Important Takeaways:
- President Donald Trump said Thursday that he wants to restart nuclear arms control talks with Russia and China and that eventually he hopes all three countries could agree to cut their massive defense budgets in half.
- Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump lamented the hundreds of billions of dollars being invested in rebuilding the nation’s nuclear deterrent and said he hopes to gain commitments from the U.S. adversaries to cut their own spending.
- “There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons, we already have so many,” Trump said. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”
- “We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully much more productive,” Trump said.
- While the U.S. and Russia hold massive stockpiles of weapons since the Cold War, Trump predicted that China would catch up in their capability to exact nuclear devastation “within five or six years.”
- He said if the weapons were ever called to use, “that’s going to be probably oblivion.”
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Important Takeaways:
- US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday that the war between Ukraine and Russia “must end,” that Kyiv joining NATO is unrealistic and that the US will no longer prioritize European and Ukrainian security as the Trump administration shifts its attention to securing the US’ own borders and deterring war with China.
- In remarks before a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, Hegseth also said that European troops should be the primary force securing a post-war Ukraine—something US troops will not be involved in, he added.
- “The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement,” Hegseth said. And he added that any security guarantees offered to Ukraine “must be backed by capable European and non-European troops.”
- “To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will not be US troops deployed to Ukraine,” he said.
- “We’re also here today to directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe,” he said
- Hegseth emphasized that the US “remains committed to the NATO alliance and to the defense partnership with Europe. Full stop. But the United States will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Forget Europe or the hotspots of East Asia and the Middle East, Marco Rubio’s first foreign trip as secretary of state took him to one Caribbean and four Central American states. The tour tells us that the Trump foreign policy is focusing on the region closest to the American homeland.
- It is not clear when China first started collecting signals intelligence, commonly termed SIGINT, in Cuba, but it was evident that the effort began more than a decade before 2019.
- The CSIS study identifies four likely Chinese listening posts in Cuba. There are two from the Soviet era…
- China wants to do more than just collect SIGINT. “China and Cuba are negotiating to establish a new joint military training facility on the island, sparking alarm in Washington that it could lead to the stationing of Chinese troops and other security and intelligence operations just 100 miles off Florida’s coast,” reported the Wall Street Journal in June 2023.
- Cuba provides the Chinese one an ideal location to surveil America. “Sitting less than 100 miles south of Florida, Cuba is well-positioned to keep watch on sensitive communications and activities, including those of the U.S. military,” the CSIS report states. “The southeastern seaboard of the United States brims with military bases, combatant command headquarters, space launch centers, and military testing sites.”
- China denied the Wall Street Journal reporting, calling it “totally mendacious and unfounded.” In any event, since the paper’s article, there has been no confirmation that the Chinese military has actually built or obtained access to such a site.
- Perhaps one explanation is that the Biden administration pressured both Havana and Beijing to back off.
- At the moment, Cuba needs Chinese cash and might therefore accede to granting China greater access to the island. The Cuban regime, after all, is enduring its worst economic crisis since at least the Soviet collapse. Russia, its old patron, is tied down by the war in Ukraine and troubled by recent setbacks in the Middle East. Vladimir Putin, therefore, is not able to help much.
- It is not clear, therefore, how far the Chinese friends will go in rescuing their Cuban comrades.
- China made great strides in the Caribbean when the United States was not paying attention.
- Rubio, however, is focused on the Caribbean basin, as the itinerary for his first trip shows. Moreover, the new secretary of state is apparently willing to use raw American power to strong-arm countries.
- The United States is unlikely to use force against Cuba over listening posts, but President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are not about to let the Chinese military take control of a country so close to the American homeland. Cuba should expect intense pressure, so China is probably at high tide in that country.
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Important Takeaways:
- China announced retaliatory tariffs on select American imports and an antitrust investigation into Google on Tuesday, just minutes after a sweeping levy on Chinese products imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump took effect.
- American tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico were also set to go into effect Tuesday before Trump agreed to a 30-day pause as the two countries acted to address his concerns about border security and drug trafficking. Trump planned to talk with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the next few days.
- This isn’t the first round of tit-for-tat actions between the two countries. China and the U.S. engaged in an escalating trade war in 2018 when Trump repeatedly raised tariffs on Chinese goods and China responded each time.
- This time, analysts said, China is much better prepared, announcing a slew of measures that go beyond tariffs and cut across different sectors of the U.S. economy. The government is also more wary of upsetting its own fragile and heavily trade-dependent economy.
- “It’s aiming for finding measures that maximize the impact and also minimize the risk that the Chinese economy may face,” said Gary Ng, a senior economist at Natixis Corporate and Investment Banking in Hong Kong. “At the same time … China is trying to increase its bargaining chips.”
- John Gong, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, called the response a “measured” one. “I don’t think they want the trade war escalating,” he said. “And they see this example from Canada and Mexico and probably they are hoping for the same thing.”
