How to stop the Houthi-Iran Red Sea attacks

We now know more about how the Houthis and their Iranian partners use radar and satellite communications to target commercial vessels and US and UK warships. The US should thus be thinking about jamming Iranian radars that are being used to help the Houthis.

The US also needs to work with commercial satellite operators to shut down access to communications that guide Houthi missiles and drones. And the way the automatic identification system (AIS) is operated needs changed to confuse the Houthis and Iranians.​

It is important to understand how the Houthis are going after merchant vessels and US and UK warships. To hit a ship with a drone or cruise missile, you need to know where the ship is at the time it is actually engaged.

The Houthis have a large arsenal of drones, cruise missiles and some ballistic missiles. Against moving targets, drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), have a high potential for accuracy.

There are nine types of Houthi drones: Hudhud-1, Raqib, Rased and Sammad-1 (reconnaissance UAVs – although the Sammad-1 can be weaponized), and Qasef-1, Qasef-2K, Sammad-2 and Sammad-3 (combat UAVs) and Wa-eed-2.

It appears that the drones being fired at commercial ships and US warships are either Qasef-1 or Qasef-2 or the Shahed-136, known as Wa-eed-2 by the Houthis. The Houthis may also have used their longer-range drones but these have been aimed at Israel, particularly the port city of Eilat.

Iran’s Shahed-136 drone has been reconfigured by Russia into a more efficient weapon. Image: Iranian Ministry of Defense

The Shahed drone is the same kamikaze weapon Iran has supplied to Russia. Neither the Qasefs nor Shaheeds are first-person view (FPV), drones that send back live video to an operator or pilot who can then direct the drone to the moving target. FPV drones are being used heavily in Ukraine, even though they are subject to jamming.

As I reported in December, it is almost certain that the Houthis and Iranians are using the global AIS to track ships in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, and more recently in the Indian Ocean. Virtually every commercial vessel over 300 tons operates an AIS transponder.

When ships are on the move, AIS broadcasts their location and speed as well as the name of the vessel every two to 10 seconds. Yet, while it can transmit information while on the move, AIS is not as accurate as radar.

According to a recent study, compared to radar the AIS transponder information was off by 97.72 meters (or around 320 feet). What this means is that using AIS to track ships may not ensure that a UAV or cruise missile hits its target.

What the AIS track can provide is the capability to interpret what the radar “sees.” In crowded shipping lanes, picking out a target isn’t easy. But with AIS the target can be identified, passed to a radar station and then followed by the radar.

By iterating AIS and radar, the Houthis or Iranians know where their target is in near real-time. (My own belief is that these complex operations are handled by Iranians.) The next trick is to communicate with the cruise missile or drone. How can this be done?

As targets move further away from the shoreline, direct radio communications become difficult, sometimes impossible. FPV drones can be operated over a distance of 8 to 10 kilometers from the operator but usually less.

The Houthis have already attacked a merchant ship (MV Gibraltar Eagle) on January 14, 177 kilometers from where the drone was launched. How could the drone or cruise missile strike a target that far from Houthi territory?

In early December 2023, a crashed Shahed-136 drone was recovered by the Ukrainians and yielded something surprising. The Iranian Shahed-136 suicide drone is now manufactured in Russia, where it is called Geran-2 (Geranium-2). It isn’t clear if the crashed drone was produced in Iran or Russia.

The Geran-2 drone.

What marked this find as unique was the fact that the Shaheed drone was equipped with an Alcatel internet modem (model 1K41VE1) and a SIM card that belonged to a Ukrainian 4G cellular service called Kyivstar. There is a debate on how the Shahed worked with the Ukrainian cellular capability.

Alcatel modem with Kyivstar SIM card installed in a Shahed drone.

Shahed drones are usually preprogrammed and do not have cameras. But the recovered drone may have had a camera, which would give it the potential capability of hitting moving targets and not just fixed locations. That is, the cameras could transmit imagery back to operators on the internet, allowing remote operation and accurate attacks.

Something similar was found upon the recovery of Iranian drone parts that hit the Campio Square commercial ship on February 10, 2023. The tanker, which was hit in the Arabian Sea around 300 nautical miles off the coasts of India and Oman, flew a Liberian flag but was owned by an Israeli company called ELESON.

The part recovered was a SIM card for the global satellite communications company Iridium Communications, a Maclean, Virginia-based public company originally founded by Motorola. Iridium offers voice and data communications services to customers around the world. 

SIM cards for Iridium satellites are widely available, including on Amazon and eBay. Modems to receive Iridium signals can be purchased directly from Iridium or third-party vendors. Iridium is especially popular for maritime use, where commercial cell phone connectivity is not available. Many military operations also use Iridium for connectivity.

Previously, the Russians allegedly used Iridium communications for Kartograf UAVs manufactured by AFM-Servers for the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and for use in the Ukraine war. 

“The drone is designed for panoramic aerial photo and video recording with the ability to transmit the collected information to the control point in real time. It can be used for reconnaissance to correct artillery fire or missile strikes,” according to Bulgarian Military, an online news service not affiliated with the Bulgarian government.

If the Houthis incorporate Iridium SIM cards and modems in their Shahed-136 drones, and perhaps in other models, they would have a far better chance to accurately target commercial vessels.  

So long as their coastal radars were operating, the Houthis could also target US military ships, provided they could find them. While US military ships have AIS systems, they don’t use them in combat areas and none of them are now operating with AIS in the Red Sea. 

Without coastal radars functioning (reportedly the US and UK have knocked out three important Houthi coastal radars), the Houthis would need alternative ways to locate US warships.

They could be getting live feeds from either the Iranian spy ship equipped with radar operating near the Bab el-Mandeb Red Sea straits, the cargo ship Behshad, or the Iranian warship IRIS Alborz, an old British-made frigate that crossed through the Bab el-Mandeb strait on January 11, a day after the joint US-UK strike on the Houthis. 

That ship also has radar and interestingly showed up almost on cue after the US-UK attack. These two ships could replace the radars the Houthis have lost. The Beshad replaced the MV Saviz, which was damaged by a limpet mine, allegedly by Israel.

A view of Iran frigate IRIS Alborz warship. Image: Wikipedia

For the US, it is important to localize Houthi attacks as much as possible and to degrade their targeting capability. One way to do this, aside from destroying their coastal radars, would be to jam the radars of the Iranian frigate and spy ship that may be feeding real-time targets to the Houthis. 

Another way would be to interdict satellite communications supporting Houthi and Iranian operations, working with Iridium to accomplish the task. Iridium can locate accounts operating on these territories fairly easily. Shutting them down will take away an asset as important as the radars the US has targeted with Tomahawk missiles. 

For merchant ships, where the way ahead is clear and open, turning AIS off and on at intervals would go a long way toward thwarting Houthi targeting.

This article was originally published on his Weapons and Security Substack. It is republished with kind permission.

Continue Reading

South Korea’s global geopolitical pivot

Nearly two years into the presidency of Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korea has made a geopolitical pivot of potentially historic proportions.

The Yoon administration has firmly rejected the prioritization of engagement with North Korea that had been a foundation of the previous president Moon Jae-in’s progressive government, embarking on an increasingly confrontational approach to the Pyongyang regime.

In a similarly significant reversal, the current government has successfully pursued a rapprochement with neighboring Japan. Seoul has eschewed a focus on wartime history issues in favor of normalization and a growing trilateral partnership on regional and global policy with Japan and the United States.

Yoon has also taken a less accommodating approach to China, even leaning toward joining steps to contain its rise.

