Ukraine sent its largest-ever delegation to Washington, DC, last week to rally support for more military defense and plead with Donald Trump not to pull the plug and make a deal that favors Russia. Pastors and religious leaders in the delegation fear that time is running out. 

“We know that President Trump is working on the new negotiations to help bring this war to an end,” said Igor Bandura, vice president of the Baptist Union of Ukraine. “We are here to pray, to advocate, to share our experience, and to remind the American people and American politicians that we are looking not just to end the war, but we need a just peace.”

American conservative and evangelical support for Ukraine has waned as the war has gone on and the Republican Party under Trump has grown increasingly skeptical of international alliances. Past efforts to shore up support for Ukraine among Republicans have yielded results, though, so the delegation remained hopeful, despite deep concerns.

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Ukrainian Christians are pleading with the Trump administration not to pull the plug on support and make a deal that favors Russia.

“We are looking not just to end the war, but we need a just peace.”https://t.co/wQ0WrrLZGI

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) February 13, 2025

Cartels are deeply entwined with the Mexican economy. Many of the tomatoes, bell peppers and cucumbers consumed in the U.S. are grown in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, where many farmers pay the cartel for water for their fields. Businesses such as mining companies and avocado growers are widely believed to pay extortion money to cartels.

“For better or for worse, this will likely force Mexican businesses and the Mexican government to confront pervasive cartel influence,” said Andrew Kaufman, an international lawyer who is counseling Mexican and multinational firms on the expected FTO designations.

Trump’s executive order took note of the cartels’ vast reach. The order gives the secretary of state—in consultation with other cabinet members—14 days to determine which Mexican cartels should be designated as FTOs. Then, key members of Congress have seven days to comment before the designation takes legal effect.

The order accuses the Mexican cartels of infiltrating governments and destabilizing countries across the Americas.

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President Trump wants to deploy a blunt new tool to fight Mexican cartels that flood the U.S. with drugs, by adding them to a list of terrorist groups that includes the likes of al Qaeda and Hamas https://t.co/pZ2amUzOxO

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) February 5, 2025

 China’s military is building a massive complex in western Beijing that US intelligence believes will serve as a wartime command centre far larger than the Pentagon, according to current and former American officials.

Satellite images obtained by the Financial Times that are being examined by US intelligence show a roughly 1,500-acre construction site 30km south-west of Beijing with deep holes that military experts assess will house large, hardened bunkers to protect Chinese military leaders during any conflict — including potentially a nuclear war.

Several current and former US officials said the intelligence community was closely monitoring the site, which would be the world’s largest military command centre — and at least 10 times the size of the Pentagon.

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SCOOP China builds huge new wartime military command centre in western Beijing – 10 times the size of the Pentagon https://t.co/19nxQg0MqM via @ft

— Demetri (@Dimi) January 30, 2025

Sailing off the south coast of England, the Russian trawler known as the Yantar carried its usual array of hi-tech equipment.

In photographs released by the Ministry of Defence, a large radar dome can be seen behind two masts bristling with antennae.

Officially, these allow the 108 metre-long craft to monitor ocean currents, befitting a vessel the Kremlin maintains is part of its oceanographic research fleet.

But it was the ship’s more nefarious purposes that prompted a rare display of British naval power on Jan 20, when the Yantar was confronted by a British warship, HMS Somerset, and patrol vessel HMS Tyne.

Humdrum though it may appear, the Yantar is known to carry two submersibles that can dive down up to 6,000 metres, allowing their crew to map, monitor and potentially sever the undersea cables that transmit data around the world.

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"It's Moscow's usual deep-sea games again"- Huh? Nothing routine about a spy ship lurking near critical infrastructure. This just proves how vulnerable undersea cables really are in modern warfare. #spyship #Russia #UnderseaCables #UKDefense #Geopoliticshttps://t.co/VzwwMSpqVy pic.twitter.com/k0EjAdaAuJ

— Robert Morton (@Robert4787) January 29, 2025

The market reaction, when it came, was brutal. On January 27th, as investors realised just how good DeepSeek’s “v3” and “R1” models were, they wiped around a trillion dollars off the market capitalisation of America’s listed tech firms. Nvidia, a chipmaker and the chief shovel-seller of the artificial-intelligence (AI) gold rush, saw its value fall by $600bn. Yet even if the Chinese model-maker’s new releases rattled investors in a handful of firms, they should be a cause for optimism for the world at large. DeepSeek shows how competition and innovation will make ai cheaper and therefore more useful.

DeepSeek’s models are practically as good as those made by Google and OpenAI—and have been produced at a fraction of the cost. Barred by American export controls from using cutting-edge chips, the Chinese firm undertook an efficiency drive, even reprogramming the chips it used to train the model to eke out every drop of power. The cost of building an AI model that can stand toe-to-toe with the best has plummeted. Within days, DeepSeek’s chatbot was the most downloaded app on the iPhone.

