📰 THIS WEEK’S BIG STORY: The Western Hemisphere took center stage this week as the Trump administration moved to lock down strategic advantage on two fronts simultaneously. In Venezuela, the Pentagon is taking a 35% stake in a private oil venture with century-long rights to 65 billion barrels of reserves — an unusual use of national security financing to secure energy dominance in the hemisphere while the Iran war disrupts Middle East supply. At the same time, the US-Canada trade relationship cracked open over Ottawa’s ties to China, with Washington arguing Canada’s preferential treatment of Chinese EVs violates the spirit of USMCA and opens a backdoor into the American market. Both moves point to the same underlying logic: as the world moves toward multipolarity, the US is done tolerating ambiguity from partners and rivals alike in its own backyard.

🌎 OUR HEMISPHERE

President Trump re-committed to the Monroe Doctrine in his 2025 National Defense Strategy. Here are the headlines you need to know about what’s happening in our hemisphere.

• The U.S. secured majority control of Venezuela’s oil reserves in a deal announced Friday, structured as the Pentagon taking a 35% stake in a private company run by Alejandro Betancourt, which gets a 100-year lease on fields holding 65 billion barrels — about one-fifth of Venezuela’s reserves. Rubio says it will lower U.S. gas prices, but Venezuela only pumps 1.1 million barrels a day. Critics call the deal unconstitutional and note Betancourt has faced money-laundering investigations with no formal charges.

• US-Canada trade talks collapsed last week after both sides accused the other of trying to add new provisions to an already-reached agreement. The US has since imposed 50% tariffs on roughly $20 billion of Canadian goods, with Canada set to reciprocate September 8 and no attempt at de-escalation before then. At the center of the dispute is China: Washington argues Canada has let Chinese EVs into its market at preferential low-tariff rates — in violation of USMCA’s rules-of-origin clause, which requires over 75% of regional value content to come from North America — creating a backdoor for Chinese goods and technology into the American market through Canada’s free-trade status. Canadian PM Mark Carney has framed the dispute as the US imposing its will on Canada’s sovereign right to set its own trade policy; US Ambassador Grier countered that Canada and China are now the only two major economies retaliating against US tariff demands rather than negotiating, effectively putting Canada in China’s camp on the dispute.

  • Amanda’s Take: While Trump doesn’t do himself and his arguments favors by making it seem like this is a petty dispute about renaming the Great Lakes, the US position here is actually rational. And as Dominic Green points out for the WSJ (gift link), this isn’t about Canada rising as a middle power to promote Canadian sovereignty and international law. Canada has violated the spirit of the agreement by doubling down on its relationship with China, and insisting they are entitled to the same privileges of the USMCA. So despite Trump’s tantrum over this, and Carney cloaking himself in the language of international law, Trump is right here.

⛩️ ASIA

The Indo-Pacific is the most consequential region on earth right now. Here’s what you need to know.

• Japan recorded its first year-on-year increase in first-half births in 11 years — 342,068 births from January through June, up 0.8% from the same period in 2025, driven by a rebound in marriages after the COVID-era slump.

• Vietnam’s National Assembly approved its first nuclear power plant Sunday, reviving a program shelved in 2016 — Ninh Thuan 1, an $8 billion, two-reactor project built by Russia’s Rosatom, with target operation between 2030 and 2035. Lawmakers also voted to split the original program into three separate projects, including a second plant, Ninh Thuan 2, after Japan withdrew as the original partner and Petrovietnam stepped in.

  • Crucial Context: Vietnam’s deal makes it the furthest along of any Southeast Asian country pursuing nuclear power, but it’s part of a broader regional build-out. The Philippines leads on regulatory groundwork, with an independent nuclear regulator already in place and a target of 2032 for its first plant. Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest power market, is targeting 44 gigawatts of nuclear capacity by 2060, including a hydrogen-focused component, while Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand remain further behind, still focused on policy frameworks and feasibility work. Nearly 40 nations, including the U.S., Japan, South Korea, and China, have joined a global push to triple installed nuclear capacity by 2050, with Southeast Asia expected to account for close to a quarter of the new capacity from “newcomer” nuclear nations. China itself is positioning its expanding nuclear industry as a tool of influence across the region, competing directly with Russia’s role in Vietnam. The push is as much about power politics as it is electricity — Southeast Asian governments are racing to secure energy security and AI-driven data center demand while hedging against reliance on any single outside power, whether that’s Russia, China, South Korea, or the West.

• China revised its National Defense Mobilization Law on August 28, effective October 1 — its first major overhaul since the law passed in 2010. A viral X post framed it as a new “wartime” decree authorizing forced conscription and property seizure, but the core provisions (mandatory service for men 18-60 and women 18-55, requisition of civilian resources) already existed in the 2010 law. The revision does expand the framework, adding detail on reserve systems, strategic materials, wartime controls over finance, transport, telecoms, energy, and food, and new mobilization language covering AI and drones.

  • Crucial Context: A lot of the analysis circulating around this is presenting the revision as proof China is actively preparing for a wide war. That’s an overreach. Chinese state media is calling it routine modernization following years of military-civil fusion reforms. Outside mainland China, in Taiwan and Japan, coverage has treated it more cautiously, as further institutionalizing whole-of-society wartime conversion rather than a signal of imminent conflict.

• Nepal’s flood death toll has climbed to at least 675, with over 2,400 still missing, as rescue efforts entered their fourth day. The catastrophe hit a country already reliant on tourism and remittances, and the international response has been muted — the U.S. has pledged just $3.6 million, a fraction of what it gave after Nepal’s 2015 earthquake.

🕌 THE MIDDLE EAST

The Middle East has been fundamentally remade since October 7th. Here’s what you’re probably missing.

• Israel signed a $3.5 billion weapons deal with Greece Monday — its largest ever with Athens — covering a full multilayered air defense system called Achilles Shield, including David’s Sling, SPYDER, and a new command-and-control system.

  • Amanda’s Take: Despite years of negative press that’s tanked global public opinion on Israel, it’s minting record defense deals with new partners across both Asia and Europe. Why? Because no matter how many legal opinions activist judges at international courts hand down, or how many condemnations NGOs issue, countries act in their own interests — full stop. If we’re really entering a multipolar world, which I believe we are, conflict is going to become more common, and the US isn’t showing up for everyone anymore. That means countries in Europe and Asia need to invest heavily in their own weapons systems, and Israel is the obvious supplier — its technology has proven itself in real combat over the past few years. Deals like this one are going to cement Israel as a major military power for years to come.

• U.S. forces struck two Iranian rocket launchers at Larak Island Sunday after observing them preparing to disperse sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz — the first U.S. strike on Iran in a month. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards responded by firing missiles at U.S. bases in Jordan; Jordan intercepted all eight. It’s the first known military exchange between the two nations in a month.

💶 EUROPE

There’s so much more to Europe than NATO skepticism. Here’s what you need to know.

• Ceuta’s migrant crisis has turned violent a month after roughly 72,000 people crossed from Morocco into the Spanish exclave. Anti-migrant protesters set fire to migrant camps on a beach where thousands have been sleeping rough, clashed with police, and blocked Red Cross workers from distributing food; separately, 12 migrants were arrested for allegedly attacking a military vehicle. Spain’s government has centralized management of the crisis and unveiled plans to overhaul its immigration laws, while accusing the conservative PP and far-right Vox of inflaming tensions — one Vox lawmaker is under investigation for saying migrants should be “hunted down, one by one.” Morocco’s alleged role in the original surge remains disputed, with Sánchez’s government blaming traffickers and insisting Rabat is a reliable partner, while opposition figures on the right and far left suspect Moroccan involvement.

🇺🇸 US FOREIGN POLICY NEWS

Here’s the headlines Washington is talking about.

• ICE deported British ‘MAGA’ commentator Milo Yiannopoulos back to the UK on Friday after arresting him at a New Orleans airport for overstaying his visa. An immigration judge had issued a deportation order in July after he missed his final removal hearing.

🤖 AI COMPETITION

The AI race is as much an economic and national security story as it is a tech story. Here’s what moved this week.

• X Safety identified a bot farm of roughly 200,000 suspected Chinese inauthentic accounts, with 200 of them actively pushing posts and AI-generated cartoons designed to inflame the U.S. debate over AI data centers — pushing the narrative that they’re driving up electricity prices and straining the grid, and that operators are profiting at the public’s expense.

• Daniel Penny — hired by a16z’s American Dynamism team after his acquittal in the NYC subway killing — published a widely discussed essay making the case for data centers, arguing they’re the foundation for reshoring American manufacturing, retraining a generation of blue-collar workers as electricians and welders, and giving young men purpose that a diploma-mill economy stripped away.

  • Amanda’s Take: Essays like this entering and driving the conversation around AI will do much more for the American psyche that is skeptical about tech, data centers, and AI than blanket statements that all opposition to these new technologies is driven by China. Even though, evidently, almost all of the opposition to this is driven by China. But people never want to believe that they’ve been duped.

Thank you for reading! Found this useful? Forward it to one person. Not a paid subscriber yet? Consider becoming one — it directly supports this work. New readers can subscribe here.

For more analysis throughout the week, follow me on Instagram, X, and YouTube!

📰 THIS WEEK’S BIG STORY: The US formally re-designates Hezbollah as an Iranian proxy as Treasury preps measures to “collapse” the regime in Tehran. Washington publicly rebukes Israel for striking a Turkish-backed air base in Syria. US-Canada trade talks collapse, triggering 50% tariffs and retaliation. And Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz keeps slipping, with traffic up nearly 400% on the US-backed Oman route.

🌎 OUR HEMISPHERE

President Trump re-committed to the Monroe Doctrine in his 2025 National Defense Strategy. Here are the headlines you need to know about what’s happening in our hemisphere.

• US expands anti-narco military campaign from sea to land across Latin America. After killing 200+ people in over 60 boat strikes over the past year, the Trump administration is now pursuing joint ground operations against cartels in allied nations. Secretary Hegseth says Colombia, Guatemala, and Honduras have agreed to joint operations, following Ecuador’s lead in March — though Guatemala’s government denies any such agreement. In Colombia, Hegseth raised the prospect of US forces joining strikes against the ELN guerrilla group at the request of new Trump-aligned President Abelardo de la Espriella. Mexico remains the holdout.

  • Crucial Context: This marks a massive sea change in how the US deals with cartels — decades of supplying weapons, intelligence, and training to regional partners are giving way to direct US combat operations on foreign soil. Washington is now treating drug traffickers the way it once treated ISIS and al-Qaeda, designating 20 Latin American criminal groups as foreign terrorist organizations.

• US-Canada trade talks collapse, triggering 50% tariffs and dollar-for-dollar retaliation. New US tariffs on ~$20 billion of Canadian goods — hockey sticks, building materials, liquor, clothing — took effect after talks broke down Friday. PM Mark Carney called it “a miscalculation,” citing last-minute US demands to limit relief to autos only, restrict Canada’s outside trade deals, and curb its cultural sovereignty. USTR Jamieson Greer said Canada “declined to finalize” already-agreed terms and that the US would “respond to Canadian retaliation.” Canada’s counter-tariffs, effective September 8, target steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, and electronics. The tariffs use the never-before-invoked Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 and are expected to face legal challenges.

  • Amanda’s Take: In case you’re confused about why the US is treating these two neighbors so differently — under Sheinbaum, Mexico has shifted toward greater alignment with the US and taken steps to restrict Chinese goods and investment into North America. Under Carney, Canada has done the opposite, deliberately expanding its economic ties with China. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

⛩️ ASIA

The Indo-Pacific is the most consequential region on earth right now. Here’s what you need to know.

• China is building detailed AI models of the American electorate to shape its U.S. policy. A Fudan-led project called ElectionSim scraped 171 million X posts to build voter profiles and simulate every state’s presidential election, claiming to reproduce 47 of 51 outcomes. Shanghai-linked researchers built synthetic Pennsylvania voters to test campaign messages, while other papers explicitly frame the work as informing Beijing’s US policy — one Shanghai Jiao Tong study on Trump’s base said its goal was to “provide a scientific basis for our country’s policy toward the United States.” Internal documents from Chinese firm GoLaxy, used by China’s Ministry of State Security and PLA intelligence, describe deploying this modeling for “cognitive-domain confrontation,” including dedicated MAGA-influencer and swing-state modules.

• Taiwan proposes record $35 billion defense budget, first to top NT$1 trillion. The 2027 budget jumps 18%, pushing defense spending to nearly 4% of GDP — a response to Trump’s pressure on allies to spend more on their own defense, and a signal to Beijing that Taipei is investing to make invasion too costly. Obstacles remain: Trump has withheld approval of a $14 billion arms package as a “negotiating chip” with China, Taiwan’s opposition legislature keeps squeezing Lai’s military requests, and Xi’s expected September White House visit adds pressure on Trump to hold off on sales.

• Congressional Republicans press South Korea to lift exit ban on former US Ambassador Morse Tan. Tan has been barred from leaving South Korea since May, when he traveled to observe local elections and was indicted for allegedly defaming President Lee Jae-myung over remarks he made on US soil at a National Press Club event. His ban was just extended three months ahead of a September 11 trial. Reps. Young Kim, Michael Cloud, Chris Smith, and Brian Mast wrote to Seoul calling it “remarkably unfair” and citing Tan’s First Amendment rights as an American citizen.

  • Crucial Context: This lands amid broader US-Korea strain — Trump recently scaled back joint military exercises with Seoul over its refusal to help with the Iran war. Tan himself has called Lee’s government “a rising dictatorship,” and House Judiciary Republicans are separately probing South Korea’s Information and Communications Network Act, the law used to charge Tan, over concerns it’s being weaponized to silence American critics.

• China’s gaokao exam system reveals the ideological gap between Western socialists’ idealized vision of China and reality. A Jacobin review of The Highest Exam by Ruixue Jia and Hongbin Li examines the National College Entrance Exam, taken by over 10 million students annually, as a zero-sum “centralized hierarchical tournament” where relative provincial ranking — not absolute score — determines life outcomes. Unlike the US, where a degree’s importance fades with experience, a gaokao-determined credential follows Chinese citizens for life, permanently gating access to elite careers. Surveys cited in the piece show most Chinese citizens attribute poverty to individual failings, with only 25% supporting redistribution.

  • Amanda’s Take: It’s remarkable that DSA and pro-socialist activists in the US look to Mao and China as their model, when the actual result of Chinese-style “communism” — which isn’t really communism at all but Chinese nationalism and fascism — is that most Chinese hold these fundamentally right-wing views on poverty and merit.

🕌 THE MIDDLE EAST

The Middle East has been fundamentally remade since October 7th. Here’s what you’re probably missing.

• US formally re-designates Hezbollah as an Iranian proxy, sanctions cash-smuggling network. Treasury changed Hezbollah’s legal status from standalone “terrorist organization” to an explicit extension of Iran’s IRGC-Quds Force, rejecting its self-description as a “Lebanese resistance movement” — part of broader US economic measures meant to “collapse” the Tehran regime. Treasury also sanctioned 10 people tied to a network, allegedly led by Turkish businessman Yunus Alper Yilmaz, that smuggled hundreds of millions to Hezbollah via couriers on commercial flights between Lebanon, Turkey, the UAE, and Iran.

• Israel strikes Syrian air base to block Turkish troop deployment — and the US publicly rebukes Israel over it. Eight Israeli strikes hit Abu Duhur air base in Idlib, which Turkey — Syria’s main backer — had been rehabilitating. Netanyahu’s office said Syria was “on the verge of breaching” an agreed security status quo. Notably, Tom Barrack, the top US envoy to the region (ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria simultaneously), called the strikes “an unnecessary escalation” and said Damascus has sought de-escalation, not conflict. Qatar, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia also condemned the strikes.

  • Crucial Context: The top US envoy in the region is publicly siding with Syria over longtime partner Israel. The likely reason: Washington doesn’t want to alienate the major Sunni powers stabilizing Syria and pulling it into their orbit — partners it needs to confront China and Russia. Israel, meanwhile, opposes Syrian stability because it means Turkish military power extending into the Levant, threatening Israel’s regional hegemony after defeating Iran’s axis in Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza. A security-paranoid Israel is willing to absorb reputational cost to avoid returning to its pre-October 7 vulnerability — expect escalation to continue regardless of the outcome of Israel’s upcoming election.

  • Amanda’s Take: Some are framing this as Israel trying to break NATO — that’s overblown. Turkey isn’t leaving NATO, and the US will manage this relationship long before it abandons Israel or NATO over these disputes, even as they grow. But I’d urge my Israeli friends to rethink the embrace of kinetic action against Turkey given where global opinion on Israel stands right now. Israel has proven over the last three years it can deliver extraordinary military victories — but it has consistently failed to convert those battlefield wins into political ones. Diplomacy, not further strikes, is the wiser path here, especially given Israel and Turkey’s historically decent relationship outside the shadow of the Gaza war.

• Strait of Hormuz traffic surged nearly 400% as Iran loses grip on the chokepoint. Nearly 200 ships transited the strait last week, up from just 40 two weeks ago. Over 80% now take the US-backed Omani route or go “dark,” up from almost none a month ago. Energy Secretary Chris Wright puts combined transits and reroutes at 15 million barrels/day, nearing the 20 million pre-war average.

  • Crucial Context: Coverage is fixating on crude, but that’s the wrong metric — refineries consume crude, everyone else runs on diesel and gasoline, and that market is cracking. The US diesel crack spread topped $100/barrel this week, with the real consumption-weighted fuel basket pricing near $165 against $85 WTI. Ukraine’s strikes on Russian refining are compounding it right as winter demand hits. This is a refined-products crisis, not an oil crisis.

  • Amanda’s Take: Hopefully, now everyone who embarrassed themselves with takes that Iran would emerge from this war a superpower because they’d control the Strait of Hormuz (looking at you, Robert Pape) will crawl back into whatever hole they crawled out of and never comment on this stuff again. Of course a couple errant Iranian drones are no match for the US Navy. Add on the economic war being waged on Iran, I think we could either see a repeat of the MOU in a few weeks, or sustained pressure from the blockade, inflation up over 100% in Iran, and the economic war being waged by the Treasury Department, could create a scenario where the regime collapses or recalibrates, like what happened in Venezuela.

💶 EUROPE & AFRICA

There’s so much more to Europe than NATO skepticism. Here’s what you need to know.

• American missionary Kevin Rideout was freed after 9 months in Islamist captivity in Niger’s Sahel region. Rideout, a pilot for North Carolina-based SIM International, was kidnapped just 150 feet from Niger’s presidential palace in Niamey in October 2025 and released this week — Trump’s 110th freed American hostage since taking office. His release was brokered by authorities in eastern Libya under commander Khalifa Haftar. No group has claimed the kidnapping, though analysts suspect ties to regional Islamist networks.

  • Crucial Context: Niger has become a terrorism hotbed since a 2023 military coup expelled French and US forces, forcing the abandonment of Air Base 101 in Niamey. Since then, ISIS-affiliated Islamic State Sahel Province and al-Qaeda-affiliated JNIM have surged — the Global Terrorism Index found JNIM fatalities in Niger rose nearly fourteenfold last year, the group’s deadliest year in the country on record.

🇺🇸 US FOREIGN POLICY NEWS

Here’s the headlines Washington is talking about.

• A new report alleges Abdul El-Sayed’s mother had ties to Iraq-era transfers for a now-blacklisted Islamic charity. A Natalie Winters investigation says Elkomy, El-Sayed’s mother, worked from 1999 for IARA-USA, the US arm of the Sudan-based ISRA network Treasury blacklisted in 2004 over alleged al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Taliban ties. A federal filing reportedly places her name on Iraq-related transfer paperwork from 1999–2002, including a $24,607.34 wire matching a court-listed transfer through Arab Bank in Amman. IARA-USA later pleaded guilty to sanctions violations and laundering, with DOJ saying it funneled $1.375 million into Saddam-era Iraq.

  • Amanda’s Take: Americans are so used to seeing Islamic terrorism — particularly Salafi terrorism — in the vein of Al Qaeda’s grand attacks or ISIS-linked lone wolf violence that, now those have calmed down, they assume the threat has disappeared. But the threat may have just changed form. What we’re seeing now looks like groups sympathetic to and tied with terrorist organizations making a concerted political push instead — and given those ties, it’s fair to argue they share similar underlying ambitions, just pursuing them through the ballot box rather than suicide bombings or hijackings. You could even make the case that there’s been a deliberate effort to suppress lone wolf attacks specifically so these networks can rise politically without the backlash violence would bring. If we want to counter this influence, fixating on the old version of Islamism won’t be enough — we need to be looking at the political vector, not just the kinetic one. Amjad Taha says it best here: The Muslim Brotherhood terrorists do not arrive announcing extremism. They exploit migration systems, manufacture stories of victimhood, reinvent themselves as activists, gain citizenship and influence, then seek positions of power from which they can undermine the freedoms that protected them..

🤖 AI COMPETITION

The AI race is as much an economic and national security story as it is a tech story. Here’s what moved this week.

• **New polling shows Americans turning sharply against data centers — more support a nuclear or coal plant in their town than a data center.** Republican support has flipped from +14 last year to slightly negative; Democrats and independents remain net negative. Politicians on both sides are capitalizing on the backlash, including Democrat Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania and Republican Greg Abbott in Texas.

  • Amanda’s Take: I used to worry this would make the US lose ground to China or seriously stall progress — I’m not worried anymore. Data centers and AI are the main drivers of the US economy right now; halting construction would almost certainly trigger a recession. Some small towns will see the upside and allow construction, and five years from now, the same people protesting data centers in their backyard will be protesting the lack of them, once they see the economic opportunity they missed. This knee-jerk reaction will force tech companies to recalibrate — offering incentives to residents and funding public projects that benefit host communities. This feels a lot like the anti-5G hysteria before COVID. Just like people snapped out of that, I think they’ll snap out of this too.

Thank you for reading! Found this useful? Forward it to one person. Not a paid subscriber yet? Consider becoming one — it directly supports this work. New readers can subscribe here.

For more analysis throughout the week, follow me on Instagram, X, and YouTube!

📰 THIS WEEK’S BIG STORY: Trump says he’ll “pretty soon” declare Hormuz US territory. Assad gets sentenced to death in absentia. China-linked hackers ran a near-autonomous AI attack on Taiwan. And South American oil is quietly keeping gas prices in check.

🌎 OUR HEMISPHERE

President Trump re-committed to the Monroe Doctrine in his 2025 National Defense Strategy. Here are the headlines you need to know about what’s happening in our hemisphere.

• Surging South American oil output is a major reason prices haven’t spiked as much as expected during the Iran war, with the region poised to supply nearly half of all global oil production growth through 2030. Rystad Energy pegs 2025 South American oil growth at 7.5%, with double-digit growth likely this year — output free of chokepoints like Hormuz or Suez, and increasingly friendly to investment amid the region’s rightward political swing under leaders like Milei. Brazil is on track to become the world’s fourth-largest oil producer by 2030 on offshore Rio and Equatorial Margin deposits; Guyana already produces close to 1 million barrels a day; Argentina’s Vaca Muerta shale broke export records in late 2025; and even post-Maduro Venezuela has nearly doubled output, hitting 1.2 million barrels a day in May.

• The US revoked the visa of Andrés Manuel López Beltrán, son of former Mexican president López Obrador, prompting President Sheinbaum to accuse Washington of interfering in Mexican politics. López Beltrán — a Morena party figure preparing to run for Mexico’s national assembly — blamed Secretary of State Marco Rubio and deputy Christopher Landau in an open letter calling the move “Hitlerian.” The revocation follows April’s US indictment of Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha on cartel bribery charges, DEA head Terry Cole’s statement that the Mexican government and cartels are “one and the same,” and ongoing US pressure for troop access inside Mexico that Sheinbaum has refused.

  • Amanda’s Take: It’s just incredible how comfortable the children of foreign dignitaries and politicians are insulting the US, or acting against our interests, while living here. I can’t think of another time in history when this behavior would have been so normalized, and where the host country who kicked out the critical dissident would be seen as the bad guy.

• China is bankrolling Cuba’s solar buildout as the island’s fuel crisis deepens, expanding Beijing’s foothold just as Washington tightens the screws on Havana’s energy supply. Chinese solar equipment shipments to Cuba jumped from $3 million in 2023 to $117 million in 2025, funding at least 59 solar parks that now supply about 10% of national power, up from 3% last year. But the buildout — hampered by a lack of battery storage — hasn’t stopped near-daily blackouts, which worsened after the Trump administration blocked most energy shipments to Havana in January. Cuba ran out of fuel reserves entirely in May.

⛩️ ASIA

The Indo-Pacific is the most consequential region on earth right now. Here’s what you need to know.

• A former National Science Foundation program officer who hid his participation in Chinese talent plans while helping award US research grants now runs an AI research center in China. Tao Li managed NSF computer science funding from 2015-2017 while secretly in China’s Dragon Star program — which the FBI assessed was created to target NSF research. The investigation took seven years; the NSF banned Li in May, by which point he’d relocated to a Hunan university tied to China’s defense-industrial complex, where he’s pushing to build the city into an AI hub.

