moscow, but Ukraine still lost control of the peninsula. For critics of the reset, Crimea exposed the weakness in Obama’s approach. Putin appeared willing to pay the price Washington had named.

What Ukraine Asked America to Send

That September, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko stood before Congress while his country’s soldiers fought Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine. He thanked Americans for their help, then made his request for weapons in words any student could understand. “One cannot win the war with blankets.” Members of both American parties urged Obama to arm Ukraine so its soldiers could make further advances more costly for Russia. Obama continued sending equipment and other aid while declining to supply the weapons Poroshenko sought, fearing a wider conflict. Five years after two diplomats pressed a button in Geneva, the argument over the reset had come down to a decision with consequences on the battlefield. What should the United States put in the hands of a Ukrainian soldier?

China’s New Silk Roads — How Can a Railway Build Influence? (2013–2016)

In September 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping stood before university students in Kazakhstan and asked his audience to think back to the merchants who once crossed Central Asia by camel. Their caravans carried silk, horses, and ideas between distant cities. Xi envisioned freight trains making the journey, with fewer delays at borders and more trade along the way. A month later, speaking in Indonesia, he proposed a maritime route linking ports by sea. Together, the proposals became known as the Belt and Road Initiative. For countries that had waited years for a railway or a deepwater port, China offered something more persuasive than a speech. Chinese banks could lend the money, and Chinese companies could build the project. What those arrangements would mean for the countries signing them depended on the details of each deal.

Why Laos Wanted a Railway

To understand why a government would borrow billions, consider the journey of a crate of fruit from a farm in Laos to a buyer in China. Laos has no coastline, and mountains stand between its capital, Vientiane, and the Chinese border. Every extra hour on a winding truck route costs money and takes time off the fruit’s shelf life. A railway running more than 250 miles north from Vientiane offered a chance to reach Chinese markets faster. It could also bring tourists south and give businesses a reason to build warehouses near Lao towns. Yet a farmer living a day’s drive from the nearest station would still face a difficult journey. Whether the railway paid off would depend partly on less glamorous work, including improving local roads and getting shipments through customs before the produce spoiled.

Who Would Own the Tracks?

In December 2016, the Lao government signed an agreement for a railway estimated to cost $5.9 billion, roughly one-third of what the country’s entire economy produced in a year. A joint railway company would borrow about $3.5 billion from China’s Export-Import Bank. Three Chinese state-owned companies together held 70 percent of the railway company, while a Lao state enterprise held 30 percent. Laos even borrowed $480 million from the same Chinese bank to help pay for its own share. China therefore gained influence before a single passenger bought a ticket. Its bank was the principal lender, and its companies held the majority stake in the business responsible for building and running the line. Laos gained a route it had long wanted. It also committed public money to a project whose success depended on how many passengers and how much freight would actually travel.

Sri Lanka and the Price of a Port

On the Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka, the port of Hambantota shows what could happen when a government needed cash after construction. Sri Lankan leaders had sought Chinese financing for the port years before Xi announced the new Silk Roads. By 2016, the government urgently needed U.S. dollars and was looking for a company willing to lease the facility. It approached Japanese and Indian firms as well as Chinese investors. The outcome came in 2017, when a Chinese state-owned port company agreed to invest about $1.12 billion for a controlling stake under a 99-year lease. One detail matters especially. Sri Lanka still owed the original construction loans after signing. Its leaders had negotiated a separate deal to raise money, and a Chinese company gained a commercial role at an Indian Ocean port that could last several generations.

The Power Written into a Contract

Critics called deals like these “debt-trap diplomacy.” They argued that a country pressed for cash could give China influence over assets it would otherwise keep under its own control. The agreements reveal how that influence worked and why local decisions mattered. In Laos, Chinese companies secured majority ownership when the railway deal was signed. In Sri Lanka, the government itself sought a port lease when it needed dollars. Neither case establishes that Beijing deliberately designed a loan to fail. Both show why citizens had reason to look beyond the price announced at a signing ceremony. A railway could help a farmer sell a harvest for years to come. The same contract could give an overseas company a lasting voice in how that harvest reached its market.

Building Islands in the South China Sea — Who Gets to Fish Here? (2013–2016)

For generations, fishing crews from the Philippines, China, and Vietnam steered toward a ring of coral west of the Philippine island of Luzon. At Scarborough Shoal, a narrow opening leads into a sheltered lagoon. Crews knew the waters as a place to catch fish and take refuge when the weather turned. Then, in 2012, a standoff between Chinese and Philippine vessels changed what happened when a Filipino boat approached. Chinese government ships began blocking Filipino crews from their traditional fishing grounds. A family could own a boat, know where the fish were, and have buyers waiting back on shore. A patrol ship could still send that boat home empty. In January 2013, the Philippines took its case to an international tribunal.

How to Build an Island Before the Judges Finish Their Work

While the case was underway, Chinese construction fleets went to work farther south, in the Spratly Islands. Dredging vessels dug sand and broken rock from the seabed and deposited the material on top of reefs. At Fiery Cross Reef, the scale of the work soon became visible from space. A satellite image taken on July 18, 2015, showed at least eighteen vessels unloading construction equipment. By November, sand and rock covered nearly the entire southwestern reef flat, and the new land had room for an aircraft runway. Reefs that sailors once picked out by watching for breaking waves could now support buildings, docks, and aircraft. That gave China places to supply ships and maintain a presence far from its mainland. It also raised a question the judges could answer. Could a country gain fishing rights simply by making more land?