The contrast with America’s approach could not be starker. Sam Altman, the boss of OpenAI, has spent years telling investors—and America’s new president—that vast sums of money and computing power are needed to stay at the forefront of AI. Investors have accordingly been betting that a handful of firms stand to reap vast monopoly-like rents. Yet if fast followers such as DeepSeek can eat away at that lead for a fraction of the cost, then those profits are at risk.

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"However, the real winners will be consumers. For AI to transform society, it needs to be cheap, ubiquitous and out of the control of any one country or company. DeepSeek’s success suggests that such a world is imaginable."https://t.co/8aZ4eM5PV5 #USChina #Geoeconomics #地経学

— Ken Doi土居 (@kitakazethomas) January 30, 2025

Almost overnight, DeepSeek has upended many of the assumptions inside Silicon Valley about the economics of building AI, as well as the best technical methods for developing the technology and the extent of the US lead over competitors in China. For much of the past two-plus years since ChatGPT kicked off the global AI frenzy, the industry has bet that the path to better AI depends largely on spending heavily on more advanced chips from companies like Nvidia Corp. and increasingly massive data centers to house them.

US President Donald Trump welcomed the development as “good, because you don’t have to spend as much money.” Industry leader Nvidia, whose shares took a huge hit from DeepSeek’s debut, also lauded it as an “excellent AI advancement” in a statement on Monday.

The market fallout was staggering. Hype over DeepSeek’s feat drove a nearly $1 trillion rout in US and European technology stocks on Monday as investors questioned the spending plans of some of America’s biggest companies. The share plunge in AI chipmaker Nvidia alone erased roughly $589 billion in market value, the biggest wipeout in US stock-market history.

Meanwhile, in DC, lawmakers are left to figure out the best route to beat back China’s progress on a technology some see as crucial to its military and economy, given the Biden administration’s chip export curbs were not enough. David Sacks, President Donald Trump’s crypto and AI czar, said DeepSeek shows the global AI race will be very competitive — while blaming the Biden administration for regulation that “hamstrung” AI development.

Further complicating matters, the renewed uncertainty over large AI investments comes just days after Trump championed a $100 billion joint venture from OpenAI, SoftBank Group Corp. and Oracle Corp. to boost US competitiveness by investing in data centers and other physical infrastructure. Now, there are new questions about the rationale for stratospheric AI budgets.

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The censorship part here is eerie. Had a physical reaction while reading that.

Bloomberg: DeepSeek Challenges Everyone’s Assumptions About AI Costs https://t.co/8ewlGlxrkD pic.twitter.com/0R1ns25aoM

— Emily Binder (@emilybinder) January 28, 2025

President Trump’s landmark executive order designating major drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) marks a watershed moment in America’s approach to national security and strategic competition against China. This reclassification acknowledges an uncomfortable truth: the fentanyl crisis is not merely a law enforcement challenge but a sophisticated form of irregular warfare targeting American society, with cartels serving as proxies in a broader strategic campaign orchestrated by China against U.S. interests.

The devastating impact of this proxy warfare is reflected in stark statistics. According to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, synthetic opioids, primarily fentanyl, were responsible for over 70,000 deaths in 2022. The Drug Enforcement Administration has meticulously documented how Mexican cartels have industrialized fentanyl production using precursor chemicals sourced predominantly from China, creating what amounts to a chemical weapons supply chain targeting American communities. These aren’t merely crime statistics – they represent casualties in an irregular war being waged through proxy forces, with networks stretching from Beijing through Sinaloa and into every major American city.

The Brookings Institution has documented how this crisis disproportionately impacts working-class communities, creating zones of social instability that strain local governments and emergency services – precisely the type of internal disruption that aligns with China’s strategic objectives. The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates the economic burden of the opioid crisis exceeds $1 trillion, representing a significant drain on American resources and societal resilience. This continued deficit reduces our ability to reinvest in competition with China, while contributing to the ballooning national debt.

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https://t.co/T0XizEzRfs

— Small Wars Journal (@smallwars) January 22, 2025

If there is a single technology America needs to bring about the “thrilling new era of national success” that President Donald Trump promised in his inauguration speech, it is generative artificial intelligence. At the very least, ai will add to the next decade’s productivity gains, fuelling economic growth. At the most, it will power humanity through a transformation comparable to the Industrial Revolution.

Mr Trump’s hosting the next day of the launch of “the largest ai infrastructure project in history” shows he grasps the potential. But so does the rest of the world—and most of all, China. Even as Mr Trump was giving his inaugural oration, a Chinese firm released the latest impressive large language model (LLM). Suddenly, America’s lead over China in ai looks smaller than at any time since ChatGPT became famous.

