Disruption – Sure A Not

Friend or foe? Trump’s threats against ‘free-riding’ allies could backfire – Asia Times

On: January 21, 2025

In: Asia

Donald Trump is an unexpected United States president in that he may be the second to reach greater anxiety in friends than in enemies.

Take the replies to his pre-inauguration remarks about buying Greenland, for example, which placed US alliance Denmark at the center of the international foreign legislation radar screen and caused the Swedish government – which retains control of the territory’s foreign and security policies — to proclaim Greenland is n’t for sale.

Canada is also in Trump’s sights with trade tariff threats and claims it should be the 51st US state. Its government has vociferously opposed Trump’s comments, begun back-channel lobbying in Washington and prepared for trade retaliation.

Both cases highlight the coming challenges for management of the global US alliance network in an era of increased great power rivalry– not least for NATO, of which Denmark and Canada are member states.

Members of that network saw off the Soviet Union’s formidable Cold War challenge and are now crucial to addressing China ’s complex challenge to contemporary international order. They might be excused for asking themselves the question: with allies like this, who needs adversaries?

Oversimplifying complex relationships

Trump’s longstanding critique is that allies have taken advantage of the US by under-spending on defense and “free-riding ” on the security provided by Washington ’s global network.

In an intuitive sense, it is hard to deny this. To varying degrees, all states in the international system– including US allies, partners and even adversaries – are free-riding on the benefits of the global international order the US constructed after the Cold War.

But is Trump, therefore, justified in seeking a greater return on past US investment?

Since alliance commitments involve a complex mix of interests, perception, domestic politics and bargaining, Trump would n’t be the deal-maker he says he is if he did n’t seek a redistribution of the alliance burden.

The general problem with his recent foreign policy rhetoric, however, is that a grain of truth is not a stable basis for a sweeping change in US foreign policy.

Specifically, Trump’s “free-riding ” claims are an oversimplification of a complex reality. And there are potentially substantial political and strategic costs associated with the US using coercive diplomacy against what Trump calls “delinquent ” alliance partners.

US tanks in a parade with US flag flying — US military on parade in Warsaw in 2022: force projection is about more than money. Image: Getty Images via The Conversation

Free riding or burden sharing?

The inconvenient truth for Trump is that “free-riding ” by allies is hard to differentiate from standard alliance “burden sharing, ” where the US is in a quid pro quo relationship: it subsidizes its allies ’ security in exchange for benefits they provide the US.

And whatever concept we use to characterise US alliance policy, it was developed in a deliberate and methodical manner over decades.

US subsidization of its allies ’ security is a longstanding choice underpinned by a strategic logic: it gives Washington power projection against adversaries and leverage in relations with its allies.

To the degree there may have been free-riding aspects in the foreign policies of US allies, this pales next to their overall contribution to US foreign policy.

Allies were an essential part in the US victory in its Cold War competition with the Soviet-led communist bloc and are integral in the current era of strategic competition with China.

Overblown claims of free-riding overlook the fact that when US interests differ from its allies, it has either vetoed their actions or acted decisively itself, with the expectation reluctant allies will eventually follow.

During the Cold War, the US maintained a de facto veto over which allies could acquire nuclear weapons ( the UK and France ) and which ones could not ( Germany, Taiwan, South Korea ).

In 1972, the US established a close relationship with China to contain the Soviet Union– despite protestations from Taiwan, and the security concerns of Japan and South Korea.

In the 1980s, Washington proceeded with the deployment of US missiles on the soil of some very reluctant NATO states and their even more reluctant populations. The same pattern has occurred in the post-Cold War era, with key allies backing the US in its interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The problems with coercion

Trump’s recent comments on Greenland and Canada suggest he will take an even more assertive approach toward allies than during his first term. But the line between a reasonable US policy response and a coercive one is hard to draw.

It is not just that US policymakers have the challenging task of determining that line. In pursuing such a policy, the US also risks eroding the hard-earned credit it earned from decades of investment in its alliance network.

There’s also the obvious point that it takes two to tango in an alliance relationship. US allies are not mere pawns in Trump’s strategic chessboard. Allies have agency.

They will have been strategizing how to deal with Trump since before the presidential campaign in 2024. Their options range from withholding cooperation to various forms of defection from an alliance relationship.

Are the benefits associated with a disruption of established alliances worth the cost? It is hard to see how they might be. In which case, it is an experiment the Trump administration might be well advised to avoid.

Nicholas Khoo is associate professor of international politics and principal research fellow, Institute for Indo-Pacific Affairs ( Christchurch ), University of Otago

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

Silicon Valley venture capital blowing up the US defense industry – Asia Times

By: Bolen C

On: January 20, 2025

In: Asia

I’m a propaganda, and if I believe that is going to make people believe what I need them to think, I’ll twist the truth. I’ll just make my own version of it.

This is not a soundbite from a specially exuberant time in the hit television show Mad People. The CEO of Silicon Valley’s hottest company for military technology, Palmer Luckey, uttered these words.

Luckey’s business, Anduril Industries, specializes in unnatural intelligence-enabled systems, including automatic weapons techniques. Anduril is a darling of the defense startup scene and its newly emerging venture capital (VC ) ecosystem, where big promises, big bets, and a bias toward propaganda are a staple required for success, with a valuation of US$ 14 billion.

The integration of artificial intelligence ( AI ) into defense programs, let alone weapon systems, remains controversial. The UK Artificial Intelligence in Weapon Systems Committee has urged caution in regards to the sourcing of AI-enabled arms, but as is frequently the case with Silicon Valley products, the creation, purchasing, and implementation of AI protection programs have quickly accelerated in recent years.

Founded only in 2017, Anduril has already been awarded multiple multi-million dollar contracts by the US Department of Defense ( DoD ), as well as the UK Ministry of Defense ( MoD ). This may not seem like a amazing growth in light of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, the conflict in Gaza, and rising global stress.

In my latest research on defense AI, I identified that one of the key owners of the accelerated purchasing of military company products, such as automatic drones and another AI-enabled systems, is the influx of huge sums of venture capital money and influence.

These venture capital firms must adopt the speed and scale ethos of the technology sector and the appetite for risk and revolution in these venture capital firms. This makes these firms not only financial players but also political ones.

This trend toward creating defense in the vein of Silicon Valley, driven by venture capital interests, is likely to become more pronounced and pervasive, according to my research, which was published in Finance and Society. With this in mind, it’s worth looking more closely at the dynamics in play when venture capital sets its eyes on matters of life and death.

The new financial model for the military

The military AI industry and global defense spending are both booming. The global market for military AI was estimated to be worth$ 13.3 billion in 2024, with a projected growth of$ 35 billion over the next seven years, according to current estimates.

These numbers vary, depending on the market data services consulted, but they have been revised upward on a regular basis in the last 12 months. In the last 24 months, global defense budgets have also increased in response to ongoing conflicts and a general escalation in militarization.

Global defense spending reached a record level of just over$ 2 trillion in 2023. In 2023, the US accounted for nearly 40 % of global defense spending with an$ 877 billion budget. The NATO alliance will be spending US$ 1.47 trillion in 2024. For large tech and finance companies with plans to establish themselves in the defenSe market, these are significant, attractive numbers.

Meanwhile, defense organizations are starting to spend more money on cutting-edge technologies, including, inevitably, AI. According to a report from the Brookings Institute in 2024, defense contracts for AI-related technologies increased by nearly 1, 200 % in the 12-month period from August 2022 to August 2023.

For most new AI products, civilian or otherwise, some form of venture capital funding is often involved, especially if the AI venture in question might prove to be too risky to be funded through bank loans or other financial instruments. Venture capital is prepared to place bets on innovations that other investors would not be able or unwilling to accept.

In the past two decades, this type of funding has primarily focused on Silicon Valley products for the civilian market, where the dynamics have allowed for extraordinary gains to be made for investors.

