Vietnam currently benefits from China’s Covid-19 lockdowns and the geopolitical tensions between the United States and China — especially in electronics manufacturing. The country flirted with its own “zero-Covid” policy and lockdowns in 2021 but changed course quickly to have two-thirds of its population vaccinated by December 2021. News leaked that Apple would move its iPad […]Continue Reading
Technology leaders have been fighting intellectual-property theft for centuries. History shows that a static defense has never worked for long. Sustained leadership depends on innovation, not barriers. The United States is now engaged in an unprecedented effort to deny semiconductor technology to China. Maintaining US leadership depends more on US innovation than on technology controls. […]Continue Reading
Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. This war has been horrendous, though it does not compare with the terrible destruction wrought by the US bombardment of Iraq (“shock and awe”) in 2003. In the Gomel region of Belarus that borders Ukraine, Russian and Ukrainian diplomats met on February 28 to begin negotiations toward a ceasefire. These talks fell apart. Then, […]Continue Reading
How would an artificial intelligence (AI) decide what to do? One common approach in AI research is called “reinforcement learning.” Reinforcement learning gives the software a “reward” defined in some way, and lets the software figure out how to maximize the reward. This approach has produced some excellent results, such as building software agents that […]Continue Reading
While European energy prices have eased slightly in recent months, stress continues to build across a continent that has long been dependent on access to cheap Russian energy. Protests related to high energy costs have been held from Belgium to the Czech Republic. Fuel shortages have led to long queues to buy gasoline at fuel stations in France. The Don’t Pay […]Continue Reading
When Nancy Pelosi traveled to Taiwan in August, it made front-page news around the world and raised the specter of all-out war between the US and China. Early in October, the Biden administration made a far more decisive move against China – but it barely made the news in Australia. Biden decided to unequivocally sever […]Continue Reading
Relations between the United States and China seem chillier and chillier, but you’d never have known that reading this item that appeared on China’s Foreign Ministry website last May: President Xi Jinping has recently replied to a letter from Ms Sarah Lande, a friend of his in the US state of Iowa. Xi Jinping pointed […]Continue Reading
Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu called his counterparts in the US, UK, France and Turkey on Sunday to warn that Ukraine could be preparing to use a “dirty bomb.” Is Shoigu also warning that the Russian army might be pushed into using nuclear weapons? A dirty bomb is commonly understood as a conventional explosive packed with radioactive materials. The […]Continue Reading
China has simulated using nuclear weapons to destroy near-earth orbit satellites, a capability that could knock out multiple enemy satellite constellations used to support military operations. The Northwest Institute of Nuclear Technology, a Xian-based research institute run by the People’s Liberation Army, claims to have developed a model to evaluate the performance of nuclear anti-satellite […]Continue Reading
Stock markets in Hong Kong and Shanghai fell sharply on Monday (October 24) as China’s new leadership was formed after the week-long 20th Communist Party National Congress closed on Saturday. The Hang Seng Index fell 1,030 points, or 6.36%, to 15,180, the lowest level in 13 years. Technology and property stocks fell by more than […]Continue Reading