China’s catch-up is startling because it had been so far behind—and because America had set out to slow it down. Joe Biden’s administration feared that advanced ai could secure the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) military supremacy. So America has curtailed exports to China of the best chips for training ai and cut off China’s access to many of the machines needed to make substitutes. Behind its protective wall, Silicon Valley has swaggered. Chinese researchers devour American papers on ai; Americans have rarely returned the compliment.

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The success of China’s large language models could turn the economics of AI on its head. America must prepare for a world in which China is breathing down its neck https://t.co/RGElwLsoIN 👇

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) January 23, 2025

The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is pushing a heady mix of Prussian imperial nostalgia and a shrewd form of Euroscepticism that catches the mood of post-globalist German voters.

The insurgent Right-wing party of Alice Weidel – a gay, Hayekian, Mandarin-speaking Goldman Sachs alumna, who worked for the Bank of China and wrote a paper on the Chinese pension system – is flying high as elections approach next month, reaching 22pc in the latest INSA poll.

The German media fears that the “shy voter syndrome” may understate the strength of the AfD support. If the final tally reaches the mid-20s, it could leave Germany in much the same state of political paralysis as France, unable to form a stable government on the broken rubble of the old party system.

Foreign investors have persuaded themselves that Friedrich Merz, the Christian Democrat leader, is going to win a landslide on a manifesto of free-market reform, fiscal stimulus and a blitz of investment. Germany is more likely to end up with the immobilism of another grand coalition, unable to rid itself of a social democrat dinosaur wedded to rust bowl industries and the obsolete model of the last century.

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Germany’s ‘Dexit’ party is becoming a serious threat to the European project https://t.co/mI9zkP5sH4 via @@YahooNews

— Dan Brosman (@dan_brosman) January 17, 2025

Ukraine is not only the breadbasket of Europe; it is also a mineral superpower, with some of the largest reserves of 117 of the 120 most widely used minerals in the world.

Of the 50 strategic minerals identified by the United States as critical to its economy and national security, many of which are quite rare yet key to certain high-value applications, Ukraine supplies 22.

Ukraine possesses the largest reserves of uranium in Europe; the second-largest reserves of iron ore, titanium and manganese; and the third-largest reserves of shale gas — as well as large deposits of lithium, graphite and rare earth metals, according to a 2022 report by the Canadian geopolitical risk-analysis firm SecDev. These minerals are essential to the production of vital goods ranging from airplanes, cellphones and electric vehicles to steel and nuclear power.

The question for the president-elect is: Does he want Russia and China to get that treasure trove of natural resources? Or does he want to develop them with Ukraine to the benefit of the American people? One of the main reasons Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine (aside from his delusional historical fantasies about how Ukrainians and Russians are “one people”) was to seize these natural resources, which are valued at an estimated $26 trillion, according to SecDev.

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Does Trump want Putin to get Ukraine’s $26 trillion in gas and minerals? Kyiv controls vast gas and mineral deposits. Does Trump want those flowing west, or to Russia and China?

Gift link: https://t.co/3feef88yEZ pic.twitter.com/QVIbrZFNyc

— Marc Thiessen 🇺🇸❤️🇺🇦🇹🇼🇮🇱 (@marcthiessen) December 19, 2024

Now that Mr Assad has fled to Moscow, the question is where will liberation lead. In a part of the world plagued by ethnic violence and religious strife, many fear the worst. The Arab spring in 2010-12 taught that countries which topple their dictators often end up being fought over or dominated by men who are no less despotic. That is all the more reason to wish and work for something better in Syria.

There is no denying that many forces are conspiring to drag the country into further bloodshed. Syria is a mosaic of peoples and faiths carved out of the Ottoman empire. They have never lived side by side in a stable democracy. The Assads belong to the Alawite minority, which makes up about 10-15% of the population. For decades, they imposed a broadly secular settlement on Syrian society using violence.

Syria’s people have many reasons to seek vengeance. After 13 years of civil war in a country crammed with weapons, some factions will want to settle scores; so will some bad and dangerous men just released from prison. Under the Assads’ henchmen, many of them Alawite and Shia, Sunnis suffered acts of heinous cruelty, including being gassed by chlorine and a nerve agent.

Syria’s new powerbrokers are hardly men of peace. Take the dominant faction in the recent advance. Until 2016 Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) was known as Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. Its founder, Ahmad al-Sharaa, had fought the Americans as a member of Islamic State (IS) in Iraq under the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Jolani. HTS and Mr Sharaa swear they have left those days behind. If, amid the chaos, such groups set out to impose rigid Islamic rule, foreign countries, possibly including the United Arab Emirates, will bankroll other groups to take up arms against them.

