O-O-O-Ozempic!

Every day Americans get inundated with pharmaceutical advertisements on television. Most depict bohemian settings with cheerful users of allergy medication, immunosuppressants and a plethora of other drugs. While most commercials end with companies telling the audience to ask their doctor if taking the medication is right for them, few viewers do –– and even fewer think anything more of the ad than to laugh.

Yet, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly have managed to crack the code of audience retention with their catchy rendition of the hit song “Magic” by Pilot to promote their Type 2 diabetes medication.

Today, Ozempic has gone well beyond its medical purpose and getting stuck in the heads of people during their commute. It now is being seriously considered as a weight loss therapeutic.

First brought onto the scene when a number of wealthy celebrities flaunted being prescribed the medication for personal use, the drug known generally as semaglutide has since been shown to effectively regulate an individual’s weight. Ozempic works by generating hormones that give the user a sense of feeling full, quelling appetite.

Similar drugs including Wegovy, an iteration of semaglutide, are Food and Drug Administration approved for helping people slim down. If fully brought to market, drugs like these stand to be unprecedented blockbusters.

Today, obesity and related medical outcomes remain chief concerns of researchers and public health experts. Over 40% of Americans ages 20 to 44 ­currently qualify as obese, with roughly 4% being diabetic. The obesity rate has increased by over 10% since 2009.

Worries over excess weight are not merely aesthetic. Obesity drives numerous devastating effects on health and wellness and tacks on nearly $200 billion in costs annually to our medical system.

At first glance, the development of an effective weight loss treatment appears to solve one of the most urgent health burdens in America today. However, before doctors’ waiting rooms fill up with anxious patients excited to shed a few pounds, the reality of people’s growing dependence on major pharmaceutical companies must be confronted.

As it stands, two-thirds of American adults take prescription medication. Merits of the drugs aside, the growing reliance on big pharma raises questions about the goals and realities of our nation’s public health system.

For one, even the fun-loving commercials mentioned earlier rattle off an eyebrow-raising number of potential side effects to their treatments. Around 10% of those prescribed medication have adverse reactions, and today, European regulators are taking a look at potential side effects of Ozempic and Wegovy, including thyroid cancer.

Additionally, many treatments have declining functionality once users drop off the med. In Ozempic’s case, the user’s weight loss can plateau while taking the injection and promptly reverse once people drop the prescription.

On a macro level, it is necessary to question the broader strategy and execution of America’s public health initiatives.

In an interesting strange-but-true realization, over the same previous 60 years when smoking has fallen from its peak to current record low levels, the prevalence of obesity has spiked. Do not mistake this for a Marlboro advertisement — the decline in smoking is certainly a net positive and lowers a leading cause of preventable death.

All of this is to say that the current public health framework, particularly obesity, needs a radical rethink.

The current discourse around America’s obesity problem is needlessly incendiary and backward-looking and distracts from its root causes.

For instance, genetic predisposition can certainly be a factor in someone’s weight struggles. However, the associated causality is often overblown. In truth, the largest drivers of obesity are diet and a lack of exercise.

Pointing out this reality should not be seen as chastising those with weight struggles. Many individuals live in communities without access to fresh and unprocessed foods, and as more and more people come to work in office settings, they have little choice but to live a sedentary lifestyle.

On top of that, many of our institutions designed to give health guidance are captured by major companies selling unhealthy foods. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has often cozied up with major companies like Monsanto and Nestle, accepting grant money and hiring former employees.

Beyond that, the FDA allows for a variety of additives in processed food that are illegal in other countries. The same lobbying forces present in the non-profit sector are equally as efficacious at pushing their agenda in the public sphere.

Additionally, researchers confirmed a relationship between weight gain and a number of other “forever chemicals,” such as PFAS, found throughout our lives in places including clothing, carpets and cosmetics.

Why is such little attention put on these forces?

A virtuous circle between manufacturers, food processors and pharmaceutical companies puts such inertia in our current world that there is little incentive to disrupt it for the public good. Corporations create a plethora of toxic consumer goods and heavily processed foods, lobbyists take regulators out to expensive lunches and pharmaceutical companies swoop in and make Americans dependent on their medication to the tune of billions of dollars.

Truly improving public health means giving medical autonomy to individuals. Regulators must take the reins and work to remove needlessly harmful chemicals and additives from everyday products people use.

Moreover, our guiding institutions must provide strategies and habits that help lower obesity in a preventative fashion.

Modern medical intervention allows for the treatment of countless conditions that, just a generation ago, would have been debilitating, if not fatal. However, treating every problem with a pill or injection makes the health of Americans dependent on companies and institutions with a history of corrupt business practices.

For too long the medical industry has treated preventable health problems once they already take place. Forward-looking health care is not just good for our bodies, it is liberating.

In an introductory computer science lecture, my class was assigned a homework assignment to write lines of code in Python to output a Fibonacci sequence using recursion. A relatively difficult concept for novice programmers, recursion is a function that “calls” itself to solve a problem, rather than requiring user execution.

Later that night, I sat in my dorm drinking Red Bull while error-checking the code, pulling my hair for hours trying to conceptualize the problem until the program finally worked.

When OpenAI released last fall ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot, I asked it to answer the same question.

ChatGPT generated the code instantly.

The world has sat in anticipation of the development and implementation of AI for decades. Concerns over mass automation, worker displacement and fear of a “Terminator” style hostile machine takeover make the disruptive technology’s rollout the most polarizing since the advent of nuclear weapons.

ChatGPT’s sudden entrance into public life became of universal interest both in its current functionality and future applications. In just two months, it smashed records for the fastest-ever adopted technology, reaching over 100 million users in that time.

The chatbot uses an advanced set of “neural networks,” or layers of input, processing and output systems. These “neurons” attempt to model the program based on the functions of the human brain. Once the system is developed, it is trained on vast amounts of test data. The final product looks like a Slack channel, but on the other side is a supercomputer capable of answering a near-infinite number of questions with shockingly thorough results.

The seemingly instantaneous breakthrough of ChatGPT is the culmination of a long process of adopting new types of computer processors.

Previously, central processing units (CPU) were the building blocks of all computers. The “brain” of electrical systems, they help process, store and output data as well as perform operations such as arithmetic and logical models. ChatGPT, and newer forms of AI, utilizes graphical processing units (GPU) because of its ability to handle large amounts of data and perform multiple tasks at once.

“The methodology of using GPUs, graphical processing units, kind of like graphics cards,” said Abe Kazemzadeh, a professor at the University of St. Thomas. “That kind of really sped up and allowed neural networks to scale to much bigger networks.”

The new technology, while currently confined to a souped-up call-and-response mechanism, has sent shock waves across every industry as people come to the realization the nature of work is set on an unknown trajectory.

Look no further than the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) strike in Hollywood, where writers and actors are both demanding higher pay and safeguards over the adoption of AI.

In many creative professions, content creators are worried the free response capabilities of technology such as ChatGPT threaten their livelihood. Among the many party tricks Open AI’s chatbot can do, it includes writing movie and television scripts.

In an already cutthroat industry, many financially struggling writers and actors are worried the value of their work will diminish — if not totally disappear — when AI is fully integrated into Hollywood’s business model.

Technology like ChatGPT produces scripts by utilizing its neural networks to model existing stories and write novel content based on user suggestions.

“Stories were one of the training data sources. So that is potentially one of the reasons why it’s so good at generating stories,” Kazemzadeh said.

Even more shocking, actors are worried deepfake-related AI can effectively clone their image and likeness and use it in an infinite number of productions without ever needing to be present on a set.

The SAG-AFTRA strike is a microcosm for the broader sphere of concern over AI, both in the implication its workers face and its uncertain outcome.

The manufacturing industry has already displaced large swaths of its workforce with automated production processes; however, the current wave of AI threatens several professions, including but certainly not limited to paralegals, financial advisors, bookkeepers, customer service and programmers themselves.   

On top of that, the nature of privacy, academic integrity, intellectual property and copyright laws all come into question.

Attempting to draw out a timeline for AI is a futile effort. Developments in the field of technology are sporadic, and any day a breakthrough or setback could dramatically alter the trajectory of AI.

Yet, existing AI does have limitations. The open-ended nature of ChatGPT itself can hamper some of its own utility.

“It may generate something that is not an exact match of what you’re trying to generate, so it’s not exactly a category you asked for and it can also be somewhat biased by the training data,” Kazemzadeh said.

As a casual tool, today’s AI advancements can be incredibly powerful, but for more advanced tasks, further specialization is needed.

“So, the fact that it’s very open-ended also makes the limitation,” Kazemzadeh said.

While the downsides of AI are easy to identify and incredibly well-litigated, in areas such as medicine, transportation and fraud detection, everyday people will see incredible benefits from innovation in the industry.

Like previous disruptive technologies like the steam engine, lightbulb, computer and cell phone, AI will dramatically alter how individuals work, interact with each other and live their everyday lives.

However, unlike previous times in history, today’s major inventions do not seek to change how people live but replicate people themselves.

The public has largely accepted the adoption of AI as a quasi-fourth law of motion. If that is the case, what will the equal and opposite reaction be?

Editor’s Note: This story contains themes of depression and suicide.

If there is one consensus among medical professionals, it is to stay off the internet.

With the rise of websites like WebMD, anybody can take on the task of their primary care physicians or specialists and diagnose themselves with countless injuries, conditions and diseases. Doing so threatens to burden the healthcare system with patients flocking to hospitals with exaggerated medical concerns and can raise their personal anxiety, with minor changes in their health easily misinterpreted as something far more severe.

Even my tech-savvy generation, Generation Z (born between 1997-2012 and colloquially known as “zoomers”) has fallen into a similar trap of overexposure to shoddy medical advice, most notably with regard to mental health.

