WSJ What’s News - Could WWII Runways Help the U.S. Counter China?

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

A.M. Edition for Oct. 21. The WSJ’s Niharika Mandhana says the U.S. is racing to upgrade far-flung airfields in the Pacific as a way to defend against China’s enormous missile arsenal. Plus, Elon Musk offers a $1 million daily prize to a randomly chosen registered voter who has signed a petition by his America PAC. And, after a slow start, the WSJ’s Peter Loftus says Johnson & Johnson’s bet on a ketamine-derived drug to treat depression is paying off. Luke Vargas hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Snakes, zombies, public speaking, the list of fears is endless. But the real danger is in your hand when you're behind the wheel. Distracted driving is what's really scary and even deadly. Eyes forward, don't drive distracted. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. Elon Musk steps up his efforts to get Donald Trump elected. Plus, the U.S. investigates a leak about Israel's plans for attacking Iran, and why America is reviving remote World War II runways in the Pacific Ocean.

So the idea is not to rely too, too heavily on a few large bases in the region. China could send volleys of missiles at those bases. They'll just be big, kind of juicy targets. It's Monday, October 21st. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

With just over two weeks to go until election day, a University of Florida database shows that nearly five million ballots have already been cast across the seven most-watched battleground states. Notted up in the polls, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are pursuing contrasting strategies, with Harris courting a narrow slice of undecided and Republican-leaning voters. Hitting the road today with former GOP Representative Liz Cheney in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, while Trump has held

events that are designed to show him as relatable, including visits to a barbershop, a McDonald's, and an NFL game that have earned him unpaid media attention. Meanwhile, Elon Musk over the weekend stepped up his efforts to boost Trump's prospects via his America PAC political group, announcing a $1 million a day lottery for registered voters in key states who sign his free speech and gun rights petition. Here he was at a Pennsylvania rally courtesy of WTAE. You don't have to vote. You just have to sign a petition saying you believe in the Constitution, which if you already believe in the Constitution, you're just signing

something you already believe and you can win a million dollars. That's awesome. Critics say the effort could run afoul of federal law by offering an inducement for people to register. A Musk attorney didn't respond to a request for comment about the matter. The U.S. is investigating the leak of top-secret American documents about Israel's plans for attacking Iran, which were disseminated by a pro-Iran site that said it received them from an anonymous source. The leak has raised concerns among some Israeli officials about the U.S. ability to protect

closely held information that affects its ally. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office didn't respond to a request for comment on whether the disclosures might affect Israel's plans for its strike. The U.S. National Security Council referred questions to the office of the Director of National Intelligence, which declined to comment. Meanwhile, Israel over the weekend intensified its war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, launching airstrikes on branches of a bank sanctioned by the U.S. that the Israeli military says is central to the militant group's economic functioning.

The strikes mark an expansion of Israel's offensive against Hezbollah. In the past, Israel has said its strikes were focused on the group's military infrastructure, though they've also hit residential buildings. Neither the bank nor Hezbollah immediately responded to a request for comment on the strikes. Boeing and the leaders of its machinists' union have reached a deal that could end a damaging strike that has halted most of the jet maker's production.

The company is offering a 35% wage increase over four years in its latest proposal, up from an earlier offer of 25% that was overwhelmingly rejected. The union plans to vote on the latest deal on Wednesday. The strike is causing Boeing to lose an estimated $1 billion a month, and even if the deal goes through, the company remains in perilous financial standing. According to our reporting, Boeing is exploring asset sales to bring in much-needed cash while shedding non-core or underperforming units. CEO Kelly Ortberg, who's already cut thousands of jobs in a bid to stem losses,

said in a note to employees earlier this month that the company had spread itself too thin and must shrink. Boeing shares are up in off-hours trading. And in other things we're watching in markets today, China's commercial banks have cut their benchmark lending rates, a widely anticipated move that's part of Beijing's efforts to boost the country's sluggish economy. After a month of policy announcements that turbocharged Chinese markets, investors now expect that lawmakers will approve a fiscal stimulus plan at a gathering of China's top legislature due to take place in the coming weeks. We are exclusively reporting that activist investor Starboard has taken a sizable stake

in Tylenol and Listerine maker Kenview. The consumer products company was spun out of Johnson & Johnson last year, and Starboard wants to push changes to boost its stock. Kenview's share price is little change so far this year, while the S&P 500 has risen about 23% in the same period. And speaking of Johnson & Johnson, let's look now at the Pharma major's bet on a controversial drug. Ketamine is among the most widely and often illegally used psychedelic drugs because of

its hallucinogenic effects. Long used as an anesthetic, it's also been used off-label by some to treat anxiety. And as Johnson & Johnson's most recent earnings showed last week, a ketamine-derived drug that treats depression is now emerging as a big moneymaker, with J&J's pharmaceutical business posting nearly 5% gains for the third quarter, helped in part by a doubling of prescriptions of spravato since the start of last year. Journal reporter Peter Loftus has more.