- China announced export controls on several elements critical to the production of modern high-tech products.
- They include tungsten, tellurium, bismuth, molybdenum and indium, many of which are designated as critical minerals by the U.S. Geological Survey, meaning they are essential to U.S. economic or national security that have supply chains vulnerable to disruption.
- The export controls are in addition to ones China placed in December on key elements such as gallium.
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Important Takeaways:
- Panama’s president vowed Sunday to end a key development deal with China after meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and after complaints from President Donald Trump that the Latin American country had ceded control over its critical shipping canal to Beijing.
- “I think this visit opens the door to build new relations … and try to increase as much as possible U.S. investments in Panama,” Mulino told reporters after meeting with Rubio on his first international trip since being confirmed.
- Trump has complained that China exerts control over the canal and charges U.S. ships six-figure premiums to cross Panama’s isthmus. The canal was built over several decades by the U.S. and completed in 1914 but handed over to Panama during the Carter administration.
- The bill, named the Panama Canal Repurchase Act, was introduced by Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., a member of the Select Committee on China and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
- If it becomes law, the bill would give the president authority to act in coordination with the secretary of state to “initiate and conduct negotiations with appropriate counterparts of the Government of the Republic of Panama to reacquire the Panama Canal.”
- The U.S. Department of State estimates around 72% of all vessels that travel through the Panama Canal are coming from or going to a U.S. port.
- Noting the canal’s strategic importance to the United States, Johnson’s office also noted how the waterway is a key transit point for U.S. Coast Guard and Department of Defense vessels.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Artificial Intelligence wars have begun.
- China fired the first shot.
- On Monday, $1 trillion in stock market value was wiped off the books of American tech companies after Chinese startup DeepSeek created an AI-tool that rivals the best that US firms have to offer – and at a fraction of the cost.
- DeepSeek claims its engineers trained their AI-model with $6 million worth of computer chips, while leading AI-competitor, OpenAI, spent an estimated $3 billion training and developing its models in 2024 alone.
- What’s more, DeepSeek says they accomplished this feat with relatively dated technology. (US sanctions deny the Chinese the world’s most advanced chip tech.)
- That news landed on Wall Street like a ton of bricks. This is the first time that China has beaten the US to a major AI discovery.
- It was nothing short of ‘AI’s Sputnik moment,’ according to Marc Andreessen, one of the foremost tech investors in the world, a reference to October 4, 1957, the day the Soviet Union beat the US to launch the first satellite into space.
- However, America cannot ignore the threat of Chinese AI dominance.
- In this day and age, artificial intelligence translates to military supremacy. Whoever commands the best AI will win wars in the future.
- DeepSeek also poses an immediate national security risk to America.
- On Monday it was the top download on Apple’s store – shooting past OpenAI’s ChatGPT – as thousands of Americans loaded it onto their phones.
- The American people have to be on their guard. If you download the app, you better ask who’s watching and who’s listening. From what I can tell, it scrapes your emails and personal data.
- As long as America recognizes DeepSeek for the threat that it is, there is no need to panic.
- Instead, just like with Sputnik, America must seize this challenge to innovate and regain AI supremacy once again.
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Important Takeaways:
- China’s “artificial sun” reactor has broken its own world record for maintaining super-hot plasma, marking another milestone in the long road towards near-limitless clean energy.
- The Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) nuclear fusion reactor maintained a steady, highly confined loop of plasma — the high-energy fourth state of matter — for 1,066 seconds on Monday (Jan. 20), which more than doubled its previous best of 403 seconds, Chinese state media reported.
- Nuclear fusion reactors are nicknamed “artificial suns” because they generate energy in a similar way to the sun — by fusing two light atoms into a single heavy atom via heat and pressure. The sun has a lot more pressure than Earth’s reactors, so scientists compensate by using temperatures that are many times hotter than the sun.
- Nuclear fusion offers the potential of a near-unlimited power source without greenhouse gas emissions or much nuclear waste. However, scientists have been working on this technology for more than 70 years, and it’s likely not progressing fast enough to be a practical solution to the climate crisis. Researchers expect us to have fusion power within decades, but it could take much longer.
- EAST’s new record won’t immediately usher in what is dubbed the “Holy Grail” of clean power, but it is a step towards a possible future where fusion power plants generate electricity.
- East is a magnetic confinement reactor, or tokamak, designed to keep the plasma continuously burning for prolonged periods. Reactors like this have never achieved ignition, which is the point at which nuclear fusion creates its own energy and sustains its own reaction, but the new record is a step towards maintaining prolonged, confined plasma loops that future reactors will need to generate electricity.