Officially declared a public health crisis in 2021, America’s youth is facing a mental health epidemic. Starting in 2011, the percentage of high school students who reported feelings of ”persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness during the past year” increased by 50%, with one-in-five students having seriously contemplated suicide.

No matter where you look, the reports concerning the emotional wellness of Gen Z are dire.

Broadly attributed to early exposure to social media, reports constantly harp on the downside of using apps like Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter andTikTok. After the COVID-19 pandemic, those same trends accelerated, leaving behind a nearly uniform public consensus the next generation fights an uphill battle against conditions such as anxiety and depression.

In a moment of apparent clarity Gen Z, more than any other age cohort, perceive social media as having worsened their mental health.

Despite such awareness, our generations still use said platforms more than any generation.  Interestingly, many members of Gen Z use the very apps they attribute to worsening their emotional well-being in an attempt to address, of all things, their emotional well-being.

“You can find some very good information, stuff that therapists use, such as certain techniques like distress tolerance we call it, breathing skills, guided imagery, ways to relax you,” said doctor Bruno Perossa, a child and adolescent psychiatrist.

Many social media accounts, most prominently on TikTok, use the succinct medium to offer quick tips to viewers. However, much of the advice given does not come from medical professionals but instead a broader collection of influencers.

“You might have somebody identify themselves on TikTok as a mental health guru, yet they have no training and they’re talking about disorders like dissociative identity disorder, multiple personality disorders,” Perossa said.

When internet personalities break from promoting makeup or workout supplements to offer guidance on serious health problems, obvious concerns arise.

For one, the same overdiagnosis and misdiagnosis problem can occur, where the cache and trust the influencers create with their audience, creates a level of trust and legitimacy that hides the lack of understanding and knowledge they really possess.

“When a celebrity gets online and purports to be and know something, they can get very married to those ideas even though they might be incorrect,” Perossa said.

Even if the content mental wellness “gurus” create is helpful and accurate, the algorithms apps like TikTok use inherently drive users towards questionable, and potentially harmful content.

One study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate showed upon liking a “mental health” related post on TikTok while posing as a 13-year-old, users could get shown suicide-related content within three minutes of using the app.

The youthfulness of TikTok’s base — 60% of Gen Z uses TikTok daily — exposes the generation to these negative forces at a pivotal point in their personal and social development.

“You’re really questioning your identity at the core of who you are and who you are and what you hope to be or what you’re being pressured to be whatever society says,” Perossa said.

Given all of this, why do zoomers, who admit to social media being a driver in their declining mental health, not only continue to use the apps but embrace it as a remedy?

From a cynical and uncharitable perspective, older generations likely see us as screen-addicted infants suffering from proto-Munchausen syndrome, incapable of seeing any world beyond that we keep in our pocket.

However, a time must come when we discontinue the lambasting of social media and come to question why much of Gen Z finds it to be the only place for self-expression and growth.

From an on-the-ground perspective, many zoomers are worn down just from being told they, their friends and their entire generation are anxious and depressed.

Being under the constant microscope of a life-long case study on our mental state makes it hard to intuit anything else but that zoomer’s did something wrong.

In an odd twist of well-meaning fate, the very coverage of zoomer’s mental health –– and the mode by which many diagnose themselves and seek help –– may contribute just as much to our generation’s mental health crisis as social media.

Concurrently, the “bleeds-it-leads” mantra of the news leads to shock-jock coverage of climate change, school shootings, political unrest and the pandemic in a way that leaves little optimism, and if you listen closely, tends to leave the fate of the world in the next generations hands.

Merits of the concerns over social media aside (I am by no means a beachhead for TikTok or Instagram), as zoomers formally enter the world as adults, it is worth reflecting on what led to the state of despair for many.

Taking care of our generation’s mental health is important, but the public coverage matters just as much.

For resources on youth mental health visit Doctor Bruno Perossa’s website: Perossa Psychiatric Practice PLLC. For suicide prevention resources, call or text 988 or chat at 988Lifeline.org.

In the last several weeks, a flurry of Supreme Court cases reignited passions about higher education and its role in American society. As America’s high court struck down affirmative action and President Biden’s proposed student-loan bailout, a misguided obsession with the university system has left large swaths of the population out in the cold.

Merits of the two cases aside, less than half of Americans hold a bachelor’s degree and only 13.5% of the country has student loan debt. Even if you focus the breakdown to those under 30, the median individual holds zero dollars of student loan debt. 

With regards to affirmative action, the percentage of minorities who were propelled into elite institutions was marginal and had very little effect on promoting the “equity” it was designed to foster.

Absent the pretense from the debates about these cases, they are over which sliver of the population gets admitted and subsidized to attend the world’s most prestigious and inaccessible institutions.

Making the education system work for all Americans, not just the few competing for elite positions in Ivy League schools, starts by changing the way we approach secondary schooling.

Across the world, models exist that seamlessly transition young adults into the workforce without needing to participate in the bloodbath of applying for colleges and student loans.

