Security desk: This Is Not Your Grandfather’s KGB

Russia’s competing spy services are so careless, it seems like they actually want to get caught, suggests The Washington Post’s David Ignatius. But Vladimir Putin probably doesn’t mind — because, unlike the Soviet-era KGB, their goal “isn’t to steal secrets but to destabilize America’s political system.” And, from Putin’s perspective, “the more people obsess about the swarms of Russian spies, the better.” But a “generational shift” is underway that has led to “an increase in sloppiness” and “ill-advised decisions.” Indeed, the 2016 election meddling “was the opposite of a subtle campaign of manipulation.” Putin “is running a multiplatform spy service for the Internet era — as quick, disposable and potentially devastating as a Snapchat image.”

Conservative: Teachers Unions Now Even More Political

Don’t think for a moment that public unions — barred by the Supreme Court from collecting “agency fees” from non-members — might now “temper their left-wing politics” in hopes of “wooing potential members put off” by their partisan politicking. Because as Frederick M. Hess and Grant Addison note at National Review, the two national teachers unions — the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association — in fact are doubling down on their political activity. Speakers at the NEA’s recent convention included Michelle Obama, Colin Kaepernick and David Hogg, while the AFT heard from Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. And both adopted a slew of resolutions right out of the hard-left playbook. As AFT President Randi Weingarten said, “We’re becoming more political, not less political.”

Foreign desk: A Reprieve of Sorts for Erdogan’s Hostage

The good news: Andrew Brunson is “no longer trapped in a Turkish dungeon,” after serving two years on trumped-up terrorism charges, notes Commentary’s Sohrab Ahmari. The bad news: The American evangelical pastor is still not free, having been transferred to house arrest. Brunson, who spent 23 years preaching the gospel in Turkey, was charged with “membership in an armed terrorism organization,” for which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says there is “no credible evidence.” But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is targeting Christians to help establish himself as the sultan of a re-Islamized Turkey. Says Ahmari: “Ankara should no longer be thought of as a Western ally. Under Erdogğan, Turkey increasingly acts like the Islamic Republic of Iran and similar anti-Western regimes. Perhaps it should be treated accordingly.”

From the right: A Socialist — Produced by Capitalism

Capitalism “is the greatest engine for the production of wealth that the ingenuity of man has ever devised,” asserts Roger Kimball at The Spectator. But once it achieves a certain level of prosperity, it inevitably produces people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “beneficiaries of capitalism whose contempt for its strictures is equaled only by their ignorance of its tenets.” Ocasio-Cortez still hasn’t grasped the truth of Margaret Thatcher’s famous dictum that the problem with socialism is that “sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.” So she’s campaigning “for tuition-free universities and the forgiveness of all student loan debt,” whose price tag is “well in excess of $1 trillion.” That, along with most of her other proposals, “would seriously hurt US prosperity” and “push the country far down the road towards penury, the inevitable result of socialism.”

Culture critic: Are Blockbusters Killing Broadway?

Netflix has already killed the video store. Now Jeva Lange at The Week says it’s “time to ask ourselves if the theater will be next.” You’ll soon be able to watch Bruce Springsteen’s Broadway show, and maybe even “Hamilton,” from the comfort of your living room, and “this is a shame.” Indeed, it’s “a potentially perilous development,” because “there are consequences when Broadway beams into Main Street.” Regional playhouses, where many first “fall in love with the theater,” are replacing live productions with public screenings. Moreover, “if audiences can just stream something online, why would they spend the extra money and effort to see it live?” And if “screenings of plays somehow become cash cows for playhouses, then they’ll start to produce with an eye towards the screen.”

— Compiled by Eric Fettmann