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The fall of a tyrant must be celebrated. And while Syria faces great uncertainty, a nation exhausted by war could yet choose the long road towards peace. Here is how https://t.co/RMkRxpiWW8 pic.twitter.com/nWqNYtt8Nx

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) December 12, 2024

Entering the weekend, Syria President Bashar al-Assad showed no signs of yielding.

As armed rebels closed in Saturday on Damascus, Assad ordered his forces to defend the Syrian capital, seemingly confident the military would come to his rescue, according to Syrian officials familiar with the matter.

By late Saturday, Assad had vanished. He didn’t show up for a prepared address to the nation, and his cabinet had no idea where he was. They learned with the rest of the world that Assad had escaped the country hours ahead of the rebels’ arrival.

The toppling of Assad’s regime, ending 50 years of his family’s rule, revealed how badly Syria’s army had been hollowed out by years of corruption, defections to the rebellion and the country’s economic crisis. Recruitment had declined, and Syrian men dodged conscription.

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In his last hours as Syria’s leader, Bashar al-Assad called for help from Russia, Iran and his own military. After an 11-day blitz by rebels, he learned too late he was out of allies and loyalty. ⁦@WSJ⁩ https://t.co/29xRh2rvtn

— Amb Antonio Garza (@aogarza) December 9, 2024

WSJ When Muhammad Imtiaz received an electricity bill of over $120 last summer, he panicked. The bill, for June and July, was all he earns in a month of ferrying passengers on his motorbike in the scrappy suburbs outside Pakistan’s capital Islamabad.

In his two-room home, where he lives with his wife and four children, he only has a fridge and lights. He runs two fans in the summer months when heat can exceed 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Should I give my rent, pay the electricity bill, or buy food for my children?” said Imtiaz, who has racked up $3,000 in debt. His family has one meal a day: watered-down lentils with flatbread. A decade ago, Pakistan, cripplingly short of power, turned to Beijing to build more than a dozen coal, solar and hydroelectric power plants as part of China’s huge infrastructure push in the country.

Now a series of policy mistakes by Islamabad means that Pakistan has enough electricity and more—but, due to the huge debt owed to China, few can afford it. The crisis is overwhelming Pakistan’s fragile economy, throwing millions of households into misery, shredding government finances and shutting down industry.

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Pakistan’s Reliance on Chinese-Built Power Plants Is Strangling Its Economy—Pakistan turned to Beijing to solve a crippling energy shortage. Now, crushed under debt and sky-high energy prices, its economy is diving.@SaeedShah https://t.co/fVY63hSYHmhttps://t.co/fVY63hSYHm

— Jonathan Cheng (@JChengWSJ) December 4, 2024

U.S. officials said Tuesday they had not been able to expel Chinese government hackers from telecommunications companies and internet service providers, warning concerned users to turn to encrypted messages and voice calls and giving no timeline for securing carriers.

The downbeat press briefing came more than three months after the first report of Chinese spies deeply penetrating major carriers for espionage, and after the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) met with scores of companies to help them shore up defenses and hunt for hackers in their networks.

“Given where we are in discovering the activity, I think it would be impossible for us to predict a time frame on when we’ll have full of eviction” of hackers from the networks, said Jeff Greene, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA.

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U.S. officials say they still have not expelled Chinese telco hackers https://t.co/udxPjSnK8O

— Dr. David P. Weber, Forensics Professor (@dpweber_fraud) December 3, 2024

Iran sharply increased its stockpile of nearly weapons-grade uranium amid its confrontation with Israel, according to the United Nations atomic-energy agency, in a challenge for the incoming Trump administration.

Iran’s decision to expand its stockpile of nuclear fuel and its failure to fully cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, which monitors Tehran’s work, is set to trigger fresh diplomatic pressure from Europe.

Concerns are growing in Western capitals that Iran could decide to develop a nuclear weapon, after comments by senior Iranian officials that Tehran has mastered most of the techniques for doing so. Israel’s hollowing-out of Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful proxy in the Middle East, has also prompted a public debate in Iran about whether the country’s best form of deterrence lies in having an atomic bomb.

Iran has always claimed that its nuclear work is solely for peaceful civilian purposes.

Both the incoming Trump administration and Tehran have sent mixed messages about whether they will seek confrontation or some kind of diplomatic engagement after President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20.

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The accurate take: Iran has significantly expanded its nuclear weapons program since Biden took office. It is now feigning restraint in anticipation of Trump’s return and Israel’s military achievements, which exposed Khamenei’s vulnerabilities. https://t.co/19MFSUDgm0

— Mark Dubowitz (@mdubowitz) November 19, 2024

From the recalibration of military strategy to the reconstitution of diplomacy, artificial intelligence will become a key determinant of order in the world. Immune to fear and favor, AI introduces a new possibility of objectivity in strategic decision-making. But that objectivity, harnessed by both the warfighter and the peacemaker, should preserve human subjectivity, which is essential for the responsible exercise of force. AI in war will illuminate the best and worst expressions of humanity. It will serve as the means both to wage war and to end it.