These moves have been set on a foundation of a strengthened security alliance with the United States, embodied in steps by the US to provide greater assurance of extended deterrence and in South Korea’s willingness to align itself with US strategic interests.

While the pivot in South Korean foreign and security policy is clearly a product of the change in political leadership in 2022, it does reflect to some degree a shift in public opinion.

Three recent polls conducted by the East Asia Institute (EAI) confirm that support for the South Korea-US alliance remains deep, with almost three-quarters of South Koreans holding favorable views of the United States.

At the same time, these polls also show growing unfavorable views of China. Improvement of relations with Japan also garners increasing support, though this is mostly seen as a part of building ties to the US.

With North Korea, Yoon has unambiguously tied an improvement in relations to the cessation of its nuclear development program and clear steps toward denuclearization, in return for which he offered an “audacious initiative” of economic assistance.

In November 2022, Yoon joined US President Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio in issuing a “Phnom Penh Statement” on trilateral partnership in the Indo-Pacific that pledged to “align our collective efforts in pursuit of a free and open Indo-Pacific.” It was the first time Seoul had embraced that framework.

In December 2022, the Yoon administration unveiled an Indo-Pacific strategy that reframed South Korea’s role as a “global pivotal state” with a regional and global approach to its security.

The Indo-Pacific strategy document marked a clear departure from South Korea’s previous security focus on North Korea and resistance to the use of Korean-based forces for regional security goals. Among other things, the statement called for cooperation on maritime security in the region, specifically mentioning the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

But Seoul did try to avoid a confrontational approach toward China and identified it as a key partner, stressing the importance of trilateral cooperation between Seoul, Tokyo and Beijing. There is interest in resuming the trilateral leaders’ summits that have been interrupted since 2019.

As the EAI polls made clear, the public, along with the business community, is wary of following the United States into an economic war with China at the cost of South Korea’s own economic growth.

Yoon has relentlessly sought to improve relations with Japan, based on his understanding that a reversal in the downturn in relations with Tokyo was a predicate for the larger goal of solidifying security ties to the United States.

In March Yoon visited Tokyo, where he offered a unilateral solution to the forced wartime labor issue, a consequence of the failure to reach a diplomatic agreement with Japan.

That decision did lead to the reciprocal visit of Kishida to Korea and Yoon’s participation as a guest at the G7 Summit in Hiroshima in May, but it was hardly popular and it is being challenged in the courts. Japan’s refusal to contribute to a fund for compensation to former forced laborers threatens to undermine the progress already made.

The decision also opened the door to Yoon’s much-ballyhooed state visit to the United States in April, crowned by an address to Congress and a rare state dinner at the White House.

Yoon and Biden also issued the “Washington Declaration”, which crucially dampened talk of a South Korean nuclear option by reaffirming its commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty while strengthening US extended deterrence guarantees.

In response to the heightened pace of North Korean missile testing, the two militaries have stepped up training and contingency planning to respond to possible nuclear use and to deepen counter-missile strategy, including trilateral missile defense exercises with Japan.

All these developments reached a culmination in the convening of the 18 August Camp David summit meeting of Biden, Yoon and Kishida, the first stand-alone trilateral summit among the three leaders.

The joint statement, “the Spirit of Camp David”, proclaimed the existence of shared stances on geopolitical competition — a thinly veiled reference to China, climate change, the Russian aggression against Ukraine and North Korea’s “nuclear provocations.”

While the Camp David meeting fell far short of what the Chinese saw as a new collective security system, the three leaders did agree on the creation of a mechanism of trilateral consultation in response to “regional challenges, provocations, and threats that affect our collective interests and security.”

The statement enumerated many of those threats, from maritime security to cybersecurity but also ranged towards cooperation on trilateral economic security issues such as supply chain resilience, technology security and advanced technology development. Officials from the three countries have also been meeting with growing regularity to implement these commitments.

The permanence of these shifts in South Korean foreign and security policy remains to be proven. But the longer they are in place, the more chance they have to become truly historic in nature.

Daniel Sneider is a lecturer on international policy and East Asian studies at Stanford University and a non-resident distinguished fellow at the Korea Economic Institute.

This article was originally published by the East Asia Forum. It is republished here under a Creative Commons license and the author’s permission.

Continue Reading

China blowing past Japan on autos may trigger change

If there’s any surprise over the fact that China dethroned Japan in 2023 to become the world’s top automaker it relates to how fast that happened.

Overall, auto exports jumped 58% last year from the prior one, topping 4.91 million units, says the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. Along with deploying its increasing strength in electric vehicles, China Inc managed to tap Russia’s sanctions-hit market with unexpected aplomb. Detroit is not thrilled, of course.

But the truly tantalizing question is how all this goes over in Japan, where, 12 years on, officials are still struggling to get their heads around China’s surpassing Japan in gross domestic product terms. That GDP changing of the guard happened, depending on your preferred data set, sometime between 2010 and 2012.

Since then, Japanese governments in succession have convinced themselves that GDP isn’t the key metric: It’s per capita income, in which Japan leads what’s now Asia’s biggest economy by nearly three times. Yet the blow to Japan’s collective psyche from losing the GDP crown was a devastating one.

Arguably, shock over trailing China helped Shinzo Abe retake the premiership in late 2012. Abe’s economic revival scheme wasn’t pitched as a beat-China strategy – but that’s precisely what his strategy to loosen labor markets, cut red tape, rekindle innovation, catalyze a startup boom and revive Tokyo’s role as Asia’s indispensable financial hub amounted to.

Years of Tokyo complacency since then have been good to China, enabling Xi Jinping’s economy to fill the void created by deflation-racked Japan. The 12 years since Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party returned to power have been a lost period for major economic retooling.

Efforts to produce more tech “unicorns,” for example, went particularly awry. Today, Japan is trailing Indonesia in the race to generate $1 billion-plus valuation startups.

The same muddle can be seen in Japan’s almost linear obsession with hybrid vehicles as the EV market shifts into overdrive.

True, officials at Toyota Motor and Japanese peers are realizing their mistakes in having dismissed the EV future that’s fast coming into view. Toyota is playing catchup with new models. Japan’s top automaker is tripling EV output as it chases China’s BYD, which recently surpassed Elon Musk’s Tesla.

The question, of course, is whether it may already be too late as Tesla, Detroit, Germany and China beat Toyota to the market. “No one,” says Michael Dunne, CEO of auto industry advisory ZoZoGo, “can match BYD on price. Period. Boardrooms in America, Europe, Korea and Japan are in a state of shock.”

Toyota’s blunder is reminiscent of Japan Inc missteps of the past. It’s worth nothing that hybrid transport — including the Prius — was always a compromise, not a technological destination. But because Toyota pioneered it, the company refused to admit that something better had come along.

A similar lost opportunity played out in the 1980s during the Betamax versus VHS video competition. Sony argued that its Betamax technology was superior; the global market favored the more user-friendly VHS format. The years that it took Tokyo to accept defeat set Japan back.

Will China’s stunning success in an industry that Japan long dominated in the Asia region and beyond catalyze officials in Tokyo and the greater Nagoya region?

“For the first time, I came face to face with the competitiveness of Chinese components,” Toyota EV Chief Takero Kato said in September. “After seeing manufacturing processes not used in Japan,” Kato says he thought, “We’re in trouble!”

China Inc is, for example, making big inroads into once reliably Japanese markets such as Thailand. Already, EV models account for 10% of the Thai market. The so-called “Detroit of Asia” is now China’s number 2 destination for Chinese EVs. Ditto for plug-in hybrid vehicles.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met with Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin on December 17, 2023, in Tokyo. Photo: Wikipedia

Perhaps sensing the risks, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida last month met with Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin. In Tokyo, Kishida proposed a dialogue framework to ensure that Thailand’s auto industry will strengthen its competitive advantage in EVs and the range of next-generation automobiles. More importantly, that Thailand will remain in the Japan camp.

