Opinion

Has there ever been a covert action that backfired as disastrously as Russia’s attempt to meddle in the 2016 US presidential campaign? Granted, we know all the reasons Moscow is gloating: Donald Trump is president; America is divided and confused; Russia’s propagandization of ‘fake news’ is now repeated by people around the world as evidence that nothing is believable and ...

For more than a year now, a sort of phony war has been going on in the financial-services industry. Respected seers such as Deutsche Bank AG Chief Executive Officer John Cryan and Citigroup Inc.’s former chief Vikram Pandit have been prophesying a digital revolution that will see routine banking jobs replaced by automation, algorithms and artificial intelligence. To date, as ...

Well, that didn’t take long. Broadcom Ltd. is exploring a $100 billion-plus takeover of chipmaker Qualcomm Inc., Bloomberg News reported. This is the same Broadcom that announced its decision to move its legal headquarters to the US in an Oval Office presentation that carried the usual bravado of President Donald Trump’s administration. We wondered then if this sudden bout of ...

Donald Trump has a cautious side after all. In naming Jerome Powell as next chairman of the Federal Reserve, the president has chosen a loyal ally of the outgoing chair, Janet Yellen. At first sight, the appointment signals business as usual in monetary policy, rather than the unconventionality that some of the other candidates stood for. On the whole, this ...

A ‘New Era’ in President Xi Jinping’s China risks setting off alarm bells in the US and Europe. The ruling Communist Party committed to the more assertive policy during a twice-a-decade reshuffle that ended last week, contrasting with a relatively restrained approach over the past three decades. Xi said that China was ‘approaching the center of the world stage’ as ...

It took Equifax just 35 days to determine that four of its executives did nothing wrong when they sold stock, saving themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars, just days after the company learned that it might have had a security breach. That was four days faster than it took the credit-reporting agency to tell the public about the hack. The ...

Here’s what we learned on Thursday about Apple Inc.: People weren’t that interested in buying iPhones in the three months ended in September, and the company isn’t likely to sell many more phones this holiday season than it did in 2016. Here’s what we still don’t know about Apple: Anything definitive about the company’s most pressing business questions: Will people ...

The big news in health care last week was the disclosure that CVS Health Corp. — owner of a vast network of drug stores — is considering buying Aetna Inc., one of the nation’s largest health insurers, for roughly $66 billion. It’s undeniably important, but why? Clearly, economic concentration in health care is growing. The possible CVS-Aetna hookup is just ...

There are a lot of question marks about Facebook. It’s not clear whether its effort to remake itself into the world’s new living-room television will pay off. It’s not clear whether it can make money from the billions of people using its messaging technologies, WhatsApp and Messenger. And it’s not clear whether Facebook can stay relevant as people find other ...

Much about Russia’s online efforts to roil the 2016 US election remains murky. But as executives from America’s top social-media companies — or more precisely, their lawyers — testified before Congress this week, two things became clear. First, the problem is much greater than previously admitted. And second, the companies in question have little incentive to solve it. In two ...