Switzerland, for example, has a multi-track model that allows for students in “upper secondary” (what we consider mid-to-late high school in America) to opt into different educational lanes. They include Vocational Education and Training (VET) and General Education. From there, students can feed into either “higher” vocational education, enter a university or enter the workforce right away.

“What was so appealing was the idea of choice and optionality — that agency young people have in workers and learners across the board, to always have a next step. There’s never a closed door where you have to start over,” said Ryan Gensler of CareerWise Colorado.

CareerWise is an organization that facilitates vocational education programs, inspired by countries such as Switzerland. They act as an intermediary between businesses and schools, intending to provide high school grads with an alternative, but equally successful, path to a traditional bachelor’s degree.

“It’s actually about creating a dual-track education system more broadly, it’s critical this goes beyond high school, and this is actually about all the way up to a PhD level,” Gensler said.

Any overhaul of America’s education system necessitates creating a pathway for students, not only to avoid the traditional college path but to provide the same level of upward mobility and earning potential as their peers who chose to immediately pursue a bachelor’s degree.

That entails reframing the concept of vocational education programs.

“We call this an options multiplier because our students will not only continue working with their employers after high school and finish their apprenticeships, but they’ll also start pursuing higher education,” Gensler said.

Creating a multi-track educational system can take multiple forms and the structure may vary by state or locality. However, a handful or few core ideas, if implemented, can radically redefine what the “normal” path is for young adults.

First, apprenticeship programs must be made available to high school students.

Allowing 16, 17 and 18-year-olds to begin combining on-the-job training with a relevant technical education both bolsters their future success in the workforce and allows exploration into different fields without sinking into thousands of dollars of debt.

Second, vocational training made available to young adults must span beyond conventional blue-collar work.

“Apprenticeships [are] not only for the trades, professional vocational education isn’t only for the trades. We’re seeing a lot of success in banking and tech, insurance, accounting, and healthcare,” Gensler said.

Much of the dogma surrounding apprenticeship programs is the perceived lack of opportunities for those who enter them. White-collar jobs are seen as only going to individuals who took the typical four-year track and leveraged their schools’ networking to enter more “prestigious” fields.

While the trades are a tremendous — and undervalued — profession, creating an alternative track to a four-year college degree requires making opportunities for young people with all career ambitions.

Third, vocational and technical programs must offer opportunities to go back to school.

This may seem counterintuitive. Why should we create an alternative to college? For students to go back to college?

This comes back to making alternative educational programs have as much upside as a four-year college. If the vocational apprenticeship route is a dead end for students with ambitions of getting an advanced degree, it will immediately stifle their interest.

This step necessitates existing colleges and universities collaborating with technical programs and accepting vocational program credits to allow for an efficient pursuit of a bachelor’s degree or beyond.

The United States has failed to meaningfully reform its education system in more than a century. Doing so properly can unlock the potential of millions of young people without forcing a square peg into a round hole. 

A four-year college degree is not for everyone: a new model is needed that gives every student a chance to start adulthood on the right track.

In recent years, grocery shopping has acquired an additional source of stress beyond managing children and encountering old acquaintances in the checkout line: it now entails restraining oneself from having a visceral sticker-shock reaction to the total printed on the receipt.

Since 2020, prices of goods — particularly food and energy — have surged by nearly 25%.

The causes of this increase, while debated among many, are generally attributed to a combination of factors such as supply chain disruptions, COVID-19 lockdowns, government stimulus, the Ukraine war and a tight labor market.

Through the act of managing interest rates, America’s central bank aims to balance maximizing employment with minimizing inflationary pressures. Or, in the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) own words, “to promote maximum employment and stable prices in the U.S. economy.”

Lower unemployment is historically understood to drive up prices of goods, as employers raise wages to attract workers, leading to increased expenses. The resulting increase in discretionary income can also potentially lead to shortages of goods, causing further price hikes.

This phenomenon known as the “Phillips Curve” has informed the monetary policy of the United States for decades, and is a core motivator for the Fed’s dramatic interest rate hikes of the last two years.

With unemployment at record lows and inflation at its highest in recent memory, by raising rates –– as the Fed has consistently done –– its aim is to conquer stubbornly high inflation.

However, assessing the last 25 years indicates the Phillips Curve to be more of a back-of-the-envelope rough sketch of monetary policy rather than a complete economic theory. Moreover, the Federal Reserve’s strict adherence to the principle has taken a blow torch to the personal finances of Americans.

Since 2000, the Phillips Curve has gone under empirical stress, as only relatively small movements in inflation were observed, despite large swings in unemployment because of the financial crisis. After the great recession in particular, America saw a dramatic decline in unemployment, lacking any meaningful inflationary pressures.

In the years leading up to the pandemic, the labor market experienced its lowest unemployment of the millennium while, again, not correlating with price increases.