Also last month, Srettha, a businessman-turned-politician, announced that four Japanese automakers will invest 150 billion baht ($4.3 billion) in EVs in Thailand over the next five years. They include Toyota, Honda Motor, Isuzu Motors and Mitsubishi Motors.

At that time Srettha’s spokesman said, “The prime minister has stressed that Japanese carmakers can play an important role in promoting EV production in Thailand.”

In Japan, Kishida’s government is offering decade-long tax incentives to boost production in EVs and high-quality chips to lure more foreign direct investment. The tax breaks will be part of Tokyo’s fiscal 2024 tax reform framework. They will include 400,000 yen ($2,755) for battery-powered EVs and hydrogen fuel-cell cars.

Tesla, unlike many global peers, won’t be roadkill as China grabs more market share, ZoZoGo’s Dunne argues. Musk’s wares benefit from a first-mover advantage and also the goodwill that comes from Tesla’s choice of the Shanghai area as the site of its first production facility outside the US.

“What does this mean for global automakers not named Tesla?” Dunne asks. “BYD will continue to win large chunks of market share from legacy automakers worldwide.”

What’s more, Dunne says, “China’s market, the world’s largest, no longer needs or wants foreign makers. Jeep, Suzuki and Mitsubishi are already gone. VW, Ford, Hyundai, Nissan, and others will depart within five years. GM, once the poster child for successful US business in China, will likely be gone, too. GM sales in China are already down by more than 50% from their 2017 peak.”

Challenges abound, of course,and they include building greater trust among mainland consumers.

“China is the global leader in the transition to electric vehicles, but even its carmakers haven’t been able to resolve consumers’ ‘range anxiety,’” says analyst Ernan Cui at Gavekal Research. She argues that households are increasingly demanding hybrid vehicles that burn fossil fuels as backup, meaning the transition to a fully electric fleet will be slower than the most optimistic forecasts.

Nor is the Chinese market devoid of risks as 2024 opens. “Investors remain cautious as China’s auto market has had a volatile start to the year as competition and macro uncertainties persist,” says analyst Tim Hsiao at Morgan Stanley.

Chinese EV demand is seen cooling as the nation’s post-Covid rebound continues to disappoint. As consumer sentiment and demand stagnate, automakers may find it becoming harder and harder to hit this year’s sales targets. In the first week of January, mainland EVs came in short of expectations, falling 20% on the month, according to Citigroup analyst Jeff Chung.

That means that even BYD “will need to refresh its model lineup or have more competitive model launches given the challenging sector competition into 2024,” notes analyst Shelley Wang at Natixis Asia.

The Warren Buffett-backed company also risks a continued price war with Tesla as buyers “continue to expect ever cheaper cars.” When the price-cutting has to stop, that “may keep consumers from purchasing.”

Yet, some are far more optimistic about the performance of China’s “new economy” sectors, which drive 12% of gross domestic product, helping growth top 5%. “Together with strong performance across new economy sectors, such as EVs and high value-added manufacturing, this should help to support a broadening in China’s economic recovery,” says economist Carlos Casanova at Union Bancaire Privée.

Casanova notes that “more easing is still required to stabilize activity. Fiscal policy stimulus will take over from monetary policy stimulus in 2024, although both will have to be deployed in 2024.”

Last year, Casanova notes, the government delivered targeted support measures, including approximately 2% of GDP in additional fiscal spending for 2024. The People’s Bank of China also injected liquidity via open market operations. A rate cut is less likely, although there is ample room to reduce reserve requirement ratios this year.

Clearly, in any event, China is increasingly committed to developing its green economy. “This policy promotion has already crowded investment into green sectors such as solar, batteries, and EVs,” says Herbert Crowther, analyst at Eurasia Group. “Green loans expanded by 36.8% in 2023, with new market entrants ranging from traditional manufacturers and local governments to fossil energy companies and large state-owned enterprises.”

China’s EV industry growth fueled a 20% expansion in private auto manufacturer fixed asset investment in the first three quarters of the year, Crowther says.

The auto sector outperformed national export and industrial value-added growth in 2023. This surge, Crowther says, was largely powered by EVs –  which accounted for 42% of Chinese auto exports over the past year (up from 30% in 2021) and 27% of auto production volume (up from 12% in 2021). Private sector manufacturing investment increased overall by 9.1%, despite the 0.3% contraction in overall private spending.

As China raises its economic and innovative game, the interesting question is what alarm bells – and responses – are triggered in Japan. Competition is always a positive dynamic between Asia’s two biggest economies. In the EV space, Japan is about to get more than it ever bargained for.

Continue Reading

China gets banned Nvidia AI chips via gray markets

Evidence has accumulated that, despite the United States’ export controls, China’s military-related firms, research centers and universities can still acquire Nvidia’s high-end artificial intelligence (AI) chip. Technology experts say the Biden administration has failed so far to stop small distributors from reselling and smuggling the chips into the Chinese underground markets.

The US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) banned the export of the A100 and H100 chips to China in October 2022 and the export of the A800 and H800 chips to the country last October, but results have not been satisfactory.

One early study, from the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a Washington-based non-profit organization, said last October that thousands of controlled AI chips could have been smuggled into China in 2023. By 1925, it said, the figure might grow to as many as 12,500 – or even hundreds of thousands – per year.

Some Chinese firms have set up multiple shell companies in third countries, used them to place small orders with AI chip distributors and diverted those chips to China, it said – and some Chinese cloud providers placed bulk orders for AI chips for their overseas data centers and redirected some of these chips to China. 

The CNAS suggested that the BIS pilot an AI chip registry and inspection program, as well as end-user verification programs in Southeast Asia. It said AI chip exporters should be required to carry out rigorous customer screening targeted at key vectors for large-scale smuggling.

Now a document obtained by Reuters shows that Chinese state entities have procured Nvidia’s A100 chips in more than 100 tenders since October 2022 and A800 chips in dozens of tenders since last October. 

Among the buyers, a Wuxi-based People’s Liberation Army entity purchased three A100 chips last October and one H100 chip this month. The Harbin Institute of Technology, one of China’s top defense-research universities, purchased six A100 chips in May 2023. The University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, based in Chengdu, bought one A100 in December 2022.

Reuters reported that these Chinese entities’ chip suppliers are not retailers approved by Nvidia. In other words, some third parties may have resold Nvidia’s AI chips to China. Nvidia’s spokesperson told Reuters that the company will take immediate and appropriate action if it knows that a customer has made an unlawful resale to third parties.

AI chip registry system

Violations are hidden in plain sight, commentators say.

An IT writer using the pen name “Chenyi” says in an article published by Xinchao IC last November that it’s not difficult to see distributors, who claim to have A100 and H100 chips for sale, over social media and e-commerce platforms in China.

“These sellers mostly come from southern China and have their secret supply channels. They can send AI chips from overseas to mainland China but they don’t provide any post-sale services,” Chenyi says. 

He says the A100 was priced at about 40,000 yuan (US$5,600) in China in February 2023 but the price surged to 250,000 yuan in May. 

He says sellers then started speculating in the H100, which is several times faster than the A100 in AI training, in June. He says the H100 is now sold at about 320,000 yuan each, a 50% premium over the official price of US$30,000.

In the US, technology giants including Amazon Web Services, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI are also facing insufficient supplies of the H100.  

