TRADE TARIFFS PET SHOP BOYS TURNING RUBBLE INTO ART THE AIDE WHO BRITISH POP DUO IN DRIVING MIGRANTS OUT, HAS THE CLOUT SCORES A BALLET BEIJING INSPIRES A BACKLASH PAGE 7 | BUSINESS PAGE 18 | CULTURE PAGE 3 | WORLD .. INTERNATIONAL EDITION | MONDAY, MARCH 12, 2018 YouTube, How Trump the great made snap radicalizer decision on Zeynep Tufekci North Korea Contributing Writer WASHINGTON OPINION Envoy’s dose of flattery At one point during the 2016 presiden- tial election campaign, I watched a opened 45-minute meeting bunch of videos of Donald Trump that could alter history rallies on YouTube. I was writing an article about his appeal to his voter BY PETER BAKER base and wanted to confirm a few AND CHOE SANG-HUN quotations. Soon I noticed something peculiar. Summoned to the Oval Office on the YouTube started to recommend and spur of the moment, the South Korean “autoplay” videos for me that featured envoy found himself face to face with white supremacist rants, Holocaust President Trump one afternoon last denials and other disturbing content. week at what he thought might be a Since I was not in the habit of watch- hinge moment in history. ing extreme right-wing fare on The envoy, Chung Eui-yong, had YouTube, I was curious whether this come to the White House bearing an in- was an exclusively right-wing phenom- vitation. But he opened with flattery, enon. So I created another YouTube which diplomats have discovered is a account and started watching videos of Overlooked key to approaching the volatile Ameri- Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, can leader. “We could come this far letting YouTube’s Since 1851, obituaries in The New York thanks to a great degree to President The videos it recommender algo- Times have been dominated by white Trump,” Mr. Chung said. “We highly ap- recommends rithm take me wher- men. Now we’re adding the stories of preciate this fact.” ever it would. Then he got to the point: The United seem to get Before long, I was some remarkable women. Among States, South Korea and their allies more and being directed to them, clockwise from top left: Ida B. should not repeat their “past mistakes,” more videos of a leftish Wells, who campaigned against lynch- but South Korea believed that North Ko- extreme. conspiratorial cast, rea’s mercurial leader, Kim Jong-un, including arguments ing in the Deep South; Madhubala, a was “frank and sincere” when he said he about the existence Bollywood legend whose tragic life wanted to talk with the Americans about of secret government agencies and mirrored that of Marilyn Monroe; giving up his nuclear program. Mr. Kim, allegations that the United States he added, had told the South Koreans government was behind the attacks of Emily Warren Roebling, who oversaw that if Mr. Trump would join him in an Sept. 11. As with the Trump videos, construction of the Brooklyn Bridge unprecedented summit meeting, the YouTube was recommending content after her husband fell ill; Qiu Jin, a two could produce a historic break- that was more and more extreme than through. the mainstream political fare I had feminist poet and revolutionary who Mr. Trump accepted on the spot, stun- started with. became known as China’s “Joan of ning not only Mr. Chung and the other Intrigued, I experimented with Arc”; and Charlotte Brontë, the nov- high-level South Koreans who were with nonpolitical topics. The same basic him, but also the phalanx of American pattern emerged. Videos about vege- elist known for “Jane Eyre.” PAGE 9 officials who were gathered in the Oval tarianism led to videos about veg- Office. anism. Videos about jogging led to CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM/GETTY IMAGES; JAMES BURKE/TIME & LIFE PICTURES/GETTY IMAGES; BROOKLYN MUSEUM; PAUL FEARN/ALAMY; NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, LONDON His advisers had assumed the presi- videos about running ultramarathons. dent would take more time to discuss It seems as if you are never “hard such a decision with them first. Defense core” enough for YouTube’s recommen- Secretary Jim Mattis and Lt. Gen. H. R. dation algorithm. It promotes, recom- McMaster, the president’s national se- mends and disseminates videos in a curity adviser, both expressed caution. manner that appears to constantly up If you go ahead with this, they told Mr. the stakes. Given its billion or so users, Trump, there will be risks and down- YouTube may be one of the most pow- Learning risk the hard way sides. erful radicalizing instruments of the Mr. Trump brushed them off. I get it, I 21st century. SHOEBURYNESS, ENGLAND in came the dicey stuff: stacks of two- experts as an experience essential to also supported by a growing list of gov- get it, he said. This is not because a cabal of by-fours, crates and loose bricks. The childhood