Perhaps this means the Fed mastered its craft, as labor markets and inflationary pressures were optimized to fuel one of the greatest expansionary periods in American history. Yet, today’s conditions force a more critical assessment of the role of monetary policy in managing the economy.

Despite unending rate hikes, unemployment remains stubbornly low from the perspective of the Fed. Jobs reports continue to smash estimates month after month, even as inflation remains sticky throughout the economy.

That is not to say the Federal Reserve has failed to reign in price increases, as the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has in its various calculations fallen relative to last year. Yet that remains insufficient in the eyes of Fed chairman Jerome Powell. June’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) press releases show it remains “strongly committed” to their target of a 2% long-term annual inflation rate.

The Fed’s recent signaling indicates it perceives the fight against inflation still within its own realm of responsibility. The unknown lies to what extent it is willing to go and what collateral damage it is willing to absorb to achieve its goal.

For one, Powell himself has articulated the Fed’s desire to add slack to the labor market, indicating current unemployment levels work against actions taken to lower inflation. Conventionally this stems from increasing borrowing costs, leading businesses to limit their capacity to add new jobs and therefore increasing unemployment. Powell has attempted to clarify his desire is not to cut jobs but to fill openings with the hope of loosening the workforce.

However, more systemic trends exist within the workforce that are largely immune to monetary policy, namely an aging population.

In a piece published by the Kenan Institute, America’s job openings to unemployed person ratio is at its highest levels in history at nearly 2-to-1, a skyrocketing trend since the beginning of the pandemic. The figure has remained constant during the same stretch of past months with booming jobs reports. The piece highlights a key factor, the aging workforce and shrinking population, as a driver of excessive job openings.

Many near-retirement-age adults opted to exit the workforce a few years earlier than planned because of the pandemic. This accelerated a trend concerning many economists and policymakers about an imbalanced labor market. The report also highlights the decreasing number of individuals being born as a cause of future concern for the same trend.

While conventionally the Federal Reserve’s control over borrowing costs may be able to increase unemployment, the dramatic evolution of the workforce is an economic trend that supersedes the scope of its operations. Meaning, even if low unemployment is a driver of inflationary pressures, more structural changes are needed as a remedy, not interest hikes.

Additionally, consumer debt levels have risen to unprecedented levels because of interest rate hikes, most noticeably with credit cards.

Today Americans hold $966 billion in outstanding balances on their credit cards, nearly triple the amount in 2008. The interest rate set by the Fed, known as the “prime rate,” in conjunction with other factors dictates the Annual Percentage Rate (APR) for consumers. Today credit card rates are roughly 20%, Roughly 5% higher than before the pandemic started.

Alongside home, auto and student loans, the former two similarly affected by rising rates, consumers are currently bogged down with over $17 trillion in personal debt, the highest in history.

Moving forward, Powell and the Federal Reserve must decide whether it will continue to raise rates to combat inflation, as it currently has, or to wean off its hawkish streak and give breathing room to borrowers.

The most recent FOMC meeting was the first time in 15 months the Fed did not raise interest rates. Before their next upcoming meeting, the Fed must take a holistic view of the economy and broader economic factors, including geopolitical conflicts, supply chain turbulence and fiscal policy, as well as challenge their own orthodox perception of the labor market.

Inflation and the economy remain the two most pressing issues for Americans, according to Gallup. Therefore, it must be the imperative of the Federal Reserve, and Congress, to remedy the ongoing struggle that is price increases. However, doing so without weighing the costs of doing so is reckless, and likely self-defeating.

Lowering the prices of goods for consumers is imperative to strong economic growth.

However, if your strategy for doing so consists of increasing unemployment and lighting Americans’ wallets on fire, a new approach is likely needed. 

NATO will convene for a conference in Lithuania on July 11 to focus on the war between Ukraine and Russia. Founded in 1949, the alliance acts as a system of mutual security. It was initially created as a counterbalance to the Soviet Union and to prevent the threat of communist expansion into Europe.

In the decades following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the purpose of NATO has been in flux. After participating in a variety of military explorations with questionable outcomes, including Iraq and Libya, many wondered if it was time to rethink the purpose of the organization.

That is, until Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his brutal invasion into Ukraine in February 2022.

On the table at this year’s conference is something infinitely consequential to the trajectory of the war: Ukraine’s membership in NATO.

The idea was first proposed in 2008, known as the “Bucharest Promise.” However, due to poor execution and lack of specifics, Ukraine remains outside of the alliance. Although NATO has admitted many countries into its alliance since its inception, the Bucharest Promise was significant due to the geopolitical implications, as it would share the longest contiguous border with Russia among all NATO nations.

Many experts, including current CIA Director and former ambassador to Russia William J. Burns, warned in 2008 such a move was seen as crossing a “redline” for Russia and could lead to military conflict.

Over 10 years later, when Russia’s ground invasion began, Putin argued a NATO expansion encroached into Russia’s sphere of influence.

In the year since Putin launched his brutal and unjust invasion, despite multiple pleas from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, admittance into NATO was largely off the table. Yet in recent weeks, the potential for a bid being offered for the country to join has become a point of discussion, with some reports seeing an invite as imminent.