  • Amanda’s Take: It’s incredible how every week there’s a new story about someone high up — in tech, government, or the military — selling out to China. And it’s almost never a national story.

• The US and Japan are advancing what could become the world’s deepest commercial undersea mine, targeting rare-earth mud near Japan’s Minamitorishima island to break China’s grip on the supply chain. University of Tokyo researchers estimate the deposit — sitting 6,000 meters down in Japan’s exclusive economic zone — holds more than 16 million tons of rare earths, potentially including 780 years of global demand for yttrium, plus gadolinium, dysprosium, and terbium. Trump and PM Takaichi signed a cooperation memorandum in March, and Japan is targeting a full-scale mining trial by February 2027. China currently supplies about 90% of global refined rare earths and has already zeroed out dysprosium and terbium shipments to Japan after Takaichi’s Taiwan comments — and Chinese survey ships and a carrier have already tested the edges of Japan’s EEZ near the site.

  • Crucial Context: This isn’t the first time Beijing has weaponized rare earths against Tokyo. In 2010, after a Chinese trawler collided with Japanese Coast Guard boats near the disputed Senkaku Islands, China halted rare earth exports to Japan — which was then nearly 90% dependent on China for such materials — sending prices soaring tenfold within a year. That crisis pushed Japan to diversify supply chains and fund alternative sources like Australia’s Lynas; today’s deep-sea mining push is a continuation of that decade-long effort to escape Chinese leverage

• Suspected China-linked hackers ran what researchers call a first-of-its-kind near-autonomous AI cyberattack on Taiwanese government systems, deploying up to eight AI agents in parallel to map, adapt, and breach with minimal human direction. Israeli firm Dream identified the four-day July operation, built from open-source AI frameworks including Hermes and OpenClaw, which mapped 21 government systems and compromised at least 85 accounts, extracting more than 2,500 personnel records before expanding to Taiwan’s nuclear safety agency and seven energy companies. Internal communications were in Simplified Chinese; the target data was in Traditional Chinese consistent with Taiwan. Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs confirmed an AI-assisted attack but stopped short of attributing it to China.

• New Zealand’s spy agency has broken from Five Eyes convention by naming China explicitly and repeatedly as the country conducting espionage against it “at scale.” The NZSIS’s latest threat assessment says China is the only country New Zealand has detected conducting espionage at scale, a bluntness Australia’s own intelligence chief avoids in his equivalent reports. Beijing has pushed back hard — denouncing Foreign Minister Winston Peters last month for calling China a nation of liars, and imposing travel bans on four New Zealand MPs who visited Taiwan. The agency also flagged Chinese-linked attempts to install space-tracking infrastructure in New Zealand and aggressive recruitment-site targeting of security clearance holders across Five Eyes countries.

  • Amanda’s Take: Based New Zealand.

• The US is pulling its last aircraft carrier presence from the Pacific to reinforce the Middle East, replacing the strained USS Abraham Lincoln with the USS George Washington after reports of food shortages, plumbing failures, and a sailor going overboard. Sen. Richard Blumenthal cited water contamination and deteriorating mental health aboard the Lincoln, which hasn’t made a port call in 200 days; Hegseth called the concerns “completely misrepresented.” The Washington had been patrolling the South China Sea and transiting the Strait of Malacca, countering Chinese influence near the Philippines and Japan — its departure leaves the Pacific without a carrier just as China has its own deployed there. Analysts say the Iran war’s strain on the fleet could take three years to fully repair.

  • Amanda’s Take: This is the US pulling its last remaining carrier out of Asia — which blows a hole in the argument that Trump’s Iran war somehow “prioritizes” Asia and countering China. It does the opposite. It leaves Asia vulnerable at exactly the moment we’ve also pulled interceptors out of South Korea and fallen behind on weapons deliveries to Taiwan. And to be fair, this move is somewhat necessary — our carriers in the Middle East are already on brutally long deployments. But that’s exactly the point: needing to strip Asia bare to keep the Middle East staffed is itself evidence this war was poorly planned from the start.

🕌 THE MIDDLE EAST

The Middle East has been fundamentally remade since October 7th. Here’s what you’re probably missing.

• Iran is accusing Qatar of holding three of its air force pilots prisoner since a Sukhoi Su-24 was shot down early in the war, a dispute now snarling US-mediated talks over reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Qatar downed the jets three days into the conflict; one crew member’s body was recovered, but the other three were never found. Iran’s missing-persons committee has appealed to the Red Cross after accusing Qatar of stonewalling; Qatar denies holding anyone and says Iran ignored its invitation to be briefed on the search.

  • Amanda’s Take: Qatar deservedly gets a lot of criticism for playing both sides in the Middle East, and has become a major boogeyman for the neocons and pro-Israel Republicans alike. But if it’s true that Qatar is currently holding Iranian pilots as prisoners of war, it’s time to reconsider the alarmist rhetoric that’s become normal about Qatar.

• A Syrian court sentenced Bashar al-Assad and eight others, including his brother Maher, to death in absentia for war crimes committed during the civil war — the first such verdict since his 2024 ouster. Only one defendant, Assad cousin and former Daraa security chief Atef Najib, was present for trial; he alone can appeal. Assad and Maher remain in Russia, which granted them asylum and is unlikely to extradite despite Syria’s request. Human rights researchers note the case leaned heavily on witness testimony given how much physical documentation from the war was lost or destroyed, and the court’s full written verdict — reportedly over 300 pages — hasn’t yet been released.

  • Amanda’s Take: It still amazes me that we’re in the middle of a regional war in the Middle East, and Syria of all places seems to be the most stable.

• Trump threatened to declare the Strait of Hormuz a “territory of the United States,” claiming the ongoing blockade already amounts to US control of the waterway. Speaking Friday in New York, Trump said he’d make the declaration “pretty soon,” arguing “no ships get through unless we want them to.” Iran’s deputy foreign minister Kazem Gharibabadi rejected the threat, saying the strait opens or closes only under Iran’s authority; foreign minister Abbas Araqchi separately said Tehran hasn’t decided to resume talks despite messages passing through Qatar and Pakistan. Iran continues to demand US compensation for war damage, sanctions relief, and unfrozen assets before reopening the chokepoint, which normally carries about a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil.

  • Amanda’s Take: What is this, the 7th time Trump has declared the Strait of Hormuz is in control of the US? 8th? 10th?

💶 EUROPE

There’s so much more to Europe than NATO skepticism. Here’s what you need to know.

• US Marine veteran Robert Gilman was released from a Russian prison after 1,666 days, arriving home in a near-catatonic state after what his family and advocates describe as sustained abuse. Gilman was arrested in Voronezh in January 2022 amid a medical episode, later sentenced to 10 years, and was transferred to a civilian hospital in June after his health collapsed — fed through a nasal tube, according to family representative Kieran Ramsey. The State Department called it a humanitarian release with no concessions given. Five other Americans remain in Russian custody, including Aleksandr Antonov and David Barnes.

• Chinese-made camera components in Royal Navy spy drones used by Britain’s Special Boat Service were found secretly transmitting “heartbeat” signals to a Chinese IP address. The K3 Scout uncrewed surveillance boats — part of a £12 million fleet from contractor Kraken Technology Group in use since March — had been earmarked for Gulf missions including Strait of Hormuz freedom-of-navigation operations. The MoD caught the issue during a routine cyber assessment and stripped the cameras’ internet connectivity; it says no sensitive data was confirmed compromised, but sources described it as a major failure in vetting component origins that’s cost the platform its credibility.

🇺🇸 US FOREIGN POLICY NEWS

Here’s the headlines Washington is talking about.

🤖 AI COMPETITION

The AI race is as much an economic and national security story as it is a tech story. Here’s what moved this week.

• **Data centers have transformed a rural Washington farm town into a fiscal windfall case study, even as they price out the workers who used to define it.** Quincy, Washington, a town of 8,500 people, once a low-opportunity farming town, now gets an estimated 57% of its property taxes from roughly 30 data centers, funding a $15 million aquatic center, a $120 million high school, and a new hospital and library, while poverty dropped from 29.4% in 2012 to 6.2% in 2024. Microsoft started it in 2006, chasing cheap hydropower; Yahoo, Dell, and Intuit followed. Housing prices have roughly doubled in a decade, outpacing local wages, and much of the data-center workforce commutes in from outside, but this isn’t unique to this area of Washington.

  • Amanda’s Take: It’s incredible how bad a reputation data centers have, given the positive community benefits we’re seeing in cases like this. It’s so sad how psyop’d people have been on these things.

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📰 THIS WEEK’S BIG STORY: This week: the CIA quietly stood up a Cuba task force as Trump piles pressure on Havana, Taiwan kicked off 10 days of war games modeled on lessons from Iran and Ukraine, Hamas disarmament talks are already falling apart, Russia hit Kyiv hard amid an interceptor shortage, and Alibaba’s newest model claims it’s caught up to Anthropic’s Fable 5 — the latest sign China may be closing the AI gap faster than Washington expected.

🌎 OUR HEMISPHERE

President Trump re-committed to the Monroe Doctrine in his 2025 National Defense Strategy. Here are the headlines you need to know about what’s happening in our hemisphere.

• The CIA has secretly set up a Cuba task force aimed at creating fissures among Cuban political elites, with a mandate to pressure Havana’s leadership toward change rather than back armed operations. The move coincides with Trump elevating Cuba to “Priority 1” status in the national intelligence framework, alongside China, Iran, and Russia, and with U.S. intelligence agencies redirecting satellites and collection assets toward the island.

  • Crucial Context: In May, Trump’s CIA director told Cuban officials directly that they were running out of time, invoking Venezuela as the cautionary tale. That’s not idle: Trump toppled Maduro and seized Venezuela’s oil resources within his first year back, and hawkish advisers reportedly believe Cuba’s government could fall by the November midterms, though the Iran war has delayed the administration’s bandwidth to act.

⛩️ ASIA

The Indo-Pacific is the most consequential region on earth right now. Here’s what you need to know.

• The U.S. and Taiwan revealed this week that their Coast Guard agencies held a joint exercise, with the USCG cutter Midgett sailing alongside Taiwan’s patrol frigate Taipei. Neither side disclosed the location or date. Taiwan’s Ocean Affairs Council Minister Kuan Bi-ling called it highly significant, framing it as a new signal of U.S. commitment to security in the Western Pacific, and used the announcement to criticize recent Chinese coast guard deployments around Taiwan’s waters.

  • Crucial Context: This matters beyond typhoon-season optics. PLA exercises around Taiwan over the past two years have shown that maritime law enforcement, not just the navy, would lead any blockade enforcement. That makes USCG-CGA coordination directly relevant to how the U.S. and Taiwan would respond if Beijing moved on a blockade rather than an invasion.

• Taiwan kicked off 10 days of Han Kuang military and civil defense exercises this week, mobilizing 20,000 reservists, slowing mobile internet in tech hub Hsinchu, and running drills to counter a Chinese blockade and a decapitation strike on its leadership modeled partly on the U.S. removal of Maduro. The exercises draw directly on lessons from Iran’s use of drones against a more powerful enemy and from Ukraine’s war, with Taiwan’s goal to prove it can hold out even if U.S. forces don’t come.

  • Crucial Context: This year’s drills lean harder into decentralized command and cyber resilience than past iterations, reflecting a view that Beijing’s most likely first move is economic and cyber warfare, not a straightforward invasion. It also comes as China ran its 20th joint combat readiness patrol of the year around Taiwan on Tuesday, and against the backdrop of Trump’s comment that he isn’t inclined to travel 9,500 miles to fight a war, which Taipei has read as a signal it needs to be self-sufficient.

  • Amanda’s Take: It always amazes me how in places like Taiwan that do these drills, civilians lives are interrupted, but they don’t seem to mind or become anti-war. Americans get turned off from war by just having to hear about one on the news, but the Taiwanese daily lives are interrupted by drills preparing for one, and they remain pretty determined to maintain their autonomy from China.

• The White House marked the 73rd anniversary of the Korean War armistice with a presidential message honoring the more than 135,000 Americans killed or wounded in the conflict and reaffirming the U.S.-South Korea alliance as a pillar of Indo-Pacific stability. The message directly linked the war’s anti-communist purpose to current threats, framing today’s rivals as a continuation of the same ideological fight.

  • Amanda’s Take: Trump doesn’t often do normal presidential discourse, but when he does, like with this Korea statement, it’s good. Notably, he says communism is “rearing its ugly head once more — this time in the West.” Usually when we talk about South Korea we name the enemy directly: Pyongyang. This time he named the ideology instead. This begs the question, is he referencing another communist bully in the region?

🕌 THE MIDDLE EAST

The Middle East has been fundamentally remade since October 7th. Here’s what you’re probably missing.

