How Does Artificial Intelligence Learn and Why ‘Elites Are Making Choices That Are Not Good News’ for Most of Us

"Even as the economic pressures that drove millions of white working-class voters to the right are moderating, the hostility this key segment of the electorate feels toward the Democratic Party has deepened and is less and less amenable to change.

“You cannot really understand the working-class rightward shift without discussing what the Democratic Party is doing,” Daron Acemoglu, an economist at M.I.T., wrote by email:

Many of the trends that negatively impacted workers, especially non-college workers, including rapid automation and trade with China, were advocated and supported by Democratic politicians. Perhaps worse from a political point of view, when these politicians were advocating such policies, they were also viewed as adopting a tone of indifference to the plight of non-college workers.

Poll data suggest that Democratic struggles with the white working class are worsening. In “Elections and Demography: Democrats Lose Ground, Need Strong Turnout,” an Oct. 22 American Enterprise institute report by Ruy Teixeira, Karlyn Bowman and Nate Moore write:

The gap between non-college and college whites continues to grow. For the first time this cycle, the difference in margin between the two has surpassed an astounding 40 points, well above the 33-point gap in 2020’s presidential contest. Republicans trail with white college voters by 13.6 points but lead with non-college whites by more than 27 points. Democrats appear stuck in the low 30s with non-college whites — no poll this month has them above 34 percent — so a repeat of Biden’s 37 percent mark appears unlikely.

David Autor, an economist at M.I.T. who has written on the role of the trade shocks that have driven white working-class voters into the arms of the Republican Party, described his assessment of the current mood of these voters in an email:

The class and cultural resentments that were inflamed by the China trade shock (alongside other technological, cultural, and political forces) are now so burned-in that I strongly suspect that they are self-perpetuating. Like a forest fire, these resentments and frustrations create their own wind that carries them forward. While the economic forces that initially fanned those flames might have abated for now, there is plenty of fuel left to consume.

“The pandemic,” Autor noted, “has actually compressed earnings inequality sharply over the last two years. This potentially reduces some of the political pressure accompanying the decline of manufacturing and erosion of non-college wages.”

While this trend would seem to favor Democrats, Autor pointed out:

Inflation has risen so fast that the fall in inequality has not actually meant earnings growth for almost anyone; rather, middle- and upper-income workers have seen larger falls in earnings power than low-income workers. It’s unfortunately cold comfort to discover that your star is rising relative to the rich because their star is falling faster than yours.

In a 2020 study, “The Work of the Future: Building Better Jobs in an Age of Intelligent Machines,” Autor, David Mindell, professor of the history of engineering and manufacturing at M.I.T., and Elisabeth Reynolds, executive director of the M.I.T. Industrial Performance Center, contend that the United States is unique among developed countries in failing to counter the negative effects of technological change on workers:

What sets the United States apart are U.S.-specific institutional changes and policy choices that failed to blunt, and in some cases magnified, the consequences of these pressures on the U.S. labor market. The United States has allowed traditional channels of worker voice to atrophy without fostering new institutions or buttressing existing ones. It has permitted the federal minimum wage to recede to near-irrelevance, lowering the floor under the labor market for low-paid workers. It has embraced a policy-driven expansion of free trade with the developing world, Mexico and China in particular, yet failed to direct the gains toward redressing the employment losses and retraining needs of workers.

Acemoglu sounded a pessimistic note in his email: “Elites are making choices that are not good news for non-college workers. In fact, they are bad news for most workers.”

He also predicted that “robots and artificial intelligence — and especially A.I. — will continue to automate a broad range of jobs, and their main impact will be to destroy ‘good’ or ‘medium-quality’ jobs for non-college workers, as well as increasingly perhaps for workers with college degrees but without postgraduate degrees. They will tend to increase inequality.”

Robots will continue to spread throughout U.S. industry, Acemoglu continued, “but there are fewer and fewer non-college jobs in this sector, so perhaps robots will not be the main issue for non-college workers.” Instead, he argued,

Artificial intelligence and other digital technologies are likely to have a bigger impact. This is both via automation and worker surveillance. Digital technologies are being increasingly used to monitor workers closely and impose worse working arrangements on them.

In a September 2022 paper, “Tasks, Automation and The Rise In U.S. Wage Inequality,” Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo, an economist at Boston University, found that automation “accounts for 50 percent of the changes in the wage structure” from 1980 and 2016, reducing “the real wage of high-school dropout men by 8.8 percent and high-school dropout women by 2.3 percent.”