Why the Height of the Tide Mattered

To answer that question, the tribunal had to work out what each reef looked like before the dredgers arrived. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a coastal country can generally claim an exclusive economic zone extending up to 200 nautical miles from its coast. Within that zone, it has the right to manage resources such as fish. At Mischief Reef, the decisive fact was something a sailor could once have observed by waiting a few hours. At high tide, the natural reef disappeared underwater. It therefore generated no maritime zone of its own, however much sand crews later piled on top. The tribunal found that Mischief Reef lay within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone and that China had built there without Philippine permission. It also found that construction at seven Spratly reefs had severely and permanently damaged coral ecosystems. The building campaign had harmed the habitat on which the fishery depended.

Who Got to Fish at Scarborough Shoal?

On July 12, 2016, the tribunal issued its ruling. It found no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources across the vast area enclosed by the nine dashes on its maps wherever those claims exceeded the rights granted by the treaty. At Scarborough Shoal, however, history mattered in a different way. The judges recognized that fishermen from several countries, including China and the Philippines, had long used those waters. Those crews retained traditional fishing rights, and China had acted unlawfully when its ships prevented Filipinos from exercising theirs. The judges left ownership of the shoal unresolved. They could settle the narrower question because the fishermen’s longstanding rights deserved protection whichever country owned the rocks.

The Boats Go Back

China rejected the ruling, arguing that the tribunal lacked authority to hear the case. The decision was binding under the treaty, but the judges had no patrol ships to escort a fishing crew through disputed waters. In October 2016, Filipino fishermen finally returned to Scarborough Shoal and brought home a catch. Philippine surveillance aircraft spotted Chinese coast guard ships still on station. This time, the crews were able to fish without being driven away. From the air, the patrol ships offered one picture of who held power at sea. Down at the docks, the returning boats offered another measure of what had changed. For the first time in years, families could once again earn a living at a fishing ground they knew.

Students Occupy Taiwan’s Legislature — Who Gets a Say in a Trade Deal?

On March 17, 2014, a committee of Taiwan’s legislature met in Taipei to review a trade agreement with China. Lawmakers from the governing and opposition parties had promised to examine it article by article. About thirty seconds into a disorderly meeting, committee chairman Chang Ching-chung announced that the review was over. He argued that the time allowed for it had expired and sent the agreement to the full legislature. Outside the building, students began to rally. On the following evening, hundreds of protesters entered the main chamber and occupied the floor where lawmakers usually sat. A disagreement over how to conduct a meeting had brought Taiwan’s legislature to a standstill.

The Opportunity Across the Water

The agreement, signed by negotiators in June 2013, concerned services. A Taiwanese bank hoping to reach customers in mainland China had reason to welcome easier access to that enormous market. A small business owner in Taiwan, facing the prospect of competition from a much larger mainland firm, had reason to ask exactly what the agreement allowed. President Ma Ying-jeou’s government argued that wider access would help Taiwan’s businesses compete. Protesters saw another risk. Beijing claimed Taiwan as part of China, while Taiwan governed itself and elected its own leaders. If Taiwanese businesses came to depend heavily on mainland customers, how freely could Taiwan’s leaders say no to Beijing in a future dispute? The protesters wanted lawmakers to examine that question in public.

Sunflowers on the Legislature Floor

Supporters brought sunflowers, and the occupation became known as the Sunflower Movement. For more than three weeks, students stayed in the chamber while crowds gathered outside. Their protest posed a difficult question of its own. Taiwan’s voters had elected the lawmakers whose seats the students now occupied. What justified interrupting their work? The students pointed to the promise of an article-by-article review. A single vote on the whole agreement would let each lawmaker answer yes or no. A public review would require lawmakers to explain individual provisions, hear objections, and let citizens judge how well their representatives answered. Even someone who favored the trade deal could care deeply about which procedure the legislature followed.

The Promise That Opened the Doors

On April 6, legislative speaker Wang Jin-pyng pledged to hold off on talks between the parties over the trade pact until lawmakers established rules for overseeing agreements with China. On April 10, the students left the chamber. The occupation ended with the deal still unapproved. To understand what the students had won, consider the position of that small business owner. With a final vote already taken, she could tell her representative why she was disappointed. With the decision still open, she could point to a particular clause, describe what it would mean for her employees, and ask the representative to act. The difference was whether she got to speak in time to matter.

Edward Snowden and the NSA — What Can a Phone Record Reveal? (2013–2015)

On June 5, 2013, Americans could read a secret court order that had been issued in their name. One word in it made the news extraordinary. The order directed a Verizon business unit to turn over records of “all” calls covered by the order, including calls made entirely within the United States. Every day, another batch was to go to the National Security Agency, or NSA. The government wanted the numbers at both ends of a call, the time it began, and how long it lasted. The words spoken stayed private under this order. Four days after The Guardian broke the story, the source stepped forward in a video interview from Hong Kong. Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old American contractor who had worked at the NSA, had given classified documents to journalists.

What Thirteen Minutes Can Tell You

Imagine looking at a phone bill and recognizing the number of a hospital. Someone in your household called it at 9:12 p.m. and stayed on the line for thirteen minutes. A call to your grandmother followed two minutes later. You might guess that somebody was sick. You could just as easily be looking at a nurse checking tomorrow’s shift and then arranging a ride to work. The numbers and times are examples of metadata, the information created when a call takes place. One evening’s records leave plenty of room for a mistaken guess. Months of records can reveal which people speak every day, which offices a person contacts, and who gets the first call in an emergency. That ability to trace relationships made the records valuable to investigators. It also explained why people cared about their privacy even when nobody had heard them speak.