Smuggling channels 

The US Commerce Department as early as 2021 had classified Hong Kong as one of its “foreign adversaries,” alongside mainland China, Iran, North Korea and Russia. It means that products that are subject to the US export controls cannot be shipped directly to Hong Kong, but must go through third countries to evade the controls.

A Hubei-based columnist published an article with the title “How to obtain A100 chips in China?” last July.

He says most of the A100 chips came from smuggling channels in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong to mainland China. He says some sellers would require buyers to complete their deals in Hong Kong. 

“As Nvidia will not provide any warranty and post-sale services for the banned A100 display card in China, anyone who bought it will suffer from a huge loss if it has problems,” the writer says. “There is no way that a faulty A100 can be shipped overseas for repair or be protected by an official warranty scheme.”

Last April, Hong Kong Customs said it seized 70 pieces of unmanifested high-value computer display cards, plus about 280 kilograms of unmanifested live lobsters, in an anti-smuggling operation at the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge Hong Kong Port. It said the products had a total estimated market value of about HK$600,000 (US$76,669). Two men were arrested. 

Taiwanese media said the seized display cards look like Quadro K2200 cards, which were launched by Nvidia in 2014 and are not subject to US export controls.

US Authorities have vowed to close loopholes in the export restrictions and have tried to prevent overseas Chinese firms from having access to Nvidia’s high-end chips. But until now, they have not suggested any effective solutions that can stop the illegal resale and smuggling of high-end chips to China.  

Read: US-China chip war may extend to legacy chips

Follow Jeff Pao on Twitter at @jeffpao3

Continue Reading

Trump's victory in Iowa was a foregone conclusion

Of course, on the day of the first nominating contest for the 2024 US presidential election, there was a storm.

In Iowa over the weekend, blizzards described as “life-threatening” by the National Weather Service brought with them temperatures well below freezing, up to 25 centimeters of snow and ferocious winds.

In these terrible conditions on Monday night, Republicans in the Hawkeye state gathered to choose their preferred candidate for president of the United States. Polls had suggested for a long time that they had already made their choice – former president Donald Trump was set to win in a landslide. The only real question was who would snatch second place.

Iowa holds a caucus vote in presidential nominating contests, as opposed to most other states, which hold primary votes. In the Iowa caucuses, registered Republican voters gather in small groups in their local diners, schools and churches, hear from candidate representatives and each other, and vote privately for their preferred candidate.

As always in US electoral politics, turnout is the main game – which explains the focus on the weather and how it might impact voters’ willingness to turn up.

Iowa was always Trump’s for the taking

Trump, who led recent polls by double digits, did not feel the pressure to mount the type of intensive campaigning that might be expected of a nominee wanting to maximise turnout and make a statement in the first nominating contest.

Why would he? Even when he was not physically present in the state – which was a lot of the time – this contest was already all about Trump.

Even when the focus was ostensibly on the other candidates, what Republican voters really wanted to know was how they felt about Trump and his many felonies and constitutional breaches, and how they could have the temerity to challenge someone who has come to dominate the Republican Party to such an unprecedented extent.

As the snow closed in and the roads iced over, those leading competitors – Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy – scrambled to reschedule and relocate their campaign events in the final days before the caucus. But they were fighting more than just the weather.

Republican voters across Iowa battled extreme winter weather to caucus on Monday night. Photo: Andrew Harnik / AP via The Conversation

As bitter as the campaigning between these candidates has been, it has been almost entirely aimed at each other. Not one of them has been prepared to make a substantive critique of Trump and what he stands for. Each has sought to cloak themselves in at least part of his political aura. And each was battling for second place.

In the end, the winner was declared before the caucuses had even finished. Just as predicted, Trump won Iowa by an overwhelming margin, with DeSantis and Haley neck and neck for second place.

Trump’s power over the party

While the result may have been a foregone conclusion, it is still significant.

The vote shows that the majority of Republican participants in Iowa were willing to publicly declare their support for a candidate who has incited an insurrection and been charged with 91 separate felonies, threatened violent retribution against his political opponents and promised to act as a dictator on “day one” of a potential second term in office.

His speeches are also steeped in overt racism that once thrived only on the political fringes. It is no longer possible to deny this political reality. This election is not like any other that has come before. It is not business as usual.

To an extent that is almost impossible to fathom, Trump continues to dominate the Republican Party. After the Iowa caucuses, it can no longer be said that he does so in spite of the multiple felony charges he faces, his disdain for democratic processes or his overt racism. Rather, it is because of all these factors that he has maintained the loyalty of a substantial, noisy and mobilized majority of the Republican base.

Some commentators hold out the forlorn hope that a Trump revival can still be averted. On current polling and performance, however, it is clear none of the other primary challengers are in a reasonable position to defeat him in the race for the nomination.

Their only hope is that Trump may be tripped up by one of the multiple legal processes he is currently snared in. Though not impossible, nothing that has happened so far suggests this is likely.

But the size and extent of Trump’s victory in Iowa does not tell the whole story. Each of his challengers has defined their pitch for power largely in deference to Trump and have studiously avoided taking him on directly.

Haley, for instance, continues to pay obeisance to Trump’s accomplishments. Her recent refusal to name slavery as a fundamental cause of the US Civil War was not an act of historical ignorance.

It was a signal sent to the Republican base that despite her previous positions on issues such as the Confederate flag, she is now willing to perpetuate and pander to the same racialized worldview as Trump.

DeSantis has frequently sought to position himself as the most activist anti-“woke” contender – a better Trump than Trump. Ramaswamy, meanwhile, has sought to present himself (with little success) as a sleeker, next-generation Trump.

Ron DeSantis (left) and Nikki Haley have spent more time attacking each other than Trump. Photo: Justin Lane / EPA via The Conversation

The positioning around Iowa, and the result, consolidate dynamics that have been underway for some time. The Republican Party remains in the grip of Trump because he is the most effective avatar of a brand of racial revanchism with deep roots in the United States.

By mobilizing against what they perceive as threats to the established social order, Trump’s conservative base has been determined to use the institutions of the American state to consolidate its positions of power.

It can then impose its worldview on the entirety of the country. The overturning of Roe v Wade by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court is a good example.

This is an explicitly racialized and anti-democratic movement that intends to impose the will of the minority over the lives of the majority. Every single Republican candidate who polled in Iowa is seeking to be the standard bearer of this movement.

The primary contest still has a long way to run. If there is any lesson from US political history, it is to expect the unexpected. But this election is not business as usual. The current trajectory is clear, and it is dangerous: dangerous for American democracy, and as a result, dangerous for the world.

This storm is only just beginning.

Emma Shortis is Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University and Liam Byrne is Honorary Fellow, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Continue Reading

Philippines pushing China's limits in South China Sea

MANILA – The Filipino military chief has announced new plans for massive construction activities across all Philippine-claimed land features in the South China Sea, a move that promises to intensify already hot tensions with China over contested territories.

General Romeo Brawner made the high-stakes announcement, which covers as many as nine disputed sea features, directly after a command conference with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr at the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) headquarters in Camp Aguinaldo.

“We’d like to improve all the nine, especially the islands we are occupying,” he added, referring to Thitu island, the second-largest naturally formed land feature in the Spratlys, as well as in Nanshan island, the fourth-largest in the area.”

The plan comes after earlier announcements that Manila plans to press ahead with fortifying its position in the Second Thomas Shoal – a disputed feature situated between the Spratlys and the island of Palawan — where a small Filipino marine detachment has been precariously stationed in a sinking vessel known as the Sierra Madre.

The Philippines maintains that this is largely for defensive purposes since rival claimants, especially China and to a lesser degree Vietnam, have been engaging in massive construction activities in the area over the past decade.