However, those with large amounts of capital to invest see a new opportunity for huge gains in defense as the defense market is expanding and the opportunities for extraordinary venture capital returns in the commercial spheres diminish.

It is unsurprising, then, that in the past five years, venture capital investment in defense technologies has surged. US venture capital funding for military technology startups has doubled between 2019 and 2022, and since 2021, the defense technology sector has received an injection of$ 130 billion in VC funding.

Private VC investments are projected to reach a record$ 1 billion, driven primarily by US venture firms, and are also at an all-time high for the European defense sector. There is a palpable buzz in the air about the possibilities for VC-backed endeavors and the possibility to reshape the defense landscape.

The Silicon Valley nexus between venture capital, military, and Silicon Valley

Venture capital has always been connected to the military sector in some way. In fact, venture capital defense investing is experiencing a boom since its infancy.

The origins of venture capital are &nbsp, typically traced back&nbsp, to the American Research and Development Corporations ( ARDC ) founded in 1946, just after the Second World War, in which the US was buoyed by a victory achieved, at least in part, by cutting-edge technologies.

One of the first businesses to consistently raise money from institutional investors to finance start-up businesses with a lot of potential but too risky for bank loans was ARDC.

With this approach, ARDC was the first venture capital outfit to create investment portfolios that often relied on one or two extraordinary successes in order to offset the majority of companies that only made very modest returns or, indeed, losses. In this way, ARDC was the first “unicorn” company to exist.

Unicorns are young companies that receive a valuation of US$ 1 billion or more (up until recently an exceedingly rare occasion for a startup and something every investor covets in their portfolio ). This is at the heart of investing in venture capital: it is risk-based with potential very high returns.

In the early days, especially just after the Second World War, many investments went toward supporting startups that would deal with&nbsp, military innovation and technologies. This resulted in the development of various analytical tools, high-voltage generators, radiation detection technology, as well as early mini-computer manufacturers, such as the Digital Equipment Corporation.

The digital landscape, as we know it today, has its roots in the military. In the 1950s, advancements in communications theory were intended for military missile technology, and the grandfathers of AI were almost entirely involved in military projects that spanned the course of the internet.

Many Silicon Valley firms remained entangled with the military sector over the decades and, as the anthropologist Roberto Gonzales has written, almost” all of today’s tech giants carry some DNA from the defense industry, and have a long history of cooperating with the Pentagon”. This relationship is then incorporated into the DNA of venture capital.

But, it is worth stressing that traditionally it was the needs of the military organizations and the governments that largely dictated the pace, structure and process for technological innovations.

A progressively vocal and influential technology startup industry and their funding partners have now launched a raft of” Patriotic capital” initiatives, including American Dynamism, the Special Competitive Studies Project, Rebooting the Arsenal of Democracy, and America’s Frontier Fund.

These enterprises were conceived by a handful of prominent companies and individuals in the new defense tech domain to shape defense and military priorities and make good returns while doing so.

In addition to unicorn companies like Anduril Industries, Shield AI, Skydio, Scale AI, and Palantir ( Palantir is technically no longer a startup since it went public in 2020, but it is still one of a cohort of new military technologies ), unicorn companies are proliferating in the defense sector thanks to large amounts of venture capital funding.

This is a recent development. The venture capital sector concentrated its efforts on a thriving civilian technology landscape over the two decades from the mid-’90s to 2014, where the sky was the limit for returns from technology startups like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and PayPal.

The defense market, in contrast, was considered mature and consolidated, with strict acquisition rules and regulations and too little opportunity for outsized returns on investments. It would typically take several years for a government contract to be completed.

Defense was also dominated by a handful of key industry players – the so-called primes which include Lockheed Martin, RTX Corporation, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, General Dynamics and BAE Systems.

These primes split up the lion’s share of the defense market among themselves, and there appeared to be little room for tech startups to expand without significant investment.

For example, companies like SpaceX and Palantir sued the US Air Force and US Army in 2014, respectively, for the opportunity to bid for certain contracts. Since then, it has become more common to break open defense for military startups.

In addition to these structural hurdles for VC investment in the defense sector, there was a greater nominal moral cost associated with the idea of profiteering from war. There was a perceived reluctance to be viewed as investing in” a defense portfolio” or, to put it another way, in instruments of death because venture capital investors are frequently endowments, foundations, insurance companies, universities, and pension funds. European venture capital investors were particularly cautious.

However, the remarkable speed with which this trepidation appears to have subsided in less than a decade is remarkable, suggesting either that the investors supporting venture capital firms come from diverse backgrounds that might have less hesitation when it comes to gaining from the business of war or that it was always just a matter of math rather than morals.

Unicorns and hypergrowth

Everyone wants to invest in a unicorn today because its valuation potential is so high.

But in order to get a foot in the door with an unproven product or concept, some startups can be motivated to make big, bold claims about the revolutionary, change-making nature of their products. The ethos of overpromising is frequently maintained even after a company has secured funding in order to maintain success toward hypergrowth.

In the worst-case scenario, overpromising is done at such scale that it amounts to criminal fraud, as it was the case with the notorious blood testing startup Theranos, which went from being one of the most exciting healthcare startups, valued at$ 10 billion at its peak in 2015, to a complete bust in four short years.

In the Theranos case, the charismatic founder of the business had overpromised the capabilities of the technology, claiming that it would make it possible to perform a number of tests using only one tiny drop of blood. This ground-breaking technology” could revolutionise medicine and save lives the world over“.

Although the technology was a promise made in the future, it was a lie that the company claimed to already have a functioning testing device. Theranos folded in 2018 and the charismatic founder, Elizabeth Holmes, went to prison.

Selling a fantasy

There are many other, less dramatic stories that play out in a similar, although not fraudulent way: companies that promise to revolutionize the way we do mundane things with ground-breaking technology, which turn out to be unsustainable, unworkable, or simply fizzle out.

However, the outcome is that investors lose money and that, more importantly, that those who have come to rely on the promise of technology suffer.

In the defense context, the promises of new military technology revolve around selling powerful deterrence, of protecting democracy, of being able to have comprehensive, accurate, real-time knowledge, of a fully transparent globe, and, first and foremost of a clean, swift and decisive victory with smooth and effortless connectivity.

This can foster an unrealistic vision of omniscience and omnipresence at worst, and at worst, it fosters a desire for an unthinkable revolution in warfare that is too appealing to resist, which ultimately draws an even wider audience into its wake.

These narratives are often underwritten by a general hype that a future with AI is inevitable. This creates a compelling narrative that mythologizes and valorizes a technology that may never deliver what is promised. It is a potent mix that often resists more sober voices that urge caution.

Although the claims made by defense unicorns frequently seem plausible, they are typically untrue because they relate to the future. And often that future reflects a vision shaped by fiction and science-fiction, which is always some degrees removed from the social and political challenges of reality.

Programs that strive to achieve global transparency and reach quickly are influenced by this temptation to overpromise and the mythologize of potential technology. The Joint-All-Domain Command and Control ( JADC2 ) program is one such effort initiated by the Pentagon. For “predictive analysis” and “high-speed battle,” it aims to unite all domains, including land, air, sea, space, and cyber, into a single network.

To make the program palatable to Congress, JADC2 is often likened to the ride-sharing platform Uber, promising seamless interaction between systems and platforms for speedy interventions.

This brings attention back to AI as a fundamental requirement for all military equipment and platforms. Without expanding military AI, this vision will be impossible. The opportunity for military startups is located here.

Two prominent military tech companies are contractors for JADC2 – Anduril and Palantir. Both businesses keep their ambitions to disrupt the defense sector, unseat the current leaders, and carve out a monopoly share of the market in order to increase profits.

Palantir has set its eyes on “becoming the central operating system for all US defense programs”, Anduril has declared that it will be going” after everything that’s on the]Defense Department’s ] list” in order to dominate in the sector. This is the battle for growth for both businesses.