Why Investigators Wanted Yesterday’s Calls

Suppose investigators learned today that a phone number belonged to someone helping a terrorist organization overseas. They would immediately want to know whether anyone in the United States had called it last month. The NSA’s database let analysts start with an approved number, find the numbers directly connected to it, and then trace whom those people had called. Analysts called each step a “hop.” Officials defended collecting records in advance because nobody could predict which number might become an urgent lead. But how often had the collection helped stop an attack? In 2014, after reviewing classified evidence, a federal privacy oversight board reported that it could identify no instance in which the program had directly uncovered a previously unknown terrorist plot or disrupted an attack. The difference between what the database could reveal and what it had accomplished became central to the debate.

Snowden’s Choice and a Judge’s Question

Snowden said the public deserved to decide whether the government should have such power. Federal prosecutors charged him with theft of government property and with unlawfully disclosing classified information. Meanwhile, a different case put the government’s own conduct before a federal appeals court. The American Civil Liberties Union, itself a Verizon customer, challenged the collection. Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act allowed the government to obtain records relevant to an authorized investigation. Could millions of customers’ records all qualify as relevant because a few might prove useful someday? On May 7, 2015, the court ruled that Congress had never granted such sweeping authority in Section 215. The judges reached that decision by reading the statute and left the constitutional privacy question open.

Who Would Hold the Records?

On June 2, 2015, President Barack Obama signed the USA FREEDOM Act. That November, the NSA ended its daily bulk collection of domestic call records under Section 215. Under the replacement system, phone companies kept records in the ordinary course of business. Investigators seeking connections to a suspected terrorist generally had to begin with a specific identifier, such as a phone number, and obtain a court’s approval to request linked records. Consider what that meant for the thirteen-minute hospital call. Under the old order, a record of that call could enter the government’s files on the day it happened. Under the new system, investigators needed a qualifying lead before asking a company for records connected to it. The difference came down to when the government had to give a reason for looking.

The Federal Personnel Breach — What Happens When a Secret File Is Stolen?

On April 15, 2015, a network engineer named Brendan Saulsbury spotted a computer inside the U.S. Office of Personnel Management repeatedly contacting an outside address. Its name, opmsecurity.org, sounded like it belonged to the agency. Someone had chosen it well. When Saulsbury and his colleagues traced the signal, they discovered that intruders had hidden malicious software on the network. The Office of Personnel Management, usually called OPM, handled many of the government’s background investigations. Its computers held the answers people had given when the United States asked whether they could be trusted with sensitive work. By the time the engineers spotted that signal, intruders had already copied millions of records.

What People Put on the Form

Consider one question on the government’s security questionnaire, known as Standard Form 86. An applicant had to identify close contacts abroad. Answering honestly could put a relative’s name into a federal file even if that relative had never visited the United States. Other questions covered past addresses, employers, arrests, bankruptcies, and drug use. Investigators could follow up through interviews, and some of the stolen files contained their findings. The government asked such personal questions partly to uncover circumstances that might leave someone vulnerable to pressure. Stealing those answers gave an outsider access to the very details investigators had gathered to help protect the applicant.

Why the Count Kept Growing

In June 2015, OPM announced that intruders had stolen personnel records belonging to about 4.2 million current and former federal employees. On July 9, officials reported the scope of a separate theft from the background-investigation databases. This one had exposed Social Security numbers and other information belonging to 21.5 million people. The two groups overlapped. Of those affected by the background-file theft, about 19.7 million had applied for an investigation themselves. The other 1.8 million were mostly applicants’ spouses or partners who lived with them. Someone who had never applied for a federal job could open the mail that fall and learn that a stranger had obtained their Social Security number through somebody else’s application.

What a Spy Could Learn

A thief seeking money might use a stolen identity to open a credit account. An intelligence officer could read the same file with a different question in mind. Who might someday have access to information worth stealing? An applicant’s work history might identify someone with valuable technical knowledge. A financial disclosure might suggest that person needed money. The name of a relative overseas might point to someone a foreign government could pressure. Each detail could be innocent, yet together they could help a stranger decide whom to approach and what to offer or threaten. U.S. officials suspected Chinese government involvement and saw espionage as a likely motive. They described ways the files could be used. Whether any particular employee would be approached could remain unknown for years.

The One Record Nobody Could Replace

The government sent notification letters and offered services that could alert families to signs of identity theft. Then, on September 23, OPM disclosed that fingerprint records belonging to about 5.6 million people were among the stolen material, far more than officials had first estimated. A bank could issue a new card. An employee could change a password. The fingerprints a young applicant supplied at the start of a career would still identify the same person at retirement. That was what made the OPM breach so difficult to put behind the people who lived through it. Engineers could remove the malicious software and stop the signal Saulsbury had spotted in April. No repair to a government computer could take back the copies that had already left.

Measuring America’s Political Divide — Were Americans Really Moving Apart?

Would you spend more to protect the environment if it meant higher prices or fewer jobs? Do immigrants strengthen the country through their work and talents, or place a burden on its resources? In early 2014, the Pew Research Center interviewed 10,013 American adults by telephone. Questions like these had appeared in its surveys going back to 1994. That gave researchers something a heated argument on television could never provide. They could compare how Americans answered the same questions twenty years apart. When Pew published its findings on June 12, two changes stood out. Knowing someone’s party told you more about what that person believed than it once had. It also told you more about how that person felt when the other party won.