Task displacement — the replacement of workers with machines — has wide-ranging adverse impacts, they write: “A 10 percentage point higher task displacement is associated with a 4.4 percentage point decline in employment between 1980 and 2016, and a similar 3.5 percentage point increase in nonparticipation (in the work force).”

Dani Rodrik, an economist at Harvard’s Kennedy School, emailed me to say that “it is extremely unlikely that we will create an employment miracle in manufacturing.” Even if the CHIPS and Science Act, which President Biden signed in August, is “successful in reshoring some manufacturing,” he argued,

I am afraid that will do very little to create good jobs for U.S. workers without college or advanced degrees. Semiconductors and advanced manufacturing are among the most capital- and skill-intensive sectors in the economy and ramping up investment in them — as worthwhile as it may be on geopolitical grounds — is one of the least effective ways of increasing demand for labor where it is most needed.

In addition, Rodrik wrote:

Many of America’s competitors have successfully increased the share of manufacturing in G.D.P., including Taiwan and South Korea. But in none of these cases has the employment share of manufacturing bounced back up. In fact, to my knowledge, there has never been a case of sustained reversal in the downward trend of the manufacturing employment among advanced economies.

There is, Rodrik observed,

broad and compelling evidence, from Europe as well the United States, that globalization-fueled shocks in labor markets have played an important role in driving up support for right-wing populist movements. This literature shows that these economic shocks often work through culture and identity. That is, voters who experience economic insecurity are prone to feel greater aversion to outsider groups, deepening cultural and identity divisions in society and enabling right-wing candidates to inflame (and appeal to) nativist sentiment.

In an April 2021 paper, “Why Does Globalization Fuel Populism? Economics, Culture, and the Rise of Right-Wing Populism,” Rodrik wrote that he studied

the characteristics of “switchers” in the 2016 presidential election — voters who switched to Trump in 2016 after having voted for Obama in 2012. While Republican voters were in general better off and associated themselves with higher social status, the switchers were different: they were worried about their economic circumstances and did not identify themselves with the upper social classes. Switchers viewed their economic and social status very differently from, and as much more precarious than, run-of-the-mill Republican voters for Trump.

In addition to expressing concern about economic insecurity, switchers were also hostile to all aspects of globalization — trade, immigration, finance.

I asked Gordon Hanson, a professor of urban policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School, whether there was any reason for these adverse economic trends to abate. “I see none,” he said, “at least in the medium run.”

The Democrats, he continued, “have come to be seen as the party of free trade, given President Clinton pushing through both NAFTA and China’s entry to the W.T.O. and President Obama championing the Trans-Pacific Partnership — they are seen as the engineers of manufacturing job loss.”

The strongest rightward push for the non-college educated, Hanson wrote,

came during the period of major manufacturing job loss of the early 2000s, which is when we document increasing support for the right wing of the G.O.P. The absence of recovery in the 2010s in regions hurt by this job loss means that forces luring non-college workers back to the Democrats were weak. We’ve not seen new shocks that would push more of the non-college educated to the G.O.P. But nor have we seen significant recovery in manufacturing that would help them make up for lost ground.

 Reshoring in the aggregate looks to have been quite small.

In 2024, Hanson predicted, “the G.O.P. will be in position to restate its 2016 message. And, at least in places hurt by globalization, Democrats will not have obvious arguments to make in their defense.”

In a July 2022 paper, “The Labor Market Impacts of Technological Change: From Unbridled Enthusiasm to Qualified Optimism to Vast Uncertainty,” Autor describes how artificial intelligence radically enlarges the potential of robotics and automation to replace workers not only performing routine tasks but more complex procedures: “What makes a task routine is that it follows an explicit, fully specified set of rules and procedures. Tasks fitting this description can in many cases be codified in computer software and executed by machines.”

Conversely, Autor goes on to say, tasks that rely on “tacit knowledge (e.g., riding a bicycle, telling a clever joke) have historically been challenging to program because the explicit steps for accomplishing these tasks are often not formally known.”

“Artificial intelligence,” Autor writes, “overturns the second piece of the task framework — specifically, the stipulation that computers can accomplish only explicitly understood (i.e., ‘routine’) tasks. A.I. tools surmount this longstanding constraint because they can be used to infer tacit relationships that are not fully specified by underlying software.”

Autor uses the manufacture of a chair to explain the power of A.I.:

It is extraordinarily challenging to explicitly define what makes a chair a chair: must it have legs, and if so, how many; must it have a back; what range of heights is acceptable; must it be comfortable; and what makes a chair comfortable, anyway? Writing the rules for this problem is maddening. If written too narrowly, they will exclude stools and rocking chairs. If written too broadly, they will include tables and countertops.

A.I. cuts through the problem of computerizing the manufacture of a chair, according to Autor, by learning

the solution inductively by training on examples. Given a suitable database of tagged images and sufficient processing power, A.I. can infer what image attributes are statistically associated with the label “chair” and can then use that information to classify untagged images of chairs with a high degree of accuracy What rules does A.I. use for this classification? In general, we do not know because the rules remain tacit. Nowhere in the learning process does A.I. formally codify or reveal the underlying features (i.e., rules) that constitute “chair-ness.” Rather, the classification decision emerges from layers of learned statistical associations with no human interpretable window into that decision-making process.

In comparison with the non-college workers hurt by earlier levels of automation, the impact of artificial intelligence will be on better-educated, more upscale employees, in Autor’s view:

A.I. will likely eat into a lot of management and decision-making jobs that formerly required college-educated workers or even workers with graduate credentials, such as lawyers. Hence, A.I. is not “more of the same.” While the last four decades of computerization have been very good for professional, managerial workers, and not at all good for blue-collar production and white-collar office/clerical/admin workers, the A.I. era may erode the college premium that has been either high or rising since 1980.

In addition, Autor writes,

A.I. will reduce the number of person-to-person jobs in sales, food service, general customer service and tech support. The jobs that are least likely to be adversely affected at present are the lowest-wage jobs in personal services (cleaning, home health aides, groundskeeping). These jobs are still cheap to accomplish with humans and still hard and expensive to accomplish with machines. On the positive side, A.I. will surely complement the most skilled and creative people in the labor market. The question is how narrow or broad that set will be. I’m worried that it may be narrow.

Autor joined Acemoglu in arguing that policymakers can influence the direction that artificial intelligence takes:

A.I. is a general-purpose technology and could be put to many invaluable purposes: improving the quality and accessibility of health care while reducing its cost; making education more accessible, engaging, and affordable; providing real-time guidance to workers who are engaged in construction, maintenance, repair, etc.; advancing medical innovation to eradicate the worldwide disease load; improving agriculture; finding efficiencies to reduce CO₂ emissions.

There is, however, another side to the potential of A.I., Autor wrote:

It could also be used for counterproductive purposes, for example, building history’s greatest surveillance states — whether that surveillance is done by the government (e.g., China) or by the private sector (e.g., the U.S.).

None of these capabilities is intrinsic to A.I. But we will develop those A.I. capabilities if that’s where we put our money. At present, U.S. investments in A.I. seem heavily directed at (1) selling advertising; and (2) replacing workers. If that’s where we put our money, I’m confident we’ll achieve those ends. That’s worse than a missed opportunity.

In his May 2022 essay “The Turing Trap: The Promise & Peril of Human-Like Artificial Intelligence,” Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, warns that “an excessive focus on developing and deploying Human-Like Artificial Intelligence can lead us into a trap. As machines become better substitutes for human labor, workers lose economic and political bargaining power and become increasingly dependent on those who control the technology.”

There is, Brynjolfsson argues, an alternative: “When A.I. is focused on augmenting humans rather than mimicking them, humans retain the power to insist on a share of the value created. What is more, augmentation creates new capabilities and new products and services, ultimately generating far more value than merely humanlike A.I.”

But, he adds, “While both types of A.I. can be enormously beneficial, there are currently excess incentives for automation rather than augmentation among technologists, business executives, and policymakers.”

The appeal to the technological elite “of a greater concentration of technological and economic power to beget a greater concentration of political power risks trapping a powerless majority into an unhappy equilibrium” and threatens a repeat of “the backlash against free trade” that blossomed with the election of Donald Trump.

“As the economic winners gained power,” Brynjolfsson writes, they left “many workers worse off than before,” fueling

a populist backlash that led to import tariffs and other barriers to free trade. Some of the same dynamics are already underway with A.I. More and more Americans, and indeed workers around the world, believe that while the technology may be creating a new billionaire class, it is not working for them. The more technology is used to replace rather than augment labor, the worse the disparity may become, and the greater the resentments that feed destructive political instincts and actions.