As Anduril’s Luckey says: “you have to fight and win across multiple areas“. ( He refers to that in terms of corporate strategy, not actual battlegrounds. ) Similarly, CEO and co-founder of Palantir, Alex Karp, acknowledged that, in order to break defense as a market wide open, he is proud to “have dragged and kicked and cajoled and humiliated” various lawmakers, policymakers and government to help further this goal. Move quickly and damage things.

Making a unicorn requires a concerted effort and an aggressive posture on the part of those who stand to gain the most financially in this domain. It is best to work together with like-minded individuals. In the current defense venture capital landscape, there is a close entanglement of founders and funders.

For instance, Peter Thiel is the co-founder of Palantir. He also oversees the Founders Fund VC company, which has investments in Space X, Anduril, and Scale AI, among others. The VC company Andreessen Horowitz also funds SpaceX, Anduril, Shield AI and Skydio.

These VC companies ‘ managers have close ties to one another. Similarly, there is interlacing between companies. For instance, former Palantir employees who founded Anduril, who applied their knowledge gained from Palentir to the company. Palmer Luckey, formerly of Oculus Rift, was installed as its charismatic and outspoken CEO.

The America’s Frontier Fund is being led by Eric Schmidt and Peter Thiel, who were formerly the CEO of Google and the head of the US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence.

There is a tightly knit and very well-connected network of financiers and startups that all work to double down on the key driving message: the defense sector is in need of disruption and we are the ones to shake things up.

Representatives of five newly established military organizations were present at a recent panel giving evidence to the US Armed Services Committee. Every single one of the five was either funded by the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz or otherwise affiliated with the firm.

At the US Armed Services Committee hearing, Palantir’s Chief Technology Officer, Shyam Sankar, testified in favor of “letting chaos reign” and “more crazy” in the military acquisition and procurement process so that the necessary incentives can be forwarded for innovation through inter-departmental competition.

Regulatory limitations, he thinks,” constrains you to oversight” and he “would gladly accept more failure if it meant that we had more catastrophic success”. Although it is unclear what kind of success this might lead to or what might happen if it fails, Palantir’s CTO makes it abundantly clear that he speaks with venture capital logic in mind.

And, according to a recent US Defense Innovation Board report, it seems the government is ready to embrace more risk and provide top cover for such “mavericks”.

The” crisis” narrative

Besides cultivating startups with high potential, there are a number of ways to bend the defense sector to the needs of Silicon Valley contractors and their VC backers. Here, too, storytelling has a lot of power.

Venture capital managers and their startups often pen high-profile op-eds in which the poor state of ( US) defense is lamented, in which the need for accelerated innovation is emphasized, and in which the possibility that the US might “very likely” become embroiled in” a three-front war with China, Russia and Iran” is conjured up. In essence, the urgency is conveyed, which encourages the promotion of businesses that are aware of the coming crisis.

A second pillar in the structural overhaul of defense is to employ an intricate network of former government employees who serve either as lobbyists or as advisers with close links to the government.

For instance, in August 2024, former Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher assumed the role of Palantir’s head of defense operations, and H. R. McMaster, former National Security Advisor, is senior advisor to Shield Capital.

There are many more such “revolving door” moments in which credible experts lend their authority to the new startups. Like most Silicon Valley creations, the military tech startup scene has a certain reputation, and the money is also appealing.

Anduril, having learned from Palantir, hired a slew of lobbyists in the first week, spending more money on “lawyers and lobbyists than engineers” as Luckey noted in a recent interview with The Economist.

With this, Anduril adopts a relatively traditional method of shaping the defense industry, which is also employed by top defense contractors, who are “investing heavily on teams of lawyers and lobbyists to shape program requirements in line with the company’s existing technology,” as Anduril acknowledges in a 2022 blog post.

Anduril, and its backers, are now doing the very same, tailored to their own suite of technologies. The attorneys are frequently employed as a means of using the law as a tool to compel reform as well as to oversee mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships.

The primary goal of the SpaceX and Palantir lawsuits against the US Army and Air Force, which I mentioned earlier, was not necessarily to win ( Space X’s lawsuit was not successful, Palantir’s was ) but to pry open space for acquisitions overhaul and both lawsuits achieved just that.

A strategy of promoting a sense of urgency, working with lobbyists, and creating the structural potential for a defense overhaul is now well underway. To be clear, I am not arguing that the defense sector would not benefit from modernization or restructuring.

I don’t want to say that all new military products are unsustainable or irrelevant. I am also not seeking to pit the primes against the new venture capital dynamics and their focus on growth.

But what I believe is worth looking into are the dynamics at play with these new businesses and their implicit priorities and interests, since they will influence how practices and priorities are decided. And where disruption is at work, some level of breakage is to be expected. In terms of life and death, this has a different tone.

Disruption debris

The disruption in the defense sector is already well underway, and efforts to remake it in the style of Silicon Valley have had a number of positive effects in recent years. The JADC2 program mentioned earlier is one.

Others are evident in programs like the US Department of Defense’s Replicator Initiative, which incorporates the aims, timelines and products that Silicon Valley military startups have to offer.

Defense officials are repeating the venture capital industry’s talking points, and various acquisition programs have changed to accommodate the required speed and scale. These companies have the ear of policymakers and the demands for a quasi-spiritual” Defense Reformation” are finding a growing audience.

What are the possible effects, then?

When Uber disrupted the private transport industry, it left in its wake a raft of eroded labor laws, worker’s rights and healthcare provisions for drivers. When AirBnB’s industry boomed, rental costs increased in well-known tourist destinations. When you try to create a monopoly, there are always social and political consequences. These effects are frequently predictable, but occasionally not.

Disrupting the defense acquisitions process comes, at the very minimum, at the expense of greater oversight of the acquisitions process. The technology industry is not known for being aware of the limits of regulations. Quite the contrary. Some of the most well-known investors in the new military startup scene are most vehemently opposed to any form of regulation.

VC heavyweight Marc Andreessen, for example, famously penned a Techno-Optimist manifesto in which he names risk management, trust and safety measures and the precautionary principles as” the enemy”.

Less regulation results in less oversight and accountability for spending, as well as for how and where specific technologies are used, and what effects are caused by them. This much is evident.

However, the rapid deployment and deployment of military technologies for battle may have many other, highly plausible, unforeseen effects. One is the refocusing on risk and experimentation.

The most recent crop of military startup technologies, such as AI-enabled drones and AI decision support systems, are being tested and improved both live and during ongoing conflicts, such as the Russia-Ukraine war, as well as in Gaza. This is a form of prototyping which is becoming increasingly prominent and which needs an active battlefield for effective testing, iteration and optimizing of the technologies.

This also means that it is possible to use outdated technologies that will only be tested and improved as you go along. It normalizes, if not promotes, the launch and sale of flawed and possibly inadequate AI products, which will inevitably cause harm to innocent civilians caught in the crosshairs of conflict.

We can already see this as a result of technology companies ‘ efforts to sell their large language models to military organizations. Scale AI, for example, has teamed up with Meta to sell an LLM product, Defense Llama, for defense purposes. The organization claims that the system needs “absolutely to involve people.”

But given the well-known fact that LLMs are prone to what are known as hallucinations, the chances that such technologies will work exactly as advertised are slim for a context so complex and dynamic as warfare. People who are in the middle of this experimentation, fine-tuning, and live testing may suffer as a result.

It is a key concern that the technology might not be suitable for the unexpected, for the less calculable or less foreseeable elements in warfare. That includes potential new terrorist threats or actions by those nations that are frequently viewed as irrational, like North Korea, for instance.

Anduril CEO, Luckey, admitted as much in the interview I opened with. He acknowledged that potential enemies who reject the game’s theoretical foundation on which much of the AI logic for defense rests:” Each of whom is responsible for the logic on which his weapons are built falls apart.”