Where Would You Stand in a Line of One Hundred People?

Imagine arranging a hundred Democrats in a line according to their answers, from the most liberal to the most conservative. Now ask where a typical Republican would stand. In 2014, 92 percent of Republicans scored farther to the conservative side than the Democrat in the middle of that line. Turn the exercise around, and 94 percent of Democrats scored farther to the liberal side than the middle Republican. Twenty years earlier, there had been considerably more overlap. Yet plenty of people still crossed party lines on individual issues. A voter might favor stricter environmental rules and also want a smaller federal government. The share of Americans who gave consistently liberal or consistently conservative answers had doubled over twenty years, from 10 percent to 21 percent. That left plenty of room in either party for someone whose answers might surprise a neighbor.

When an Opponent Started to Look Dangerous

A second set of questions measured something more personal. A citizen could disagree with nearly everything the opposing party proposed and still trust its leaders to act in good faith. How many Americans had moved beyond disagreement to outright hostility? In 1994, about one in six people on each side gave the opposing party a very unfavorable rating. By 2014, that figure had climbed to 43 percent among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents and 38 percent among Democrats and Democratic leaners. Some saw danger in the other party’s ideas. Thirty-six percent on the Republican side believed Democratic policies threatened the country’s well-being. On the Democratic side, 27 percent said the same about Republican policies. For those Americans, losing an election could feel like putting the country they loved at risk.

A Neighborhood Question with an Unexpected Answer

One of the most revealing questions mentioned neither Congress nor the president. Where would you like to live? About three-quarters of consistent conservatives preferred larger houses spaced farther apart, even if shops and schools were several miles away. Almost the same share of consistent liberals preferred smaller houses close together, with places they could reach on foot. Someone looking for a backyard or a walk to school could end up among political allies without ever asking a neighbor how she voted. Yet when researchers asked what made a community worth choosing, Americans across the political spectrum valued good schools and the chance to live near extended family. Two families could picture very different streets for much the same reason. Both wanted a good place to raise their children.

Whose Voice Reached Washington?

Pew also asked respondents where President Barack Obama and Republican leaders in Congress ought to meet when they bargained. People with a mixture of political views generally favored meeting halfway. Many consistent liberals and conservatives wanted their own side to come away with more. That mattered because people with strong political views were especially likely to contact elected officials, contribute to campaigns, and take part in primary elections. A representative listening carefully to the people who called the office could still get a misleading impression of the people back home. Were Americans really moving apart? By two measures, their political beliefs and their feelings about the opposing party, the answer was yes. But a citizen who wanted compromise and never picked up the phone counted just as much in Pew’s survey as the neighbor who called Congress every week.

The Sony Hack — Could a Foreign Government Decide What Americans Watched?

Two days before Christmas in 2014, people lined up at Atlanta’s Plaza Theatre to buy tickets for The Interview. Five showtimes were on the schedule. Just a week earlier, the country’s largest theater chains had backed away from the same movie after an anonymous group threatened theaters that showed it. Michael Furlinger, a co-owner of the Plaza, faced a decision with consequences for everyone who walked through his doors. How seriously should he take a threat whose authors had already proved they could do harm? And if a threat alone could take a film off his screen, who would choose the next one? UPI.com

From a Studio’s Computers to a Theater’s Door

The trouble had begun on November 24 at Sony Pictures. Attackers calling themselves the Guardians of Peace stole confidential files, destroyed data, and left thousands of the studio’s computers unusable. Private emails and employees’ personal information spilled onto the internet. Then, on December 16, a message threatened people who went to see The Interview, a comedy about two Americans recruited to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The message invoked the attacks of September 11. Suddenly, people who sold tickets, swept aisles, or planned a Christmas trip to the movies had become part of a dispute over how Hollywood portrayed a foreign ruler. FBI

What Could an Owner Know?

The Department of Homeland Security said it had no credible intelligence pointing to an active plot against theaters. An owner weighing that assessment still had employees to consider. Customers could decide to stay home. The person assigned to tear tickets would have to report for work. When major chains withdrew, Sony canceled the planned nationwide opening on December 17. Two days later, the FBI publicly attributed the computer attack to North Korea, citing similarities in the destructive software and connections to computers previously associated with North Korean operations. That finding answered an important question about who had attacked Sony. It left Furlinger with a different question about the people at his box office. How much protection would they need if he opened? FBI

Christmas at the Plaza

On December 23, Sony authorized a limited theatrical release. Furlinger chose to show the film and announced plans for extra security. On Christmas Day, the Plaza’s first screening sold out. Before the comedy began, Kate Smith’s rendition of “God Bless America” played, and many in the audience sang along. The attackers had already changed what Americans could watch that holiday. In towns where theaters canceled, moviegoers lost a local screening. At the Plaza, Furlinger’s decision left the final choice with each person standing beneath the marquee. They knew about the threat. They bought a ticket.

Politics in the News Feed — When Friends Became Political Opponents (2016)

On June 9, 2016, President Barack Obama endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. Donald Trump responded on Twitter, warning that a Clinton victory would mean another four years of Obama’s policies. Clinton’s campaign fired back with three words: “Delete your account.” By that afternoon, it was the most widely shared tweet her account had ever posted. Anyone who passed it along could add a comment of their own. A voter might share it as the best joke of the campaign. A friend could share the very same words as an example of what had gone wrong with American politics. The candidates had started the argument, but they had little say over where it went once it reached somebody’s friends.