The Philippine defense establishment sees its new fortification plans as a desperately needed effort to catch up with rivals and make up for years of strategic passivity under the pro-Beijing Rodrigo Duterte presidency.

Nevertheless, Manila risks overcorrecting past mistakes by unduly provoking confrontation with China, which has adopted an increasingly bellicose stance in response to the radical reorientation in Philippine foreign policy under the Marcos Jr administration.

Catch-Up Time

In many ways, the Philippines is both a latecomer as well as a pioneer in the South China Sea scramble. Under the Ferdinand Marcos Sr. dictatorship, the Southeast Asian nation was at the forefront of building military and civilian facilities in the disputed areas, culminating in the establishment of a modern airstrip on Thitu Island in the late 1970s.

Subsequent Filipino presidents, however, lacked either strategic urgency or the resources to maintain and upgrade the country’s position in the maritime area as Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan also built substantial facilities on disputed South China Sea features.

But China’s massive reclamation activities, beginning in late 2013, jolted the Philippines out of its stupor. At the same time, Vietnam also pressed ahead with the militarization of land features under its control.

A satellite image from work on a 3.1-kilometer runway in disputed Spratlys Island in an artificial island at Mischief Reef in the South China Sea. Photo: Asia Times files / EyePress / Digital Globe

Even notoriously cautious Malaysia, known for its “quiet diplomacy”, has been unilaterally developing energy resources within Chinese and Vietnamese-claimed waters in recent years.

It was not until the late 2010s that the Philippines, under the guidance of independent-minded Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, began properly maintaining and upgrading its facilities in places such as Thitu Island, which hosts a relatively large civilian community along with military personnel.

The Marcos Jr administration has built on those earlier efforts by recently establishing a two-story facility on the island, which boasts “advanced systems” such as vessel traffic management, coast cameras, radars and satellite communication equipment.

Philippine National Security Council Advisor Eduardo Ano, a former military chief who supported Lorenzana’s efforts in the past, welcomed the new facilities as a means to “greatly enhance the PCG’s [Philippine Coast Guard’s] ability to monitor the movements of the Chinese maritime forces, other countries that might be coming here, and also as well as our own public vessels and aircraft.”

Pushing the limits

The Philippine defense establishment, however, has even bigger plans for this year. In defiance of China, the AFP is set to fortify its de facto military base over the Second Thomas Shoal, which has been the site of multiple violent encounters between Filipino and Chinese maritime forces in recent months.

“What we are doing is we’re just trying to make it more livable, more habitable for our soldiers because their conditions are really difficult,”  the Philippine military chief said in a mixture of Filipino and English when asked about the purpose of the new project.

“We already have a budget. It is incorporated in the budget of the armed forces. Every year we have a budget for the improvement of facilities,” he added, underscoring the importance of the new construction project as part of a bigger strategic plan in the South China Sea.

While the Philippines sees its action is necessary for national defense, it could nonetheless provoke China into aggressive reprisals. The Asian superpower isn’t only opposed to the Philippine construction plans in the area, but also to the Marcos Jr administration’s overall foreign policy tilt toward the US and its allies.  

Much to China’s chagrin, the Philippines has quickly turned into a new hub for major wargames and joint exercises by Western powers. Last year, the Southeast Asian nation conducted the largest-ever Balikatan exercises, where the US, Japan, Australia and the Philippines simulated potential conflict with China.

Last year also saw the annual Kamandag exercises, at which as many as 2,749 participating troops from the Philippines, US, UK, Japan and South Korea conducted amphibious and naval exercises in a not-so-subtle signal to China.

This went hand in hand with the first-ever Philippine-US aerial patrols in the South China Sea as well as the first-ever quadrilateral Philippines, US, Australia and Japan naval drills in the disputed areas.

Philippine Marines observe their US counterparts conduct a fire mission at Colonel Ernesto Ravina Air Base, Philippines, during exercise Kamandag in 2019. Photo: Donald Holbert / US Marine Corps

The Philippines is also exploring a new Visiting Forces Agreement-style agreement with Japan and France while coordinating an emerging trilateral Japan-Philippine-US alliance known as JAPHUS.

Perhaps of biggest concern to China is the expansion of the Philippine-US Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) that will grant the Pentagon access to northernmost Philippine military facilities bordering near Taiwan.

The two allies are also rapidly upgrading a whole host of military facilities close to the South China Sea, thus dramatically expanding America’s forward deployment presence in the area.

The upshot of it all is a dangerous and volatile new dynamic, whereby efforts by the Philippines to enhance its position and defend its sovereign rights are reinforcing China’s fears of encirclement by a US-led network of allies.

Absent a robust diplomatic effort, the Philippines could be sleepwalking toward a direct confrontation with the increasingly jittery Asian superpower, a clash that could unintentionally set off a wider regional conflict.

Follow Richard Javad Heydarian on X at @Richeydarian

Continue Reading

Open letter to Chinese American high school students

Country roads, take me home

To the place I belong

– John Denver

The jig should have been up when the Varsity Blues scandal broke. Oh was it delicious. Hollywood actresses, hedge fund managers, winery owners, real estate developers and other assorted muckety-mucks sneaking their low-watt spawn into elite colleges. The fraud was so absurd you couldn’t make it up.

Rich people Photoshopping their kids playing sports, paying for medical “stupid” certifications to get “special” proctoring, hiring a Harvard grad SAT ringer able to deliver any score you want. Stanford, Yale, Cornell, Georgetown and we are not going to make USC jokes because the school has gotten a lot better in recent years.

And that Chinese girl who paid US$6.5 million to get into Stanford. Did you see her hour-long “I got into Stanford” video on YouTube? Oh the burns in the comments. If you could only read Chinese. Epic!

Of course, the joke is really on us. Because four years later, elite American universities – with additional malfeasance in the interim – continue to command the same prestige, elicit the same anxiety and demand the same obeisance.

The college counseling business is as hot as ever. Some are reportedly charging over a million dollars for white-glove service starting in the 7th grade, with a perfect record of admissions into HYPSM (if you have to ask, you can’t afford it).

And Asian Americans. Did you really think you scored a win when the Supreme Court scrapped affirmative action last year? The universities saw it coming a mile away and became test-optional well before the gavel came down. Underrepresented applicants are polishing their essays on how they’ve thrived in unsafe spaces while you are stuck with the surname Zhang.

So what can you do? You’ve already maxed out the SATs, signed up for every AP class, play the oboe, do bogus charity work and took up a ridiculous sport like fencing. At this point, it’s just one giant crap shoot.

Will the admissions officer like your essay on teaching inner-city kids at math camp (but they really taught you)? Does Yale need another oboist? Will your history teacher write a flashy enough recommendation?  

And even if you do get into HYPSM (or its sorry near peers), you will be surrounded by a sea of people who maxed out on the SATs, took every AP class, play an instrument, did bogus charity work and took up a ridiculous sport like water polo. If it is true that you learn the most from your peers, then HYPSM will likely prove less educational than high school.

If you are lucky and go to a regular high school, at least you are exposed to regular people with regular aspirations and regular opinions – deplorable as they may be. In HYPSM, you will join the tiresome Westoid elite with their anxious entitlement and risible pretensions. It’s a nauseating mélange of sanctimony, condescension, virtue signaling, victim larping and look-at-me posturing.

The only people you might learn something from are the international students who mostly keep to themselves after discovering how loud, deranged and solipsistic their American classmates are.

You will discover that student cliques mostly keep to themselves – international students with international students, blacks with blacks, Asian Americans with Asian Americans, frat boys with frat boys, sorority girls with sorority girls (okay, frat boys and sorority girls do mix). 