• Iran and Oman are finalizing a draft deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, giving Tehran oversight of inbound shipping traffic while barring it from charging tolls. The 60-day arrangement would set up separate lanes coordinated with Iran and Oman respectively, and a deal could pave the way back to nuclear talks, but Iran’s leadership still hasn’t signed off and a prior June memorandum on the same goal collapsed amid Iranian attacks on shipping.

  • Amanda’s Take: Color me skeptical of any deal. It’s getting annoying to report on this conflict.

• Trump’s road map to disarm Hamas is unraveling five days after its announcement, with Netanyahu saying Israel never agreed to the Board of Peace’s 15-point plan and won’t withdraw until Hamas fully disarms, while Israeli strikes on Gaza have continued despite mediator requests to stop. Hamas has separately warned it won’t accept full disarmament of Palestinian groups or abide by the deal if Israel keeps targeting the enclave.

  • Crucial Context: Israel has been quietly expanding its footprint in Gaza from the 53% outlined in the October ceasefire to roughly 70% now, even as the disarmament talks stall. Mediators are pushing a Northern Ireland-style phased decommissioning instead of a straight handover, betting it’s more realistic, but with Netanyahu facing elections this fall and Hamas naming a new but still uncompromising leader, neither side has real incentive to move first.

💶 EUROPE

There’s so much more to Europe than NATO skepticism. Here’s what you need to know.

• Russia killed at least 17 people and injured 44 in a missile and drone attack on Kyiv and the surrounding region, hitting a train station, warehouses, and civilian logistics facilities. Ukraine’s air defenses failed to intercept any of the 28 missiles launched, which could be a direct result of the Patriot interceptor shortage that’s been compounded by the U.S.-Iran war straining global supply.

  • Crucial Context: Trump had floated letting Ukraine produce Patriots domestically, then backtracked last week and cast doubt on sharing the technology. Zelensky is now naming that hesitation directly, saying delays or refusals to supply interceptors “lead directly to such horrific casualties.”

• Roughly 60,000 migrants breached the border into Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta last week, overwhelming police and sending residents into their homes before Madrid deployed police and military to escort most back to Morocco by Saturday. Migrants say Morocco allowed the crossing for unclear reasons, and analysts tie the timing to tensions between Madrid and Rabat: Spain’s PM recently visited Morocco’s rival Algeria, criticized Israel, and barred U.S. military aircraft involved in the Iran war from Spanish airspace.

  • Amanda’s Take: To me, the most disturbing thing about this migration crisis was people’s immediately reaction to both excuse the migrants, and jump to conspiracies. I saw the usual suspects blame Israel, despite zero evidence of this. I also saw tons of leftists react to videos of an overwhelming invasion with reactions like “they’re just looking for a better life.” Be that as it may, an enclave of 89,000 cannot just absorb 60,000 migrants, especially when they so brazenly violate the law. This should be obvious, but apparently it is not.

🇺🇸 US FOREIGN POLICY NEWS

Here’s the headlines Washington is talking about.

• A Tibetan independence activist, Lobga Rangzen, died after setting himself on fire outside U.N. headquarters in New York on July 2, an act he’d documented in a video manifesto criticizing China’s new ethnic-unity law, which Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Mongolians say criminalizes their languages and cultural practices. His death has galvanized a Tibetan diaspora movement that had grown fractured and discouraged, sparking protests in Canada, France, Australia, and India.

  • Crucial Context: Self-immolation as protest has been confined mostly to Tibetans inside China, where details rarely surface publicly — more than 170 cases since 1998. This is the first to draw major international attention from outside China, and it lands as the Dalai Lama’s decades-long nonviolent approach has visibly failed to stop Beijing’s tightening grip, splitting the overseas Tibetan community over what comes next.

🤖 AI COMPETITION

The AI race is as much an economic and national security story as it is a tech story. Here’s what moved this week.

• Alibaba released Qwen3.8-Max, its largest AI model to date, claiming benchmark performance that matches or beats Anthropic’s flagship Fable 5, which was briefly placed under U.S. export controls earlier this summer. It’s the latest in a rapid string of Chinese frontier releases, following Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 two weeks earlier, that’s renewing questions about whether U.S. chip export controls are actually slowing China down.

  • Crucial Context: Hugging Face’s CEO said this week that China is now winning the AI race outright and expects Chinese labs to lead at the frontier, not just in open-weight models, by late 2026 or 2027. The shift isn’t one lab pulling ahead — it’s Alibaba, Moonshot, DeepSeek, Tencent, and Zhipu all producing world-class releases in the same stretch, which is a harder problem for U.S. policy to respond to than beating any single competitor.

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📰 THIS WEEK’S BIG STORY: The Iran ceasefire didn’t hold. After Hormuz talks collapsed Tuesday, Iran fired on U.S. forces in Jordan — and the U.S. hit back hard, striking dozens of Iranian military and maritime targets. The war is now in its sixth month, with Iran escalating on every front, including an assassination video targeting Melania and Barron Trump. Meanwhile, South Korea’s stock market just lost $2 trillion in six weeks, and four African countries have now exited the ICC in the past year, with the U.S. cheering every one. Different regions, same story: the old order is cracking, and nobody’s waiting for it to hold.

🌎 OUR HEMISPHERE

President Trump re-committed to the Monroe Doctrine in his 2025 National Defense Strategy. Here are the headlines you need to know about what’s happening in our hemisphere.

• Venezuela is set to begin U.S.-supervised talks on a democratic transition, alongside a U.S.-backed exit from the ICC. The move comes as the third round of U.S.-Mexico USMCA negotiations wrapped up this week, while U.S.-Canada trade talks have yet to formally start — though Canada’s chief trade negotiator met with USTR’s Greer in Washington on July 29. Trump, addressing the USMCA talks, put it bluntly: Mexico and Canada “need us. We don’t need them.”

  • Amanda’s Take: It’s good to see the State Department praise Venezuela for leaving the ICC. It is the biggest waste of taxpayer dollars we currently fund.

⛩️ ASIA

The Indo-Pacific is the most consequential region on earth right now. Here’s what you need to know.

• South Korea’s stock market just lost $2 trillion in value, crashing 44% in about six weeks — and it’s wiping out a generation of young investors. An AI-fueled boom sent the market up 135% between December and June, driven almost entirely by two chipmakers, SK Hynix and Samsung, which shot up 1,900% and 600% and became half the entire market’s value. Locked out of Seoul’s housing market, Koreans in their 20s and 30s piled into these stocks instead, many using 5x portfolio margin and 2x leveraged single-stock ETFs — and margin loans hit an all-time high of 38.63 trillion won by end of June. When the run cracked, it cracked hard: SK Hynix is down 60% since late June, 360,000 retail accounts have been liquidated so far (62% of them under 35), and retail investors lost 2.15 trillion won on borrowed money in a single month. Seoul’s government has rolled out 24-hour market monitoring, new leveraged ETF limits, and a debt counseling hotline — but liquidations are still ongoing.

  • Amanda’s Take: This is being likened to the 2008 stock market crash, but for Korea.

• An earthquake quake hit Kumamoto, Japan on July 28, and 80 minutes after the shaking stopped, a gas explosion tore through a mall that had just survived it intact. The blast collapsed the mall’s second floor, killing at least three workers who’d gone back in after evacuating. 28 people died overall, including five in a factory chimney collapse. Aeon says it’s likely a gas leak, despite inspecting the mall’s valves three days before it reopened in June.

🕌 THE MIDDLE EAST

The Middle East has been fundamentally remade since October 7th. Here’s what you’re probably missing.

• Iran released a video this week titled “How to Kill Melania Trump,” tracking the first lady’s movements around New York and naming stores she shops at, and ending with a direct threat against Barron Trump, 20. It’s part of a pattern: last week, billboards went up in Tehran calling for the deaths of Trump and his children, reading “Blood for blood.“ Both Melania and Barron have full Secret Service protection, and Trump has said he’s left standing orders to hit Iran “at levels they’ve never seen before” if any plot against him succeeds.

• The US struck Iran Wednesday night, hitting dozens of targets — military command centers, missile and drone facilities, coastal surveillance, and maritime capabilities — after Iran fired missiles at US forces in Jordan, shattering a ceasefire that had held for less than a week. The ceasefire collapsed right after Hormuz strait talks between Iran and Oman fell apart Tuesday; Iran attacked hours later. Trump says a counterstrike was inevitable — “will I always hit back? Pretty much” — while Netanyahu met with Hegseth in Washington as the two sides weighed diplomacy, harder economic pressure, or further military action. The war with Iran is now in its sixth month.

  • Amanda’s Take: I have a feeling this will be the new normal for the region.

• Israel heads to the polls October 27, with four fault lines defining the race: accountability for October 7, the country’s shift to sustained multi-front wars, ultra-Orthodox conscription exemptions, and a rising cost of living. Opposition parties want an independent inquiry into the Hamas attack failures; Netanyahu wants a politician-appointed commission instead, which critics call a whitewash. He’s also facing scrutiny over past Israeli-approved Qatari cash transfers to Gaza. Since 2023, Israel has moved from short deterrence wars to ongoing campaigns in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Yemen, straining reservists and drawing international backlash. The defense budget has doubled, adding to an already brutal cost of living.

  • Amanda’s Take: We talk a lot about how America’s elections play a role in the Middle East war, and not nearly enough about how Israel’s upcoming elections are effecting what’s happening in the region. As it was explained to me in Israel when I visited in 2016, Israelis only vote based on their security. They do not pay a ton of attention to domestic issues (that has changed slightly, but they care overwhelmingly about security). Hawkishness wins in Israeli elections - so it’s surprising to me they’re sitting out the fight in Iran and have backed down in Lebanon right now.

💶 EUROPE & AFRICA

There’s so much more to Europe than NATO skepticism. Here’s what you need to know.

• The Pentagon officially launched its Europe force posture review this week — a six-month study designed, in Elbridge Colby’s words, to make sure NATO moves “fast and irreversibly” toward Europe taking primary responsibility for its own conventional defense. The review comes as the Pentagon cuts 5,000 troops from Germany, while Trump has separately directed 5,000 more troops to Poland — a move not yet implemented. Officials say the review will weigh U.S. force posture against the 2025 National Security Strategy and 2026 National Defense Strategy, and Washington is framing it as a political ultimatum, not a routine logistical shuffle. Results are expected to reshape troop levels by early 2027.

• Chad announced Monday it’s withdrawing from the ICC, becoming the fourth African country to move toward exit since 2025, following Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso. Chad accuses the court of bias against African nations. The move lands as the ICC is already reeling — its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, was just removed over sexual misconduct allegations — and as the U.S. actively campaigns against the court: Rubio has vowed to “dismantle” what he calls the ICC’s threat to sovereignty, and the State Department publicly praised Chad’s withdrawal, calling on more of the court’s 125 members to follow.

  • Amanda’s Take: More great news about countries leaving the ICC. Unelected bureaucrats have no business digging in other countries’ business using the ICC, wasting US taxpayer dollars to pretend they are the global arbiters of morality.

🇺🇸 US FOREIGN POLICY NEWS

Here’s the headlines Washington is talking about.

• Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died this month at 71, was memorialized at Washington National Cathedral in a service that doubled as a portrait of Trump’s current grip on Washington — Trump delivered the eulogy, and the readings and speaking slots skewed almost entirely toward Trump allies and social conservatives, with no Democrats and none of Graham’s foreign-policy or military colleagues on the program**.** His Senate seat has been filled by his sister, Darline Graham.

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For more analysis throughout the week, follow me on Instagram, X, and YouTube!

📰 THIS WEEK’S BIG STORY: A heavy week across every front. Washington is sitting on $13 billion in Venezuelan oil money with almost no public accounting, and Ortega just scrapped Nicaragua's elections for good. Trump opened the door to a Middle East nuclear arms race with the Saudi deal, right as US-Iran strikes resumed and oil creeps toward $100. Meanwhile China is fielding an AI model the White House says was built on stolen Anthropic tech, and a Chinese spy was just caught inside NATO's own HQ. Nobody's playing defense this week except the countries that should be.

🌎 OUR HEMISPHERE

President Trump re-committed to the Monroe Doctrine in his 2025 National Defense Strategy. Here are the headlines you need to know about what’s happening in our hemisphere.

• The US has collected over $13 billion in Venezuelan oil revenue in 2026 since taking control of the country’s exports after Maduro’s January capture — but has disclosed almost nothing about where it went. Venezuela’s own tracker shows just one transfer, $300 million in March; a State Department official claimed $3 billion had been sent and promised audits that never materialized. Trump says the US has recouped its military costs many times over.