How a Cousin Became a Political Messenger

Later that June, Facebook announced a change to its News Feed, the stream of posts people saw when they opened the site. Posts from friends and family would receive higher priority. The idea was easy to understand. Few people wanted to miss a sister’s graduation announcement because a publisher had posted another headline. But a sister could also share a campaign speech. A cousin could post a newspaper story with a single line explaining why it mattered to him. Suddenly, a reader had two things to consider. What did the candidate mean, and what did the cousin mean by sharing it? Facebook users tended to follow people they knew personally. That gave a political remark an audience built over years of school, work, and family life, often before anyone knew how the others voted.

The People Missing from the Comment Section

Imagine opening a friend’s post and finding a fierce argument underneath. Reading the replies, you might conclude that practically everyone had taken a side. In October 2016, the Pew Research Center published a finding that changes how that scene looks. When friends posted political opinions they disagreed with, 83 percent of American social media users said they usually let the post pass. Only 15 percent said they usually answered with a post or comment of their own. The friend who disagreed and kept scrolling left nothing for the next reader to see. Neither did the uncle who wanted time to think or the neighbor who preferred to talk in person. A page full of replies told readers what a handful of people were willing to say in public. How everyone else felt was considerably harder to tell.

When Someone Disappeared from the Feed

Some users made a choice that lasted beyond a single argument. Pew found that 31 percent had changed their settings to see fewer posts from someone for political reasons. Twenty-seven percent had gone further and blocked or unfriended someone over politics. Some people had done both. For a person weary of election talk, seeing fewer posts offered a quiet way to get through the campaign without a public quarrel. It also had a consequence that was easy to overlook. A person who turned down the volume on a neighbor’s campaign commentary might also miss that neighbor’s family news. Republicans and Democrats had something in common here. Nearly identical shares of users on each side said the sheer amount of politics in their feeds had worn them out.

What Could Still Happen Between Friends

There was another possible ending to an online disagreement. In Pew’s survey, 35 percent of social media users described exchanges with political opponents as interesting and informative. And 29 percent said those conversations could leave them feeling they shared more with the other person than they had expected. That experience offers a different way to read the exchange that began with Clinton’s three-word tweet. Counting shares could tell a historian how far the words traveled. Reading replies could reveal some of the arguments they started. But understanding what the election meant inside a friendship would require hearing from the person who never posted a word. When November came, that quiet friend had just as much say at the ballot box as the loudest voice on the screen.

Hacked Emails and 2016 Election: How Can a Foreign Power Influence a Debate?

On March 19, 2016, an email arrived in the personal inbox of John Podesta, chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. It appeared to be a warning from Google that someone had tried to use his password. The message offered a link to change it. Anyone who followed that link would reach a page designed to look like Google’s, where the attackers could capture the very password the user was trying to protect. Investigators call this trick spear phishing because the bait is prepared for a particular person. The attackers gained access to Podesta’s account and stole years of correspondence. For months, voters knew nothing about it. The political value of those messages depended on a second decision that had little to do with computers. When should the public see them?

A Friday Release Before a Monday Convention

On Friday, July 22, the website WikiLeaks published thousands of emails stolen in a separate break-in at the Democratic National Committee, the organization that runs the national party. On Monday, delegates would gather in Philadelphia to nominate Clinton for president. Her primary rival, Senator Bernie Sanders, had already questioned whether party officials had treated his campaign fairly. Now voters could read private exchanges in which some of those officials expressed hostility toward him. On Sunday, Sanders called for party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to resign immediately. That afternoon, she announced she would step down at the end of the convention. Whoever had stolen the emails had no power to remove an American party leader. Publishing them when thousands of delegates and reporters were gathering helped bring existing complaints to a head in a single weekend.

Who Was Behind the Screen Name?

During the summer, someone calling himself “Guccifer 2.0” claimed credit for the Democratic Party hack and presented himself as a lone Romanian hacker. The name gave reporters someone to quote, but readers had little way to check who was typing. On October 7, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence publicly announced that U.S. intelligence officials were confident the Russian government had directed the email thefts. They said the disclosures were intended to interfere with the election. More details became public later. In 2018, a federal grand jury indicted twelve officers of Russia’s military intelligence service, known as the GRU. Prosecutors described how officers used invented online identities, including Guccifer 2.0, to distribute stolen material while concealing their role.

One Inbox, Many News Cycles

October 7 was also the day WikiLeaks began publishing emails from Podesta’s account. More installments followed as Election Day approached. For a newspaper editor, each release raised a genuine difficulty. A private exchange might reveal something voters deserved to know about how a candidate or campaign operated. Yet whoever supplied the collection had already made an editorial choice of their own. Readers could search through one campaign chairman’s correspondence while having no comparable view inside his opponent’s inbox. Even a reporter who quoted every word accurately could tell only part of the story. And each new installment gave the campaigns another occasion to argue about the emails when they might otherwise have been answering questions about jobs, taxes, or foreign policy.

What Could Investigators Actually Prove?

After Donald Trump won the election, two questions often ran together. Had Russia tried to influence Americans? Had its efforts decided who won? Investigators could trace the thefts, identify public releases, and document consequences such as the uproar in Philadelphia. In January 2017, U.S. intelligence agencies reported their assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered an influence campaign. They made no judgment about its effect on the outcome, and Homeland Security reported that the systems Russian actors had targeted or compromised were separate from those used to tally votes. A stolen email can change the question a reporter asks on Monday morning. It leaves no record of what a voter would have decided on Tuesday if that question had never been asked.