” It’s very hard to engage in game theory with people who pursue the non-game theory optimal strategy…It’s like playing monopoly with the person who is going to drop out and give all their money to somebody else”.

A significant impediment to something that is so rife with chance as warfare. There are also second and third-order effects that emanate from this shift toward venture capital logic.

By presenting an imminent threat, the global risk and security landscape may change, by placing greater emphasis on weapons technologies, funding for alternative approaches to conflict might be restrained, and by dedicating more money to technologies that are still being tested and may not have permanence, significant amounts of money that would be better spent elsewhere might be wasted.

But this is a land of make-believe and unicorns, where such considerations are as speculative as the much-hyped promises of AI weapons as the defenders of democracy.

The “move fast and break things” motto in Silicon Valley implies that issues that arise during the development of the technology can always be addressed and resolved later. In the world of defense and war, the harm produced by this kind of risk-taking cannot so easily be undone.

Elke Schwarz is a lecturer at Queen Mary University of London’s Political Theory program.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the article’s introduction.

China tech shrugged off Trump 1.0 trade war – and can do it again – Asia Times

By: Bolen C

On: January 18, 2025

In: Asia

When Donald Trump re-enters the White House, he’ll get accompanied by a group of China hawks who will use tariffs and trade restrictions to prevent Beijing from challenging the country’s technological superiority.

China has been subject to such industry force since Trump took office in 2017 and it has continued through the Biden administration. This isn’t completely new.

However, some commentators are suggesting that the magnitude of what Trump is now proposing, including taxes of up to 60 % on goods from China, had “keep Beijing on the defense and completely transform the rivalry in America’s favor,” according to one analyst.

For a watch is premised on the belief that China’s obsolete, state-subsidized, manufacturing-for-export type is mature for disturbance by US taxes.

However, as someone who has written and edited two books on China and creativity and studied China’s systems since the early 2000s, I believe this description of its economy is at least two years out of date.

China’s industrial sectors have grown fast since 2016 as a result of the removal of American tariffs. However, since the” business war” launched by Trump in 2017, Chinese systems has really emerged as a world leader.

China’s technology climb

Thirty years ago, China’s best technology company had yet to create a competitive personal computer internally, and the country scarcely had internet access. The nation was the nation’s manufacturer fifteen years ago, where iPhones and other technology products were assembled without the ability to produce any high-tech components on their own. They were stuck at the bottom of the value chain.

No Chinese planners could have predicted the future directions that China’s technology would take it even with the best glass game in the middle of the 2000s.

Fast-forward to now: China is today ahead of rival economies across large industrial areas. The think tank Information Technology and Innovation Foundation found in a 2024 statement that China is leading or internationally competitive in five out of nine high-tech businesses – automation, nuclear energy, electric vehicles, artificial intelligence and quantum computing – and quickly catching up in four others: chemicals, system tools, biopharmaceuticals and semiconductors.

A Bloomberg research also identified China as leading or internationally competitive in 12 out of 13 technology-intensive business. And China was identified as the leader of 37 of the 44 crucial systems tracked by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Why has the Chinese technology sector grown so fast? Some in Washington think that the decades of meticulous state planning have given rise to the world’s high-tech sectors.

But this, I believe, greatly overestimates Beijing’s vision and power. Although the Chinese government has certainly pursued the lofty objective of catching up with the West since the 1980s, having goals is not the same as having the ability to carry them out.

Many in the West level to the Chinese government subsidies that support local tech companies. While grants have contributed to some technical achievement, the Chinese government has also provided many problems.

Take electronics, for example: Despite massive Chinese state assets since the 1990s, China still lags in producing cutting-edge cards and is reliant on goods.

Dare to DREAM

In my view, China’s technological dynamism didn’t come from the magic of central planning, but through five key elements I call DREAM.

D stands for the exchange between the state and the market.

While China’s government wields significant power, the country’s private sector is neither submissive nor powerless. In 2022, businesses that are not owned by the government ( mostly private ones ) but also offshore ones in which Beijing does not hold a controlling stake accounted for 95 % of enterprise R&amp, D spending and 88 % of urban employment.

Beijing has stepped up its sanctions against tech giants, including a ban on Alibaba’s Ant Group from listing on the New York Stock Exchange in 2020 and a Covid-19 lockdown that hurt the private sector, but the government is not bound by strict ideology, as many in the West believe it to be. It has recently begun to support the private sector, and it has even begun to draft laws to protect them.

Indeed, it’s more accurate to describe state-market relations in China as dynamic, adaptive interaction– more dialogue than dictatorship.

R refers to domestic R&amp and D ( R&amp, D).

Over the past 20 years, China has heavily invested in domestic research capacity, once dependent on imported technology. Chinese scientists and engineers continue to be deeply involved in global networks despite the fact that political tensions have accelerated the development of self-reliance.

Further, China has a higher number of highly skilled workers thanks to a supposedly anti-espionage initiative launched under Trump’s first administration.

The” China initiative” that the US Justice Department introduced in 2018 promoted the idea that Chinese and Chinese American scientists might be spying for Beijing, leading to a flood of top scientists returning to China.

They continued to conduct cutting-edge research and train a fresh batch of Chinese scientists there.

E is for China’s industrial ecosystem, which it can exploit.

China’s vast manufacturing base enables rapid creation and scaling of new technologies. China was the only nation to cover every major industrial sector and contributed 35 % of the global gross manufacturing output in 2023.

Silicon Valley’s innovative ecosystem, which can rely on extensive venture capital and a booming stock market, may not exist in China. However, it has over the years developed comprehensive supply chains, and it excels at repurposing them to quickly introduce new products to the market.

Take the example of robotics. Only when labor costs increased sharply, did China take the robotics industry seriously. In 2010, China’s manufacturing labor costs were about US$ 2 per hour, similar to those of the Philippines or Vietnam, by 2022, that figure rose to about$ 8 per hour – more than double the average for Southeast Asian countries.

China installs more industrial robots each year than the rest of the world combined, and its robot quality has increased exponentially.

A stands for accumulative changes.

Chinese companies excel at incremental improvements, which add up to an accumulative transforming effect rather than new discoveries. Instead of a few brilliant ideas from any leader’s creative mind, the vast manufacturing networks offer opportunities to improve already-existing products based on market feedback.

Analysts in the US have long predicted that China’s rampant intellectual property violations would end its innovation drive, believing that it would stifle people’s desire to innovate if they believed they would be robbed of their ideas.

Instead, as Taiwanese tech expert and writer Kai-Fu Lee has explained, Chinese enterprises can be dynamic and innovative in an environment with less IP protection. They frequently grow their market share quickly and establish business ecosystems to stop rivals from catching up.

M means the middle market.

Chinese firms tend to target middle-income consumers, both domestically and globally. By prioritizing affordability and functionality over cutting-edge innovation, they avoid head-to-head competition with Western giants such as Apple.

Xiaomi and Oppo, two Chinese smartphone manufacturers, cost a third to a third as much as an iPhone but have comparable features. Tesla and other Chinese electric vehicles have comparable prices, but they still have some excellent features.

Chinese firms tolerate lower profit margins, as they can rely on the expanded sales in the middle market, both domestically and, increasingly, overseas.

Tariffs as a counterproductive measure

The incoming Trump administration’s issue is that, while tariffs may change how China’s manufacturing and exports are perceived globally, they won’t eliminate any of the DREAM components. They might actually have the opposite effect: boosting China’s capacity for self-reliance and bolstering its standing in the world’s middle-class.

The issue is primarily due to the fact that American policymakers frequently view technological competition with China as a zero-sum game. However, technological competition is not comparable to a race with separate lanes and a finish line. Rather, tech transformation is a complex process in which countries and companies compete, collaborate and build on each other’s work.

Ultimately, America’s technological prowess won’t be measured by the extent to which it manages to stop China, but by how successfully American companies can address humanity’s greatest challenges. There will be little progress made in the direction of tariffs and trade wars.