Brynjolfsson is not alone in the economic community — in fact, he has widespread support — for his argument that a “moral imperative of treating people as ends, and not merely as means, calls for everyone to share in the gains of automation.

The solution is not to slow down technology, but rather to eliminate or reverse the excess incentives for automation over augmentation.”

At the moment, calls for policies to institute a moral imperative like this are limited to the universe of artificial intelligence and automation technologies, with little or no momentum in the political community. Worse yet, the bitter divisions throughout our political system suggest that the development of this momentum will be a long time coming.”

Naftos kainos gali padvigubėti, jei Europa įvykdys savo grasinimą uždrausti Rusijos naftos importą jūra po gruodžio 5 d.

  „Tyla yra auksas. Sakoma, kad tai sena arabų patarlė, tai geras patarimas tiek JAV, tiek Saudo Arabijos vyriausybėms, jei jos nori turėti bet kokią galimybę išsaugoti saugumo santykius, kurie dabar yra svarbesni, nei tada, kai jie prasidėjo prieš aštuonis dešimtmečius.

 

    Vakarai investuoja į karinę operaciją Ukrainoje ir gali lengvai įsivelti į naujus karštus konfliktus su Kinija ir Iranu, dar nepasibaigus prezidento Bideno kadencijai.

 

     Naftos kainos JAV yra maždaug 90 USD už barelį ir gali padvigubėti, jei Rusija nuspręs nutraukti naftos siurbimą arba jei Europa įvykdys savo grasinimą uždrausti Rusijos naftos importą jūra po gruodžio 5 d.

 

    Net ir slegiant šiam pasauliniam košmarui, Bidenas ir sosto įpėdinis princas Mohammedas bin Salmanas įsitraukia į viešą muštynes ​​dėl naftos, kurios kelia pavojų JAV ir Saudo Arabijos saugumui. Tai, kas prasidėjo kaip politinis kandidato Bideno postringavimas, kuris žadėjo karalystę paversti „parijos valstybe“, nes manė, kad sosto įpėdinis princas prisidėjo prie Jamalo Khashoggi nužudymo, tapo aštria asmeniniu dviejų lyderių nesantaika. Ir kai jie įsitraukia į naujus atpildo ratus, priešai, tokie kaip Iranas, atkreipia dėmesį. JAV Nacionalinio saugumo tarybos atstovas antradienį patvirtino, kad kariuomenė yra labai parengta dėl galimo Irano išpuolio prieš Saudo Arabiją.

 

    Saudo Arabijos naftos ministras princas Abdulas Azizas bin Salmanas, sosto įpėdinio princo pusbrolis, spalio 25 d. paskelbė vėsinantį perspėjimą dėl naftos ateities: „Mano didžiulė pareiga – parodyti pasauliui, kad atsargų naudojimas gali tapti skausmingas ateinančiais mėnesiais“. Jis užsiminė apie tai, kad J. Bidenas toliau mažino JAV strateginius naftos rezervus, bergždžiai stengdamasis sumažinti benzino kainas ir laimėti demokratams balsų kitą savaitę vyksiančiuose vidurio kadencijos rinkimuose. Atsargos, sukurtos 1975 m., siekiant apsaugoti JAV nuo staigių tiekimo sutrikimų, yra mažiausios per 40 metų. Pastaraisiais mėnesiais prezidentas atsiėmė beveik trečdalį to, kas jose buvo, jam pradėjus eiti pareigas.

 

    Ką tiksliai planuoja Saudo Arabija, nėra aišku. Tačiau gruodžio pradžia bus lemiamas momentas pasauliniam tiekimui, nes naftos kartelis, vadovaujamas Saudo Arabijos ir Rusijos, vėl susitiks gruodžio 4 d., vieną dieną prieš tai, kai Europos grasinimas uždrausti Rusijos naftos importą jūra į Kinija ir Indija įsigalios.

 

    JAV ir Saudo Arabija dabar yra tarsi įsiutusi pora skyrybų viduryje. Nesusipratimai tokie gilūs ir vieši, kad jų nesantaika greičiausiai neišnyks, kol į Baltuosius rūmus neįsikels naujas prezidentas. Abi šalys ir toliau skleidžia savo skundus, kurios sujudina JAV ir Saudo Arabijos visuomenę. Saudo Arabija tikina, kad kampanijos metu buvo pasirengę nekreipti dėmesio į Bideno pasisakymus. Tačiau eidamas pareigas jis ir toliau kaltino kronprincą. Dar blogiau, J. Bidenas sumažino ginklų pardavimą Saudo Arabijai, bei iš JAV teroristų sąrašo išbraukė jų Irano remiamus husių užpuolikus Jemene. Iš ten reikalai pakrypo žemyn.