  • Crucial Context: Oil revenue normally accounts for roughly a quarter of Venezuela’s GDP, so this money was supposed to be the country’s recovery engine — especially now, with $37 billion in earthquake damage still unaddressed. Instead, Rodríguez’s government has to ask Washington’s permission just to cover salaries or buy oilfield equipment. Custodial control of a country’s oil wealth, indefinitely, without public accounting, is a strange definition of “custodial.”

• Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega declared “there won’t be anymore elections,” effectively canceling the vote already pushed back to November 2027. He made the announcement at the anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution, railing against the US and vowing “never, never, never” to hold elections again. At least 46 people remain jailed in Nicaragua for political reasons, and the government has shuttered more than 5,000 organizations, mostly religious, since 2018.

  • Crucial Context: Ortega first came to power in 1979 as a Marxist guerrilla leader who helped topple the Somoza dictatorship, then returned to the presidency in 2007 through elections after Nicaragua’s democratic interlude. Since then he’s rewritten the constitution to erase term limits, installed his wife Rosario Murillo as co-president, crushed the 2018 protest movement in a crackdown that killed hundreds, and “won” a 2021 election after jailing every candidate who could have beaten him — a vote Washington still doesn’t recognize. This is the natural endpoint of that trajectory: a revolutionary who spent two decades converting a democracy into a family dynasty, now dropping the pretense of elections entirely.

• A federal judge set Nicolás Maduro’s trial for June 2027, more than a year after he was seized from a Caracas compound in a US military operation and jailed in Brooklyn on narco-terrorism and cocaine-trafficking charges. His lawyers plan a two-stage defense: first arguing sovereign immunity and the illegality of his capture, then, if that fails, contesting the underlying charges next year. The immunity argument could be genuinely strong — Rubio has called Maduro illegitimate while simultaneously empowering his own vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, as Venezuela’s leader, which Maduro’s team may argue undercuts Washington’s position.

• Trump announced 50% tariffs on select Canadian goods, including electrical equipment and machinery, covering about $20 billion in trade and taking effect in 30 days. Unlike previous rounds, there are no USMCA carve-outs this time, and the administration invoked Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 — a Depression-era provision allowing tariffs up to 50% for discrimination against US goods that has never been used this way before. Ontario Premier Doug Ford is pushing for dollar-for-dollar retaliation, while the White House framed Canada as one of only two countries, alongside China, that chose to retaliate against US tariffs rather than negotiate.

  • Crucial Context: This is Trump’s second attempt at broad tariff authority this year — the Supreme Court ruled in February that he couldn’t use IEEPA to impose sweeping global tariffs, which is why he’s now reaching for a Depression-era statute that’s never been tested this way. Capital Economics estimates only about 5% of Canadian imports are actually affected, so this is less about economic impact and more about establishing whether Section 338 survives a legal challenge as a durable new tariff tool for future negotiations.

⛩️ ASIA

The Indo-Pacific is the most consequential region on earth right now. Here’s what you need to know.

• Ken Moriyasu of the Hudson Institute lays out how to choke China’s ability to survive a Taiwan invasion without concentrating forces in the Strait itself. Beijing’s economic survival in a war scenario depends on overland trade routes across Eurasia bypassing a US naval blockade at Malacca — so deterrence leverage actually runs through Central Asia, the South Caucasus, and Eastern Europe. Armenia is the current pressure point: a stalled constitutional reform is blocking a peace deal with Azerbaijan and the US-backed TRIPP corridor that would pull the Middle Corridor away from Russia-friendly Georgia.

  • Amanda’s Take: If a Taiwan invasion scenario keeps you up at night, this will be an interesting read for you.

• A new Foreign Affairs piece from Rhodium Group’s Logan Wright argues China’s economic decline has flipped the strategic balance: real growth since 2021 is likely closer to 2% cumulative versus Beijing’s official numbers, the banking system is buried in bad debt from the post-2008 credit bubble, and the government now runs a $2 trillion annual fiscal deficit with no domestic demand engine left. That leaves China totally dependent on exports — last year’s record $1.2 trillion surplus — which Wright argues is a sign of weakness, not strength, and makes Beijing’s rare-earth threats far more deterrable than Washington treats them.

• Federal FARA and lobbying disclosures reviewed by Fox News lay out the scale of China’s influence apparatus in America: $80 million in FARA spending from Chinese government sources in 2025 alone, plus five state media outlets registered as foreign agents (CGTN alone got $66.8 million from CCTV in ten months) and seven Chinese companies — including Huawei and Hikvision — paying American lobbyists to fight sanctions and military-company designations. Much of Beijing’s most effective reach, though, like the United Front Work Department and CCP-linked campus groups, files no disclosures at all.

  • Amanda’s Take: I wish people would spend a quarter of the time they spend obsessing over Israeli or Qatari influence on Chinese influence.

• Beijing is closing the offshore loophole that let China’s tech tycoons get rich outside its capital controls. New rules from the State Council, central bank, and securities regulator now force founders who list companies in Hong Kong or New York to repatriate cash-out proceeds back to the mainland and pay tax before they can invest overseas again — reversing two decades of practice that built fortunes for Tencent-era entrepreneurs and made Hong Kong the world’s largest cross-border wealth hub at $2.9 trillion. Billionaire Leaf Li’s brokerage Futu was hit with a $271 million penalty in May for facilitating cross-border investments outside the new system, tanking its stock nearly 30% in a day.

  • Amanda’s Take: This move is not one that a country makes when it projects confidence about its economy and control over its population.

🕌 THE MIDDLE EAST

The Middle East has been fundamentally remade since October 7th. Here’s what you’re probably missing.

• Trump reauthorized US airlines to fly directly to Lebanon, ending a 40-year ban imposed after Hezbollah’s 1985 TWA Flight 847 hijacking. The move follows his White House meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and comes as Lebanon and Israel work through a US-backed framework to dismantle Hezbollah’s grip on the country. Rubio said the goal is a Lebanese government strong enough to be the sole armed force in the country, but Israeli strikes on Hezbollah during the supposed ceasefire have already reignited a wider Iran-US exchange, with Tehran hitting American assets in Kuwait and Jordan.

  • Amanda’s Take: This is almost certainly about tourism, which is the closest thing Lebanon has to an economic pillar right now. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, Lebanon was the banking and education capital of the Middle East — the place wealthy families from the Gulf sent their kids to study and parked their money. The civil war ended that, and Lebanon never really recovered. If Hezbollah’s grip is genuinely fading and Washington is serious about reopening the country, someone is going to make millions building a Christian tourism company around the sites where Jesus walked in Lebanon, plus a whole line of Lebanon-focused consumer products. I’d bet on it.

• Trump approved a 30-year civilian nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia that could eventually allow uranium enrichment on Saudi soil, with American companies like Westinghouse building the reactors and shutting out Russian and Chinese competitors. A two-year US-Saudi study will determine whether enrichment is warranted; if approved, Americans would build the facility under a “black box” arrangement meant to prevent the transfer of enrichment technology itself. Saudi Arabia has rejected both the IAEA’s stricter Additional Protocol inspections and the “gold standard” commitment never to enrich uranium at home — the same standard the UAE accepted — and Congress now has a limited window to block the deal, requiring a two-thirds veto-override vote to do so.

  • Amanda’s Take: This reads as a bad sign for where Iran’s nuclear program actually stands. Either we’re trying to keep Saudi locked in as an ally, or we’re quietly acknowledging Iran isn’t far from a bomb and deciding to let the Saudis build a program that makes it easy for them to get one too. If I’m right, that’s a full departure from US nonproliferation policy since 1945, and it doesn’t exactly project confidence that we’re going to finish the job in Iran. We’re also tacitly greenlighting a regional arms race — expect Turkey and the UAE to start angling for their own programs next. But here’s my real question: if we’re reversing decades of nonproliferation policy, why start with Saudi Arabia instead of South Korea and Japan?

• The US and Iran have resumed strikes on each other, with Trump describing the exchanges as tit-for-tat. Oil prices are climbing toward $100 a barrel as the conflict drags on.

  • Amanda’s Take: If my read is right, this is close to the ceiling. Oil near $100 is exactly the kind of pain that forces de-escalation — it hits Trump’s domestic economic numbers, it hits Iran’s already-strangled export revenue, and it starts rattling every other player in the region who doesn’t want a prolonged oil shock. I’d expect this round of fighting to cool off soon, not escalate further.

💶 EUROPE

There’s so much more to Europe than NATO skepticism. Here’s what you need to know.

• A 21-year-old Muslim migrant plowed a car through Berlin’s Tiergarten during the city’s Christopher Street Day Pride celebration Saturday night, killing at least one person and injuring 16, some with stab wounds. Police named the suspect as Abdul B., described as involved in local Islamic groups and already known to law enforcement, and said there is a “strong suspicion” of terrorism. The attack canceled the rest of the event and lands months before eastern German state elections where migration and public safety are already driving polling gains for the far right.

  • Amanda’s Take: The NYT headline is “Car Plows Into Crowd” — like it’s a Waymo gone rogue. All these years later, mainstream media is still more concerned with not “contributing to Islamophobia” than with reporting the story accurately, or with looking out for other vulnerable communities, like the LGBT community that was actually targeted here.

• A Canadian woman of Chinese origin who interned at NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Mons, Belgium, has been arrested on spying charges. Belgian prosecutors say she is suspected of spying for a third country and belonging to a criminal organization; SHAPE’s own security services flagged her to Belgian intelligence before her arrest. NATO says operations were not affected.

  • Crucial Context: This is not an isolated case. Recent years have seen a steady drumbeat of Chinese espionage arrests across the West: MI5 warned UK lawmakers directly about Chinese agents targeting Parliament, Dutch intelligence caught Chinese spies targeting the semiconductor sector, Belgian and German authorities have separately charged EU Parliament-linked staff and Bundeswehr-linked suspects with spying for Beijing, and the US has prosecuted multiple Chinese nationals for infiltrating military bases and national labs. The NATO HQ case fits a pattern of using students, interns, and dual nationals to gain access to Western security institutions from the inside.

🇺🇸 US FOREIGN POLICY NEWS

Here’s the headlines Washington is talking about.

• The Trump administration is weighing military strikes on JNIM, the al-Qaeda affiliate that’s become the dominant militant force in Mali and the wider Sahel. If approved, it would mark the eighth country Trump has ordered strikes in this term, joining Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, and Venezuela. NSC counterterrorism director Sebastian Gorka is pushing for action, but officials are split — Mali’s junta government relies on Russian mercenaries for security, meaning any US strikes risk friction with Russian forces on the ground, echoing deconfliction dynamics from Syria’s civil war.

  • Crucial Context: France tried the military-only approach in Mali for a decade starting in 2013 and ultimately failed, and Russia’s Wagner/Africa Corps mercenaries have been at it for five years with the situation only worsening. By ACLED’s count, Mali’s own military and its Russian partners killed nearly four times more civilians than JNIM and ISIS-Sahel combined last year — 925 versus 232. A purely kinetic US intervention would be entering a battlefield where the “counterterrorism” forces are already the bigger killers of civilians.

🤖 AI COMPETITION

The AI race is as much an economic and national security story as it is a tech story. Here’s what moved this week.

• China’s Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, an open-weight model that matches or beats leading US systems on benchmarks and is free to use — demand was so high the company suspended new subscriptions two days after launch. The gap between Chinese and American frontier models has narrowed to three to six months, according to Counterpoint Research, and analysts see K3 less as a DeepSeek-style shock and more as evidence China’s progress is now a repeatable pattern rather than a one-off.

  • Crucial Context: Michael Kratsios, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, said the administration has actual information that Moonshot distilled Anthropic’s Fable model to build K3, calling it “large-scale, covert industrial distillation.” Anthropic’s policy head backed that up, framing it as IP theft and a national security risk, and Treasury Secretary Bessent floated sanctions and Entity List designations. Most independent analysts remain skeptical of the distillation claim specifically, noting Moonshot likely didn’t have enough access to Fable before K3’s launch to make it plausible — but the government’s position is that they have evidence, not just suspicion.

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For more analysis throughout the week, follow me on Instagram, X, and YouTube!

📰 THIS WEEK’S BIG STORY: While Trump ponders expanding the war on Iran, new reporting from Morgan Stanley discusses how localities in the US are declaring war on AI data centers (aka progress). Speaking of war, we have new insights into China’s war posture, and Xi has declared war on the Politburo and an American nuclear scientist.

🌎 OUR HEMISPHERE

President Trump re-committed to the Monroe Doctrine in his 2025 National Defense Strategy. Here are the headlines you need to know about what’s happening in our hemisphere.