Vassar College’s professor of economic geography is Yu Zhou.

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

China plans to blow Starlink out of the sky in a Taiwan war – Asia Times

By: Bolen C

On: January 14, 2025

In: Asia

The important part place would play in a Taiwan Strait conflict is highlighted by China’s strong moves to counter Starlink’s martial applications with cutting-edge satellite disruption methods.

This month, the South China Morning Post (SCMP ) reported that Chinese scientists have developed a method to target SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation. According to SCMP, the technique is used to simulate a space mission that could use 99 Chinese satellites to view nearly 1,400 Starlink satellites in less than 12 hours.

The study, led by Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics director Wu Yunhua, features Starlink’s martial applications as seen in the Ukraine conflict.

According to the Chinese team’s computer model, China could effectively monitor and control the functional status of Starlink satellites, which are equipped with lasers, microwaves, and other types of reconnaissance and tracking equipment. The SCMP report cites a fresh linear AI engine that was used to mimic the whale hunting strategy.

Wu’s team claims to have created an unheard technology that makes it possible for computers at the surface command center to create a detailed and trustworthy action strategy in less than two hours.

Additionally, it states that the Harbin Institute of Technology, which is also a member of the job, has received significant funding from the Foreign government and military.

China is officially developing anti-satellite systems to counteract the Starlink network’s perceived military threat, which has shown geopolitical utility in Ukraine by enabling real-time battle coordination.

Foreign researchers advocate” soft and hard remove methods” to destroy Starlink’s distributed star, which provides resilient connection through over 2, 300 satellites.

Targeting individual Starlink satellites is deemed inefficient, instead, China has explored disruptive technologies, including the Relativistic Klystron Amplifier ( RKA ), a high-power microwave weapon capable of disabling sensitive satellite electronics. But, deploying for techniques faces challenges, including dish heat and power demands.

China is also developing advanced directed-energy arms like solid-state laser mounted on spacecraft and is exploring the potential of X-ray beams, which are concepts from the US Strategic Defense Initiative ( SDI) to destroy some satellites simultaneously. This strategy aims to remedy the standard anti-satellite arms’ cost-exchange imbalance.

The logic for these programs stems from Starlink’s confirmed defense advantages, such as boosting US drones ‘ and cunning fighters’ data speeds by 100-fold, and its important role in Ukraine’s field successes, including the sinking of the Russian cruiser Moskva.

China’s rely on such technology reflects a broader strategy to mitigate Starlink’s features and maintain space superiority, especially in scenarios like a Taiwan issue.

Noting Starlink’s effectiveness in the Ukraine war, Juliana Suess mentions in a January 2023 article for the Royal United Service Institute ( RUSI) that Taiwan, inspired by Ukraine, is developing its Low-Earth orbit ( LEO ) satellite communications system.

According to Suess, the project was announced by the Taiwanese Space Agency in December 2022 and aims to give Taiwan a sovereign capability for independent communications in the event of a Chinese invasion.

She points out that the system is designed to protect Taiwan’s undersea cables, which currently serve as the backbone of its external communications, from potential attacks.

In a July 2024 report for the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, Charles Mok and Kenny Huang highlight the vulnerability of Taiwan’s undersea cables, which the island relies on for its internet connectivity.

Mok and Huang point out that Taiwan has 15 submarine cables that connect it to international digital networks and carry over 99 percent of the world’s data. The risk of unintentional or deliberate cable damage is increased, however, because its location in an earthquake-prone region and its proximity to geopolitical tensions.

They note recent incidents of severed cables near Taiwan, which are believed to be involving Chinese ships, have raised concerns about potential digital blockades. They point out that fixing undersea cables takes time, and that having a few global repair fleets adds to this.

In line with the vulnerabilities of Taiwan’s undersea cable infrastructure, The War Zone reported this month that Taiwanese authorities have accused a Chinese-owned vessel, the Shunxin-39, of severing an undersea communications cable near Keelung Harbor.

According to The War Zone, this incident is the most recent in a line of similar events affecting Taiwan’s underwater infrastructure. The Shunxin-39, which is registered in Cameroon but controlled by a Hong Kong company led by a Chinese national, was discovered to be operating under multiple identities, raising questions of deliberate sabotage.

According to the report, Taiwan’s coast guard attempted to intercept the vessel for investigation, but rough weather prevented boarding. The ship then mentions that it continued its journey to South Korea, where Taiwanese authorities requested assistance with the investigation.

According to The War Zone, the damaged cable from the Trans-Pacific Express network is essential for connecting East Asia to the US West Coast. The report says that although communication was rerouted with minimal disruption, the incident highlights the vulnerability of Taiwan’s undersea infrastructure.

Although satellites are immune from these flaws, Mok and Huang contend that undersea cables cannot be replaced due to their high cost and limited data storage.

Furthermore, Marc Julienne mentions in a November 2024 report for the French Institute of International Relations ( IFRI ) that while ambitious, Taiwan’s LEO satellite program faces several key challenges.

First, Julienne makes a note of the fact that the use of foreign partners for satellite launches highlights the lack of local launch capabilities, a significant impediment to achieving full space power status. Although autonomous launch vehicles are in the works, he claims that development is still slow, with test flights only scheduled for 2028.

Second, he claims that efforts to create a domestically controlled LEO broadband satellite constellation are hampered by the limited experience in space-based communications among Taiwan’s traditional space actors and the lack of satellite communication expertise within its industrial base.

Julienne says these challenges are compounded by Taiwan’s geographic and geopolitical vulnerabilities, such as reliance on submarine cables for internet connectivity, which are prone to natural disasters and potential sabotage by adversaries.

He makes the point that Taiwan’s efforts to improve” communication resilience” through satellite constellations are important but require significant financial and human capital investments. However, he says Taiwan’s burgeoning space sector struggles to attract and retain talent, with many engineers favoring higher-paying opportunities in semiconductors or working overseas.

Finally, Julienne says navigating the geopolitical sensitivities of space development, particularly in maintaining civilian oversight and avoiding provocative military applications, adds complexity to Taiwan’s ambitions.

Trump’s Greenland bid is about race with China for Arctic control – Asia Times

By: Bolen C

On: January 9, 2025

In: Asia

With the exception of a canceled state visit to Denmark, Donald Trump faced a lot of ridicule when he first made an offer to purchase Greenland in 2019. Fast forward six times and Trump’s renewed “bid” for the nation’s largest beach is back on the table.

And that too with renewed strength. In an interview on January 7, the approaching US leader refused to rule out the use of force to take ownership of Greenland and he dispatched his brother, Don Jr,” and several associates” there on January 8, 2025, to emphasize his sincerity. Money may not be a hindrance to any offer that Trump envisages, especially with Elon Musk taking over the plan.

Trump is not the first US politician to attempt to get Greenland. The island’s first acquisition test dates again to 1868, the first time it has been documented.

The next significant efforts since Trump was made by the 1946 administration’s president, Harry S. Truman. Trump’s renewed interest in Greenland hence continues a long line of geographical expansion efforts by the United States.

Trump’s most recent bet is less absurd today than it may have appeared again in 2019 even without this historical background. On the one hand, Greenland is extremely rich in so-called” important materials”. According to a 2024 record in the Scholar, the area has known reserves of 43 out of 50 of these nutrients. According to the US Department of Energy, these minerals are necessary for “technologies that create, transmit, store and preserve power” and have” a higher risk of supply chain disruption”.

Given that China, a major distributor of a number of crucial nutrients to international markets, has been putting more restrictions on its imports as part of an ongoing business dispute with the US, this is undoubtedly a valid concern. Washington would have more control over the supply chain and lessen any utilize that China might have to exert. Having access to Greenland’s solutions.

Strategic price

Greenland’s corporate location also makes it valuable to the US. Pituffik Space Base, a well-established US center, is crucial to US weapon protection and early warning and is important for space surveillance. The base’s future growth may also improve US ability to track Russian naval activities in the Arctic Ocean and the northern Atlantic.