 

    Liepą, naftos kainoms ir infliacijai JAV sparčiai kylant, J. Bidenas lankėsi Saudo Arabijoje. Nors jis neigė, kad ieškojo papildomos naftos gavybos, visi žinojo, kad tai tiesiog tiesos sukimas. Valstybės departamentas tokiems skeptikams, kaip aš, užtikrintai pasakė, kad Saudo Arabija padidins gamybą rudenį. Tačiau prezidentas išėjo iš savo susitikimo pasigirti, kad apkaltino akistatoje sosto įpėdinį princą Mohammedą pritarus Khashoggi nužudymui.

 

    Užuot padidinusi gavybą, karalystė spalio 5 d. susitarė su naftos karteliu ją sumažinti. JAV pareigūnai apkaltino Saudo Arabiją susitarimo atsisakymu. Bidenas garsiai ir viešai pažadėjo „pasekmes“, įskaitant ginklų pardavimo apžvalgą. Reikalai dar labiau paaštrėjo, kai praėjusią savaitę laikraštis „WS Journal“ paskelbė, kad sosto įpėdinis princas privačiai šaiposi iš Bideno klaidų ir abejojo  ​​jo protu.

 

    JAV ir Saudo Arabijos vadovybės karas tapo nevaldomas. Net 1973 m. embargo metu karalystė užtikrino, kad JAV kariuomenė turėtų visą reikiamą naftą. Po rugsėjo 11-osios atakos Pasaulio prekybos centre prezidentas George'as W. Bushas ir karalius Abdullah stengėsi išlaikyti gyvybiškai svarbius santykius. Panašaus požiūrio reikia ir dabar.

 

    Saudo Arabijos vyriausybė turi teisę teikti pirmenybę didelėms pajamoms iš naftos, iš kurios finansuojami jos brangūs ekonominių reformų planai. Tačiau karalystės lyderiai neturėtų stebėtis, jei kai kurie amerikiečiai tokį sprendimą laikys neapgalvotu – jei ne nedėkingu. Juk JAV tiesiogine prasme išgelbėjo Saudo Arabijos naftos telkinius nuo Saddamo Husseino per pirmąjį Persijos įlankos karą.

 

    Amerika taip pat buvo suinteresuota, kad Sadamas nekontroliuotų Artimųjų Rytų naftos išteklių. Tačiau tai yra esmė: JAV ir Saudo Arabija dalijasi – ir vis dar dalijasi – susidomėjimu Artimųjų Rytų saugumu ir naftos tiekimu. Rusijai, Kinijai ir Iranui planuojant, kaip pasinaudoti JAV, kurią laiko smunkančia galia, būtina, kad Rijadas ir Vašingtonas pabandytų atkurti savo santykius tylia ir išmintinga diplomatija. Jei JAV nori daugiau Saudo Arabijos naftos, jos turi spręsti Saudo Arabijos saugumo problemas dėl Irano ir nustoti bendrauti su Teheranu.

 

     Karalystė niekaip neturi patikėti, kad glaudesni santykiai su Kinija ir Rusija garantuos jos saugumą. Ir JAV negali rimtai manyti, kad žalia energija yra pasirengusi pakeisti naftą. Ir Biblija, ir Koranas aukština tylos dorybę. Joe Bidenas ir Mohammedas bin Salmanas būtų išmintingi, kurį laiką patylėti.

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     Ponia House, buvusi „The Wall Street Journal“ leidėja, yra knygos „Apie Saudo Arabiją: jos žmones, praeitį, religiją, lūžių linijas ir ateitį“ autorė [1].

1. Both Sides Lose in the U.S.-Saudi Feud
Karen Elliott House. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 02 Nov 2022: A.17.

Oil prices could double if Europe carries out its threat to ban imports of Russian crude by sea after Dec. 5

"Silence is golden. Said to be an old Arab proverb, this is good advice to both the U.S. and Saudi governments if they are to preserve any possibility of salvaging a security relationship more important now than when it began eight decades ago.

