 Rojak is a colloquial Malay word for “eclectic mix,” and is the name for a Javanese dish that typically combines sliced fruit and vegetables with a spicy dressing. ‘I spent a lot of time breaking the laws in other countries’ An ex-CIA base chief in Afghanistan dishes on her former colleagues: Agents often don’t know enough about the places they work in, and the agency’s staff in Washington often aren’t familiar with the situation on the ground. In a fascinating interview with the policy newsletter Statecraft, Laura Thomas said the U.S. has a sense that “reason rules, that people always choose what’s in their best interest, and forget the role of emotion, and basic human nature.” Many field officers, she said, don’t know enough about the history and “tribal dynamics” of where they’re working; meanwhile, it was a challenge to “watch people in D.C. get things so wrong and not be able to do anything about it.” Thomas couldn’t say where exactly she was based or when exactly she was with the CIA in Afghanistan, and the interview had to go through a CIA review process to make sure she didn’t divulge classified information. She’d face jail time if she ignored that obligation. “I spent a lot of time breaking the laws in other countries,” she said. “I’d really like to stay in the good graces of my own.” Mobile wallets as soft power Mobile wallets have become a form of soft power for countries, Matt Jones argues in Payments Culture. Tourists traveling to China for the first time — or for the first time since the pandemic — will be immersed in a world where those apps are ubiquitous for everyday payments. “The impression visitors have of China will be shaped by their experience using AliPay and possibly WeChat Pay,” the two most prominent services. And as the apps are increasingly adopted by foreigners inside and outside China, the country’s soft power expands: Alipay now allows visitors to link their overseas cards to the app, popular stores in hubs like London have started allowing China’s mobile wallets as payment methods, and Western companies opened accounts on WeChat and Weibo for brand-building. “Companies are keen to signal to Chinese customers that we understand your culture,” Jones wrote. ‘A perfect shitstorm of climate change’ Women are harder-hit by climate change, two recent reports found. Though female farmers are equally capable at adopting farming practices that adjust to environmental changes, they tend to suffer more in extreme weather. Female-led households also lose more income from a long-term increase in average temperatures. The impacts are far-reaching: A decline in rainfall in India’s Maharashtra state, for example, led to crop failures, forcing families dependent on farming to migrate and resort to sugarcane cultivation. Once in that industry, “women and girls face the added burden of fetching water from distant communal sources and are forced to bathe without privacy,” Thin Lei Win, a longtime food-policy reporter, wrote in her Thin Ink newsletter. “To me, this is a microcosm of what is likely happening in many parts of the world — a perfect shitstorm of climate change, gender inequality, government neglect, and power imbalances hitting the most vulnerable.” | 