US autonomy over Greenland, if Trump’s deal comes to pass, do likewise properly buckle any goes by rivals, especially China, to get a grip on the island. If Greenland is still a member of NATO, which has provided the island with an quarterly grant of about US$ 500 million, this may be less of a issue.

Greenland’s freedom – assistance for which has been gradually growing – may open the door to more, and less controlled, foreign purchase. In this situation, China is perceived as especially eager to step in if the chance arises.

Add to that the growing security assistance between Russia and China and the fact that Russia has typically become more physically violent, and Trump’s case appears to be even more reliable. He is not the only one to raise the alarm: Canada, Denmark, and Norway have all recently reacted to the growing Russian and Chinese presence in the Arctic.

The issue with Trump’s proposal is not that it is based on a flawed assessment of the underlying issue it attempts to address. In a time when geopolitical rivalry is waning, Russia’s and China’s influence in the Arctic region is generally a security issue. In this context, Greenland unquestionably poses a particular and significant security risk to the United States.

The flaws in Trump’s plan

The problem is Trump’s” America first” tunnel vision of looking for a solution. insisting that he wants Greenland and that he will receive it, even if that means imposing high tariffs on Danish exports ( think Novo Nordisk’s weight-loss drugs ) or imposing force.

Predictably, Greenland and Denmark rejected the new “offer”. And key allies, including France and Germany, rushed to their ally’s defense – figuratively for now.

Rather than strengthening US security, Trump is arguably effectively weakening it by, yet again, undermining the western alliance. The irony of doing so in the north Atlantic does not only seem to be lost on Trump, This kind of territorial expansionism, which is representative of Trump’s isolationist tendencies, also seems to be a more fundamental issue at play here.

” Incorporating” Greenland into the US would likely shield Washington from the collapse of crucial mineral supply chains and keep Russia and China at bay. Beyond the kind of bluster and bombast that are typically associated with Trump, and signaling that he will do it whatever the cost, is an indication that his approach to foreign policy will quickly wear off with any gloves.

Trump and his team may believe that the US can get away with this by strengthening security cooperation with Denmark and the rest of its NATO and European allies in the Arctic and beyond. Given that what is at stake here are relations with the United States ‘ hitherto closest allies, this is an enormous, and unwarranted, gamble.

No great power in history has ever been able to go it alone forever, and even taking control of Greenland by hook or by crook is unlikely to reverse this.

Stefan Wolff is a University of Birmingham professor of international security.

The Conversation has republished this article under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

China’s zero-inflation troubles getting harder to ignore – Asia Times

By: Bolen C

On: January 9, 2025

In: Asia

With the announcement that manufacturer prices dropped for a 27th consecutive month in December and that customer price changes are essentially zero perhaps before Donald Trump’s trade war kicks off, China’s deflation issues became more difficult to rewrite.

The 2.3 % decline in wholesale prices year over year and the small 0.1 % rise in consumer prices only add to the growing fad. That’s nothing more true than in China’s bond business. Offer relationships suggest investors have never been so skeptical on Beijing’s ability to avoid so-called” Japanification”.

The yield gap between 10-year US securities and similar 10-year royal Chinese debt increased to an unprecedented 300 basis points this week. Despite Team Xi’s storm of signal efforts, that’s despite. In the wake of the Asian financial crisis, investors are concerned that China will soon surpass its record-breaking negative work in the late 1990s.

Trump’s returning to the US presidency in 11 days is the financial undertone. The US dollar is currently in a strong upward trend due to anticipation that Trump did implement tariff and revenue cuts. Team Xi and the People’s Bank of China are now trying to stop the yuan from falling below the$ 7.2 per dollar mark as a result.

There’s some good news moving in, also. Stock exercise, for instance, seems to be holding upward, expanding for three straight weeks now. However, good socioeconomic factors remain constrained as a 2025 begins to look incredibly uncertain.

According to Zhiwei Zhang, chief economist at Pinpoint Asset Management,” Recent economic data has stabilized, but the speed is not strong enough to put downward pressure on consumer prices already.”

Also before Trump’s profit, weak domestic demand has Taiwanese firms cutting output, freezing hiring and laying off employees. Nevertheless, says Macquarie Group general China analyst Larry Hu,” 2024 may be remembered as a time of muddle-through”.

Although this was much better at least than the -0.6 % and -0.3 % changes in November and October, economist Michael Pettis at the Carnegie Endowment notes that “despite this being much better at least than the -0.6 % and -0.3 % changes in December, it represents the fourth month of zero to negative price changes. CPI inflation overall for 2024 was at a very low 0.2 %, the same as it was last year, and the lowest level since 2009. For all the signal and the boom in bill during the year, in other words, China has been unable to resurrect inflation”.

Brian Tycangco, researcher at Stansberry Research, adds that” the recession threat is real and growing in China. Beijing should use this most recent information as a sign to act more quickly on stimulus.

As the new year begins, Xi’s internal group appears to be doing just that, stepping up efforts to shock need. Beijing is rolling out 15 % incentives for buying fresh smartphones, tablets, devices and other devices. In coastal towns of Shanghai, card programs are popping up to increase demand for goods like furniture, cars, and electronics, as well as interior metropolises like Hubei and Sichuan.

However, 25 years later, Japan continues to demonstrate that a comprehensive response to depreciation requires a disproportionate use of both monetary and fiscal resources, and the sooner the better. Looked at through this lens, all gaze are on how the current annual Central Economic Work Conference&nbsp, held in Beijing affects Xi’s policy objectives.

That mid-December session ended with pledges for macro policies aimed at” stabilizing growth” and “reviving household consumption” and achieving a “reasonable rebound” of inflation via “more proactive” fiscal and monetary maneuvers. Yet it’s rubber-hitting-the-road time as global investors fun about depreciation getting worse in Asia’s biggest market.

Problem is that economics have more questions than answers regarding Xi’s plan proposals. What are you going to do with all this generation, asks Natixis scholar Alicia Garcia Herrero? Who will you import to? Protectionism is rising, and China isn’t changing its unit, making the issues likely become more serious. I think 2025 is time for change, and China needs to change quite quickly, or the year may end up very hard”.

The coming” Trump deal” is raising the stakes. To be sure, no everyone fears the worst. Bank of America planners warn that “geopolitical tensions and probable US guidelines… could lead to higher cost of capital and several de-rating once more in 2025. That said, we believe the worst of flow/position-selling for the China business should have been over”.

The 60 % tax threat, according to the optimistic viewpoint, is a negotiating ploy intended to bring Xi to the table of negotiations. The next four years might not be the business conflict hellscape traders fear, so if Trump give a significant business deal with China precedence over a business war.

However, the worst-case circumstance might occur sooner than China bulls now believe. The economy’s current uptrend is predicated on expectations that Trump’s 60 % taxes are just the start. Never mind that an “increase in customs duties may lead to an understanding of the money which would cancel out the gain in competitiveness,” according to economist Sylvain Bersinger of the business intelligence company Asterès.

The bigger problem is Trump’s 1980s-era view that taxes are “beautiful” and the fastest road to raising America’s financial activity. China’s economy will suffer as a result of a worsening house crisis, great youth unemployment, mounting debts among local governments, and poor consumer demand.

” Imports will naturally grow much less and purchase too”, alert economics at S&amp, P Global. ” The impact on investment can in part blow in even before US tax implementation, because of the increased confusion. Spill-over to job, income and trust will ponder on use”.

Ian Bremmer, chairman of Eurasia Group, notes that the “incoming US leader promises taxes that could destroy the global economy, incident relations with China, and increase the conflict in unregulated spots”. He cites the US-China conflict as “export disruption disruption to everyone else this season, shortening the global recovery and accelerating geoeconomic separation at a time when global growth is sluggish, inflation remains high, and debt levels are at traditional highs.”