development, useful in build- ernment officials, among them Amanda Where others see flashing yellow YouTube engineers is plotting to drive schoolyard got a mud pit, a tire swing, ing resilience and grit. Spielman, the chief inspector of Ofsted, lights and slow down, Mr. Trump speeds the world off a cliff. A more likely log stumps and workbenches with ham- Outside the Princess Diana Play- the powerful agency that inspects up. And just like that, in the course of 45 explanation has to do with the nexus of British bring an element mers and saws. ground in Kensington Gardens in Lon- British schools. minutes in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump artificial intelligence and Google’s “We thought, how can we bring that don, which attracts more than a million Ms. Spielman has poked fun at threw aside caution and dispensed with business model. (YouTube is owned by of danger to education, element of risk into your everyday envi- visitors a year, a placard informs par- schools for what she considers exces- decades of convention to embark on a Google.) For all its lofty rhetoric, accepting a few bruises ronment?” said Leah Morris, who man- ents that risks have been “intentionally sive risk aversion, describing as “simply daring, high-wire diplomatic gambit Google is an advertising broker, selling ages the early years program at the provided, so that your child can develop barmy” measures like sending school- aimed at resolving one of the world’s our attention to companies that will BY ELLEN BARRY school in Shoeburyness in southeast an appreciation of risk in a controlled children out on city field trips in high- most intractable standoffs. pay for it. The longer people stay on Britain. “We were looking at, O.K., so play environment rather than taking visibility jackets. Late last year, she an- The story of how this came about, as- YouTube, the more money Google Educators in Britain, after decades we’ve got a sand pit, what can we add to similar risks in an uncontrolled and un- nounced that her agency’s inspectors sembled through interviews with offi- makes. spent in a collective effort to minimize the sand pit to make it more risky?” regulated wider world.” would undergo training that would en- cials and analysts from the United What keeps people glued to risk, are now, cautiously, getting into the Now, Ms. Morris says proudly, “we This view is tinged with nostalgia for compass the positive, as well as the neg- States, South Korea, Japan and China, is YouTube? Its algorithm seems to have business of providing it. have fires, we use knives, saws, differ- an earlier Britain, in which children are ative, side of risk. a case study in international relations in TUFEKCI, PAGE 15 Four years ago, for instance, teachers ent tools,” all under adult supervision. believed to have been tougher and more “Inspections will creep into being a bit SUMMIT, PAGE 4 at the Richmond Avenue Primary and Indoors, scissors abound, and so do self-reliant. It resonates both with right- more risk-averse unless we explicitly The New York Times publishes opinion Nursery School looked critically around sharp-edged tape dispensers (“they wing tabloids, which see it as a correc- train them to get a more sophisticated UNCERTAINTY OPENS A DOOR FOR CHINA from a wide range of perspectives in their campus and set about, as one of normally only cut themselves once,” she tive to the cosseting of a liberal nanny understanding of the balance between President Trump’s decisions on trade hopes of promoting constructive debate them put it, “bringing in risk.” says). state, and with progressives, drawn to a benefits and risk, and stand back, and and North Korea have unsettled gov- about consequential questions. Out went the plastic playhouses and Limited risks are increasingly cast by freer and more natural childhood. It is RISK, PAGE 6 ernments in Asia. PAGE 5 Montreal’s cultural revival for a musical favorite son MONTREAL stairs — a playful allusion to the song. Olivier Farley, the owner, said he had chosen the name because “everyone in Montreal is proud of Leonard Cohen — New generation finds the French, the English; he is sacred here.” love for Leonard Cohen Then there is the imposing, luridly bridging multiple divides colorful mural that stretches nine stories down the side of a building in the BY DAN BILEFSKY Plateau-Mont-Royal neighborhood. Pil- grims come daily to pay homage to the In an octagonal chamber at the Musée painted portrait of Cohen, staring plain- d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, a tively from under his signature fedora. A spectator in a trance-like state hums second, even more towering Cohen-in- Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” as num- spired mural, can be found in the heart bers on a digital display leap up to 631.