Stevenson’s army, October 24

Academics find that tough talk on China helps in elections.
Politico notes this:

Which U.S. races feature China as a hot topic? We have the data. Wichowsky is also a principal investigator at Elecurator, a research project affiliated with the Northwestern Mutual Data Science Institute. She shared some findings with China Watcher:

— Close senate races: China figures most prominently in advertising in Montana’s Senate race, where incumbent Republican Steve Daines faces former Gov. Steve Bullock. In Arizona, incumbent Martha McSally (R-Az.) is attacking Mark Kelly on China. In Kentucky, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and challenger Amy McGrath have both mentioned China in attack ads. In total, attack ads referring to China appear in 10 Senate races, including Colorado, Michigan, Alabama, Iowa, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

— Close House races: Democratic Rep. Anthony Brindisi in New York’s 22nd congressional district has run several ads that discuss how he fought to bring jobs back from China. In Utah’s 4th, vulnerable Democratic incumbent Ben McAdams is getting hit by Republican challenger Burgess Owens for being soft on China. In Iowa’s open 2nd district race, both sides are using China in attack ads.

SCMP has analysis of new Taiwan arms.

Former ambassador and Trump official laments politicization of State Dept.

Intelligence officials say Russia poses greater election threat than Iran.

New order threatens career government employees.

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).