Peter Loftus, Journalist, Journal of Medicine, University of New York, New York, New York The challenge with the drug at first was just general skepticism among doctors that this was something that would be useful, and the logistics of just having to tightly control its distribution and then to give the drug in these clinics and have the patient stay for two hours and be monitored. And it also came out shortly before the COVID pandemic. And so those things at first kind of limited its uptake. But in the last couple of years, use has really taken off.

Analysts think that sales for this year could surpass $1 billion for the first time for Spravato, and that eventually the drug could generate upwards of $5 billion a year. And so that would become a very important part of Johnson & Johnson's pharmaceutical lineup. Coming up, the U.S. military shifts its approach in the Pacific Ocean to deny China big, juicy targets. We've got that story after the break.

Let's head now to a remote corner of the Pacific Ocean where the U.S. Air Force is reviving overgrown island runways in a bid to counter Beijing's missile threat in the region. overgrown island runways in a bid to counter Beijing's missile threat in the region. On one U.S. territory, the tiny island of Tinian, Master Sergeant Jody Branson and his team have been working to clear runways that were used to launch the atomic bombings of Japan during World War II. So what my team had to do was go through the jungle, find these coordinates on a GPS, and mark them for the boundary of the airfield. Normally what we have is a stick or machetes to be able to tear down and make a pathway through the jungle. Journal Southeast Asia Bureau Chief Niharika Mandana was in Tinian not long ago,

and she spoke with our Kate Bullivant about the broader purpose behind the U.S. military's moves there. So China's built a big arsenal of missiles, And there's three things to think about there. One is the volume of fires. China has hundreds of short range missiles, medium range missiles, intermediate range missiles, and it could throw hundreds of missiles at US bases, for instance. Then there's the range issue. Chinese missiles are able to travel longer distances from the Chinese mainland. So it's not just the first island chain. They could get out further,

you know, thousands of kilometers to the second island chain and even further than that. And the third thing is accuracy. China's missiles have become more and more accurate over time, so they're able to hit their targets with more precision. So if you put all of this together, what it means is that US bases in the region, they're at risk. And say a conflict erupts, China moves to attack Taiwan. One of China's goals might be to stop a US intervention and firing missiles at US bases would be one of the prime ways to do that. Right. So with that in mind, what is the US's plan here? So the idea is not to rely too heavily on a few large bases in the region, right? The presence is concentrated on a few large bases in Japan, on the US territory of Guam. There are a few in Korea, and that's kind of the footprint. And this idea is that in a conflict, China could send volleys of missiles at those

bases, destroy aircraft, crater runways. They'll just be big kind of juicy targets. So under the new concept, the Air Force would in a conflict disperse from the bases to a number of airfields across the Indo-Pacific. And those could be bases belonging to allies. It could be single runways on remote West Pacific islands, like the one on Tinian. It could be civilian runways. So it does sound like a huge logistical undertaking, having so many resources spread over such a wide area. Does the US military have the capability to pull this off? So yes, it is a much harder thing to do. When you have a few small bases, resupplying

them is easier, right, because the bases are already equipped with a lot of facilities. They have fuel, they have runway repair kits, they have maintenance crew. When you're trying to get those things out to a bunch of different places across a vast theatre, it's a lot more complicated. The resources question is also salient today because the US military is spread thin. It has a lot of different priorities in different parts of the world. It needs new platforms. It needs to be manufacturing more missiles. It needs to be making more ships.

And then there's this, you know, military construction, which is putting hundreds of millions of dollars to revive airfields, a few more to extend another airfield here. There's a lot of competition for resources between this and other military priorities. And then the last kind of hurdle too is access, which is a big piece of this. China would fight from its own soil, but the US needs its allies in the Pacific. So it would need access in a conflict, for instance, to airfields in Japan, the Philippines, Australia. And that would make these countries targets too. So those are political discussions

that will have to be had when contingencies arrive. But this plan is dependent to a large degree on some of that access materializing. That was the Journal Southeast Asia Bureau Chief, Niharika Mandana. Niharika, thanks so much for your time. Thank you very much. And that's it for What's News for Monday morning. Today's show was produced by Kate Bulevent and Daniel Bach with supervising producer Christina Rocca. I'm Luke Vargas

for The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening.