According to Larry Merizalde, China CEO of South African manufacturer Aspen, “we’ve seen some disturbance in our ability to implement some clinical application actions and in the ability of our health representatives to attend hospitals.” AstraZeneca was likewise “facing challenges from the medical anti-corruption investigations in China, reducing AZN’s exposureContinue Reading
shabby Graphics” Mum, could I sing for a little while longer?”
In the American capital of Delhi, six-year-old Vanraj’s family Pakhi Khanna is preparing herself to deal with that chorus for the upcoming couple of days. The 38-year-old has reduced her father’s outside fun from two hours to 30 minutes, his classes have been moved online this month, and football coaching has been discontinued.
Numerous students in Delhi, including Vanraj, have had their schedules suddenly altered as a result of the alarmingly high levels of air pollution. Delhi’s Air Quality Index ( AQI ), which measures the amount of PM 2.5 or fine particulate matter in the air, has consistently exceeded the 450 mark over the past few days, which is almost 10 times the acceptable threshold. Lung specialists claim that breathing this dangerous atmosphere is comparable to smoking 25 to 30 cigarettes per day.
Gopal Rai, the culture minister of Delhi, has requested that all schools close until Friday and that only high school students attend online classes because the situation is so dire. This isn’t the first instance of air contamination interfering with education in Delhi; it has been occurring every spring for the past four to five years.
The number of times that schools are closed as a result of weather contamination has actually been rising. According to Shariq Ahmad, director of a government school in Kalkaji, south Delhi, classes are now disrupted for at least five to six days straight.
Parents and professionals are worried about how these sudden breaks in daily routines and understanding will affect kids, especially since schedules had just started to return to normal following the Covid – 19 epidemic.
As usual, points are more challenging for people with limited resources.
Deepa, a domestic helper who only goes by one brand, claims that her sons don’t benefit from the online learning design. Both Prasanna, 10, and Abhishek, 12, who are in the sixth and five grades, attend public schools.
The university has been encouraging kids to study at home since Friday, and professors have been sending pictures of their completed worksheets via email. However, Deepa’s home doesn’t have a computer; instead, the kids can only get their schoolwork when their mother, who cleans and cooks in many homes, comes home in the afternoon and hands them her phone.
She claims that without assistance from teachers, her children find it difficult to understand the instructions.
According to Deepa,” I worry that this will have an impact on how well they perform on the upcoming test.” She continues,” I would like it if my kids attended school while wearing faces.”
However, Delhi’s pollution rates are so large that not even masks provide much defense.
For their three-year-old daughter Mira, Anant Mehra and his wife have totally discontinued outside playtime. On the one hand, they’re happy that her daycare classes have moved online, but they also complain that it’s frustrating to force a three-year-old to spend hours in front of the computer.
Mr. Mehra adds that Mira is becoming uneasy and angry due to being at home. She misses her friends and the play-based education she receives in college, he claims. Her being at home has an effect on their work day as well because he and his family, who have a cross working design, have planned their deadline around Mira’s hospital time.
For universities, students, or parents, immediately ending classes like this is simply not sustainable, according to Mr. Mehra. ” The government needs to act quickly to reduce the pollutants.”
Mira and Vanraj are aware that they are being prevented from going outside because of” bad air ,” but neither of them fully comprehends the risks associated with breathing toxic air. They frequently struggle with air pollutants, which prevents them from having joy, playing, and making friends.
Ms. Khanna says,” As a parent, I want to preserve my child safe, but I also don’t want startle him or make him constantly worry about the weather he’s breathing.” Therefore, when I explain to him why he is unable to do certain things, I must strike a delicate harmony.
Team members are also being impacted by the gap. The abrupt declaration of online classes, according to one English and environmental studies teacher who teaches students between the ages of seven and ten, throws her ideas off course.
She is forced to choose online training with shorter, easier-to-understand topics, and then write curriculum for her kids to practice at home. But she claims that once real classes resume, she will need to re-teach these lessons because many kids find it difficult to learn online.
The teacher, who didn’t want to be named, said,” This puts a lot of stress on us because we also have to consider about finishing the course.”
People like Shreya Nidhi, who serves as a guardian for her 14-year-old brother Umang, claim that she is dissatisfied with the state and the way that pollution obstructs her son’s academic progress each year. She had prevented him from going to school, even though it meant skipping tests, prior to the president’s order to close schools.
Umang was unhappy and frustrated by this because he was concerned about how lacking exams may impact his academic year.
But his health is more important to me. We must consider these drastic measures to protect our loved ones because the government isn’t doing anything to stop air pollution, she claims.
shabby Graphics” Mum, could I sing for a little while longer?”
That is the chorus that Pakhi Khanna, the family of six-year-old Vanraj, is preparing herself to deal with over the course of the next few days in the Indian capital of Delhi. The 38-year-old has reduced her father’s outside fun from two hours to 30 minutes, his online classes this week, and his football coaching.
Vanraj is one of the thousands of students in Delhi whose schedules have been suddenly altered as a result of air pollution reaching alarming rates. Delhi’s Air Quality Index ( AQI ), which gauges the amount of PM 2.5 or fine particulate matter in the air, has consistently surpassed the 450 mark over the past few days, which is almost ten times the acceptable threshold. Lung experts claim that breathing this poisonous atmosphere is comparable to smoking 25 to 30 cigarettes per day.
Gopal Rai, the culture minister of Delhi, has requested that all schools close until Friday and that only high school students attend online classes due to the dire circumstances. This isn’t the first instance of air contamination interfering with education in Delhi; it has been occurring every spring for the past four to five years.
The number of times that schools are closed as a result of air pollution has actually been rising. According to Shariq Ahmad, director of a federal school in Kalkaji, south Delhi, classes are now disrupted for at least five to six days straight.
Parents and professionals are worried about how these sudden breaks in daily routines and understanding will affect kids, especially since schedules had just started to return to normal following the Covid – 19 crisis.
As usual, people with limited resources have it harder.
The virtual learning unit doesn’t work for Deepa’s sons, a domestic help who only goes by one name. Both Prasanna, 10, and Abhishek, 12, who are in the sixth and second grades, attend a government institution.
The university has been encouraging kids to study at home since Friday, and teachers have been sending pictures of their completed worksheets via email. However, Deepa’s community doesn’t have a computer, so the kids can only use it when their mom, who cleans and cooks in many homes, comes home in the afternoon and gives them her phone.
Without assistance from instructors, she claims, her children find it difficult to comprehend the training.
According to Deepa,” I worry that this will impact their performance in the examination next fortnight.” She continues,” I would like it if my kids attended school while wearing faces.”
However, Delhi’s pollution rates are so large that not even masks provide much defense.
For their three-year-old daughter, Mira, Anant Mehra and his family have totally stopped going outside to play. On the one hand, they’re happy that her daycare classes have moved online, but they also complain that it’s frustrating to force a three-year-old to spend hours in front of the system.
Mira is agitated and anxious, according to Mr. Mehra, who is also elderly. She misses her friends and the play-based education she receives in college, he claims. He and his family, who have a cross working arrangement, have planned their days around Mira’s nursery time, so her presence at home also affects their workday.
According to Mr. Mehra, immediately ending courses like this is simply not responsible for colleges, students, or parents. ” The government needs to act quickly to reduce the pollutants.”
Mira and Vanraj are aware that” bad air” is keeping them from going outside, but neither of them totally comprehends the risks associated with breathing toxic air. They experience persistent heat waste as a barrier that prevents them from playing, making friends, and having fun.
Ms. Khanna says,” As a parent, I want to preserve my child safe, but I also don’t want startle him or make him constantly worry about the weather he’s breathing.” Therefore, when I explain to him why he is unable to do certain things, I must strike a delicate harmony.
Team members are also being impacted by the gap. The abrupt declaration of online classes, according to one English and environmental studies teacher who teaches students between the ages of seven and ten, throws her intentions off course.
She must immediately choose online lessons on shorter, easier-to-understand subjects, and therefore write coursework for her kids to practice at home. But she claims that once real classes resume, she will need to re-teach these lessons because many kids find online learning difficult.
The teacher, who didn’t want to be named, said,” This puts a lot of stress on us because we also have to consider about finishing the course.”
People like Shreya Nidhi, who looks after her 14-year-old brother Umang, claim to be dissatisfied with the state and how waste obstructs her son’s education on a yearly basis. She had prevented him from going to school even though it meant skipping test before the government ordered schools to be closed.
Umang was unhappy and frustrated by this because he was concerned about the impact of missing test on his academic year.
But his health is more important to me. We must consider these drastic measures to protect our loved ones because the government isn’t doing anything to stop air pollutants, she claims.
The specific problems that caused the system healing delays on October 14 did not come up during the annual exercises that both banks conducted to check the recuperation of their IT systems at their backup data centers, according to Mr. Tan.
DBS would not be permitted to make non-essential That changes or invest in new business initiatives for six months, according to MAS ‘ announcement last year.
Experts informed CNA that they were not aware of any future DBS acquisition plans. According to Mr. Thilan Wickramasinghe, head of Singapore studies at Maybank, DBS is concentrating on integrating other companies into the bank and probably has a” limited appetite” for additional mergers and acquisitions.
MAS added that DBS may continue to apply a ratio of 1.8 times to its risk-weighted assets for operational threat and keep the size of its tree and ATM networks for the time being.
In May, it was first told to do so. At that time, the ratio of 1.8 days resulted in more regulatory money, or income that must be set apart as a pilot, of about S$ 1.6 billion( US$ 1.2 billion ).
A company’s ability to invest may be constrained by a higher capital requirement.
SINGAPORE: On November 1, a distributed denial of service( DDoS ) removed the websites of Singapore’s public healthcare organizations, resulting in an extended outage. & nbsp,
Services that needed internet connectivity, such as websites, emails, and staff productivity tools, were unavailable during the disruption, despite the fact that essential healthcare services were untouched. & nbsp,
There was no evidence to suggest that medical data and internal networks had been compromised, according to a statement from Singaporean health tech firm Synapxe, which supports the operations of 46 people medical institutions.
The DDoS attacks are also happening, and there may still be sporadic outages of online service, it added. & nbsp,
According to experts, it’s crucial to maintain essential services unhindered even in the face of cybercrime because public health care systems are so crucial.
Additionally, they emphasized how crucial it is to separate inside healthcare systems from online and web-based services. & nbsp,
A distributed denial of service( DDoS ) attack, one of the most frequent cyberattacks, is a malicious attempt to obstruct an online service or site by inundating it with unusually high volumes of data traffic. & nbsp,
According to Atreyi Kankanhalli of the National University of Singapore,” Cybercriminals overburden a network with so much traffic that it cannot function( communicate ) as it usually would.” & nbsp,
This would impede customers, or requests, from reputable people, according to the Provost’s Chair Professor in the Department of Information Systems and Analytics at the School of Computing at NUS. Users would then be unable to load content on & nbsp. In addition, & nbsp,
Prof. Kankanhalli & nbsp used the example of a group of people swarming the shop’s entrance door, making it difficult for legitimate customers to enter. & nbsp,
According to the & nbsp, Singapore University of Social Sciences’ ( SUSS ) & nfspp, Ng Boon Yuen, a DDoS attack coordinates multiple attack streams so that numerous devices are simultaneously attacking the target system.
These products are frequently those that have been compromised by malware and are” remotely controlled” by the intruder, according to the senior teacher of the business program at SUSS ‘ School of Business. & nbsp,
According to cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks, a DDoS attack is normally planned in three steps. & nbsp,
The first step is typically & nbsp, reconnaissance to find a specific target, according to its Field Chief Security Officer of Japan and Asia Pacific Ian Lim. & nbsp,
The second step is” weaponization ,” in which the attacker creates or rents a bot network to carry out the attack. Launching the strike and possibly adapting to the defenses to withstand it is the next step, according to Mr. Lim.
The purpose or goal of the harm may determine the next steps, he continued. & nbsp,
Sluggish application performance, protracted inability to access websites or system files, high processor and memory usage, frequent disconnections from wireless or wired internet connections, and an increase in spam emails are all potential indicators of a DDoS attack, according to the Cybersecurity Agency of Singapore( CSA ).
According to Synapxe, it has access to services that prevent unusual internet traffic spikes before they reach the people healthcare system. & nbsp,
Synapxe added in its statement that routers are in place to ensure that only legitimate traffic enters the network even after the limiting service has cleared the traffic. & nbsp,
But, on November 1st, a strange increase in network traffic that was picked up around 9.15 am was able to get around the obstructing service and destroy the firewalls. & nbsp,
DDoS preventing services have power limits, Prof. Kankanhalli noted. & nbsp,
” Attacks bigger than 2 terabits per second( Tbps ) have happened, and attack sizes are getting bigger.” Massive attacks you overwhelm firewalls and preventing services.
According to Mr. Lim, the danger environment for DDoS has changed, allowing adversaries to launch attacks with more volume and speed.
Any internet-facing system, such as a router or modem, has bandwidth limitations that can be overextended in network-based DDoS. The application is overcome and can no longer listen to reasonable calls in an application-based assault, according to Mr. Lim. & nbsp,
According to the CSA, one of the 11 industries with important details infrastructure is healthcare. & nbsp,
According to Prof. Kankanhalli, it is a crucial company that makes it an appealing destination for online thieves looking to cause trouble. & nbsp,
” The adversaries may have both financial and activist motivations for causing break.” For instance, take information to buy or demand ransom from the company.
According to Mr. Lim, due to the status of the organization and the media attention it may garner, big institutions are frequently the goal of such attacks. According to & nbsp,” Hacktivism” or” hacking for a cause” is frequently the reason behind DDoS attacks that are not financially advantageous. & nbsp,
DDoS could also be used as a distraction strategy to conceal another invasion occurring elsewhere in the organization, Mr. Lim continued.
Professionals concurred that if critical operating techniques in a hospital are available via the internet, they will be vulnerable to DDoS attacks. & nbsp,
According to Nanyang Business School’s( NBS ) Goh Kim Huat, the majority of hospitals have separate systems for managing their internal healthcare systems and hosting online web pages.
According to Prof. Goh, a member of NBS ‘ Division of Information Technology and Operations Management, internal healthcare systems have files like electronic medical records that are” mission critical, confidential, time-sensitive, and need to be continuously available for patient safety.”
For separation is currently being practiced in our health care system. Mission-critical healthcare systems are typically compartmentalized and equipped with redundancy( backup ).
According to Prof. Kankanhalli,” Service connecting to the internet have many benefits, but likewise immediately increase risks.” However, it is not feasible to forbid all of these services; rather, you must implement since many safeguards as you can.
The question is whether it is essential to maintain the availability of medical institution websites, Dr. Ng said, even if there was no data breach and operations were essentially unaffected. She stated that the accessibility of websites that offer e-services to the general public may be crucial. & nbsp,
Even though websites for health care organizations are primarily there to inform the public, a disturbance can lead to various issues, according to Dr. Ng. & nbsp,
For instance, a user would use the hospital’s telephone number for public inquiries if they were unable to locate the contact information for the professional clinic or ward on the website. According to Dr. Ng, a high amount of enquiries could destroy the call center.
A spokesperson for NUHS( National University Health System ) added that their call center and emails were even partially absent in light of the recent disturbance.
According to the top teacher, when various( or all ) channels of information and communication are impacted, those who are in need of assistance does become concerned or even anxious. & nbsp,
According to online safety company Cloudfare, businesses can use specially created network equipment or a cloud-based protection service to alleviate the threat. & nbsp,
DDoS mitigation, which involves using a cloud-based provider across many stages, is the process of properly shielding cybernet or server from DDOS attacks.
A website must first be able to distinguish between an attack and a large volume of regular traffic in order to react by deftly removing harmful bot traffic while absorbing the remaining traffic.
A good network may route traffic effectively and look for patterns like specific attacks coming from specific nations or improper use of specific protocols. & nbsp,
According to Mr. Lim, the organization would be able to bring in experts shortly to stop or divert these attacks if the DDoS attack was detected early. & nbsp,
” A thorough examination of the attack will also enable the preparation and application of a suitable course of reduction.” Remember that the intruder might be anticipating your defenses and changing the direction of their harm.
” To totally address the continuing attack, constant attention is required because this is a dynamic situation. To increase response time, it is essential to have a team( internal or partners ) prepared to respond to DDoS incidents and exercise drills.
To prevent unauthorized access and takeover of your network devices and routers, the CSA advises using strong passwords and enabling two-factor authentication,( 2FA ) as an additional layer of security.