A membership bid contains massive implications. Within the NATO bylaws drafted at its inception, Article 5 states: “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.”

To this point, the United States has voluntarily supported Ukraine to the tune of over $100 billion. However, if Ukraine were a member of NATO, the U.S. would be obligated to offer military support for the war’s duration. Additionally, given Putin’s hysterics about NATO expansion and his vast arsenal of nuclear weapons, a potential Ukraine membership bid could lead to a dramatic escalation and devastating full-on war between NATO and Russia.

While Putin’s opinion about NATO expansion in no way justifies his brutal invasion, the alliance must be more concerned with looking for a viable off ramp to the conflict, rather than fulfilling the loosely strung-together Bucharest Promise.

Since the conflict began, Putin has repeatedly issued warnings of nuclear retaliation if NATO intervenes. While he has not acted on those threats, Putin’s actions by no means indicate an unwillingness to do so.

Just a few months ago, Russia officially suspended its support for the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START).

RAND Corporation, a U.S. sponsored think tank, published a thorough analysis of the war centered on promoting United States’ interests and finding possible ends to the conflict.

First, the report highlights key objectives as outlined by Mark Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Namely, they included, “Don’t have a kinetic war between the U.S. military and NATO with Russia,” and, “contain [the] war inside the geographical boundaries of Ukraine.”

Additionally, the RAND Corp. identifies a clear relationship between truncating the duration of the war and preventing escalation. Given Putin’s withdrawal from New START, even if the threat of nuclear war is relatively small, the risk only increases the longer the war goes on.

From here, RAND Corp.’s analysis provides three possible ends to the war: absolute victory, armistice and political settlement. The first –– absolute victory –– is the least likely and certainly least desirable, occurs when one side either completely decimates a nation or deposes its existing government. The latter two, often hard to distinguish, are agreed upon ceasefires that result in an outcome ranging from a treaty to a militarized zone, such as that between North and South Korea.

The report further highlights key inhibitors from an armistice or political settlement from occurring, one of which being, “Negotiating an end to a war requires both sides to believe that they have more to gain from peace than from continuing to fight.”

In March of last year, a settlement was briefly in sight when Ukraine proposed its neutrality to NATO in exchange for future security guarantees. A lot has happened since then, and such failed peace talks do indicate Russia has territorial ambitions that align with Putin’s supposed concern over NATO.

However, the point remains, Ukraine’s NATO membership is a point of contention with Russia, and offering such a bid is unlikely to prompt any peace deal.

Additionally, there are a variety of logistical challenges to Ukraine joining NATO. Where will the borders be drawn? Do they include the territory already in Russian control? If so, will Article 5 be automatically invoked? Also, it is unknown what the timeline for membership will be.

As of now, the United States, Germany and a handful of other NATO states are skeptics of a membership bid. However, according to Jens Stoltzman, NATO secretary general, there is near consensus among the alliance Ukraine will join after the war ends.  

Delayed admittance may lower the chance of a direct conflict between NATO and Russia, but it runs afoul of the scenarios outlined by the RAND Corp. Putin’s desire to end the war would decrease, since doing so results in Ukraine joining the alliance, undermining the pretext of his invasion.

Ukraine’s desire to join NATO is completely reasonable, as it would fulfill a long-standing promise spanning multiple presidential administrations and increase its access to resources needed to defend itself.

However, the time to do so was in 2008 when swift admission would have bolstered the organization and significantly reduced the likelihood of Putin’s unjust and brutal invasion. After all, for all its ruthlessness, Russia has yet to attack a NATO country, but hasty admission would only increase the probability of such aggression.

Joe Biden is rightly hesitant to offer Ukraine membership into NATO. He must maintain skepticism and orient the alliance and Ukraine towards a diplomatic end to the war.

So far, the West has called Putin’s bluff on all his threats of nuclear retaliation by consistently arming Ukraine with weapons and materials needed to defend itself against Russia’s aggression. However, there is a fine line between playing hardball and playing Russian roulette with a nuclear-armed lunatic like Putin.

Admitting Ukraine into NATO would only beg the question, how many rounds are left until the bullet is finally fired?

Brooks Koepka won the 2023 PGA Championship on May 21 by two shots over his competition. His third time winning the tournament, and fifth major championship in total, the Sunday further cemented Koepka as one of the top golfers in the world. 

Three weeks later, Koepka and several other golfers, including Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson, experienced another major win when the PGA Tour announced its intention to merge with Saudi Arabia-backed LIV Golf. 

Criticized by many as an effort to “sports wash” the public image of Saudi Arabia, the golfers who defected are accused of helping downplay the poor treatment of ethnic, religious and other minority groups; attacks on free speech; war crimes and, most known to the public, the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Founded in 2021, LIV Golf emerged onto the scene with financing from the Public Investment Fund (PIF), Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. The league has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in signing bonuses to attract the sport’s biggest stars, like Koepka, away from the PGA tour, hoping to host fan-friendly all-star-packed tournaments with rock concert vibes and less stringent dress codes. 