Humanity’s long-standing struggle to constitute itself in ever-more complex arrangements, so that no state gains absolute mastery over others, has achieved the status of a continuous, uninterrupted law of nature. In a world where the major actors are still human—even if equipped with AI to inform, consult, and advise them—countries should still enjoy a degree of stability based on shared norms of conduct, subject to the tunings and adjustments of time.

But if AI emerges as a practically independent political, diplomatic, and military set of entities, that would force the exchange of the age-old balance of power for a new, uncharted disequilibrium. The international concert of nation-states—a tenuous and shifting equilibrium achieved in the last few centuries—has held in part because of the inherent equality of the players. A world of severe asymmetry—for instance, if some states adopted AI at the highest level more readily than others—would be far less predictable. In cases where some humans might face off militarily or diplomatically against a highly AI-enabled state, or against AI itself, humans could struggle to survive, much less compete. Such an intermediate order could witness an internal implosion of societies and an uncontrollable explosion of external conflicts.

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In our book Genesis we talk about all of the impacts of AI. One of the biggest impacts is on the conduct of war and national security: https://t.co/wv1CHGJdLn

— Eric Schmidt (@ericschmidt) November 20, 2024

European and NATO officials acknowledge that talk of territorial concessions no longer raises as many eyebrows as it once did, and diplomats frame it not as “land-for-peace” but rather as land for Ukraine’s security.

“I think everybody has more or less reached this conclusion. It’s hard to say it publicly because it would be a way of saying we are going to reward aggression,” said Gérard Araud, a former French ambassador to Washington.

“It’s certainly not fringe anymore,” said a Western official who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

It’s unclear exactly what a deal might look like, as diplomats weigh blueprints of “peace plans” floated since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. With Russian forces in control of roughly a fifth of the country — including in the eastern Donbas region and the annexed Crimean Peninsula — freezing today’s front lines or outlining a demarcation line would mean Ukraine ceding swaths of its territory.

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Ukraine’s European allies eye once-taboo ‘land-for-peace’ negotiations https://t.co/OHvlOH5hyT

— Earl Anthony Wayne (@EAnthonyWayne) November 14, 2024

After years of internal strife, it was a dispute about economic policy that finally toppled the German government. Now Europe is facing months of political paralysis just as its many simmering crises are coming to a boil.

With both France and Germany led by minority governments, the continent’s key powers are facing months of impotent introspection as challenges pile up, from a hostile second Trump administration to the economic headwinds from China and Russia’s steady advances in Ukraine. 

The political currents tossing governments across Europe are similar to those that propelled Donald Trump to win back the presidency, the Senate and very possibly the House. Voters on both sides of the Atlantic are in a restive mood, unhappy with the economy and unimpressed by politicians’ efforts to control a surge in illegal immigration.

But while America’s overall economy is strong, Europe’s recovery from its recent economic shocks has been lackluster, especially in the industrial heartlands of Germany.

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"Europe Rudderless"

Both France and Germany now have minority governments.https://t.co/s2WbcRtpOi

— Axel Merk (@AxelMerk) November 7, 2024

Western security officials say they believe that two incendiary devices, shipped via DHL, were part of a covert Russian operation that ultimately aimed to start fires aboard cargo or passenger aircraft flying to the U.S. and Canada, as Moscow steps up a sabotage campaign against Washington and its allies.

The devices ignited at DHL logistics hubs in July, one in Leipzig, Germany, and another in Birmingham, England. The explosions set off a multinational race to find the culprits.

Now investigators and spy agencies in Europe have figured out how the devices—electric massagers implanted with a magnesium-based flammable substance—were made and concluded that they were part of a wider Russian plot, according to security officials and people familiar with the probe.

Security officials say the electric massagers, sent to the U.K. from Lithuania, appear to have been a test run to figure out how to get such incendiary devices aboard planes bound for North America.

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Exclusive | Russia Suspected of Plotting to Send Incendiary Devices on U.S.-Bound Planes – WSJ https://t.co/cNY7wdokRm

— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) November 5, 2024

Amid U.S. warnings against a counterattack on Israel, Iran is sending a defiant diplomatic message: It is planning a complex response involving even more powerful warheads and other weapons, said Iranian and Arab officials briefed on the plans.

It remains to be seen whether the Iranian threats are real or just tough talk. Israel’s punishing airstrike against Iran on Oct. 26 shredded the country’s strategic air defenses, leaving it badly exposed and sharply raising the risks to Iran if it follows through. 