You will while away four years, slowly socialized into Westoid elitism with its arcane rules of self-censorship and approved aspirations, until your life path is narrowed down to finance, consulting or tech. This is made tolerable by drunken debauchery and meaningless hookups (that’s what the kids tell me anyways) that passes for a social life.    

All of this is to deliver an indoctrinated end product to Wall Street and Silicon Valley which has accomplished the miracle of hijacking both progressivism and capitalism while impoverishing the rest of America. Evidently, there are progressive non-solutions to every problem which coincidentally increase FAANG share prices. 

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you know it’s all a giant farce. The system broke down decades ago. Really, what are the chances you go to a “regular” high school and expect the meritocracy to pick you from the haystack? No, your parents scrimped and saved, fought tooth and nail, to buy that house in Tenafly, New Jersey or Mountain View, California.

College admissions was your religion since birth. Sunday afternoon is for test prep classes (Saturday mornings are for Chinese school; we will get back to that). And when the time comes, your anxiety-ridden parents will fork over a pretty penny for a college counselor, if not white glove S-Class level.

If you think this isn’t farcical enough, the racket has now gone international. Longtime China resident and insightful Twitter commentator Arnaud Bertrand relays a familiar story. His ultra-wealthy Chinese friend has decided to move his family to California largely to buy his children into the American elite.

The friend plans to purchase a house in the best California school district and hire top tutors for his children, confident that it will pave the way to prestigious American universities and elite status in Western society.

Mr Bertrand explains, “Why isn’t this possible in China? Because China has invested considerable efforts – and continues to do so – to ensure that wealth couldn’t ‘game’ the education system.”

China’s schools are not funded by local property taxes. The government did away with guaranteeing school placement based on property ownership. Private schools exist but enrollment is by lottery. And famously, China, in one fell swoop, scrapped the entire for-profit tutoring industry.

Of course, explains Mr Bertrand, none of these measure are perfect. An underground tutoring industry continues to operate. The ultra-wealthy can hire household “help” with PhDs. But his wealthy friend likely reached the correct conclusion – his money has a better chance of buying his children into America’s elite than China’s.

Some of Mr Bertrand’s observations deserve to be quoted in full:

This all raises the bigger question of the reproduction of elites. In the long run, which society is more sustainable and fares better: one that does little to avoid the reproduction of elites like the US (which – contrary to the “American dream” narrative – is one of the high-income economies with the lowest rates of relative upward mobility) or one that actively fights it to enforce, to the extent possible, a meritocracy?

What my friend’s story illustrates is actually even more than this: in the US you don’t even only have a reproduction of local elites but you also have elites from other countries who come to the US because it’s easier to reproduce there!

This may all be grim reading for the anxious Chinese American high school junior. But fear not! Han Feizi does not come bearing bad news but rather with an offering of devastating logic.

Remember Saturday morning Chinese school? Where you go to socialize and misbehave? Well strap yourself down and get back up to 1,500 characters!

An arbitrage opportunity of historic proportions has opened up. Forget about HYPSM. There is nothing for you to learn there. It was already done and dusted 20 years ago. The sheeple just haven’t realized it.

Remember this acronym: TPSFZUN. That’s Tsinghua, Peking, Shanghai Jiao Tong, Fudan, Zhejiang, USTC and Nanjing. Yeah, it’s a mouthful, but it’s not like HYPSM was so obvious. And we are not talking study abroad. We are talking the full four-year degree shebang!

Vaclav Havel famously said that China’s development “has happened so quickly, we have not yet had time to be astonished.” This applies to higher education as well.

In 2004, Tsinghua was ranked 62 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. In 2024, Tsinghua ranked 12th in the world and 1st in Asia (with arch-nemesis Peking University at 14th). Both ranked higher than the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth and Brown.

Seven of the top 10 research universities in the Nature Index are now in China – University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS), Nanjing University, Tsinghua University, Peking University, Zhejiang University and Fudan University.

One of the metrics weighing down the rankings of Chinese universities is their lack of international students. And that’s where you come in! This arbitrage is just asking to be exploited. As an overseas applicant, you get the full DEI treatment. You are the underrepresented minority, the diversity admit, the token international student!

Don’t get me wrong, they don’t take just anybody. You still have to be a top student with a near 4.0 GPA and SATs over 1400. The biggest hurdle will probably be Mandarin proficiency which, depending on the school, you need either HSK4 or HSK5 to matriculate.

All things considered, however, it’s a buyer’s market allowing you to short-circuit both the soul-crushing hell of the gaokao and the humiliating dog and pony show of applying to HYPSM.

Let’s first get one jaw-dropper out of the way. It is an important consideration for many families, especially if yours stretched themselves sending you to private school. Four years of tuition as an international student at Tsinghua will set mom and dad back about $17,000 (room and board are extra). You are free to do your own calculations for HYPSM.

This is, of course, about much more than arbitraging school rankings and acceptance rates (and cheaper tuition). What you are actually getting by choosing this road is a real education. Let me explain. There are important directionality and timing elements involved.

There is a lot of truth to the cliché that modern China is a closed society with an open mind while America is an open society with a closed mind. It is relatively straightforward for a Chinese national to study in the US given the open minds of China’s youth and America’s open society. The reverse is problematic. Chinese society is far more insular and the minds of American youths are generally closed to outside input.

The Chinese American, however, is a different animal and has a window of opportunity. The width of this window depends on how seriously you took Saturday morning Chinese school. Some of you are actively discussing Genshin Impact on Weibo and can sail through HSK7. Others have more work to do.

But for most of you, there is a solid enough base to build on. The best strategy may be to stretch college out to five years with the first year in language immersion (five years of undergraduate tuition is $21,000).

To be sure, this road is not for the faint of heart. You will not be comfortably surrounded by cookie-cutter versions of yourself who maxed out on the SATs, took every AP class, play an instrument, did bogus charity work and took up a ridiculous sport like diving.

You will be surrounded by gaokao mutants whose intellect can be so blazing it’s like staring at the sun (thankfully, there are slackers as well). You might be constantly fighting a language deficiency. And through it all, you have the additional burden of going through the many stages of culture shock.

On the positive side, the liberal arts education at elite Chinese universities may surprise you. The resentment warriors in American academia are laying siege to the Western canon, poisoning every facet of the liberal arts education.

While politics has always encroached on academia in China, the boundaries are far better defined. Chinese universities may, in fact, be a healthier environment to study the Western canon given the immolating culture wars currently being waged on American campuses (see here). Nobody at Fudan cares if Hegel is dead, white or male.  

On a side note, this letter is addressed to Chinese Americans (and the diaspora in general) to knock some sense into them. It also applies, with certain caveats, to non-ethnic Chinese. It can be done, has been done and should be done more.

Anecdotally, non-ethnic Chinese Westerners who have successfully taken this road are eccentrics. These oddballs have gotten a far superior education than HYPSM could possibly provide because they would have had to shake off Western solipsism and open their minds.

All of this, in the end, represents an opportunity for a real education – to be outside your comfort zone, to be stretched, to interact with the unfamiliar. You have a short window in your youth to gain lifelong access to the closed society that is China. It cannot be done after undergrad anymore.

Decades ago, when China was short on talent, carpet-bagging Ivy League Chinese Americans flocked to Beijing and Shanghai. Nowadays, one can run a couple hundred meters down Chang’an Avenue with arms outstretched and knock over a dozen Chinese nationals with HYPSM degrees.