The merger came as a shock to many. For more than a year the two sides have engaged in countless lawsuits, counter lawsuits and public spats. However, even without fully published details about the merger, ex-post analysis of the situation clarifies why it finally went through.

For one, the PGA and LIV have been intertwined in a series of lawsuits and counter-lawsuits that exposed the PGA to a potential investigation by the Department of Justice over illegal monopolistic behavior and threatened Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the PIF, with deposition by the PGA in court.

“They are much more worried about sort of the precedent it sets. If this is going to make it much easier for others to drag other people in Saudi Arabia who are sort of nominally part of the government but are doing things on behalf of other organizations. Are they going to be able to pull them into court much more easily?” said Kevin Draper, a reporter for The New York Times.

The PIF has managed to keep a blurred relationship between itself and the Saudi Crown, largely by ducking formal legal inquiry. Putting Al-Rumayyan on the stand to testify threatens the Saudi government’s ability to influence the actions of the wealth fund without a public reaction.

By cutting a deal with one of the contingencies being both sides dropping their lawsuits, each side limits their exposure to various legal ramifications that could result from ongoing courtroom battles.

Additionally, neither side is in ideal economic shape to endlessly escalate their differences.

If the fight between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf was seen as an arms race, it would be akin to a squirt gun going up against an Abrams tank. The PIF, with a $600 billion war chest, trounces the PGA’s $2 billion annual revenue, which is heavily dependent on inflexible contracts.

“The PGA Tour, their biggest revenue driver was a television deal,” Draper said. “They signed a television deal in 2020. It goes through like 2030. They don’t get to renegotiate that, so their money is set.”

However, the PIF is experiencing its own financial woes. LIV tournaments have so far been a flop. With no TV deal, court filings showed LIV failed to generate any sizable revenue in 2022. While the PIF has managed to strike a TV deal since then, it is with the CW.

Not exactly a slam dunk.

“They reported ratings for their first two tournaments,” Draper said. “They were not good. Not a lot of people watch. And then they just stopped reporting ratings.”

As it stands, the CW’s primetime hour consists of “Whose Line Is It Anyway,” “Nancy Drew” reruns and “World’s Funniest Animals.” Probably not the pedestal the PIF had in mind to showcase their gold-plated golf tournaments.

“Perhaps these unmeasured tournaments have been going gangbusters. But it’s usually a rule that if you do not report TV ratings, your TV ratings are bad,” Draper said.

All of this leads us to an uncomfortable truth: for all the public blustering and posturing, the roadblocks surrounding this deal have nothing to do with any concerns over human rights abuses. The outrage over reshuffling the world of golf is about saving face and downplaying the broader role Saudi Arabia plays in American society.

Thomas Friedman, an author, columnist and former cheerleader of Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS), whom he called a “modernizer” of Saudi Arabia in 2017, made his disapproval of LIV Golf’s “sports washing” efforts known last year. In a hyperventilative piece, Friedman makes an oddly compassionate plea with MBS to leave the PGA Tour alone and focus on reforming his country to better itself from within.

Why the change?

To be fair to Friedman, at the time of his MBS puff piece, Jamal Khashoggi had not yet been brutally murdered and dismembered at the Saudi consulate in Turkey, a development he does acknowledge in his rebuke of LIV Golf. 

However, Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses predate Khashoggi’s murder and their influence in the American economy and mass culture operates well outside the realm of golf. For nearly a decade the United States has unquestionably sold Saudi weapons to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.

In one of the most brutal wars in recent memory, Saudi Arabia’s actions in Yemen have led to an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in the world and prompted accusations of war crimes. Additionally, and even less well known, is the increasingly mounting evidence of Saudi knowledge and potential material support for the individuals involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Additionally, Saudi Arabia’s influence in the realm of American business stretches well off the course. The PIF, outside of LIV Golf, owns tens of billions of dollars in equity positions in companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Home Depot, Costco and J.P. Morgan (at no point did concerns over human rights abuses come up in their earnings calls).

LIV Golf is not an unprecedented invasion of an American institution, but simply an incendiary and bold-faced interjection of Saudi influence in our hemisphere. So much so that Saudi Arabia fanboys such as Thomas Friedman felt the need to denounce the new league and, even more daringly, the several golfers who were willing to participate in it.

The new obsession over LIV Golf and its merger with the PGA Tour is not over concerns of human rights abuses or “sports washing” by theocratic dictators such as MBS.

In truth, when human rights abuses are confined to the Gulf states and business dealings are done through a broker in a smoke-filled room, MBS is called a modernizer and Saudi Arabia is a thriving ally.

However, when Khashoggi is murdered and LIV Golf takes over the PGA, the problem is now on home turf and talking heads suddenly scramble to look for a scapegoat to downplay America’s problematic relationship with Saudi Arabia.