Around the World During a Changing Global Order — Russia, China, Cybersecurity, and Political Polarization (2013–2016)

Brazil and Germany Bring Digital Privacy to the United Nations (2013)

If a Brazilian citizen sent a message to a friend in Germany, whose government was responsible for keeping it private? After Edward Snowden’s surveillance disclosures, Brazil and Germany took that question to the United Nations. They asked governments to examine how they intercepted communications and collected personal data. On December 18, 2013, the General Assembly adopted a resolution affirming that the right to privacy extends to digital communications and calling for oversight of surveillance. This changed the terms of the American debate. Congress could decide what powers to give U.S. intelligence agencies, but people whose communications crossed American networks often lived abroad. Their governments wanted a voice in deciding what protections those people deserved.

A Collapse in Oil Prices Complicates the Standoff with Russia (2014)

While American and European officials debated how to punish Russia for seizing Crimea, something happened that no sanctions order had commanded. Between July and December 2014, the world price of oil fell by more than half. Russia depended heavily on energy exports, so each barrel sold abroad suddenly brought in far less money. At the same time, Western sanctions made it harder for major Russian companies to borrow overseas. The ruble fell sharply against the dollar, making imported goods more expensive for ordinary Russians. For students trying to judge whether sanctions worked, the timing matters. A weaker Russian economy showed that Moscow faced real pressure. The price of a barrel of oil helps explain why Washington and its allies could claim only part of the credit.

Britain Takes a Seat at China’s New Bank (2015)

On March 12, Britain became the first major Western country to announce that it wanted to help found the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. China had proposed the bank to finance projects such as transportation networks and energy systems. Washington worried about the standards the new lender would follow and had reportedly urged allies to stay out. British officials saw an advantage in joining early enough to help write the rules. Other European governments followed. For Beijing, that was a diplomatic achievement before the bank financed a single railway. China had persuaded some of America’s closest partners to put money into an institution it had proposed. For Britain, the decision demonstrated how an ally could cooperate with Washington on defense while making a different calculation about trade and investment.

Japan Debates When It Could Defend an Ally (2015)

In September, demonstrators gathered outside Japan’s parliament while lawmakers argued over a question with consequences for the United States. If an ally came under attack and Japan’s own survival was at stake, could Japanese forces help defend it? Japan’s postwar constitution renounced war, and for decades its government had placed tight limits on the use of force. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe argued that China’s growing military power made closer cooperation with the United States necessary. Opponents feared his legislation weakened a constitutional safeguard that had kept Japan out of overseas wars. Parliament passed the laws, permitting Japan to help defend an ally under limited conditions. China’s rise had reached well beyond the disputed islands. It was changing what American and Japanese commanders could plan to do together.

Britain Votes to Leave the European Union (2016)

On June 23, British voters answered a question that American voters never faced in quite the same form. Should their country remain a member of the European Union? Supporters of leaving wanted Britain to reclaim authority over matters such as immigration and national law. Supporters of remaining valued access to European markets and Britain’s voice in decisions made with its neighbors. With 72.2 percent of eligible voters participating, Leave won 51.9 percent. Britain remained an EU member that year, but its government now had to work out how to leave an institution that had shaped national life for decades. Brexit gave students of American polarization a revealing comparison. In Britain, too, voters disagreed about how much authority leaders should share across borders. A narrow majority settled which course the government would take, while leaving the country deeply divided over what that choice should mean in practice.

People Behind the Changing Global Order (2013–2016)

Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama — Deciding How Far to Go

Vladimir Putin served as a Soviet intelligence officer, including a posting in East Germany, before entering Russian politics and rising to the presidency. Barack Obama worked as a community organizer on Chicago’s South Side, became a lawyer and senator, and won the American presidency in 2008. Their decisions met in Crimea in 2014. Putin signed the treaty by which Russia claimed the peninsula. Obama imposed financial sanctions and later resisted calls to send lethal weapons to Ukraine, concerned that doing so could widen the conflict. Studying them together gives students a concrete question about leadership. What options does a president have when another leader is willing to bear the cost of a warning?

Xi Jinping — The Leader Who Offered to Build

Xi Jinping rose through China’s Communist Party leadership and became China’s president in 2013. That September, speaking to university students in Kazakhstan, he proposed closer trade ties along the routes of the ancient Silk Road. A month later, in Indonesia, he proposed a maritime counterpart. Xi matters to this period because the resulting Belt and Road Initiative offered other governments something their citizens could use. A railway could bring customers closer. A port could open an overseas market. By helping finance and build such projects, China also gained lasting relationships with the officials, banks, and companies responsible for running them.

Edward Snowden — The Contractor Who Made a Secret Order Public

Edward Snowden was a 29-year-old American computer specialist working as a contractor for the National Security Agency when he gave classified documents to journalists in 2013. One revealed that a U.S. court had ordered a telephone company to deliver call records to the government every day. Snowden identified himself in a video interview from Hong Kong, and federal prosecutors charged him over his disclosures. His importance lies partly in the decision he placed before other citizens. Once Americans could read the order, they could debate whether the government should collect their records in bulk. In 2015, Congress changed the law governing that collection.