- “A fusion device must achieve stable operation at high efficiency for thousands of seconds to enable the self-sustaining circulation of plasma, which is critical for the continuous power generation of future fusion plants,” Song Yuntao, director of the Institute of Plasma Physics responsible for the fusion project at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Chinese state media
- The data gathered by EAST will support the development of other reactors, both in China and internationally. China is part of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) program, which involves dozens of countries, including the U.S., U.K. Japan, South Korea and Russia.
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Important Takeaways:
- Outgoing FBI Director Christopher Wray revealed during an interview on Sunday, a week before he steps down, that China has penetrated America’s water treatment plants, electric grid, and other critical civilian infrastructure, and is lying “in wait” for an opportunity to cyberattack at a time and place of its choosing.
- Asked on CBS’s 60 Minutes about Chinese penetration of U.S. cyber and infrastructure, Wray said China’s cyber program is the largest in the world and has stolen more of Americans’ personal and corporate data than every nation combined. Then, he added:
- But even beyond the cyber theft. There’s another part of the Chinese cyber threat that I think has not gotten the attention publicly that it I think desperately deserves. And that is Chinese government’s pre-positioning on American civilian critical infrastructure. To lie in wait on those networks to be in a position to wreak havoc and can inflict real-world harm at a time and place of their choosing.
- Wray said China has already infiltrated malware into critical American infrastructure.
- “Things like water treatment plants. We’re talking about transportation systems. We’re talking about targeting of our energy sector, the electric grid, natural gas pipelines. And recently we’ve seen targeting of our telecommunications systems,” he said.
- Wray said China has also been listening into Americans’ calls.
- Joshua Steinman, former National Security Council senior director for cyber security during the Trump administration, posted on X:
- This enrages me. I left them with the tools they needed to confront this. And it appears those tools went unused for four years. Total mismanagement.
- Wray called stepping down “one of the hardest decisions” he has ever made, but said he had little choice after President-Elect Donald Trump made it clear he would be replaced.
- Trump has nominated Kash Patel, former deputy Director of National Intelligence and Pentagon chief of staff for the role.
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Important Takeaways:
- “Unfortunately, the Chinese Communist Party is just filthy all over there. They control the ports at both ends of the Panama Canal — both the Atlantic and Pacific ends,” Johnson said, describing the current scope of Chinese influence.
- “Lots of reports about China cozying up to Panama, having more and more influence over how the canal is operated, and 40 percent of all American container loads that leave our country go through the Panama Canal. It is an asset that is uniquely important to us,” he said, explaining that “73 percent of all the traffic in the Panama Canal is American traffic, either imports or exports, overwhelmingly American energy, liquefied natural gas and American agricultural products.”
- “And as you noted, we used to control the thing until 1999,” he said, asserting that he believes President-elect Donald Trump “should have the ability to go evaluate whether or not we can get a willing buyer, willing seller situation.”
- Host and Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle noted that he witnessed the Chinese influence firsthand when visiting the canal in 2017.
- “I think most of, if not all of the ships were all carrying Chinese flags. I was just blown away by it,” he remarked.
- “Well, and you’re right to bring up how many ships are flagged with the Chinese flag,” Johnson responded, although he explained that the scope of the issue is much bigger.
- “And this is not just a problem for the Panama Canal. It’s a problem for supply chains. Generally, during COVID, you had Chinese carriers who were discriminating against American goods at our own ports,” the congressman said, revealing that 60 percent of U.S. container loads that were going back to Asia “were going back empty at a time when American ag[ricultural] products were rotting on the dock, literally rotting on the dock. They were doing that purposely.”
- “My bill, the Ocean Shipping Reform Act, passed last Congress, was signed into law and really forced the Chinese to start to treat us more fairly
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Important Takeaways:
- Western experts have publicly called on China to be more transparent about a viral outbreak overwhelming its hospitals — as data shows the virus is growing in the US.
- Beijing has downplayed footage of overcrowded waiting rooms and wards posted on social media, saying respiratory infections are ‘less severe’ and ‘smaller in scale’ compared to last year.
- That has led some to fear there are similarities with the current situation and the Covid outbreak in 2019, which was initially played down by China.
- It is thought China’s outbreak is being fueled by the relatively unknown virus human metapneumovirus (HPMV), which normally causes cold-like symptoms such as a blocked nose, headache, shivering and tiredness.
- Sanjaya Senanayake, infectious disease expert associate professor of medicine at The Australian National University, said it was ‘vital for China to share its data on this outbreak in a timely manner’, including ‘data about who is getting infected.’
- He added: ‘Also, we will need genomic data confirming that HMPV is the culprit, and that there aren’t any significant mutations of concern. Such genomic data will also guide vaccine development.’
- Their warning comes as the US experiences its own increase in HMPV cases, with positive test percentages doubling from the beginning to the end of December.
- According to the latest CDC data, just under 300 positive test results reported during the last week of December, the latest figures available.
- The US CDC said it is ‘monitoring’ the cases in China but believe they are ‘not currently a cause for concern in the US.’
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