What’s more, Bremmer says, Trump 2.0″ will destroy an uncontrolled decoupling in the world’s most important political marriage. That, in turn, risks a significant financial disruption and broader crisis. Trump will impose new tariffs on Chinese goods in an effort to entice Beijing to make concessions on a number of issues, and China’s leaders will do so more strongly to demonstrate to both Trump and the Chinese people that they can and will fight back.

Wildcards appear, also. Conflicts over Taiwan” may perhaps fall”, Bremmer says, even if a “full-blown problems” seems doubtful in 2025.

The renminbi is its own potential battlefield. Team Xi and currency speculators are attempting to reduce the yuan against the money as the year gets underway. At the moment, the People’s Bank of China is really publicly setting the dollar’s regular mention price stronger than 7.2 per money, signaling that Beijing isn’t favoring a weaker exchange rate.

However, the decline in Chinese bond yields and the growing spread with the US may make it even more difficult to stabilize the yuan. The trend has 10-year yields around 1.6 % – and lower at times – for the first time since the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2008 Lehman Brothers crisis

Markets aren’t always accurate, but the deflationary signals coming out of the current yield levels should stoke the alarm at Xi’s Ministry of Finance. The fallout could further lower retail spending, aggravate China’s capital outflow issue, and give the Japanification talk that irritates Xi’s reform team more.

The case study from Japan’s 1990s, according to Goldman Sachs, serves as a “valuable playbook” for economists and stock investors trying to assess the outlook for Chinese assets.

To be sure, there may be winners from falling Chinese prices, just as there was with Japan. Falling prices could act as a covert tax cut for consumers who are in a tough economy. In China, brokerage Haitong Securities believes that low prices could benefit technology companies looking to expand, high-dividend stocks, and exporters with diversified businesses.

Still, the ways in which deflation could undermine confidence in China Inc. make today’s bond markets signals a wake-up-call moment for Xi’s economy.

China-linked shipowner denies Taiwan accusation of damaging undersea cable

By: Jing Write

On: January 8, 2025

In: Asia

“COMMON ACCIDENTS” China’s Taiwan Affairs Office claimed that more than 100 instances of undersea cable damage are” frequent sea incidents” and that they occur annually in a written speech sent to Reuters late on Wednesday. Taiwan is “intentionally hyping up the so-called dark corridor danger from the mainland” while theContinue Reading

Flyover shut for Orange Line build

By: Barkar Nash

On: January 7, 2025

In: South-East Asia

PUBLISHED: 8 Jan 2025 at 06: 02

NEWSPAPER SECTION: News

Motorists on Tuesday queue to use Liab Thang Rotfai Taling Chan, going under the flyover crossing Charan Sanitwong Road in Bangkok Noi district which had been closed since 10pm on Monday due to the construction of the Orange Line electric railway system. Pattarapong Chattpattarasill — On Tuesday, vehicles line up to utilize Liab Thang Rotfai Taling Chan and travel under Charan Sanitwong Road, which has been closed since 10pm on Monday because the Orange Line electric rail system has been constructed. Pattarapong Chattpattarasill

The Orange Line electric rail system’s bridge has been made operational in order to make room for the development of Charan Sanitwong Road. It is advised for motorists to use other routes to avert traffic congestion.

The Orange Line ( Bang Khun Non-Thailand Cultural Center ), or Bang Khun Non-underground station, will be located beneath the intersection where Charan Sanitwong Road crosses Liap Thang Rotfai Taling Chan Road and Sutthawat Road, according to Mass Rapid Transit Authority ( MRTA ) Deputy Governor Kittikorn Tanpao.

The bridge was closed on Monday for at least two times at 10 p.m. Its restoration is scheduled to start in December 2026, with completion expected in June 2028. On Liap Thang Rotfai Taling Chan Road and Sutthawat Road, just one email and one outgoing driveway will be closed during the closing.

To relieve traffic disturbance, the MRTA has provided alternative routes. Travelers from Ratchapunk Road heading for Siriraj Hospital you use Borommaratchachonnani Road, follow Somdet Phra Pin Klao Road, and then move onto Arun Amarin Road to reach their place.

Otherwise, they can use Phran Nok–Phutthamonthon Sai 4 Road, Phran Nok Road and Wang Lang Road to get to Siriraj Hospital.

From Liap Thang Rotfai Taling Chan Road, those arriving at Siriraj Hospital you take the Chim Phli Road, Kaeo Ngoen Thong, and Soi Charan Sanitwong 35. From that, they may reach the hospital via Wang Lang Road.

According to him, the MRTA is committed to ensuring the safety of the people and minimizing the impact of customers and environmental factors.

Ukraine closure of Gazprom Europe pipeline hurts Russia war effort – Asia Times

By: Bolen C

On: January 6, 2025

In: Asia

Kyiv has suddenly turned off Russia’s fuel source to Europe, ending a source of income that helped pay for Moscow’s war against Ukraine. The decades-old agreement, which made it possible for Gazprom’s natural gas to travel through Ukraine through Ukraine, expired on December 31 at midnight, thereby ending Russia’s final key fuel corridor.

The movement is mainly symbolic because Russia’s dependence on it has already drastically decreased since the invasion of Europe in February 2022. However, it doesn’t negate the significance of the selection or suggest that there won’t be any repercussions for the remaining Gazprom consumers in Europe.

Russia will continue to supply some oil via the Turkstream network across the Black Sea, primarily to Serbia and Hungary. In addition to the closing of the Yamal-Europe network through Belarus and the cancellation of Nordstream 2 in 2022, Gazprom has suffered another significant blow as a result of the loss of transit contacts through Ukraine.

Gazprom reported its first running damage in a year, reporting its first loss since 1999, and is now expected to lose another €5 to €6 billion. This will also help the business decrease its tax contributions to the Soviet budget.

Russia only recently provided around 41 % of the EU’s energy needs. It currently simply offers about 8 %.

It has found new users in Asia, primarily for fuel. Major portions of its oil infrastructure are currently inactive. And while it is fighting Ukraine, its gas export markets are being redirected to Asia, which is too slowly and expensive to maintain.

The EU has demonstrated a surprising ability to muster the political will and political will to bear the consequences after quickly kicking off Russian gas by finding new suppliers, especially of liquified natural gas ( LNG ) in the US and Norway.

Gas storage tank across Europe are now more than 90 % complete, and the EU has even increased its strength endurance. Charges have also fallen far below their 2022 inflationary peaks. There is no denying that Brussels will be able to control the consequences of Ukraine’s oil supply interruption.

This is also made easier by the fact that only three states, until late, still depended on Russian supplies.

Austria stopped receiving fuel in November after a legal debate with Gazprom, but the country had plans in place that were quickly and effectively implemented to reduce disturbance.

Hungary can make up for its shortfalls by supplying its goods mainly via the Turkstream pipeline. Additionally, it may purchase more LNG from Croatia, where the EU constructed a sizable new switch to practice goods, generally from the US.

For Slovakia, also, the vitality risks are minimal. The nation has available options for the supply of electricity and gas because it is well integrated into the EU energy system.

Russia's European gas network, 2014. — When it all worked: Russia’s gas pipes into Europe in 2014. Map: East European Gas Analysis

In any case, just about one-third of the roughly 12 billion cubic meters of Russian oil are used for private use. The remaining portion was profitably sold within the EU. The government’s Russia-friendly perfect minister, Robert Fico, tried hard to get the travel package renewed. False allegations of an energy crisis in Europe, risks to condemn Ukraine for breaking the transit agreement, and a trip to Moscow in December, which is unusual for an EU head of government, were included. But all to no cost.

Crisis in Moldova

Even worse, the days of Putin being able to quickly sabotage energy resources against EU people are now over with the end of the gas transits through Ukraine. However, the close of Russian gas transits through Ukraine is not without victims.

