Cross-strait tensions, the One-China policy and regional security around Taiwan and China.
Eritrea
On Friday, Ethiopian Foreign Minister Gedion Timothewos wrote to the U.N. Security Council, citing Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, to say Eritrean troops had advanced up to 38 miles into Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region…
Narco-terrorism
President Donald Trump likes to say he is " nine for nine " with the candidates he has backed in Latin America and the Caribbean, and Brazil's Oct. 25 runoff could make it ten. Senator Flávio Bolsonaro led the first…
Iran-war
Writing for the Daily Mail in 2023, Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson sardonically argued , “The Americans don't give us crucial nuclear secrets because they love little old England. They don’t share…
Military
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As the US Navy lays the groundwork for its next-generation SSN(X) attack submarine to replace its aging fleet, the US’s longstanding undersea supremacy faces an intensifying test against China’s rapid naval buildup…
Larry C. Johnson
The East-West line to Yanbu is breaking down, and with it the kingdom’s last reliable route around Hormuz When the Strait of Hormuz closed at the end of February, Saudi Arabia had what almost no other Gulf producer had…
Ukraine War
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As the war in Ukraine grinds into its fifth winter, the collapse of recent diplomatic initiatives and Washington’s explicit pivot from arming Kyiv to brokering a territorial freeze have laid bare a stark new reality. In…
Eurasia
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Beijing’s biggest geopolitical concern each time Trump and Putin warmly embrace one another or the United States make a friendly gesture towards Russia is the fear that such moves will not only seriously impact…
External
By: Khanh Vu Duc Vietnam President To Lam with Governor General of Canada Louise Arbour. Photo from VNA For years, Washington and Beijing have pushed the international system toward a binary logic: choose sides and…
Uncategorized
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This past week, a flock of Israel supporters jetted to Jerusalem to attend this year’s “National Conservative” conference, the project led by Israeli political thinker Yoram Hazony. Days later, the offspring of…
Earlier today I published this week’s episode of Sharp China, in which we discussed the EU-China trade talks, Xi’s health and succession, and the possibility that the Trump Administration has hit “peak dove” on China…
Opinion
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Some of America's allies apparently still have not understood Donald Trump's slogan, "America First". For some reason, they assumed that their own interests were part of the programme, too: Israel's security, Ukraine's…
CEO Interviews
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Eric Hong is Vice President of Engineering at Mixel, a Silvaco company, where he leads the development of analog and mixed-signal IP, including high-speed PHY and SerDes solutions. Prior to Mixel, he held engineering…
Geopolitics
Detained when returning from a conference in Russia, a former UK diplomat in Moscow was forced to give a DNA sample to UK counter-terrorism police. Ian Proud was a member of His Britannic Majesty’s Diplomatic Service…
Geopolitics
The weaponisation of trade has not brought the global economy to its knees yet, but it is building up problems that won’t go away. Marco Carnelos is a former Italian diplomat. He has been assigned to Somalia, Australia…
Corruption
Capitalism is becoming ever more dominated by large firms, and the owners of the small companies getting squeezed are naturally becoming increasingly disenchanted with the system. Dr Tommaso Crescioli is an Economist at…
China
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Two giant pandas recently landed in Atlanta, a week after Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met in Washington. The summit produced no immediate breakthrough on trade deals, Taiwan or AI, but it did produce something cuddly for…
National Politics
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Analysis of the political situation in Spain from a tenants’ union activist. In ‘International Viewpoint’. Read the article HERE . A protester shakes a keyring while holding a banner that reads “¡Derecho a techo a justo…
Technology
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For most of the past thirty years, the semiconductor industry ran on a remarkably clean division of labor. Everybody knew their place. The caricature was almost this simple: TSMC printed. Memory makers crammed…
Members
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Welcome to The Ukraine Compass, a weekly digest of Ukrainian commentary and analysis from across the political spectrum only for War on the Rocks members. Each week, we bring you a curated selection of articles from…
Semiconductor
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Teradyne has announced Magnum E2, a memory test system designed to address the increasingly demanding interfaces used in artificial intelligence and high performance computing. The platform targets advanced DRAM and…
Economy & Trade
Satellite image of the Strait of Hormuz. Credit WikiMedia By UN Women GENEVA, Oct 13 2026 (IPS) An additional 11.7 million women and girls could face food insecurity by the end of 2026, as the escalation in the Middle…
Energy
The Trump administration is implementing a new imperial scheme to gain control of Iraq’s oil. Although President Trump appears to be winding down U.S. involvement in Iraq, declaring on September 30 that “we’re getting…
Newsletters
Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband outside 10 Downing Street in 2024 (Alamy) This read was first published exclusively for our email subscribers on the 14th of September 2026. Get the latest from Anna Stavrianakis direct to…
Activism
Something stinks. Astoria is one of my favorites on the Oregon coast, a small town of around 9,000 people with great restaurants and craft shops. Two of them, a coffee shop and ceramics studio, are owned by a small…