Additionally, it suggests & nbsp putting security measures in place at the network’s perimeter, such as firewalls between internal and external connectivity points.
One of the most typical types of attacks is DDoS episodes.
According to the CSA and Infocomm Media Development Authority( IMDA ), DDoS attacks on telco infrastructure in 2016 crippled StarHub’s broadband network twice in three days. & nbsp,
Therefore, infected subscribers’ Internet-connected products in their homes were taken over and used in the cyberattacks. The devices’ owners, thieves, were able to deliver visitors to their intended destination. & nbsp,
SINGAPORE: The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has barred DBS from any new business acquisitions for six months, in response to the bank’s multiple service disruptions this year.
DBS, Singapore’s largest lender, is also required to pause non-essential IT changes for six months.
“This is to ensure that the bank dedicates the needed resources and attention to strengthen its technology risk management systems and controls,” MAS announced in a media release on Wednesday (Nov 1).
The bank will not be allowed to reduce the size of its branch and ATM networks in Singapore for now.
“This is to ensure there are adequate alternative channels for its customers in the event of further disruptions while the bank works to enhance the operational resilience of its digital channels,” said MAS.
“This direction will be in force until MAS is satisfied with the progress of DBS Bank’s remediation plan.”
DBS and Citibank’s digital banking and payment services were disrupted for hours on Oct 14 due to a technical issue with the cooling system at a data centre operated by Equinix.
DBS automated teller machines (ATMs) were also affected, prompting Singapore’s largest lender to reopen branches on a Saturday afternoon to assist customers.
MAS had ordered DBS and Citibank to conduct “a thorough investigation”, noting that the banks were not able to fully recover their systems within the required timeframe.
Any unscheduled downtime for a critical service affecting a bank’s operations or service to customers must not exceed four hours within any 12-month period.
Banks are required to have backup data centres and systems in place, MAS noted on Oct 19 in response to the outage.
The Oct 14 outage was among several DBS service disruptions this year.
In March, a day-long service outage hit online banking and payment platforms such as PayLah!, prompting MAS to issue a strongly-worded statement saying the bank had “fallen short” of expectations due to the “unacceptable” disruption.
In May, digital banking services and ATMs were down due to “human error in coding the programme that was used for system maintenance”.
In the wake of the two successive service disruptions in the space of just over a month, MAS imposed additional capital requirements on DBS.
Following the March incident, MAS had also directed DBS Bank to engage an independent third party to conduct a comprehensive review of the effectiveness and adequacy of the people, processes and technology supporting its digital banking services.
MAS noted on Wednesday that shortcomings were identified in system resilience, incident management, change management, as well as technology risk governance and oversight.
Following the independent review, DBS had set out a roadmap to address the shortcomings.
“The roadmap is being implemented in phases, with the changes affecting its system architecture design taking more time to complete,” MAS said on Wednesday.
“MAS has reviewed DBS Bank’s remediation plan under the roadmap and is satisfied with its scope and the planned measures to improve system resilience,” it added.
“In line with MAS’ expectations, DBS Bank will hold senior management accountable for the lapses and the board will enhance its governance approach to oversee the implementation of the roadmap.”
MAS said it will review the progress made by DBS on its remediation efforts at the end of six months.
“MAS may extend the duration of the measures, vary the additional capital requirement currently imposed, or take further actions at that point,” it added.
“In the meantime, MAS will retain the multiplier of 1.8 times to DBS Bank’s risk-weighted assets for operational risk, which was imposed after the March and May 2023 incidents.”
The regulator said DBS will take up to 24 months to put in place the planned structural changes to improve the resilience of its digital banking services.
“In the meantime, it is possible that disruptions may still occur. In such situations, MAS expects DBS Bank to promptly recover its services and communicate to its customers in a clear and timely manner,” it added.
MAS previously hit the bank with capital requirements after its digital banking services were disrupted for two days in November 2021. At the time, MAS also ordered the bank to appoint an independent expert to conduct a “comprehensive review” of the incident.
When Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visits China this week, he will be able to celebrate a figure that previous Australian leaders could only dream of. Over the past year, China has imported more than AU$200 billion (US$127 billion) worth of Australian goods and services.
In August 2023, the Australian Bureau of Statistics put the annual value of goods exports at AU$194 billion and services at AU$9.5 billion. In 2016, the last time an Australian prime minister visited China, the combined figure was less than half the current level at AU$95.6 billion.
Besides buoyant commodity prices and the emergence of new areas of trade such as lithium, exports have reached a record high because the disruptive measures imposed by Beijing in 2020, affecting barley, coal, lobsters and more, have been steadily removed.
Australian Trade Minister Don Farrell says that under the Albanese government’s watch, by September 2023 AU$20 billion of “trade impediments” had been reduced to just AU$2.5 billion.
There is one narrative in Australia, particularly popular among those who championed former prime minister Scott Morrison’s government’s abrasive approach to China relations, that this positive outcome resulted from firm Australian resistance. It suggests that eventually, Beijing had no choice but to “capitulate” under Australian pressure. This narrative is both misleading and self-serving.
It is true that by the end of 2021 Beijing had recognized that its campaign of trade disruption was causing more harm to itself than it was shifting Canberra’s foreign policy positions.
Upon his arrival in January 2022, the new Chinese ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, said he was on a “noble mission” to work with “the Australian government and friends in all sectors … to jointly push the China–Australia relations back to the right track.”
But Australian resolve provides only a partial explanation of the removal of the disruptive trade measures. What triggered Beijing’s actions in 2020 was not a particular policy by the Morrison government, but rather its diplomatic posturing.