How the Israeli response plays out will depend on the size, nature and effectiveness of Tehran’s threatened strike. So far, Israel has refrained from hitting Iran’s oil and nuclear facilities, essential to its economy and its security, but that calculus could change, Israeli officials have said.

Iran has told Arab diplomats that its conventional army would be involved because it had lost four soldiers and a civilian in Israel’s attack, the Iranian and Arab officials said. Involving its regular army doesn’t mean its troops would be deployed but that the paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that normally deals with Israeli security matters wouldn’t act alone in this case.

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WSJ reports #Iran's regime has been sending messages to Arab countries that it is planning a complex response to #Israel involving more powerful warheads & weapons and its regular army. Worth noting Artesh officers have deployed to #Syria in the past.https://t.co/KdVnXRlgIB

— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) November 3, 2024

In principle, Ukraine could liberate its lost territory if the United States and its European partners intervened with forces of their own. But this would require jettisoning the indirect strategy they chose in 2022. It would come at great human, military, and economic cost. And it would introduce far greater risk, as it would mean war between NATO and nuclear-armed Russia. For this reason, such a policy will not be adopted.

Instead of clinging to an infeasible definition of victory, Washington must grapple with the grim reality of the war and come to terms with a more plausible outcome. It should still define victory as Kyiv remaining sovereign and independent, free to join whatever alliances and associations it wants. But it should jettison the idea that, to win, Kyiv needs to liberate all its land. So as the United States and its allies continue to arm Ukraine, they must take the uncomfortable step of pushing Kyiv to negotiate with the Kremlin—and laying out a clear sense of how it should do so.

Such a pivot may be unpopular. It will take political courage to make, and it will require care to implement. But it is the only way to end the hostilities, preserve Ukraine as a truly independent country, enable it to rebuild, and avoid a dire outcome for both Ukraine and the world.

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The Perfect Has Become the Enemy of the Good in Ukraine | Foreign Affairs https://t.co/YQorbrdOWe

— Richard N. Haass (@RichardHaass) November 4, 2024

He called himself a simple onion farmer, a Mayan Indian with four kids and a fourth-grade education.

U.S. prosecutors knew better.

By his late 30s, Felipe Diego Alonzo had built a crime route stretching from Central America to Texas, allegedly paying off Mexican drug cartels along the way. He tooled around Guatemala’s western highlands in a loaded silver Ford Ranger pickup. When the police finally raided his ranch, they found a study in rural narco-chic: wooden chalets, a swimming pool, a show horse valued at $100,000.

What they didn’t find was a narco. Alonzo’s business “was more profitable than drug trafficking,” said one of the Guatemalan officials who detained him.

Alonzo was moving people.

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As smuggling rings made billions from migrants, the U.S. was sidelined https://t.co/QKiCwSIpZx

— Mary Beth Sheridan (@marybsheridan) November 1, 2024

Data centers are the factories of AI, turning energy and data into intelligence. Industry leaders estimate that a few major U.S. technology companies alone are expected to invest more than $600 billion in AI infrastructure, particularly in data centers, between 2023 and 2026. The countries that work with companies to host data centers running AI workloads gain economic, political, and technological advantages and leverage. But data centers also present national security sensitivities, given that they often house high-end, export-controlled semiconductors and governments, businesses, and everyday users send some of their most sensitive information through them. And while the United States is ahead of China in many aspects of AI, especially in software and chip design, America faces significant bottlenecks with data centers.

Data centers are critical for the digital economy and AI. But the data center buildout is hitting a wall. The United States is home to the plurality of the world’s data centers, numbering in the thousands. Yet America’s aging energy grid, which powers those data centers, is under enormous strain from a complex set of factors, including rising electricity demand, delayed infrastructure upgrades, extreme weather events, and the complex transition to renewable energy. Meanwhile, surging data center demands driven by rapidly increasing AI workloads are exacerbating the grid’s vulnerabilities.

It’s not just a question of how those energy needs can be met, but where. When it comes to data centers, the shortage of powered land in the United States—or more specifically, the shortage of powered land with the connectivity required to support large-scale data centers—combined with supply chain challenges and lengthy permitting timelines for new infrastructure—presents a challenge to realizing both the public and private sectors’ AI ambitions.

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There are a lot of known unknowns about AI, but “The Next AI Debate Is About Geopolitics.” In my latest @ForeignPolicy piece, I argue that data might be the “new oil,” but nations—not nature—will decide where to build data centers. Source: Foreign Policy https://t.co/CHLEzhY9I6

— Jared Cohen (@JaredCohen) October 28, 2024

The Death Spiral is one of the main Pentagon Pathologies. The American people devote ever greater resources to their defense while receiving less and less in return. The Air Force had 10,387 aircraft in 1975 when the Military Reformers began their work in earnest. Today the Air Force has 5,288. The Navy had 559 active ships in 1975. Today the fleet has only 296. The Pentagon’s base budget is more than 60% higher today than it was in 1975, when adjusted for inflation. The American people simply spend more and receive much less in return for their defense dollars.