Moldova has been seriously affected. And in government-controlled areas of the country, a 60-day strength state of emergency introduced in December has imposed major restrictions on domestic use.

Moldova’s state seems convinced that the country you survive the winter. However, its lack of preparedness for the crisis, which was already evident since Ukraine announced in the summer of 2023 that it would not renew its travel agreement with Russia, led to the departure of its energy secretary and principal state power company head in November.

This does not reflect well on the pro-European state, which will have parliamentary elections in 2025. It is still recovering from a greatly contentious referendum on a possible future EU membership and national elections in October 2024, both of which were hampered by large Russian voter-buying and propaganda campaigns.

The far more perilous position in the rebel area of Transnistria may be an even bigger issue. Around 300,000 people there were entirely dependent on Ukrainian oil that was delivered through Ukraine.

They have no heat or warm fluids as of January 1. Although the state’s primary power plant has switched from gas to coal, petroleum has only been available for about 50 times.

The population’s only bare necessities are those that are domestic, and Transnistria’s financial model was fully based on the availability of effectively free Russian gas. With this now being unavailable, there is a chance that an economical and humanitarian crises will quickly spiral out of control.

This, in turn, poses significant social and security threats for Moldova. Moldova is already buckling under its own financial and energy crises, but it has little choice in helping Transnistria or handling the large number of migrants.

Although this may provide an ideal opportunity to reshape the situation, Moldova may take an enormous risk in doing so. Following a quick, violent discord in the early 1990s, Russian forces were stationed there as “peacekeepers” and guarded an outdated Russian munitions backup facility. Its population has been largely influenced by separatist and Russian propaganda for more than three decades, which had scarcely help the pro-European ballot.

None of this implies that Moldova may experience violent trauma or that Russia will somehow be able to influence the situation so that Ukraine’s back had become a target for a minute front. With its last major piece of the power battle with Europe now over, Russia is the biggest loser in the long run as a result of the ending of gasoline transits through Ukraine.

The University of Birmingham’s Stefan Wolff is an assistant teacher of global security.

This content was republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original content.

US sanctions China-based hackers’ cybersecurity service provider – Asia Times

By: Bolen C

On: January 5, 2025

In: Asia

A Beijing-based cybersecurity company was sanctioned by the US Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control ( OFAC ) and charged it with supporting a group of hackers who had attacked American organizations.

Integrity Technology Group, according to the OFAC, has been a victim of numerous system intrusions in the US. Flax Typhoon, a Taiwanese destructive state-sponsored digital group that has been engaged since at least 2021 and frequently targets businesses within US critical infrastructure sectors, has been given the all-clear credit for these incidents. &nbsp,

Bradley Smith, acting director of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, stated,” The Treasury Department will never hesitate to hold malicious computer celebrities and their drivers accountable for their actions.” As we continue to work together to strengthen public and private sector computer defenses, the US will employ all available means to counteract these risks.

According to the OFAC, Flax Typhoon has compromised computer systems in North America, Europe, Africa, and across Asia, with a special emphasis on Taiwan. It uses legitimate remote access software to keep consistent control over its victims ‘ networks before attempting to gain first access to their computers using publicly known vulnerabilities.

According to OFAC, Flax Typhoon players used system connected to Integrity Tech during hacking operations against many victims between mid-2022 and soon 2023. Flax Typhoon frequently received and sent data from Integrity Technology facilities at the time.

” On this kind of unnecessary and groundless claims, we’ve made apparent our place more than once”, Mao Ning, a director of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said in a press briefing. ” China opposes all forms of phishing and, in particular, we oppose spreading China-related deception motivated by political agenda”.

In an editorial published on January 2, The China Daily, a state-owned newspaper, claimed that the US had used cutting-edge technology to insert Foreign words and codes into ransomware in the attacked methods to avert the perception that Flax Typhoon is related to China. &nbsp,

Instead of “wasting its day concocting yet another far-fetched plot where Beijing plays the baddie,” it recommended Washington examine cybersecurity with Beijing in working groups.

In an article published on January 4, a Fujian-based journalist using the moniker” Little Penguin” claims that” the US was inferior to others in security knowledge.” ” In rage, it began to pour filthy water on China”.

” The US is the one who launched cyberattacks. More than a thousand centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz nuclear hospital failed as a result of a computer virus that was implanted by the US and Israel in 2007, according to the author. &nbsp,

He claims that the US tried various means of attack, such as restrictions, to harm Chinese companies because it has for a very long time failed to break into China’s security system.

The OFAC’s latest sanction came after the US Justice Department on September 18, 2024, announced a court-authorized law enforcement operation that disrupted a botnet consisting of more than 200, 000 consumer devices ( so-called “zombies” in computer jargon ) in the US and worldwide.

In addition to Flax Typhoon, two additional China-based qualified intrusion adversaries, Ethereal Panda and Volt Storms, likewise became engaged in 2021, according to Texas-based security firm Crowdstrike. &nbsp,

Volt Storms

On May 24, 2023, Microsoft said Volt Storms targeted critical infrastructure organizations in Guam and elsewhere in the US. On August 24 of the same year, it said Flax Typhoon targeted dozens of organizations in Taiwan with the key intention of performing espionage.

In a report released in February 2024, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency ( CISA ), National Security Agency ( NSA ), and Federal Bureau of Investigation ( FBI ) stated that the state-sponsored cyber actors in the People’s Republic of China are attempting to pre-position themselves for cyberattacks in the event of a major crisis or conflict with the US.

Five Eyes countries’ Joint Cybersecurity Advisory said Volt Storms might launch destructive cyberattacks against critical infrastructure in the US and allies.

In March, Michael Regan, administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, and Jake Sullivan, national security advisor to the president, told US state governors in a letter that Volt Stormss cyber attacks were striking water and wastewater systems throughout the US.

On April 15 last year, China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center (CVERC) and the 360 Digital Security Group jointly published a report titled “Volt Storms: A Conspiratorial Swindling Campaign Targets with US Congress and Taxpayers Conducted by US Intelligence Community.”

“Volt Storms is actually a ransomware cybercriminal group that calls itself the ‘Dark Power’ and is not sponsored by any state or region,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said last April, citing the CVERC report.

He added that some US citizens have been using origin-tracing of cyberattacks to target and body China, making the claim that the US is the victim while China is the other way around and politicizing security concerns.

Cao Xing, a doctor at Beijing’s China University of Political Science and Law, writes in an article that was published on January 3 that” the most recent criticism against China is just the tip of the iceberg.” &nbsp,

Looking back on the past several years, Cao says it’s not difficult to see how the US has occasionally tied” digital risks” to China. ” For instance, the US had blamed China for the hacking of senior US authorities ‘ email accounts, including those of the US Ambassador to China.”

He claims that China’s studies have now established that the complaints made by the United States were unsupported. He claims that it’s better for the earth to co-operate and address the issues rather than engage in blind conflict because the intricate web culture may have become a stage for “modern warfare.”

In an annual report submitted to the US Congress on December 18, the US Department of Defense said that since at least 2019, Volt Storms has been compromising and prepositioning itself on US critical infrastructure organizations’ networks to enable disruption or destruction of critical services in the event of increased geopolitical tensions or military conflict with the US and its allies.

The department said Volt Storms’s targets span multiple critical infrastructure sectors – including communications, energy, transportation systems and water – in the continental and non-continental US and its territories, including Guam.

It claimed that China’s state-sponsored hackers targeted US defense organizations throughout 2023 and that they had been stealing sensitive information for economic and military gain. &nbsp,

” The targeted information can benefit the PRC’s defense high-technology industries, support the PRC’s military modernization, provide the PRC’s leadership with insights into US plans and intentions, and enable diplomatic negotiations”, it said. &nbsp,

The Asia Times has Yong Jian as a contributor. He is a Chinese journalist who specializes in Chinese technology, economy and politics. &nbsp,

Read: Beijing slams Five Eyes for cyberattack allegations