After the early Australian moves that disadvantaged China, such as Australia leading the world in banning Chinese technology companies from participating in its 5G rollout in August 2018, and accusations then that Beijing was threatening Australian trade, there was little sign of it.
It was only in early 2020 when the Morrison government began aping the political attacks launched by former US President Donald Trump against Beijing over the Covid-19 pandemic that Beijing took steps against Australian trade.
Beijing wasn’t alone in being taken aback by Australia’s political assault. On Morrison’s call for international health inspectors to be given powers akin to “weapons inspectors.”
Martin Parkinson, the usually reserved and then recently retired secretary of the Australian Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, remarked, “what whizz kid … dreamed up those talking points, what did they think they were going to achieve with that?”
When the Albanese government restored “calm and consistent” diplomacy, little wonder that ministerial visits resumed and trade disruptions began to ease.
A critical ingredient in the restoration of trade ties has been the multilateral trading system, overseen by the World Trade Organization (WTO).
This system, which supports open and competitive global markets, blunted the effects of Beijing’s bans on Australia by facilitating the redirection of exports of Australian coal, barley and other commodities, previously destined for China, elsewhere.
The WTO also provided a neutral forum in which Canberra and Beijing could engage in their disputes relating to barley and wine.
After Washington drove the WTO’s regular appeals body into dysfunction in December 2019, Australia and China both stuck to a rules-based process by joining the workaround to the WTO dispute settlement process, the Multi-Party Interim Arrangement. This meant that neither would appeal an unfavorable WTO panel finding “into the void.”
In the case of barley, the timeline is telling. The WTO panel circulated its final report on Australian barley exports to both parties on March 15 – reportedly in Australia’s favor.
On April 10, Canberra and Beijing announced a deal had been struck in which Beijing would undertake an “expedited review” of the tariffs it had imposed. This led to Chinese tariffs being lifted on August 4.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong calculates that Australia “would not have been able to get this outcome without working through the WTO.” Later that month, Trade Minister Farrell farewelled the first shipment of 55,000 tonnes of Australian barley, at a healthy price premium, destined for China.
October brought the news that the same process was in train for wine. On the informal measures still affecting lobsters and beef, Farrell says that warming relations and the experience of the barley episode mean that Australians can “be very confident … that we can resolve all of those outstanding issues.”
Australia’s resistance to Beijing’s attempts at economic coercion was undoubtedly right. But in celebrating the latest trade numbers, when in Beijing Albanese might propose a toast to professional diplomacy and a shared commitment to the multilateral trading system, including an independent, rules-based resolution of disputes. Recommitment to both is the right way forward.
James Laurenceson is Professor and Director at the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney.
This article was originally published by East Asia Forum and is republished under a Creative Commons license.
Uranium enrichment and the nuclear fuel industry make up a globally integrated complex concentrated in the hands of a few key players. A geopolitically-driven divorce is on the horizon, however.
At the outset of the invasion of Ukraine last year, US Senator John Barrasso, a Republican of Wyoming, led an effort to ban Russian-origin uranium and nuclear products following the West’s break with the fossil fuel industries that had been filling the Kremlin’s war chest.
The bill stalled, but it highlighted America’s reliance on Russian nuclear imports and the need for a comprehensive supply chain rework. When countries are already scrambling to secure supply for nationally critical materials like rare earths or semiconductors, doing so for nuclear fuel – which powers one-fifth of US electricity generation– is not a bold proposition.
Rosatom, Russia’s sprawling state-owned champion, dominates chokepoints in the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle – 38% of global uranium conversion and 46% of enrichment. This not only gives Moscow leverage over downstream “critical infrastructure” abroad but supports its wider energy statecraft agenda.
Since 2007, nuclear reactor exports have become a key channel in Russia’s foreign influence strategy, accounting for about half of the 53 units under construction worldwide.
Additionally, leading US small-modular reactor companies like TerraPower and X-energy require high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU) for their designs, and that is only commercially available from Russia.
The National Nuclear Security Administration has the ability to downblend weapons-grade material into HALEU for civil use but conflicting national security directives necessitate that it be considered a temporary solution at best.
This year, Barrasso is making more headway. The “Nuclear Fuel Security Initiative” (NFSI) breezed through the Senate as an amendment to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act rather than as a stand-alone bill.
This would allow Congress more discretionary authority to ensure that disruptions in the nuclear fuel supply chain neither (1) impact existing commercial reactor operations, nor (2) impede the development of advanced nuclear reactors.
A companion bill banning Russian uranium (with allowances through 2027) is working its way through the House.
Opening the HALEU bottleneck is an acute priority, but the imperative should also address the broader, energy security implications of growing Russian and Chinese influence over Kazakhstan and its industry behemoth, Kazatomprom – the world’s largest uranium miner.
A disruption to the West would equate to a crisis. Nearly all producers are fully booked for years, and soaring uranium spot prices hint that warehoused sources may be depleted.
To avoid sleepwalking into a larger dilemma brought on by a captive Kazakh uranium industry, policymakers not only should empower the Department of Energy to reshore enrichment but also should firm up the broader nuclear fuel supply chain with trusted partners.
Once known as the steady “floor” for global supply, Kazatomprom has been beset by geopolitical risks, and is on its fourth CEO in two years.
First, its primary transport route through Russia was impacted by international sanctions. Now, the bubbling Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict threatens to complicate the Trans-Caspian Route it had promoted as an alternate solution.
With access to Europe constricted and US influence in Central Asia waning, Kazakhstan has little choice but to be more accommodating towards its two assertive neighbors, who are already (by far) its most important partners in trade.