Don’t worry, you will never lose access to the West. That is guaranteed by your native command of English. For many of you, especially if a decent amount of Chinese was spoken at home, you have the opportunity in your university years to claim full native command of Mandarin. If you want it, it is yours for the taking. If you don’t claim it now, it will be lost in time.

I sense skepticism and hesitation. Of course, this is normal. This is not a well-worn path. There are no how-to manuals or consulting companies guiding students on this road. The street lamps have not been installed and you even wonder if this road comes to an abrupt end just outside your view.

If you are worried about future placement chances at Goldman Sachs, you should probably forget the whole enterprise. With decades of experience in investment banks, Han Feizi can say that he was always looking for the unicorn, the luminous being, the perfectly bilingual and bicultural animal.

At some point, you have to have Confucian faith that learning is its own reward. Planning for the future is a fool’s errand. To take the road less traveled, next to having children, is the ultimate expression of hope. We leave you with perhaps Lu Xun’s most famous quote:

“Hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said not to exist. It is just like the roads made across the earth. For actually there were no roads to begin with, but when many people pass one way a road is made.”

Continue Reading

Baloch camp vs establishment camp

ISLAMABAD – The Capital Territory of Pakistan is under intense political pressure ahead of general elections scheduled for February 8.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan is facing in-house challenges. So far, two senior judges, Justice Mazaher Ali Naqvi and Justice Ijaz Ul Hasan, have resigned in protest over the perceived one-man rule of Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa.

Those two judges were frequently blamed by the public for supporting former prime minister Imran Khan and the establishment in an open manner. They were also accused of alleged corruption. Premature retirement will grant them amnesty from any judicial investigation, corruption charges, and prosecution. 

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf candidates will contest the general elections of February as Independents. PTI supporters are blaming the chief justice for the judicial crisis, and his alleged political bias.

On the other hand, a majority of politicians, journalists and social activists are welcoming the resignations of the two judges, and calling it a breath of fresh air for judicial and democratic stability.

Baloch protesters

Meanwhile, claimed victims of state policies are protesting in front of the National Press Club. Two camps have gathered outside the Press Club. The Baloch Missing Persons camp is led by Mahrang Baloch, and the Camp of Martyrs is led by Jamal Raisani, who is known for having strong links with the Pakistani establishment.

Protesters in the first camp are demanding justice for missing persons. They accuse state security forces of enforced disappearances in Balochistan. Many social-media groups, activists, journalists, and even some politicians are openly supporting them.

The members of the second camp demand justice for so-called martyrs, financial support, and action against militants, particularly Baloch separatists. They accuse banned outfits like the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and Baloch Liberation Front (BLF) for the killings of their loved ones.

This group is also known as the pro-establishment camp in order to put pressure on the other one led by Mahrang Baloch. 

Pakistani media and politicians are divided in support for the two camps. Both are arguing in their own ways to strengthen their own stance on the two camps. Media pundits like Hamid Mir, Matiullah Jan, and other key people are supporting Mahrang Baloch’s camp.

They accuse the government and security forces of failed policies implemented in Balochistan and in the rest of country. The principal demand of this camp is presenting missing persons before the court, and the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) has the same demands.

According to the organizers of this camp, the total number of missing persons is in the thousands. They have also displayed pictures of around 200 persons on the protest tents’ walls.

Generally, most Pakistanis are supporting Mahrang Baloch’s camp. So far, no key government official has visited the camp to assure justice and security, and guarantee that their beloveds will be presented before the court. 

Oppression in Balochistan

No doubt, Mahrang Baloch’s camp serves as a prominent voice for the oppressed Baloch community, particularly addressing the grave and serious issue of missing persons. Their principal demands include an end to enforced disappearances, present missing persons before the court, stop extrajudicial killings, and an end to death squads in Balochistan. 

Logically, the heart of the issue lies in the widespread phenomenon of enforced disappearances in Balochistan. The government’s approach, marked by the use of violence, has fueled the fire of Baloch grievances.

Enforced disappearances have been notably employed in Balochistan, leading to a growing number of missing persons. The Mahrang Baloch camp has emerged as a response to this crisis, giving a voice to the Baloch people and shedding light on the human-rights abuses they endure.

The torture of Baloch women is a particularly sensitive aspect of the conflict. Such acts not only violate basic human rights but also inflame sentiments within the Baloch community. The pain and suffering endured by Baloch women contribute to the cycle of violence and revenge, making it imperative for the government to reconsider its approach.

Pressuring Baloch families to abandon their protests reflects a disregard for the legitimate concerns and grievances they hold. It undermines the democratic right to peaceful assembly and dissent, perpetuating a cycle of discontent and resistance.

The government should instead engage with these families, addressing their concerns and working toward a resolution that ensures justice and accountability.

For a sustainable resolution, the government must step forward and acknowledge the gravity of the situation. Ending the policy of enforced disappearances is a critical first step. The government should establish mechanisms to investigate and address cases of enforced disappearances, ensuring that those responsible are held accountable.

Additionally, a broader dialogue with the Baloch community is essential. This involves addressing the root causes of discontent, including economic disparities, political marginalization, and historical grievances. A comprehensive and inclusive approach is needed to build trust and foster a sense of belonging among the Baloch people.

The Baloch camp led by Mahrang Baloch represents the collective voice of an oppressed community grappling with the serious and pressing issue of enforced disappearances as state led policy to silence dissent.

The government must negotiate with the protesters, address the root causes of the prevailing discontent, and Baloch grievances, leading to transparent and accountable approach to end violation of human rights, and misuse of force.

The government should explore political avenues to resolve the prevailing issues in Balochistan. Engaging in meaningful dialogue with all stakeholders can help to pave the way for a more inclusive and lasting solution.

Continue Reading

US carrier plan harbors risk of near-term obsolescence

The US Navy is ramping up production of Ford-class aircraft carriers despite concerns about the growing vulnerability of the nuclear-powered massive ships to missile attacks, shortfalls in American shipbuilding capability and a seemingly outdated focus on obsolete design concepts.

This month, Naval News reported that the US Navy is increasing deliveries of its new Ford-class aircraft carriers amid a perceived growing need for their capabilities. Justin Meyer, executive director of the US Navy’s Program Executive Office (PEO) Carriers, is quoted in the report highlighting the benefits and importance of buying, building and operating the carriers in “twos.”  

The report notes that US demand for aircraft carriers has never been greater, with USS Carl Vinson, USS Ronald Reagan, USS Gerald R Ford, and USS Dwight D Eisenhower operating in dual-carrier operations in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The USS Gerald R Ford, commissioned in 2017 and operating since 2022, is the first of a new class of carriers procured to replace in-service Nimitz-class ships. The next Ford-class carrier to be deployed will be the USS John F Kennedy, with over 90% of construction complete and the carrier’s combat systems undergoing testing.

Naval News says that testing of the ship’s aircraft launch and recovery equipment, Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) and Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG) will begin in the second quarter of 2024. The report says the carrier is delivered with core capabilities like its F-35 aircraft operations ready to go.

The USS Enterprise and USS Doris Miller Ford-class carriers are being procured under a “two-ship buy” strategy. The USS Enterprise is now 35% complete, with over 20,000 tons assembled in dry dock, while the USS Doris Miller is 13% complete, with keel laying scheduled for 2026.

The Ford-class carrier features an enhanced flight deck for increased sortie rates, a redesigned island and new nuclear power plant. Image: US Navy

Aircraft carriers are an enduring component of America’s naval strategy and vital to its global power projection capabilities that underpin US conventional military superiority and economic dominance.

Along those strategic lines, a 2019 Lexington Institute study mentions that since the US is increasingly dependent on goods manufactured abroad from sources close to near-peer adversaries like China and Russia, it is essential for the US to secure the air and sea lanes around those sources.