The West is invested in the military operation in Ukraine and could easily become embroiled in new hot conflicts with China and Iran before President Biden's term ends.

 Oil prices in the U.S. are roughly $90 a barrel and could double if Russia decides to stop pumping oil or if Europe carries out its threat to ban imports of Russian crude by sea after Dec. 5.

Even as this global nightmare lurks, Mr. Biden and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman are engaged in a public brawl over oil that endangers the security of both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. What began as political posturing by Candidate Biden -- who vowed to make the kingdom a "pariah state" because he believed the crown prince was complicit in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi -- has become a bitterly personal feud between the two leaders. And as they engage in new rounds of retribution, enemies like Iran are taking notice. A U.S. National Security Council spokesman confirmed Tuesday that the military is on high alert for a possible imminent Iranian attack on Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Oil Minister Prince Abdul Aziz bin Salman, a half-brother of the crown prince, issued a chilling Oct. 25 warning about the future of oil: "It is my profound duty to make clear to the world that using emergency stocks may become painful in the months to come." He was alluding to Mr. Biden's continued draw-down of the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve in a vain effort to reduce gasoline prices and win votes for Democrats in next week's midterm elections. The stockpile, created in 1975 to protect the U.S. against sudden supply disruptions, is at its lowest volume in 40 years. In recent months the president has withdrawn nearly a third of what it contained when he took office.

Exactly what the Saudis are planning isn't clear. But early December will be a decisive moment for global supplies as the oil cartel, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, meets again Dec. 4 -- the day before Europe's threatened bans on importing, financing or insuring Russian oil shipments, even to third countries like China and India, go into effect.

The U.S. and Saudi Arabia now are like a furious couple in the midst of a divorce. The misunderstandings are so deep and public that their feud isn't likely to heal until a new president moves into the White House. Both nations continue to air their grievances, which stir up the U.S. and Saudi publics. The Saudis insist they were prepared to overlook Mr. Biden's pariah talk during the campaign. But once in office, he continued to accuse the crown prince. Worse, Mr. Biden cut arms sales to the Saudis even as he removed their Iran-backed Houthi attackers in Yemen from the U.S. terrorist list. Things went downhill from there.

In July, with oil prices and inflation rising precipitously in the U.S., Mr. Biden visited Saudi Arabia. Although he denied that he was looking for additional oil production, everyone knew that was simply spin. The State Department confidently told skeptics like me that the Saudis would raise production in the fall. But the president emerged from his meeting to brag that he had accused Crown Prince Mohammed to his face of approving Khashoggi's murder.

Rather than increase production, the kingdom on Oct. 5 agreed with the oil cartel to cut it. U.S. officials accused the Saudis of reneging on a deal. Mr. Biden loudly and publicly promised "consequences," including a review of arms sales. Things escalated further when the Journal reported last week that the crown prince has privately been making fun of Mr. Biden's gaffes and questioning his mental acuity.

The U.S.-Saudi leadership war has gotten out of hand. Even during the 1973 embargo, the kingdom made sure the U.S. military had all the oil it needed. After the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, President George W. Bush and King Abdullah worked to keep the vital relationship on track. A similar attitude is needed now.

The Saudi government has the right to make a priority of high oil revenue, which funds its expensive economic reform plans. But the kingdom's leaders shouldn't be surprised if some Americans see that decision as unmindful -- if not ungrateful. After all, the U.S. literally saved the Saudi oil fields from Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War.

It was also in America's interest not to have Saddam controlling the Middle East's oil resources. But that's the point: The U.S. and Saudi Arabia shared -- and still share -- an interest in Mideast security and oil supplies. With Russia, China and Iran all plotting how to take advantage of the U.S., which they view as a declining power, it's imperative that Riyadh and Washington try to restore their relationship through quiet and wise diplomacy. If the U.S. wants more Saudi oil, it must address Saudi security concerns about Iran and stop courting Tehran.

The kingdom can't possibly believe that closer relations with China and Russia will guarantee its security. And the U.S. can't seriously think green energy is ready to replace oil. The Bible and the Quran both extol the virtue of silence. Joe Biden and Mohammed bin Salman would both be wise to go quiet for a while.

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Ms. House, a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, is author of "On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines -- and Future."" [1]

1. Both Sides Lose in the U.S.-Saudi Feud
Karen Elliott House. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 02 Nov 2022: A.17.