In May, Rosatom took a bite out of Kazatomprom, acquiring a 49% stake in its prized Budenovskoye-6 and -7 uranium deposits. Several executives quit as a result, fueling speculation that it was a “backdoor deal” imposed by Astana in cooperation with Moscow.
Once developed, this uranium mine complex is expected to become the world’s largest, capable of supporting Rosatom’s downstream dominance in conversion, enrichment, and fuel fabrication for many years to come.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, there were signs of Kazakhstani president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev distancing himself from Vladimir Putin, but the opposite has instead played out. The two have met in person at least a dozen times since, with energy cooperation a frequent focus.
Beijing has also factored Kazatomprom into its energy strategy. China is undergoing a massive buildout of new nuclear power plants, on track to become the world’s top producer by 2030. In his first post-Covid trip abroad, Xi Jinping visited Tokayev to lay the groundwork for deeper bilateral collaboration – with energy, again, a priority area.
Since then, the China National Nuclear Corporation has secured a major long-term uranium supply contract in excess of 50% of Kazatomprom’s total book value.
Additionally, the China General Nuclear Power Corporation has started receiving nuclear fuel assemblies from the Ulba Metallurgical Plant on the Kazakh-Chinese border – a joint venture slated to provide 200 tons of nuclear fuel each year until 2041.
Signs of deepening Russia-China cooperation over nuclear fuel may further fan this hotspot of security concerns. In March, the US House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces was briefed on reports of Rosatom supplying highly enriched uranium to fast breeder reactors in China, a well-established pathway for weapons of mass destruction.
While there is no indication that Kazakhstan collaborates with Russia or China toward nuclear arms, evidence of an increasingly captive uranium industry presents a glaring liability for energy security in the US and Europe.
All this is coming to a head as demand for uranium is returning in force. With grids around the globe struggling to replace coal reliably with the variable generation of wind and solar, nuclear power is gaining recognition as a necessary component in the clean energy transition at large.
Nuclear plant developers from China, France, South Korea and the US are presently vying for business across Africa, Asia and the Middle East – eager to catch up with Rosatom’s lead.
And the most ominous driver of supply chain bifurcation may be the resuming buildup of nuclear weapons between great powers. China has been expanding its arsenal for years, and with Russia’s recent suspension of the “New START” arms control treaty, the US is pressured to modernize its own capabilities.
America should restore long-term nuclear fuel security before a crisis puts critical infrastructure at risk. The Nuclear Fuel Security Initiative can be maximized by (1) stockpiling uranium as disruption insurance, (2) reshoring critical bottlenecks like HALEU manufacturing and enrichment and (3) proactively friend-shoring the upstream stages of the supply chain among trusted allies.
The first two are already off the ground, with a strategic uranium reserve recently established and Ohio-based Centrus Energy beginning enrichment operations just this month.
But they require greater urgency. The reserve’s current inventory would cover only nine days of US commercial demand, and Centrus has a long way to go in scaling up to create a meaningful shift away from Rosatom.
The United States is fortunate that Canada and Australia are the number 2 and number 4 suppliers of uranium after Kazakhstan. However, the problem is that ramping up enough production to quit Kazatomprom would take many years, given the mining sector’s challenging workforce as well as lending and regulatory conditions.
Friend-shoring through policy incentives or consortium-building can accelerate this process by signaling a commitment to decoupling from the Russian nuclear industry – thereby boosting investor confidence and diverting capital otherwise flowing to marginally cheaper producers, like Namibia or Uzbekistan.
The surprising coup in Niger and its impact on France’s nuclear firm, Orano, should be lesson enough regarding dependence on states with elevated political risk for uranium supply.
Since the dual-use nature of uranium and the oligopolistic conditions of the space will never allow it to become a true commodity market, scruples over government intervention should be saved. The United States allowed Russia to maneuver into its commanding position by privatizing, then outsourcing, this critical supply chain.
Expeditiously rebuilding supply security at home and industrial capacity among allies is the first step to making a comeback in an industry that will undoubtedly remain vital within energy, technology and national security arenas for decades to come.
Brandt Kekoa Mabuni ([email protected]) is a resident WSD-Handa fellow at Pacific Forum in Honolulu.
This article was first published by Pacific Forum and is republished with permission. The article is a primer to a longer forthcoming report by the author titled “Splitting the Atom’s Supply Chain: Analysis & 3S Implications for a Disintegrating Nuclear Fuel Industry.”
Aviation was among the industries hit the hardest during the pandemic.
Driven by pent-up travel demand after Thailand reopened its borders in 2022, the carriers that rebounded quickly were able to do so by maintaining sufficient resources, including pilots and crew, as well as their fleets, as was the case with Thai AirAsia.
Santisuk Klongchaiya has been chief executive of Thai AirAsia and SET-listed Asia Aviation (AAV) since 2018, leading the airline through the toughest time in aviation history by using “resilient leadership”.
His journey with Thai AirAsia began when he met Tony Fernandes and Tassapon Bijleveld at Warner Music. Mr Fernandes and Mr Bijleveld would later resign from Warner Music, with Mr Fernandes going on to establish Air Asia and Mr Bijleveld later becoming chief executive of Thai AirAsia.
Mr Santisuk was later persuaded to join Thai AirAsia as its head of commercial operations as the airline began a new chapter in aviation history by introducing the successful low-cost model to the Thai market.
By overcoming all kinds of challenges over the past 20 years, such as the 2003 Sars epidemic, the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, and various periods of political unrest in Thailand, Mr Santisuk said he always believed those experiences would help the airline quickly rebound from the impact of Covid-19.
Unlike many other airlines during the pandemic, Thai AirAsia made a bold move by retaining its entire workforce and fleet, opting only to return aircraft when their contracts expired.