An argument can be made that modern military equipment is more expensive because of the capabilities they provide the troops. That is extremely debatable because many of the high-profile acquisition programs over the past 25 years have been underwhelming at best, and often complete failures. It is difficult to find anyone who will honestly say the Littoral Combat Ship was worth the effort.

Left unchecked, the acquisition Death Spiral’s inevitable destination is unilateral disarmament. Norman Augustine, a former DoD official and Lockheed Martin CEO predicted in 1983, with only a hint of satire, that by 2054, “the entire defense budget will purchase just one aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy 3-1/2 days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day.”

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At the current spending rate, in another generation we will have a lot of rich contractors and no aircraft or Naval fleets to speak of https://t.co/k4XV5gsk7Z

— Responsible Statecraft (@RStatecraft) October 24, 2024

The Economist has spoken to a range of people with first-hand knowledge of Iran’s oil system. To check and verify what they told us, and flesh out the detail, we then sought information from other sources, including former sanctions officials, Iranian insiders, intelligence professionals and WikiIran, a third-party website soliciting leaks. Our investigation shows that the country has built sprawling shadow financial channels, which run from its oil rigs to the virtual vaults of its central bank. China, Iran’s main buyer, is an architect of this system, and its chief beneficiary. Global banks and financial hubs, often unknowingly, are used as vital cogs. A source familiar with Iran’s books says that, as of July, it had $53bn, €17bn ($19bn) and smaller pots of other currencies lying abroad.

Although enforcement has weakened in recent years, Iran is subject to the broadest sanctions America has imposed on any country. Aimed at forcing Iran to curb its nuclear enrichment and funding of terrorism, they target swathes of its economy, as well as the government. No other country imposes such stringent sanctions, so, in theory, most can deal with Iran. In practice, few do so openly, as America bans its firms not just from trading with Iran, but also with foreigners that knowingly do so. It is especially tough for Iran to receive and move dollars, as every such transaction, almost anywhere in the world, must eventually be cleared by an American bank.

But our report shows that, with patchy enforcement, determination and help from a greedy partner, a country under a de facto global embargo can end up flouting it on a cosmic scale. Many of Iran’s tactics are reminiscent of those a drug cartel would use to market products and recycle proceeds into other dark enterprises, often via seemingly legitimate businesses. Iran’s subterranean oil system is governed by rules as much as by threats. The task is to construct an elaborate charade that will dupe sanctions-enforcers.

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Iran's money laundering network (simplified by the Economist) https://t.co/oIUs0Pjo3A pic.twitter.com/qI1FZb8okf

— Dr. Paul J. Sullivan (@DrPJSullivan) October 17, 2024

Years before the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, Hamas’s leaders plotted a far deadlier wave of terrorist assaults against Israel — potentially including a Sept. 11-style toppling of a Tel Aviv skyscraper — while they pressed Iran to assist in helpingachieve their vision of annihilating the Jewish state, according to documents seized by Israeli forces in Gaza.

Electronic records and papers that Israeli officials say were recovered from Hamas command centers show advanced planning for attacks using trains, boats and even horse-drawn chariots — though several plans were ill-formed and highly impractical, terrorism experts said. The plans anticipate drawing in allied militant groups for a combined assault against Israel from the north, south and east.

The trove of documents includes an annotated, illustrated presentation detailing possible options for an assault as well as letters from Hamas to Iran’s top leaders in 2021 requesting hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and training for 12,000 additional Hamas fighters.It is unclear whether Iran knew of the planning document or responded to the letters, but Israeli officials view the requests as part of a larger effort by Hamas to draw its Iranian allies into the kind of direct confrontation with Israel that Tehran has traditionally sought to avoid.

The 59 pages of letters and planning documents in Arabic obtained by The Washington Post represent a fraction of the thousands of records that Israel Defense Forces say they have seizedsince Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza began Oct. 27

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"Captured documents reveal Hamas’s broader ambition to wreak havoc on Israel" @washingtonpost Hamas wanted to do a lot more on October 7th. They were stopped by Israeli army, police, security and intelligence, and everyday civilians protecting their families, their nation.

-… pic.twitter.com/JZNgoWZMAn

— John Spencer (@SpencerGuard) October 13, 2024

One year after the brutal Hamas attack that ended Israel’s two-decade golden age of relative peace, expanding wealth and growing diplomatic ties, the country is now firmly on the counterattack and preparing to be at war for years.