Hillary Clinton and Debbie Wasserman Schultz — The Candidate and the Party Chair

Hillary Clinton had served as first lady, a U.S. senator, and secretary of state before becoming the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016. Debbie Wasserman Schultz was a Florida congresswoman who also chaired the Democratic National Committee. That distinction mattered when hackers stole the committee’s emails. The party chair was responsible for an organization expected to treat competing Democratic candidates fairly. When published messages showed some officials expressing hostility toward Bernie Sanders, his supporters had fresh grounds to question the committee’s conduct. Wasserman Schultz announced she would step down. Clinton went on to accept the nomination. Their different responsibilities explain why emails about the same primary had different consequences for each woman.

Life Lessons from a Changing Global Order — Russia, China, and Cybersecurity

Ask Who Wrote the Choices

Imagine walking into a voting booth and discovering that the choice you came to make is missing. In March 2014, residents of Crimea faced a version of that problem. Russian forces controlled strategic sites across the Ukrainian peninsula, and the referendum ballot offered no straightforward way to keep Crimea’s existing status within Ukraine. Russia used the announced result to claim the territory. The United Nations General Assembly rejected the vote’s validity. For a student learning to judge a poll, an election, or even a classroom survey, the habit worth practicing comes before counting the votes. Read the question. Look for the missing choice. Ask whether people were free to answer. Those details determine what a result can honestly tell you.

Read the Agreement from Both Sides of the Table

Laos wanted a railway for a good reason. A faster route through its mountainous countryside could help farmers get goods to buyers in China. China also had a good reason to finance the line. Its bank would earn interest, and its state-owned companies would hold 70 percent of the railway company. To understand the bargain, follow one crate of fruit north and one loan payment back. Who benefits if the fruit reaches market sooner? Who still owes money if fewer trains run than expected? The same questions apply closer to home when a school accepts a donation or a family borrows to start a business. It is possible to recognize a genuine opportunity and still read carefully enough to see who will make decisions and who will carry the risk.

Think About the Person Who Never Got to Choose

When hackers stole federal background-investigation records in 2015, roughly 1.8 million of the people affected had never applied for a background investigation. Most were spouses or partners whose details appeared in someone else’s paperwork. That figure changes how we think about privacy. An applicant could decide whether a government job was worth disclosing years of personal history. Someone named on the form might have no such decision to make. Students face a smaller version of that responsibility when they forward a private conversation or post a group photograph. Before sharing it, look at every name and face. Who else is being asked to live with a decision that only one person gets to make?

Leave Room for the Friend Who Said Nothing

During the 2016 campaign, an angry exchange beneath a political post could make a whole community look divided into shouting camps. Yet 83 percent of American social media users surveyed by Pew said they usually ignored a friend’s political post when they disagreed with it. The person who wrote three replies was easy to notice. Ten people who read the exchange and quietly moved on left no comparable record. Remember that when a comment thread seems to speak for your school, town, or family. If you want to know what a friend believes, ask privately and give them time to answer. You may learn something that counting comments could never uncover.

Know Where Your Evidence Runs Out

After stolen Democratic Party emails appeared online in July 2016, the party chair announced her resignation on the eve of its national convention. That is a consequence historians can document. How many voters changed their minds because of the emails is a different question. Investigators traced the thefts and releases, but U.S. intelligence agencies made no judgment about their effect on the election result. For students, there is an honest and demanding way to discuss such an event. Finish these two sentences separately. “The evidence shows…” and “I would need to know more about…” In this case, a resignation belongs in the first sentence. What millions of people would have done in a different election belongs in the second.

Vocabulary to Learn While Studying A Changing Global Order — Russia, China…

1. Sovereignty

Definition: A country’s right to govern itself and make decisions about its territory.

Sample sentence: At the United Nations, countries defended Ukraine’s sovereignty and its right to decide its own future.

2. Annexation

Definition: The act of a country claiming another territory as part of its own, often by force.

Sample sentence: Ukraine rejected Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and continued to claim the peninsula as its territory.

3. Referendum

Definition: A vote in which citizens decide a specific public question directly.

Sample sentence:  In Britain’s 2016 referendum, voters chose whether their country should remain in the European Union or leave it.

4. Sanctions

Definition: Penalties, such as limits on trade or banking, used to pressure a government, organization, or individual to change its actions.

Sample sentence: After Russia seized Crimea, the United States imposed sanctions that restricted certain Russian officials’ access to money and property.

5. Ceasefire

Definition: An agreement to stop fighting, either temporarily or for a longer period.

Sample sentence: The 2015 Minsk agreement called for a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine and the withdrawal of heavy weapons.

6. Infrastructure

Definition: The basic structures and systems people rely on, such as roads, railways, ports, and power lines.

Sample sentence: Through the Belt and Road Initiative, China helped finance infrastructure that could carry goods from inland farms to distant markets.

7. Economic leverage

Definition: The ability to influence another party’s decisions through money, trade, loans, or control of resources.

Sample sentence: A bank can gain economic leverage when a borrower needs more time to repay a railway loan.

8. Exclusive economic zone

Definition: An area of sea extending up to 200 nautical miles from a country’s coastal baseline, where that country has special rights to fish, oil, and other resources.

Sample sentence:  In 2016, an international tribunal ruled that Mischief Reef lay within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

9. Cybersecurity

Definition: The work of protecting computers, networks, and information from theft, damage, or unauthorized access.

Sample sentence: A cybersecurity engineer helped uncover the federal personnel breach when he noticed a government computer repeatedly contacting an unfamiliar internet address.

10. Data breach

Definition: An incident in which someone gains unauthorized access to private or protected information.

Sample sentence: The 2015 data breach at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management exposed personal details about federal job applicants and their families.

11. Metadata

Definition: Information that describes a communication, such as the numbers involved in a call, its start time, and its length.

Sample sentence: Phone metadata could show that someone called a hospital at midnight, while the reason for the call remained private.

12. Spear phishing

Definition: A scam aimed at a particular person or group that uses a convincing message to trick the target into revealing information or opening a harmful link.

Sample sentence: A spear phishing email disguised as a Google security warning helped attackers gain access to campaign chairman John Podesta’s inbox.

13. Espionage

Definition: The secret collection of information for a government or organization, usually to gain an advantage over a rival.

Sample sentence: Stolen background checks could be useful for espionage because they identified people with access to sensitive information.

14. Political polarization

Definition: A widening division between political groups in their beliefs, their feelings toward each other, or both.

Sample sentence: Researchers studying political polarization asked Americans how they felt about the opposing party as well as where they stood on issues.

15. Partisanship

Definition: Loyalty to or support for a political party.

Sample sentence: Partisanship could shape how two friends reacted to the same campaign message during the 2016 election.

16. Public opinion poll

Definition: A survey that asks a sample of people questions to estimate what a larger population thinks.

Sample sentence: A 2014 public opinion poll helped researchers compare Americans’ political views with answers people had given twenty years earlier.

Activities While Studying A Changing Global Order: Russia, China, Cybersecurity

Crimea and the Border on the Map

Recommended Age: 9–14 years

Activity Description: Students make a two-layer map to explain how Russia could control Crimea while other countries continued to recognize it as Ukrainian territory. Allow 20 minutes.

Objective: Distinguish control of a place from international recognition of its borders.

Materials: A map showing Ukraine, Russia, Crimea, and the Black Sea; tracing paper or a second sheet of paper; two colored pencils.

Instructions: Have students locate Crimea and trace its outline. In the first color, mark Crimea as part of Ukraine at the beginning of 2014. Read three events aloud: Armed men seized Crimea’s parliament on February 27. Russia signed a treaty claiming Crimea on March 18. On March 27, the United Nations General Assembly affirmed Ukraine’s borders and rejected the referendum used to justify the change. On the second layer, shade the territory Russia controlled by the end of March. Ask students to write a map legend that makes both layers understandable. Finish by asking, “Why would a mapmaker need both a boundary line and shading to tell this story?”

Learning Outcome: Students can use their map to explain how military control changed while international recognition of Ukraine’s border continued.

Would You Sign the Railway Deal?

Recommended Age: 11–17 years

Activity Description: Students play a farmer, a lender, and a government official deciding whether to build a railway. The exercise draws on the China–Laos railway agreement and uses fictional numbers for easy calculation. Allow 25 minutes.

Objective: Identify who benefits from an infrastructure project, who makes decisions, and who carries financial risk.

Materials: Paper, pencils, and twelve coins or counters.

Instructions: Give each role a question. The farmer asks, “Can I get my crops to the station?” The lender asks, “Can the railway repay the loan?” The official asks, “What will the country gain, and what must we promise?” For the first year, place twelve coins on the table as railway income. Set aside five for operating costs and four for the loan payment. Three remain. Run the year again with only seven coins of income. The project is now two coins short. Have the three parties negotiate one change before signing. Would they seek a smaller annual payment, contribute more money up front, or build a road that helps farmers reach the station? At home, one student can take each role in turn.

Learning Outcome: Students can explain why Laos wanted a rail connection to China and how a lender can gain influence when a borrower needs different repayment terms.

The Thirteen-Minute Phone Call

Recommended Age: 8–14 years

Activity Description: Students examine a fictional call log to discover what investigators could infer from the kinds of records debated after Edward Snowden’s 2013 disclosures. Allow 15 minutes.

Objective: Distinguish a recorded fact from a reasonable guess.

Materials: One sheet of paper and a pencil.

Instructions: Write three entries from the same fictional phone: “7:10 p.m. — hospital — 13 minutes,” “7:25 p.m. — grandmother — 2 minutes,” and “7:40 p.m. — taxi company — 3 minutes.” Ask students to write two different stories that fit all three calls. Perhaps someone was arranging a hospital visit. Perhaps a nurse was checking a shift and organizing transportation. Underline what the log establishes and circle every detail supplied by imagination. Then ask, “If an investigator saw this pattern every Tuesday for a year, what new question could they ask? What would they still need to find out?”

Learning Outcome: Students can define metadata using an example and explain how a true record can support more than one interpretation.

The News Feed and the Silent Majority

Recommended Age: 10–18 years

Activity Description: Students compare a lively comment thread with a private poll to investigate why online arguments could give a misleading impression of public opinion during the 2016 election. Allow 20 minutes.

Objective: Recognize how the people who choose to speak can differ from the wider group.

Materials: Ten slips of paper, a pencil, and two envelopes labeled “Public Comments” and “Private Answers.”

Instructions: Use the question “Should school start thirty minutes later?” Prepare ten fictional voter slips: six say yes, three say no, and one says undecided. Give a “posts a comment” mark to one yes voter and all three no voters. Put those four opinions in the public envelope and a copy of all ten in the private envelope. Open the public comments first. Ask students to predict the vote and explain their reasoning. Then reveal the private answers. Three of four commenters opposed the proposal, yet six of ten voters supported it. Invite students to write one accurate headline using only the comments and a second using the full poll.

Learning Outcome — Students can explain how a comment thread can contain entirely sincere opinions and still leave readers mistaken about what most people believe.