“We adopted a ‘pause and play’ strategy to continue from the same place where we stopped once we wanted to resume again, instead of starting from the beginning of the whole track that would have made us progress slower during the recovery period,” said Mr Santisuk.
He said he wanted to give credit to the chairman of Thai AirAsia’s board — Vichate Tantiwanich — who allowed the company to maintain this plan, and also give credit to his 5,000 staff, who had received a reduction in pay and participated in the company’s furlough programme.
The airline also received good cooperation from stakeholders, such as the aircraft leasing company, airports, and the provider of aeronautical radio services, for temporarily pausing service expenses and repayment.
Salaries were slashed based on the position of the employee. For example, Mr Santisuk’s salary was cut by 50%, whereas the salaries of employees earning the least would receive the smallest reduction in salary.
“Our greatest ‘lesson learned’ is to make ourselves healthy, with strong internal management, financial status and stakeholders,” he said.
Starting with two aircraft in 2004, the company is now operating a fleet of 54 aircraft. Mr Santisuk said he believes that a strong organisational mindset ensured the airline survived and it still maintains the biggest market share on domestic routes following the pandemic.
In terms of costs, he said the airline learned to streamline its operational plan with feasible and well-prepared plans, particularly in terms of fleet expansion, which is the biggest investment for airline businesses.
The key point in terms of sales and marketing is to step away from a price war as experienced in the past, he added.
Looking ahead, he said the aviation industry still has to maintain a balance between supply growth and demand over the next few years.
On the demand side, airlines must closely monitor pent-up demand and assess how long it will continue. They must monitor the progress of big markets such as China, as well as how the Russia-Ukraine war will affect the world economy and tourism.
With supply chain disruption persisting, carriers still have to wait when it comes to aircraft maintenance and face delayed aircraft deliveries.
“In the long run, I believe in sustainability for all aspects,” he said.
TOKYO – Thirteen years on, the Japanese still haven’t quite gotten over China surpassing their economy in gross domestic product (GDP) terms. Now here comes Germany with a fresh blow to the national psyche.
This week, the International Monetary Fund calculated that Germany’s nominal GDP is on track to surpass Japan’s this year. That would push Japan from No 3 to No 4 globally.
If you think Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s approval ratings are low now – a mere 29% – just wait until this changing of the economy guard makes banner headlines. It will remind 126 million people that the ruling Liberal Democratic Party continues to dither as Japan’s global footprint shrinks.
Economists are skilled at finding creative ways to explain away such inflection points. We’re only talking about GDP in US dollar terms, some argue. Others say vagaries surrounding changes in prices of goods and services muddy the picture.
And to this day, Tokyo stresses per capita income levels — which are markedly higher in Japan — are the most important metric vis-a-vis China’s economy.
But there’s no masking that the fall from No 3 to No 4 speaks to the weakness of the Japanese economy and the collateral damage from a now backfiring 25-year-old weak yen policy.
It’s worth noting, too, that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s economy isn’t exactly thriving in the homestretch to 2024. The IMF thinks growth in the US, UK, France and Spain will top Germany over the next five years.
In mid-August, The Economist argued Berlin had gone “from European leader to laggard” and asked, “is Germany once again the sick man of Asia?” Ten days later, a Wall Street Journal headline proclaimed “Germany Is Losing Its Mojo. Finding It Again Won’t Be Easy.”
Economists can debate where Germany is, circa late 2023. But it’s hard to refute that from the mid-2000s to the late 2010s, Berlin showed Tokyo how it’s done in terms of thriving economically despite strong exchange rates.
German executives and policymakers “didn’t complain about exchange rates – they figured it out and restructured accordingly,” explains economist Stephen Jen, managing partner at SLJ Macro Partners. What’s more, as the global economy grew increasingly chaotic after the mid-2000s, Germany “didn’t fight it,” Jen notes. Berlin “went with it” and raised its economic game accordingly.
Over time, Germany – then under the leadership of Gerhard Schroder followed by Angela Merkel – found ways to innovate and adapt to the fast-changing forces of globalization despite high labor costs and financial crises.
Better than most peers, Germany balanced tensions between increasing competitiveness and maintaining maximum employment, even amongst the “Mittelstand,” the medium-sized enterprises that long formed the backbone of German industry.
In 2014, economist Sebastian Paust probably didn’t know how right he was when arguing in an Asian Development Bank report that the Mittelstand was a “model” not just for Japan but emerging Asian economies, too.
If a “full” German Mittelstand-like “success story is the goal,” Paust explains, “reform steps must be taken to create a high-standard legal and institutional system that is complemented by a stable and sufficiently decentralized and participative political system combined with a strong entrepreneurial spirit toward social responsibility.”
Though it boosted exports in the late 1900s, Japan’s weak yen policy deadened the nation’s entrepreneurial animal spirits. Since then, a revolving door of leaders leaned on a weak yen to juice growth. That rid the last 13 governments of the urgency to boost competitiveness, recalibrate growth engines and welcome disruption.
Year after year, the Bank of Japan came under increasing pressure to ease further — to push a quantitative easing (QE) experiment that began between 2000 and 2001 into new monetary frontiers.
Things got supercharged in 2013 when Haruhiko Kuroda was named BOJ governor. The central bank went on a multi-year buying binge, cornering the government bond market. Stocks, too, through epic buying of exchange-traded funds. By 2018, the BOJ’s balance sheet topped the size of Japan’s entire economy — then roughly US$4.9 trillion.
Yet the last decade of hyper-easing merely exacerbated Tokyo’s all-liquidity-no-reform problem. It generated record corporate profits, but it failed to incentivize CEOs to boost wages, invest big in innovation, increase productivity or take risks on promising new industries.