Give credit to the golfers who stayed true to the PGA, such as Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler and Justin Thomas, among others who turned down top-dollar offers to join LIV Golf. 

However, treating Brooks Koepka like Benedict Arnold for signing a blank check from the PIF makes Saudi Arabia’s sphere of influence appear confined to the world of golf, obfuscating America’s relationship with the repressive regime more than “sports washing” ever could.

Specialization, the practice of a child playing and training for a single sport outside of its normal season, has become an accelerating trend among young athletes. 

Today, it is far from uncommon to encounter a middle or high school athlete spending the majority or entirety of a calendar year practicing and playing a single sport. Some estimates suggest that around one-third of young athletes specialize in a sport year-round.

At first glance, it may not appear to be a serious problem. Young people dedicating themselves to improving their craft in a specific sport could indicate a sign of increased motivation and drive (certainly preferable to sitting around playing video games). 

However, the rise of sports specialization has led to a disturbing uptick in chronic orthopedic injuries caused by overuse. The American Academy of Pediatricians has reported a nearly 150% increase in ACL injuries from 2011 to 2021.

While most prominent in basketball, specializing in any sport — including baseball, soccer, running, hockey and tennis, among others — increases the risk of overuse injuries. Injuries that were once shocking to see in children, UCL and hip labrum tears, tennis elbow and a litany of other muscle strains, have become commonplace in emergency rooms and orthopedic specialists’ offices.

Specialization also deprives children of the benefits of diversified athletics.

“I think there’s a decrease in the risk of injury with a well-balanced program because you are able to not only just slow down on things that could flare up from overuse, but you are strengthening other body parts,” said Dr. Adam Johannsen, an orthopedic and sports medicine surgeon at Tria Orthopedics.

Playing multiple sports allows for muscle and ligament recovery while also strengthening and conditioning otherwise neglected parts of the body, resulting in a well-rounded physical skill set that improves durability. 

As a result, athletes who cross-train across multiple sports experience lower extremity injuries at half the rate of those who specialize, according to a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Even at the professional level, NBA players who played multiple sports during their youth and delayed specialization have a decreased risk of serious injury during their careers.

On top of that, as young athletes specialize at earlier ages, the propensity for emotional burnout increases. The constant emphasis and pressure to succeed at a single sport eventually erodes the enjoyment of athletics in general. This increases kids’ risk of anxiety, stress, social isolation and worsening academic performance.

With such physical and mental health risks associated with specialization, why has it become so prevalent?

While single-sport athletes are not a monolith, the broader trend of year-round training is attributable to a web of cultural trends and logistical challenges, increasing the appeal and perceived benignity of specialization.

For one, many world-famous athletes have built brands around the obsession they display over their respective sports. Tiger Woods famously went on “The Mike Douglas Show” at the age of two to display his precocious talent. Moments like these and others have left parents and athletes with the impression that a child must begin training at an early age to excel at a sport. 

In reality, today’s high school athletes have been shown to start specializing at an average of two years younger than current college athletes. Therefore, even if specializing does improve the chances of playing beyond high school, kids are still doing so at too young an age.

Additionally, limited space on high school teams, especially in suburban areas, drives athletes towards early specialization. One study showed larger high schools see a higher propensity for specialization compared to smaller, rural schools. 

With any given sport offering only 10-15 spots per team, in a large graduating class, only a small portion of students can be meaningful contributors. Consequently, the pressure to compete for limited spots can understandably drive athletes to dedicate their elementary and middle school years preparing to secure the coveted starting spot.

Where does this leave athletes today? Should the practice of year-round preparation be scrapped entirely? How can schools encourage multi-sport athletes?

As the study of NBA players indicates, simply delaying specialization significantly reduced the probability of sustaining serious injuries during their time in the league.

In my conversation with Johannsen, I asked him about this.

“It is kind of dependent on the sport and the person and the goals. Once you get over age 16, focusing on a sport is a little better, as long as you incorporate that broader training program,” Johannsen said.

As an athlete decides to seriously pursue playing a sport at a higher level, it is reasonable for them to dedicate a greater deal of their time out of season to training. However, waiting to do so until later in high school both limits the chances of suffering overuse injuries and allows the athlete to reap the benefit of cross-training in their youth.

Additionally, even if the number of athletes who can compete on the school’s official sporting teams is limited, youth and high school athletic programs must promote multi-sport athletes by increasing the number of intramural and in-house leagues, allowing for more athletic opportunities for students to participate.

Beyond physical well-being, multi-sport athletes will manage to avoid the stressors and causes of emotional burnout mentioned earlier, and hopefully develop habits and traits on the field, court, ice rink, track or swimming pool permeate their everyday life instead. 

A paradigm shift is required in the approach to youth athletics. Being part of a team is supposed to expose kids to a variety of positive social and physical experiences and most of all, be fun. 

For the sake of their physical and mental well-being, bring back the sports generalist. Children’s minds and ACLs will be grateful in the future.