External
I try to understand all sides of an argument, even if it doesn’t make any sense to me on the surface. I understand why some people want to say pedophiles shouldn’t be demonized, even as it turns my stomach that people…
Activism
Sorry to intrude on your inbox again, but I wanted to bring your attention to yesterday’s raid by federal agents on the Washington-area home of Rep. Ilhan Omar — 22 days before she faces reelection to Minnesota’s 5th…
Semiconductor
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Sandra Rivera, Chair of VSORA , joined Bloomberg’s The Close in July for an interview on the current state of AI. What follows is a summary of that conversation. When a Silicon Valley veteran who once ran Intel’s Data…
AI
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Intel’s strategic argument about enterprise AI is that the value of a model depends on the system that surrounds it. In an article by executives Bill Pearson and Anil Nanduri, the company positions open software as the…
#Culture
I recently read Joseph Murphy’s seminal work The Power of Your Subconscious Mind , and it left me thinking about how much power our inner lives can have over the way we experience the world. Murphy writes extensively…
War & Peace
The international system is having a legitimacy crisis. It has never been more obvious that the institutions charged with maintaining peace are struggling to produce it. But perhaps the problem isn’t simply that today’s…
Archive
A British man fought for the Israeli army in Gaza when war crimes appear to have been committed, a four-month investigation by Declassified has found. Jonathan Burman, who is in his mid-20s and from Manchester, posted…
External
Show Notes: On today’s show Andrew and Bill begin with an extended survey of EU-PRC trade dynamics in the wake of an eventful week. Topics include: a deal on hybrid exports that may have averted a trade war, potential…
Europe
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This phenomenon has been described by political scientists long ago. A recognition of this fact by someone who was close to former president Joe Biden is quite impressive. White House Press Secretary from 2022 to 2025…
Cogs of War
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America faces a well-defined industrial base problem. Whether it’s a hypothetical Taiwan invasion wargame run two dozen times, the current Iranian conflict, or the Russo-Ukrainian War, the same result repeats: Magazines…
Commentary
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The standard explanations for why Taiwan is so important to the Chinese Communist Party are familiar: territorial integrity, credibility of deterrence commitments, great power competition with the United States, the…
Featured
A group of UN Staffers outside the Secretariat. Credit: United Nations By Thalif Deen UNITED NATIONS, Oct 13 2026 (IPS) The United Nations has once again revived a longstanding problem that has been left lingering behind…
Ukraine War
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The deal struck by Donald Trump with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on October 9 to allow Russia to sell millions of tonnes of diesel is a major departure from US policy and runs counter to Ukrainian and…
Europe
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The arrests near RAF Fairford on September 27 are still surrounded by uncertainty, but the incident has already raised a wider question for Britain and other European countries that host American military forces. When a…
Armed Conflicts
By Jomo Kwame Sundaram KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Oct 13 2026 (IPS) The protracted demise of dollar-gold convertibility and associated fixed exchange rates did not end dollar hegemony. With crucial and timely help from…
Opinion
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Famous Indian author Shashi Tharoor was famously quoted as saying: “Everything in India is recycled, even the dreams “ In October 2010, The Economist ran a cover titled “How India’s growth will outpace China,” citing…
Iran-war
Republicans could be looking at a major wipeout in the midterm elections. Their tiny House majority was always going to be difficult to maintain, but the Senate should not be in play at all. Yet it surely is, with…
Ukraine
Britain is clamping down even harder on critics who consider Western foreign policy to have been a catastrophic failure. We are fast approaching the point where expressing an alternative opinion can land you in jail. On…
Europe
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For most of the past two decades, the Iran nuclear file was where Europe proved it could do geopolitics. Britain, France and Germany opened talks with Tehran in 2003, kept them alive through years of American scepticism…
Piracy at sea
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At first the idea of mercy was something that helped me through the ordeal. But would real forgiveness be a form of Stockholm syndrome? I knew Mohamed Tahlil as a gentle pirate who oversaw a team of guards during the…
Military
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While the US is arming its long-serving B-52 with potent ship-killing missiles to take on China’s expanding navy, severe munition constraints and operational vulnerabilities could undermine its strategic impact. This…
Larry C. Johnson
Karl Miller’s new assessment: a seven-to-ten-year rebuild, a trillion-dollar bill, and a diesel crisis that Saudi Arabia can no longer cushion For most of this war, Saudi Arabia has been the shock absorber of the world…
Southeast Asia
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When Australia’s Lowy Institute think tank released the 2025 edition of its Southeast Asia Aid Map in July last year, it projected that Western aid cuts would shift the region’s development finance toward Asian partners…
ASIA NARRATIVES China Systems Weekly: Political, Economic and Social Narratives Oct 5–Oct 11, 2026 Executive Assessment The developments from October 5–11 reveal a common structural shift: economic interdependence is…