• A Canadian woman living in New Jersey on an overstayed visa, Kaitlyn Tracey, was arrested and turned over to ICE after allegedly slapping a 16-year-old girl on the Point Pleasant boardwalk for wearing pro-Trump and ICE-branded clothing; her husband, a US citizen with a history of posting videos wishing death and cancer on the Trump family, is now publicly fighting her detention.

  • Amanda’s Take: Be careful the moment you decide you’re on the right side of history. Moral certainty is exactly what let this woman justify hitting a teenager — she wasn’t acting despite believing she was righteous, she was acting because of it. This is how communists justified killing sprees and bread lines.

• The Trump Administration directed USTR to impose a 25% tariff on most Brazilian imports, saying President Lula’s government has failed to negotiate in good faith and has prioritized ego over a deal that would benefit the Brazilian people.

  • Crucial Context: This fits a broader pattern — right-wing governments have been gaining ground across South America, and Brazil is the biggest prize left on the board. Tariff pressure on Lula reads less like a standalone trade dispute and more like the administration angling for the next big political flip in the region.

• New BBC reporting, based on interviews with Sinaloa cartel members, reveals new details about Zhang Zhidong, a Peking University graduate known as “Brother Wang,” awaiting US trial as the alleged architect of the cartel’s fentanyl supply chain — brokering Chinese precursor chemicals into Mexican labs, laundering money through 100+ US shell companies, and running operations spanning the Americas, Europe, China, and Japan before his 2024 arrest, wall-hole escape, and flight to Russia via Cuba, which sent him back into Mexican and eventually US custody.

  • Amanda’s Take: This is exactly why “just focus on our hemisphere” doesn’t hold up. One broker had bank accounts spanning nearly every region on earth, and when he made a run for it, he fled to Russia. In a globalized world, a regional problem — Chinese chemicals, Mexican labs, American overdoses — becomes a global one almost instantly. There’s no such thing as staying in your lane anymore.

⛩️ ASIA

The Indo-Pacific is the most consequential region on earth right now. Here’s what you need to know.

• Japan is building its first centralized intelligence agency since World War II, with Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government quietly seeking input from the US, Australia, and Germany on cyberdefense, staffing, and counterespionage — a $407 million agency expected to launch by December, coordinating roughly 33,000 people currently scattered across the police, Defense Ministry, and Foreign Ministry.

  • Crucial Context: Japan has been called a “spy paradise” for decades — fragmented intelligence-gathering, easily corrupted officials, and foreign agents operating with near impunity, a legacy of the post-WWII dismantling of its security apparatus. Takaichi is finishing what her mentor Shinzo Abe started in 2013. This is happening now because Russian spies have reportedly been using Japan as a hub to source sanctioned weapons components, and China has been running disguised disinformation operations against Japanese audiences.

• Satellite imagery analyzed by The Telegraph shows China building full-scale replicas of US Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, Taiwanese and American fighter jets, and other military assets in remote desert areas like the Taklamakan — then bombing them with ballistic missiles and other munitions to refine precision-strike targeting.

  • Crucial Context: This isn’t new — China has used mock-ups for weapons testing for years — but the target set is the tell. Full-scale US destroyers and Taiwanese government buildings aren’t generic training aids. They’re rehearsal for a specific scenario: sinking American ships and taking Taipei.

• China expelled Politburo member Ma Xingrui from the Communist Party on charges including bribery, “power-for-sex” and “power-for-money” dealings, and covering for misconduct by relatives and close aides — the first civilian Politburo member purged since Sun Zhengcai in 2017, and only the seventh sitting Politburo member to face formal disciplinary investigation since 1990. Analyst Neil Thomas called it a signal of Xi’s “continued dominance” ahead of next year’s Party Congress.

  • Amanda’s Take: Xi has run “anti-corruption” as his justification for purges for over a decade. That officials are still being caught under that banner this deep in suggests either the campaign failed, or corruption was never really the point. These purges are loyalty tests wearing an anti-corruption label — Xi decides who’s compromised, and the timing lines up with who he needs gone.

• Chinese authorities have held Boston-based seismologist Youlin Chen, a US citizen, since November 2024 on espionage charges tied to his open-source, US-funded research distinguishing North Korean nuclear tests from earthquakes; he was detained at Beijing airport after visiting family, faces a likely closed-door trial, and was designated “wrongfully detained” by Secretary of State Rubio in March 2026 — a designation the Trump administration held back from announcing publicly until this week.

  • Crucial Context: Chen’s wife says he was initially forced to sit motionless on a hard stool for hours without reading or exercise, denied adequate diabetes medication, and has since lost 30-40 pounds on a diet with little protein or produce. Trump reportedly raised his case directly with Xi in May, with no result. Xi has a Washington visit planned for September, and Beijing has given no indication it will move on Chen before then.

• The Wall Street Journal reports (gift link!) China rebuffed Putin’s push for a second Power of Siberia gas pipeline during his May Beijing visit, demanding Russia sell gas at domestic, below-market rates — a proposal Beijing told the Russian delegation not to raise again until terms changed. Putin left having signed 42 agreements, but no pipeline deal. China now accounts for nearly 40% of Russia’s trade, up from 10% in 2013, while Russia is under 4% of China’s — and Beijing has quietly shelved its denuclearization precondition with North Korea while working to reassert itself as Pyongyang’s primary patron over Moscow.

  • Crucial Context: Russia and China are not natural allies — they’re bound by shared antagonism toward the US-led order, not common interest. That’s the same fault line Nixon and Kissinger exploited in the 1970s, triangulating Moscow against Beijing to fracture what looked like a unified communist bloc.

🕌 THE MIDDLE EAST

The Middle East has been fundamentally remade since October 7th. Here’s what you’re probably missing.

• President Trump is reportedly leaning toward expanding US military operations against Iran after Situation Room briefings on options including seizing Kharg Island and other Strait of Hormuz territory with ground troops, and bombing Pickaxe Mountain, a fortified tunnel complex built 300-475 feet into granite that’s believed to be an incomplete covert nuclear site. The US launched a fifth straight day of airstrikes Wednesday after Iran attacked shipping in the strait and collapsed an interim ceasefire, and has been enforcing a naval blockade, including disabling a Curaçao-flagged ship headed for Kharg Island with Hellfire missiles.

  • Amanda’s Take: Is he really willing to expand operations with oil already in the $90s and potentially pushing past $100 by next week? Or is this pressure talk meant to scare Tehran back to the table before he has to actually pull the trigger? Time will tell.

• President Trump hosted Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi in the Oval Office, promising a new era of US-Iraq economic deals as Washington pressures Baghdad to sever Iran’s financial and militia ties in the country. Al-Zaidi — a political newcomer and bank owner whose own institution was banned from dollar transactions in 2024 over suspected Iran-linked money laundering — has secured pledges from three Iraqi militias to disarm and launched an anti-corruption sweep, though none of the militias have actually disarmed yet, and several Tehran-linked figures vanished before arrests were made, widely seen in Iraq as a tip-off.

💶 EUROPE

There’s so much more to Europe than NATO skepticism. Here’s what you need to know.

• Sen. Lindsey Graham’s final Russia sanctions bill, cosponsored with Sen. Richard Blumenthal and now backed by the White House after months of negotiation, may actually pass where prior versions stalled. The revised text broadens mandatory sanctions to cover secondary helpers of Russia’s defense industrial base and shadow fleet, shifts from a blanket 500% tariff to targeted tariffs on top buyers of Russian energy, and carves out exceptions for allies actively cutting their dependency — while also granting the president broad waiver authority, requiring only a written national-interest certification to bypass any sanctions provision.

🇺🇸 US FOREIGN POLICY NEWS

Here’s the headlines Washington is talking about.

• President Trump is expected to allege in a primetime speech tonight that China compromised US voter data and that the CIA knew about it but withheld the information from him during his first term.

  • Crucial Context: The 2021 National Intelligence Council assessment found with high confidence that China did not attempt to influence the 2020 outcome or interfere with election infrastructure — Beijing decided no winner was “advantageous enough” to risk getting caught meddling. A minority view held China tried to undermine Trump’s reelection through social media, and a separate 2020 report found Chinese intelligence had analyzed voter registration data across multiple states, though the unredacted portions don’t allege manipulation.

• Under Secretary of War Elbridge Colby posted a thread on X dismissing the idea of a “middle powers” coalition strategy — arguing allies pursuing it are wasting time and capital on a distraction, that “middle powers” as a category doesn’t hold up under a realist reading of interest, geography, and military power, and that US engagement demand is rising, not falling. He argued no country can match US defense industrial capacity or defense-relevant tech, and said allies should keep investing in their own defense industrial bases — but only in ways that complement America’s, not replicate or replace it.

  • Amanda’s Take: Most of the pushback on this thread is going after Colby personally, not his argument. That’s telling. Nobody’s actually making the case that a middle powers bloc can out-produce or out-innovate the US defense industrial base, because they can’t. Attack the man because you can’t touch the point.

🤖 AI COMPETITION

The AI race is as much an economic and national security story as it is a tech story. Here’s what moved this week.

• Morgan Stanley estimates $156 billion in US data center projects were cancelled or delayed in 2025, with another $130 billion in Q1 2026 alone, as local community pushback and new moratoriums accelerate.

  • Crucial Context: Almost all of this friction is happening at the local level — zoning boards, city councils, water and power fights — not in Washington. If the pattern holds, it reshapes where data centers get built and could throttle the capex growth the AI buildout depends on.

Thank you for reading! Found this useful? Forward it to one person. Not a paid subscriber yet? Consider becoming one — it directly supports this work. New readers can subscribe here.

For more analysis throughout the week, follow me on Instagram, X, and YouTube!

📰 THIS WEEK’S BIG STORY: Rest in Peace, Sen. Lindsey Graham. Plus—How Rubio is running Venezuela, Ukraine’s strategy in Crimea seems to be working, and U.S. allies come together to reaffirm our commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.

🌎 OUR HEMISPHERE

President Trump re-committed to the Monroe Doctrine in his 2025 National Defense Strategy. Here are the headlines you need to know about what’s happening in our hemisphere.

• The New York Times reports (gift link!) Secretary of State Marco Rubio effectively runs Venezuela’s finances, natural resource distribution, and government since the U.S. captured Nicolás Maduro in January — controlling Treasury disbursements, setting sanctions terms, and shaping key personnel decisions for interim leader Delcy Rodríguez. Inflation has fallen, the U.S. has opened Venezuela’s oil sector to American companies, and Washington and Caracas carried out their first joint military operation in decades, killing Tren de Aragua leader Niño Guerrero in June.

  • Amanda’s Take: It makes me wonder how Trump’s personalized foreign policy projects — this one, the Gaza Board of Peace, the Asia trade deals where South Korea and Japan are investing directly in the U.S. — hold up after he leaves office. If Vance or Rubio succeeds him, these arrangements probably stay in place. But they’re so loosely institutionalized that it’s hard to picture what a different administration would do with them — wind them back, or just let them lapse, the way Biden ignored the Abraham Accords instead of building on them.

• The U.S. and Canada struck a deal to open the Gordie Howe International Bridge — connecting Detroit and Windsor, Ontario — on July 27, after a dispute over tolls delayed its planned June opening. Trump had threatened to block the opening earlier this year unless the U.S. got an ownership stake and compensation.

  • Crucial Context: Canada paid for the entire bridge’s construction. Under the new deal, half the net profit still goes to a U.S.-benefiting regional development fund, and the bridge authority needs U.S. approval to raise tolls more than 10% or undercut rates at the privately-held Ambassador Bridge.

⛩️ ASIA

The Indo-Pacific is the most consequential region on earth right now. Here’s what you need to know.

• The Philippines, Australia, Canada, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, New Zealand, Romania, Slovenia, the UK, and the US issued a joint statement marking the tenth anniversary of the 2016 Arbitral Tribunal ruling, which rejected China’s expansive “nine-dash line” claims over most of the South China Sea and found no legal basis for its “historic rights” argument. The statement calls that ruling final, legally binding, and definitive, and is intended to keep a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific.’

  • Amanda’s Take: Look at who signed and who didn’t. The usual European allies who love a summit and a joint statement are all there. Asia’s swing states are not — no India, no South Korea, no Vietnam. Countries that actually have to live next to China are more careful about symbolic signatures than the ones who don’t.

• Chinese scholars, at a June 30 Jinan University symposium, claimed the Philippines’ Batanes province belongs to China as an extension of Taiwan, calling Manila’s administration a “postwar fait accompli.” SeaLight says this is part of Beijing’s gray-zone strategy to justify Chinese patrols near Taiwan.

  • Crucial Context: Worth noting: the Philippines once governed northern Taiwan too, from Manila under Spanish rule. China’s argument is that proximity and past administration create sovereignty. By that same logic, Manila’s claim to northern Taiwan is just as good as Beijing’s claim to Batanes.

🕌 THE MIDDLE EAST

The Middle East has been fundamentally remade since October 7th. Here’s what you’re probably missing.

• Iraq, Syria, and the US plan to revive a 500-mile pipeline running from Kirkuk to Syria’s Mediterranean port of Baniyas, aiming to reduce Iraq’s dependence on the Iran-controlled Strait of Hormuz. Originally built in 1952, the pipeline has sat defunct since damage from the 2003 US invasion. The deal is expected to be unveiled next week when Iraqi PM Ali al-Zaidi meets Trump at the White House, with Syria’s foreign minister also expected to attend the signing.

  • Crucial Context: Iraq exports 95% of its oil through Hormuz, and Vortexa data shows Iraq’s seaborne exports in May were just 8% of last year’s average — a serious hit to a country where oil sales fund 90% of the state budget. This pipeline only makes sense now because Iran has shown it can choke Hormuz. But a pipeline isn’t immune from the same threat — drones can hit a pipeline just as easily as they can threaten a strait.

• Streamer ‘Clavicular’ traveled to Tel Aviv and streamed himself partying at clubs — a notable shift for someone previously seen clubbing in Miami with Nick Fuentes, Myron Gaines, and other prominent antisemitic figures, where he danced to Kanye West’s “Heil Hitler.”

  • Amanda’s Take: This is better PR for Israel than anything Israel’s own messaging apparatus puts out. I’ve been to Israel — it’s awesome. Instead of over-explaining the history or justifying how Israel conducts itself in a long war, moments like this do more to explain why Israel exists: show it as a normal place full of normal people, having a normal night out.

• Rep. Ro Khanna, exploring a 2028 presidential run, was blocked for 90 minutes by armed Israeli settlers while touring the demolished West Bank village of Khirbet Zanuta, an encounter he called the most frightening part of his trip. Israel says Khanna faced this because he didn’t notify Israeli authorities of his West Bank visit and therefore had no IDF security detail — and that a detail would have prevented the standoff entirely. Khanna says he skipped the detail on purpose, wanting to see what “normal people” experience there.

  • Amanda’s Take: Spoiler: normal people don’t go to settlements in the West Bank. Activists do, and they go looking for a confrontation they can report back on to whichever side they’ve already decided is terrible. Get ready for the next round of performative Democrat activism heading into the 2028 cycle: arrest porn, Israel edition. Remember before Charlie Kirk’s assassination, when Democrats kept staging arrests protesting the Trump administration, all spring and summer 2025? They cut that out after Kirk was killed, probably smart, it made the caucus look deeply unserious. But watch — congressional Democrats are going to start picking fights with settlers or the IDF in the West Bank. And getting performatively arrested by Israel does nothing about the cost of housing or groceries for the people who sent you to Congress.

💶 EUROPE

There’s so much more to Europe than NATO skepticism. Here’s what you need to know.

• Ukrainian drone strikes have hit nearly all the bridges into Crimea and unleashed roughly 50 strikes in five days on the peninsula’s fuel infrastructure, electricity grid, and shipping, leaving much of Russian-occupied Crimea without power, fuel, water, and cell service at the height of tourist season. Nineteen cities remain without power, food prices have spiked due to logistics breakdowns, and tourists are asking for evacuation help after arriving by car with no gas left to leave.

  • Crucial Context: Ukraine lost Crimea in 2014. The conventional wisdom was always that Ukraine couldn’t survive without it, but also would never get it back. Ukraine’s strategy of suffocating the peninsula instead of retaking it by force looks like it’s working. That raises a real question: does Zelenskyy use Putin being on his back foot to actually take Crimea, then settle for ceding part of the Donbas so Ukraine keeps it? Crimea matters beyond symbolism — it’s Ukraine’s access to a warm water port, something landlocked or ice-bound countries don’t have. Odesa and the other Black Sea ports work, but a foothold in Crimea gives Ukraine a real naval and commercial presence in the Black Sea year-round, without relying on a strait or another country’s coastline.

• American citizen Jamey Carney, 43, a rabidly pro-Palestine New Yorker who’d moved to Ireland in 2021, was found murdered in her home in Killarney on July 7. An autopsy found she died of suffocation. The person of interest — reportedly a Middle East-born asylum seeker with permanent residency in Ireland who knew Carney and frequently stayed at her home — fled to Istanbul before her body was discovered, triggering an international manhunt involving Interpol and Europol.

  • Amanda’s Take: This is another unfortunate case of suicidal empathy. She built her life around welcoming the very demographic that killed her.

🇺🇸 US FOREIGN POLICY NEWS

Here’s the headlines Washington is talking about.

• Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) died at 71. A decade ago, he called Trump “the world’s biggest jackass” and voted for a third-party candidate in 2016 — by the time of his death, he’d become one of Trump’s most prominent defenders in the Senate, work he was candid about doing to “be relevant.” He grew up in the back room of a segregated bar in rural South Carolina, the first in his family to go to college, and became his 13-year-old sister’s legal guardian after both his parents died within 15 months of each other around the time he graduated. He served four terms in the Senate, first elected in 1996, and was best known internationally for his advocacy on behalf of Ukraine and Israel. President Trump called into Meet the Press visibly shaken by the loss, saying it felt like losing a member of his family.

  • Amanda’s Take: Graham died with a net worth somewhere between $1.7 million and $3 million after nearly 30 years in Congress. Compare that to stock traders like Nancy Pelosi and Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose net worths exploded while in office. If anyone had the access to cash in — defense and weapons contractors, given his Armed Services Committee work — it was Lindsey Graham. He didn’t. When remembering Lindsey, instead of looking at people cheering on his death because they disagreed with his politics (gross!), look for moments which captured his whit, like this one, one of my personal favorites.

🤖 AI COMPETITION

The AI race is as much an economic and national security story as it is a tech story. Here’s what moved this week.

• A Bengaluru startup called Vimag Labs built an EV motor that doesn’t need rare earth magnets at all. Normally those magnets — which China controls about 94% of the global supply for — are what make high-performance electric motors work. Vimag’s motor uses ordinary copper coils and software to do the same job instead. Since it doesn’t need any rare earth materials, it can be built entirely in India, and it’s already being tested by major Indian vehicle makers and a European supplier.

  • Crucial Context: This matters because China’s grip on rare earths is only getting tighter — AI data centers and defense systems are eating up more of the global supply, and Beijing’s export quotas have swung prices by 30-80% in a matter of months. A software workaround like this is one way countries can route around China’s monopoly instead of staying dependent on it.

✝️ CHRISTIANITY IN GEOPOLITICS

• Pastor Ezra Jin, founder of Beijing’s underground Zion Church, wrote in a WSJ opinion piece that he was released after 266 days in a Chinese prison — freed with all charges dropped, thanks to diplomacy from President Trump and members of Congress. He was reunited with his wife and US-citizen children on July 4th after eight years apart. Eight of his fellow church members remain imprisoned in cramped, sweltering cells. Jin writes that China has no reason to fear the tens of millions of Chinese Christians worshipping in unregistered house churches — they’re not political dissidents, just people who want to worship according to the Bible. He’s calling for house churches to be legalized alongside state-run ones, the same way China legalized private industry alongside state-owned enterprises.

Thank you for reading! Found this useful? Forward it to one person. Not a paid subscriber yet? Consider becoming one — it directly supports this work. New readers can subscribe here.

For more analysis throughout the week, follow me on Instagram, X, and YouTube!

📰 THIS WEEK’S BIG STORY: The Iran War might be back on — or we might be back to negotiations, already — while Trump met with NATO leaders in Turkey, and China launched nuclear-capable ballistic missiles in the Pacific, causing a stir.

🌎 OUR HEMISPHERE

President Trump re-committed to the Monroe Doctrine in his 2025 National Defense Strategy. Here are the headlines you need to know about what’s happening in our hemisphere.

• The US declined to renew the USMCA by its July 1 deadline, triggering a decade of mandatory annual reviews with Canada and Mexico instead of a clean 16-year extension. The pact still underpins nearly $2 trillion in annual trade, and talks continue — the US wants a level playing field, higher US-specific content requirements on autos, and limits on Chinese content flowing through Canada and Mexico.

  • Crucial Context: The uncertainty is already costing jobs — Mexico’s auto sector has shed 100,000 positions since 2025, and Canadian business investment has fallen for five straight quarters. Mexico is playing ball, proposing ways to cut Chinese imports and boost North American manufacturing. Canada is further behind and has actually retaliated against US tariffs, which is part of why Trump’s team is treating Ottawa more skeptically than Mexico City right now.

⛩️ ASIA

The Indo-Pacific is the most consequential region on earth right now. Here’s what you need to know.

• Korea, the US, and Japan signed a trilateral MOU on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara to fast-track small modular reactor deployments across the Indo-Pacific, backed by more than $10 million in new US funding for project support and a regional training hub.

  • Crucial Context: The pact leans on the three countries’ complementary nuclear industries to de-risk projects, unlock private investment, and streamline licensing — positioning Korean, US, and Japanese firms as the default alternative to Chinese and Russian nuclear vendors for developing Indo-Pacific states.

• South Korea’s new “fake news” law took effect Tuesday, letting courts hit news outlets and large social media creators with damages up to 5x proven losses — and fines up to $656,000 for repeat offenders — for spreading information deemed false or manipulated.

  • Crucial Context: President Lee Jae Myung’s Democratic Party rammed this through in December over a conservative boycott. Regulators insist private platforms decide what counts as “false,” not the government — but Naver, Kakao, and YouTube now have every incentive to over-censor rather than risk liability, and the law’s own supporters say its purpose is to shut down the kind of speech that fueled Yoon’s martial law push. U.S. Under Secretary of State Sarah Rogers said it “endangers tech cooperation” and hands regulators “invasive license for viewpoint-based censorship.” South Korea ranks 47th in the world for press freedom. This won’t move it up.

• China test-fired a nuclear-capable JL-3 ballistic missile from a submarine into the Pacific on Monday, landing near the Solomon Islands — only the third time Beijing has ever conducted a long-range missile test across the Pacific, and a clear signal it now has a functioning nuclear triad.

  • Crucial Context: Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Australia, Vietnam, and other ASEAN nations all condemned the launch, and some of the missile paths passed through Japanese and Philippine exclusive economic zones. China spends constant energy accusing Japan of remilitarizing — but Japan isn’t the one lobbing nuclear-capable ICBMs through its neighbors’ waters. Every time Beijing does this, it pushes the exact countries it’s trying to intimidate closer to Washington, not further from it.

🕌 THE MIDDLE EAST

The Middle East has been fundamentally remade since October 7th. Here’s what you’re probably missing.

• The US and Iran exchanged fire again Wednesday after Trump declared the eight-week ceasefire over, with US forces striking 90 targets near the Strait of Hormuz and Iran retaliating by attacking US-hosting bases in Kuwait and Bahrain**.** Late Wednesday night, Trump told reporters Iran had called seeking a deal — though he was skeptical they’d honor it.

  • Amanda’s Take: Oil experts pointed out back in April that Brent crude prices were dictating this conflict — in the $90s, both sides escalated; once prices hit the $120s, both backed off. That range has shifted lower. Now it looks like the $60s to $70s triggers hostilities, and the $90s brings both sides back to the table. Negotiations will continue because neither side wants a full-scale war (though with Trump, you never know) — but expect these strikes to keep happening alongside the talks for the foreseeable future.

• Trump announced Wednesday he’ll remove Syria from the US state sponsors of terrorism list — nearly 50 years after Assad’s father put it there in 1979 — after meeting with Syrian interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa at the NATO summit in Ankara. ****Congress has a 45-day window to block it, but the move has bipartisan backing, including from Democratic Sens. Shaheen and Warren.

  • Crucial Context: This caps a yearlong sequence: sanctions relief last June, al-Sharaa’s terrorist designation dropped in November, his White House visit days later, and Congress repealing the Caesar Act in December. Al-Sharaa led an al-Qaeda offshoot before breaking ties and toppling Assad — HTS has also been accused of human rights abuses under his leadership. The administration is betting his “formal assurances” on counterterrorism outweigh that history, and unlocking Syria’s access to the global financial system is the last major piece.

• Trump announced Tuesday he’ll lift 2020 sanctions on Turkey tied to its purchase of the Russian S-400 missile system, and floated selling Turkey F-35 fighter jets despite Congress explicitly barring that sale while Ankara still holds the S-400s.

  • Crucial Context: Congress removed Turkey from the F-35 program and sanctioned its defense sector in 2020 specifically because the S-400 poses a security risk to the jet’s stealth systems. One workaround reportedly gaining traction: offload the S-400 to a third country — but Russia typically requires end-user agreements on its weapons sales, so it’s unclear Moscow would even allow it. Congress still has to change the law regardless. Trump called Turkey “much more loyal than other countries we think would be loyal,” the first US presidential visit to Turkey in 11 years.