A weak exchange rate provided 25 years of modern capitalism’s most generous corporate welfare, which ended up holding Japan back. Why would CEOs exert themselves restructuring, recalibrating or reimagining industries that once showed Apple, Samsung and Tesla how it’s done when the BOJ has your back 24/7?
Prioritizing exchange rates over disruption made dominating Asia’s future industries much easier for China. And now Germany, whose officials are about to walk into Group of Seven meetings with even greater swagger.
The IMF reckons Germany’s nominal GDP will end 2024 at $4.43 trillion, topping Japan’s $4.23 trillion for Japan. This shift comes as the yen sits around 150 to the dollar — near a 33-year low — and around 160 to the euro. The yen-euro rate was last in this neighborhood in 2008 amid the global financial crisis.
What’s more, the yen is likely to slide even further. Tight labor markets and surging oil prices are upping the odds of more US Federal Reserve rate hikes, perhaps as early as next week. European Central Bank rate hikes also widened the yield gap with Japan.
“The greenback continues to draw smaller benefits from strong US data and high rate advantage than it should, likely due to its overbought status, but upside risks remain predominant,” says economist Francesco Pesole at ING Bank.
The BOJ remains in stimulus mode amid flatlining wages and slowing growth. Few observers expect much from next week’s BOJ policy meeting. At most, the BOJ might announce a modest tweak in its “yield curve control” policy. An outright tightening step, though, is becoming even less likely given Prime Minister Kishida’s fiscal policy plans.
In December, Kishida unveiled a more than 50% boost in defense spending over five years to $315 billion. Last week, he pledged to cut income taxes and corporate levies, in addition to greater assistance for childcare. This latter push comes as his government’s approval falls to record lows.
As Tokyo adds to a national debt that’s already approaching 260% of GDP, the BOJ might have to boost liquidity as opposed to withdrawing it. Kishida’s U-turn on spending will put newish BOJ Governor Kazuo Ueda in a difficult spot.
When he took the helm in April, traders everywhere expected an early pivot away from QE. Perhaps even a rate hike or two. Ueda has demurred, fearing Japan Inc isn’t ready to lose the easy money training wheels.
In the meantime, the global scene has taken a turn for the worse. The 2022 surge in energy prices related to Russia’s Ukraine invasion is now accelerating thanks to the Hamas-Israel crisis. As the gap widens between Japanese yields and those in the West, the yen may experience increased downward pressure, compounding Japan’s troubles.
As Willem Thorbecke, a senior fellow at Japan’s Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry, puts it: “Although a weak yen has been profitable for many Japanese firms and their trading partners, a further depreciation would be harmful. It will not increase exports of goods or key services such as tourism. It would also limit any potential increase in employment at a time when Japan needs more high-quality jobs.”
In Thorbecke’s view, further depreciation “would reduce the purchasing power of firms and consumers, and hinder their ability to import key products. For pharmaceutical goods and oil, whose imports do not decline when the exchange rate weakens, depreciation would still increase their yen costs.”
The problem is that “when the dollar costs of oil and primary commodities are already high, any further increase could swell Japan’s [current] account deficit,” Thorbecke says. “While the current value of the yen offers advantages, a further downward spiral would impose costs that exceed the benefits.”
A weak yen also can negatively affect consumer confidence. “Due to an increase in the weight of imported consumer goods, the purchasing power of households became prone to decline when the yen depreciated,” notes Wakaba Kobayashi, economist at Daiwa Research Institute.
Rather than currency management, “structural reforms that encourage innovation and productivity should be continued,” says analyst Takeshi Tashiro at the Peterson Institute of International Economics.
“Japan,” Tashiro says, “must rethink its agenda to address excess private savings and consider alternative ways to manage its savings when the private sector cannot meet demand on its own.”
Given the high level of government debt, Tashiro says, “Tokyo should also seek out the most promising investment opportunities while prioritizing alternatives to budget deficits in order to sustain demand. Low inflation in a period of yen depreciation shows that managing the economy in the face of huge private savings continues to be Japan’s major challenge.”
Asked about the IMF projections earlier this week, Japan’s Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said: “It’s true that Japan’s growth potential has fallen behind and remains sluggish. We’d like to regain the ground lost over the past 20 or 30 years. We want to achieve that through measures such as our upcoming package.”
Yet Kishida’s package would do nothing of the sort by merely treating the symptoms of Japan’s malaise, not its underlying causes.
Already, IMF data suggest Germans have reason to feel better off than their Japanese counterparts. Average German GDP per capita is roughly $52,824 versus $33,950 for Japanese households. At this point, continued yen weakness will do zero to boost Japanese living standards.
To be sure, German leader Scholz has more than his fair share of economic headaches. Last month, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) warned that Germany may suffer the heaviest blows from a global slowdown.
“Germany, perhaps more than other EU economies, is affected by the slowdown in China,” says Clare Lombardelli, chief OECD economist. “It exports a lot to China, as well as imports, so it’s a combination of factors.”
While “you’re seeing weaker growth across all of Europe,” Lombardelli adds, “Germany is probably the largest example. You’re seeing the impact of inflation on real incomes. That’s been suppressing consumer demand. And you’re seeing the impact of monetary policy tightening.”
Still, Japan’s woes are enabling Germany to rise in global rankings at the worst possible moment for a Tokyo government that’s very much on the ropes. The costs of 25 years of a yen-only growth strategy have never been higher, with the slip from No 3 to No 4 perhaps just the first drop in a deeper economic fall to come.
Follow William Pesek on X, formerly Twitter, at @WilliamPesek