The study notes that the US Navy needs to be constantly forward deployed with sufficient firepower to sustain a high rate of operations against such threats and survive combat despite operating near adversary centers of military power.

It stresses that US aircraft carriers are likely to play a role in that strategy, as they enable the continuous forward deployment of US airpower in areas where competing nations are most likely to seek military gains. That includes the Western Pacific, which is now the heartland of the global industrial economy.

The current US maritime strategy, known as Advantage at Sea 2020, mentions the crucial role of US aircraft carriers in a potential great power conflict with China.

According to the strategy, carriers, surface action and expeditionary strike groups supported by unmanned vehicles would carry out powerful air and missile strikes from unexpected directions in a conflict.

It says the Ford-class carrier wings with improved weapons ranges, modernized aircraft and unmanned refueling capabilities will extend their strike range deep into contested areas.

However, a separate 2016 study by the Lexington Institute suggests that the US’s 11 nuclear-powered carriers may not be enough to meet military needs should there be an increase in threat levels.

The study adds that while US aircraft carriers are nearly impossible to sink with anything short of nuclear weapons, there must be some room for attrition in US war plans given the long lead time associated with aircraft carrier production.

The study recommends the US accelerate production of the Ford-class carriers for a fleet of 12 ships allowing for the deployment of at least four carrier strike groups simultaneously. 

An August 2022 US Congressional Research Service (CRS) report mentions that the USS Gerald R Ford has faced significant delays despite being commissioned in 2017.

The CRS report notes that challenges regarding the construction, testing and certification of the ship’s 11 weapons elevators were first identified in November 2018, with final checks completed in December 2021. The carrier finally entered service in October 2022.

Despite those delays, lessons from building the USS Gerald R Ford could accelerate subsequent ships’ production and testing times.

However, China’s growing anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) arsenal, shortfalls in US shipbuilding capability and US focus on large traditional warships may wed the US to obsolete naval strategies and ship designs, which concentrate too much capability into a few vulnerable ships.

That could force a radical rethink of the aircraft carrier concept in the near future.

In a November 2023 Naval News article, Scott Savitz notes that the US Navy needs to shift to unmanned platforms to maintain its edge over near-peer adversaries, following the distributed lethality concept to reduce vulnerability.

The USS Carl Vinson in the South China Sea. Photo: Lieutenant Jonathan Pfaff / US Navy

Savitz says that future aircraft carriers with completely unmanned air wings could be made smaller than current carriers.

That, in turn, would remove the limitations of human pilots, allow for smaller crews, exploit the advantages of AI and shipboard 3D printing, and disaggregate critical units among different ships to make carrier strike groups less vulnerable to a single point of failure.

He envisions future carrier strike groups as built around multiple, smaller drone carriers instead of one traditional carrier. These drone carriers, Savitz argues, would be supported by offboard storage from unmanned supply vessels organic to the carrier strike group.

Savitz also notes that since drone carriers are smaller than traditional carriers, they have less power, cooling and space requirements, giving them enough upgradability over their lifespans as new drone technologies come online.

Continue Reading

Samsung to build all-AI, no-human chip factories

Samsung Electronics is planning to fully automate its semiconductor factories by 2030, with “smart sensors” set to control the manufacturing process, according to South Korean media reports.

The world’s largest maker of memory chips aims to create an “artificial intelligence fab” that operates without human labor, the reports said. The ground-breaking project is reportedly already underway, the same reports said.

Samsung has signaled since last summer it aims to AI to optimize integrated circuit (IC) design, materials development, production, yield improvement and packaging. Identifying the cause of defects in the production process is reportedly a top priority of the AI plan.

Samsung is developing its own sensors and switching procurement from foreign to domestic suppliers to gain control of the technology and develop relevant South Korean expertise. Measuring plasma uniformity in deposition, etching and cleaning is one key application; real-time monitoring of production processes is another.

The technology will be applied both to Samsung’s DRAM and NAND flash memory operations and its contract manufacturing operations. Catching up with Taiwan’s TSMC and staying ahead of America’s Intel are of vital importance to Samsung as die-shrinks progress from 3nm now to 2nm by 2025 and 1nm late in the decade.

The finer the circuit line widths, the greater the risk of microscopic defects dragging down chip production yields. Deploying AI to keep the problem to a minimum is increasingly critical to maintaining competitiveness. A completely automated factory would also eliminate the risk and cost of human contamination.

Top-end chips are expected to come down to 1nm by the end of the decade. Image: Facebook Screengrab

Samsung’s new sensors are reportedly small enough to fit on existing production lines, enabling the upgrade of current facilities while saving space.

This is important because Samsung currently has the largest wafer processing capacity in the semiconductor industry with more than a dozen production lines in South Korea, China and the US. All of the facilities are reportedly candidates for smart sensor upgrades.  

Samsung is preparing to build a new chip factory in Texas and plans to add five new “state-of-the-art” production lines in South Korea by 2042 at a total cost of about 300 trillion won (US$230 billion).

The five domestic lines will be built at a new industrial complex in Yongin, south of Seoul, where Samsung will work with about 150 suppliers, IC design companies and research institutions. Those facilities are likely to be completely automated.

Last March, the South Korean government issued a statement saying, “The mega cluster [in Yongin] will be the key base of our semiconductor ecosystem… [to] leap forward as a leading country in the middle of fierce global competition over advanced industries.”

“Timing is everything in the semiconductor industry,” Samsung Semiconductor CEO Kyung Kye Hyun said according to reports. “It is most important to start the construction of the Yongin National Industrial Complex early to maintain dominance amid intensifying global semiconductor competition.”

Samsung is also building a new semiconductor R&D center in Yongin. When he visited the site last October, Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Lee Jae Yong said, “We need a turning point for innovation that leads us to take another leap in the semiconductor business amid ongoing internal and external risks.”

Samsung Electronics expects to report operating profits for the fourth quarter of 2023 of between 2.7-2.9 trillion won, which would be an increase of 11% to 19% over third-quarter profits. Sales are expected to remain more or less unchanged, but memory prices have started to recover while costs come down.

Despite global macroeconomic uncertainty, Samsung’s management expects continued improvement in chip market conditions in 2024. Higher sales and profits, in turn, will make it easier to fund the automation of existing production lines and the construction of new AI-powered factories.

Samsung kept semiconductor capital spending roughly flat in 2023 amid a cyclical downturn. In 2024, the company should resume its long-term upward investment trend, with a focus on increasing the production of high-bandwidth memory used with AI accelerators.

South Korea’s SK Hynix is also deploying more AI in its chip-making mix. Photo: Asia Times Files / AFP / Jung Yeon-Je

AI is both a productivity-enhancing tool and a new growth market for memory chip makers like Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron. SK Hynix is working with Gauss Labs, an industrial AI solutions developer with offices in Palo Alto, California, and in Seoul.

The AI start-up’s “Panoptes virtual metrology” solution is already being used to optimize thin film deposition in SK Hynix factories and more applications are reportedly in the pipeline.

Micron, meanwhile, has its own internally developed AI to optimize production. “We have built something here that is completely differentiated. We’re seeing much, much higher levels of accuracy,” said Koen de Backer, Micron’s vice president of smart manufacturing and AI.

“We can now launch products twice as fast while improving productivity by 10%. It’s truly been transformative. You could say it’s a killer app,” the Micron executive claimed.

With that competition, Samsung’s completely automated AI fab is a strategic imperative, not an option, in a chip-making landscape fastly being reshaped by AI.

Follow this writer on X: @ScottFo83517667

Continue Reading