Weathering a ferocious Iranian missile assault in recent days and shaking off calls from allies for a cease-fire in Gaza, Israel is instead opening new theaters of fighting.

It launched a stunning series of attacks against the Lebanese militia Hezbollah in Lebanon in recent weeks, while simultaneously targeting Houthi rebels in Yemen, rooting out militancy in the occupied West Bank and mapping out its next steps against Iran, the architect of a so-called axis of resistance that includes U.S.-designated terrorist groups bent on destroying Israel.

The campaign marks an aggressive shift in Israel’s security posture. 

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Ever since Hamas’s slaughter of Israelis on October 7th 2023, violence has been spreading. One year on, the Middle East is an inch away from an all-out war between Israel and Iran. Israel’s skilful decapitation of Hizbullah, a Lebanese militia backed by Iran, prompted the Islamic Republic to rain missiles on Israel on October 1st. Israel may retaliate, perhaps striking Iran’s industrial, military or nuclear facilities, hoping to end once and for all the threat it poses to the Jewish state.

Iran is certainly a menace, and use of force against it by Israel or America would be both lawful and, if carefully calibrated, wise. But the idea that a single decisive attack on Iran could transform the Middle East is a fantasy. As our special section explains, containing the Iranian regime requires sustained deterrence and diplomacy. In the long run, Israel’s security also depends on ending its oppression of the Palestinians.

Iran’s latest direct attack on Israel consisted of 180 ballistic missiles. Unlike an earlier strike in April, this time Iran gave little warning. But as before, most of the projectiles were intercepted. The salvo was a response to the humiliation of its proxy, Hizbullah, which until two weeks ago was the most feared militia in the region. No one should shed tears for a terrorist outfit that has helped turn Lebanon into a failed state. For the past year Hizbullah has bombarded Israel, forcing the evacuation of civilians in its northern belt. Israel’s counter-attack, unlike its invasion of Gaza, was long-planned. It has made devastating use of intelligence, technology and air power, killing the militia’s leaders, including its chief, Hassan Nasrallah, maiming its fighters with exploding pagers and destroying perhaps half of its 120,000 or more missiles and rockets.

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The year that shattered the Middle East pic.twitter.com/6YqtHxDnDQ

— Ibrahim Hamidi ابراهيم حميدي (@ibrahimhamidi) October 3, 2024

The long-feared “wider war” in the Middle East is here.

For the last 360 days, since the images of the slaughter of about 1,200 people in Israel last Oct. 7 flashed around the world, President Biden has warned at every turn against allowing a terrorist attack by Hamas to spread into a conflict with Iran’s other proxy force, Hezbollah, and ultimately with Iran itself.

Now, after Israel assassinated the Hezbollah chief, Hassan Nasrallah, and began a ground invasion of Lebanon, and after Iran retaliated on Tuesday by launching nearly 200 missiles at Israel, it has turned into one of the region’s most dangerous moments since the Arab-Israeli War of 1967.

The main questions now are how much the conflict might intensify, and whether the United States’ own forces will get more directly involved.

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A Wider War in the Middle East, From Hamas to Hezbollah and Now Iran – The New York Times https://t.co/JjU4OyZeLr

— cecilia ballesteros (@ceciliab) October 2, 2024

Reconciliation is not an event; it is a process taking generations. In 1945, Europe was a hopeless and bankrupt slaughterhouse of hatred and cruelty. Today, there are huge struggles, but the only place we ever truly express rivalry and hunger for victory is on the football field. And France is remarkably successful.

Reconciliation requires human participation. It happens through the brilliance of leadership, de Gasperi, Adenauer, Monnet, Schumann, de Gaulle, Churchill, General Marshall. Defying the bloodshed of the past, it beats swords into ploughshares. Reconciliation means history that is true. It means healing past hurts and admitting wrongs.

Reconciliation is not only agreement, although agreement is necessary; reconciliation is the transformation of destructive conflict into creative rivalry underpinned by mutual acceptance and love. It is a cycle of peace, justice, and mercy, building up a structure shining in the love of God. A moment of peace opens the way to truth telling. Truth telling sows the seeds of relationships. They allow a gram more of peace. In this thin soil of peace, justice can be sown. Amidst justice a fragile confidence appears. From confidence the next and better circle can begin.

But the foundation of it all is prayer, for in prayer we commit ourselves to partnership with God.

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In a world of conflict, we must imagine peace – and that begins by partnering with God in prayer.

It was a great privilege to address the #SantEgidio International Meeting for Peace in Paris today.

You can read my address here: https://t.co/wker09gmcy #PeaceIsPossible pic.twitter.com/9MBNzjGmb7

— Archbishop of Canterbury (@JustinWelby) September 22, 2024