💶 EUROPE

There’s so much more to Europe than NATO skepticism. Here’s what you need to know.

• Trump said Wednesday the US will license Ukraine to manufacture Patriot air defense systems itself, telling Zelenskyy “you can’t complain that we’re not giving them enough” once Kyiv can build its own.

  • Crucial Context: RTX, the contractor that builds Patriots, hasn’t even been informed yet — and producing a single interceptor already takes over two years with the US’s existing industrial base. This is more a signal that Washington wants Ukraine self-sufficient than an immediate fix for the shortage.

• Trump left the NATO summit in Ankara declaring “a lot of love” and “tremendous unity” among allies, capping two days that included a fresh Article 5 pledge and a formal end to the summit on a positive note. ****German Chancellor Friedrich Merz credited Trump directly, telling reporters that past presidents raised burden-sharing “without success,” but “this president is doing it in a different way, and the results speak for themselves.”

  • Amanda’s Take: Europeans love to hold summits and give speeches — the real test is whether they follow through once the cameras leave. That said, credit where it’s due: Germany actually raised defense spending in its proposed budget. Watch what they do, not just what they say in Ankara.

• A Paris appeals court cleared Marine Le Pen to run for president in 2027, shortening the ban on holding office that her embezzlement conviction had triggered — though she’ll still have to serve a year of home detention with an electronic monitor. ****Le Pen confirmed she’s running, campaigning as a “duo” with 30-year-old protege Jordan Bardella, who she says would be her prime minister.

  • Crucial Context: France is drifting away from traditional left-wing politics and toward the anti-immigration right — good news for Le Pen, whom the press still labels “far-right.” The election is a year off and plenty can change, but the signal matters: France, and maybe the rest of Europe, is waking up to the idea that something has to give.

🇺🇸 US FOREIGN POLICY NEWS

Here’s the headlines Washington is talking about.

• **The 2026 Reagan Institute Summer Survey finds Americans still broadly back US global leadership and a strong military as the guarantor of peace — but the bipartisan consensus behind that view is cracking, with Democratic support cooling sharply while Republican support holds firm.** The survey also oversampled young, self-identified MAGA Republicans under 30 to test whether they’re more isolationist than the movement overall: 72% want the US more engaged internationally versus just 19% who want to pull back, and 85% call a strong military essential.

  • Crucial Context: This survey comes out every year, and it should pour cold water on anyone convinced the US is veering off into some crazy new direction. Mainstream Republicans still hold the same core beliefs past generations did — strong American leadership, a strong military, standing up for freedom abroad. Younger Republicans aren’t in lockstep with older ones on every point, but they’re far more aligned than the podcast bros want you to believe.

🤖 AI COMPETITION

The AI race is as much an economic and national security story as it is a tech story. Here’s what moved this week.

• China is weighing whether to restrict foreign access to its most advanced open-weight AI models, including unreleased ones — a potential reversal of the strategy that let Chinese labs undercut American AI companies globally by giving models away for free.

  • Crucial Context: The US already restricts foreign access to Anthropic’s Mythos and OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 over security concerns, and Anthropic has accused Chinese labs, including Alibaba, of “distilling” Claude’s capabilities to close the gap. If China locks down its own frontier models, that’s tacit admission open-sourcing them was a security risk all along.

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📰 THIS WEEK’S BIG STORY: America turned 250 this weekend, and the celebrations weren’t confined to US soil. Allies around the world marked the anniversary. On the night of July 3, France gifted a light show at New York’s Statue of Liberty, and on July 4 the Patrouille de France, the French air force’s elite aerobatic team, flew over Liberty State Park in red, white, and blue. At Versailles, drones formed an American flag over the Royal Gardens during the palace’s night fountain show. Japan lit up Tokyo’s Rainbow Bridge with a drone display of President Trump and Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. While China and Russia spent the weekend running joint naval drills off Qingdao, America spent it surrounded by allies throwing it a birthday party. Here’s what else you may have missed over the holiday.

🌎 OUR HEMISPHERE

President Trump re-committed to the Monroe Doctrine in his 2025 National Defense Strategy. Here are the headlines you need to know about what’s happening in our hemisphere.

• Israel and Venezuela have had no diplomatic ties since 2009, but Israel sent a roughly 30-person IDF Home Front Command team to Venezuela after the deadly earthquakes there. The mission isn’t search-and-rescue — it’s structural engineering, assessing which of an estimated 1,300 damaged buildings can be saved and which must be demolished, at the Venezuelan government’s request. The team says it’s operating openly in IDF uniforms with no hostility, and was greeted on arrival by members of Venezuela’s Jewish community and local officials.

  • Amanda’s Take: Of course Al Jazeera writers and social media activists lost their minds over this. But let’s think it through for a second. After a devastating earthquake, despite the chaos in their own region, Israel sent people to help. Where’s Greta Thunberg’s flotilla with aid?

⛩️ ASIA

The Indo-Pacific is the most consequential region on earth right now. Here’s what you need to know.

• China and Russia launched their “Joint Sea 2026” naval exercise this week off Qingdao, followed by joint patrols pushing farther into the Pacific. Russia sent major surface combatants including the guided-missile cruiser Varyag; China deployed frontline destroyers and a submarine. At-sea drills cover joint reconnaissance, air and missile defense, and maritime strike. Analysts call it a direct challenge to a free and open Indo-Pacific.

  • Crucial Context: These China-Russia drills are now an annual, rotating fixture, and each round gets larger and more combat-oriented. Chinese state media frames the goal openly: deter “certain countries,” resist “historical revisionism,” and prove the two navies can keep key sea lanes open deep into the Pacific. Read plainly, that’s Beijing and Moscow rehearsing to push the US Navy out of the first island chain.

• Taiwan raided Supermicro’s Taiwan office and eight other sites, summoning six people, as it widens its first criminal probe into Nvidia AI chips being diverted to China. Investigators also hit Supermicro distributor Albatron and data center operator Chief Telecom. Supermicro shares fell 8%.

  • Crucial Context: Here’s the catch: Taiwan doesn’t classify unauthorized AI chip exports to China as a crime, so prosecutors can only charge document forgery and fraud, not the smuggling itself. Taipei is weighing legislation — under discussion in US trade talks — that would ban AI chip sales to all of China and let prosecutors charge exports as a crime for the first time. Meanwhile the US is going harder: a federal indictment charges a Supermicro co-founder with diverting roughly $2.5 billion in Nvidia servers to China using dummy servers and heat-lifted serial labels. He faces up to 20 years.

• SK Hynix, the world’s second-largest memory chip maker and a top Nvidia supplier, plans to list on the Nasdaq. It’s aiming to raise about $28 billion, trimmed down from its earlier target after its stock slipped, but still one of the biggest share sales ever — second only to SpaceX’s $75 billion IPO last month. The money goes toward building more chip factories in South Korea.

  • Crucial Context: The smaller target reflects growing nervousness about whether the AI boom can keep up its spending. SK Hynix has dropped 12% this month on those fears, but the stock has still more than tripled this year. A US listing puts it closer to American rival Micron and could pull in big passive investment funds.

🕌 THE MIDDLE EAST

The Middle East has been fundamentally remade since October 7th. Here’s what you’re probably missing.

• Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa appointed Netflix actress Rozina Lazkani, 36, to the country’s new 210-seat People’s Assembly. She’s a star of the drama Al-Hayba with no prior government experience and no notable role in the 2024 revolution that ousted Assad. She was one of Sharaa’s 70 personal appointees to the transitional parliament.

  • Amanda’s Take: Some people still say, unironically, that Syria is run by ISIS. In reality, despite al-Sharaa’s past ties to al-Qaeda, Syria is one of the most stable places in the Middle East right now (imagine reading that two years ago). Anyone insisting it’s a caliphate is unserious and shouldn’t be listened to.

• Iran held a massive state funeral for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, killed in the U.S.-Israeli strikes in late February. There will be six days of ceremonies across five cities in Iran and Iraq, timed to overlap with America’s 250th anniversary. His son Mojtaba, named the new supreme leader in March, has been hiding in a bunker (or is injured) since the strikes and did not appear. Crowds chanted “Death to America,” and some mourners carried banners demanding revenge.

  • Crucial Context: The funeral is a staged show of unity papering over a fractured country. Iran has arrested more than 6,000 people since the war began, and when Iranians first learned Khamenei had been killed, some celebrated openly. Analysts note the elaborate multi-city tour was designed to lend Khamenei a sacredness he never had — he lacked his predecessor’s stature, so the regime is compensating by parading his body through Shiite holy sites.

💶 EUROPE

There’s so much more to Europe than NATO skepticism. Here’s what you need to know.

• China is hollowing out Germany’s Mittelstand — the midsize, export-heavy manufacturers that are the backbone of the economy. Their moat was quality no one could match. China has closed the gap and sells at half the price. Germany is now losing more than 10,000 industrial jobs a month.

  • Crucial Context: This was engineered. Beijing’s “10,000 Little Giants” program funneled subsidies and state resources into midsize firms built to replace Germany’s “hidden champions.” Chinese firms already control a third of global machinery production. Once that hits 40 or 50 percent, industry lobbyists say the leverage is gone.

• An IISS report found Russia ran a coordinated drone surveillance campaign over European nuclear sites for 18 months — 144 incidents across more than a dozen countries, with “substantial impunity.” Targets included RAF Lakenheath in the UK and France’s nuclear submarine base at Île Longue. Not a single drone was captured or shot down.

  • Crucial Context: The drones launched at sea from “shadow fleet” vessels sailing dark with transponders off, using techniques Russia learned in Ukraine. One seized tanker had a Chinese captain and two Russian military contractors aboard. IISS calls it a tactical win for the Kremlin and a strategic failure of NATO air defenses.

🤖 AI COMPETITION

The AI race is as much an economic and national security story as it is a tech story. Here’s what moved this week.

• A Bitcoin Policy Institute report says a China-linked network tied to Marxist Neville Singham and the Party for Socialism and Liberation has inserted itself into local fights against AI data centers across 14 states, helping stall or block at least $23.6 billion in investment — including a $1 billion Google build in Indiana and a $12 billion Blackstone center in Wisconsin.

  • Crucial Context: The real AI race isn’t just talent — it’s zoning hearings, and that front is being lost quietly. The water-usage claims driving much of the outrage are inflated by as much as 1,000 times. Singham, an American, has poured nearly $300 million into these projects, and PSL’s funding is a black box. House Energy and Commerce members have asked the White House and FBI to investigate foreign involvement.

✝️ CHRISTIANITY IN GEOPOLITICS

• China released Ezra Jin Mingri, pastor of Beijing’s underground Zion Church, after more than 250 days in detention and allowed him to leave for the United States. Trump had personally raised his case with Xi Jinping during their May summit in Beijing. Jin, who moved his church online after authorities shut its physical headquarters in 2018, was reaching an estimated 10,000 worshippers across China through streamed sermons before his arrest.

  • Crucial Context: Jin’s release came on the eve of the Fourth of July, and his family openly credited both Trump and Xi. But eight other Zion pastors remain in custody. One, Franklin Wang Lin, has been hit with a fraud charge built on the argument that collecting church donations is illegal — an attempt to criminalize a core Christian practice. He’s reportedly lost more than 30 pounds and is malnourished in detention.

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For more analysis throughout the week, follow me on Instagram, X, and YouTube!

📰 THIS WEEK’S BIG STORY: The US and Iran traded strikes around the Strait of Hormuz before agreeing to stand down and resume talks in Doha Tuesday. While the West argues over whether the Iran MOU is a “capitulation,” two pro-Iranian outposts got gutted in the same 72 hours — Iraq arrested 47 pro-Iranian officials, and Israel and Lebanon signed a framework requiring Hezbollah’s disarmament. Nuclear expert David Albright added the hard numbers: Iran’s centrifuge program is wrecked, and a bomb is now at least a year away with no guarantee of success. Meanwhile, Russia’s war economy is buckling, and Venezuela is still digging for 50,000 people missing after last week’s earthquakes.

🌎 OUR HEMISPHERE

President Trump re-committed to the Monroe Doctrine in his 2025 National Defense Strategy. Here are the headlines you need to know about what’s happening in our hemisphere.

• Venezuela is searching for nearly 50,000 people still missing after twin earthquakes flattened parts of Caracas and the coastal state of La Guaira last week. The government reports 1,450 dead and over 3,100 injured, though US Geological Survey modeling suggests the toll could climb into the thousands. Acting President Delcy Rodríguez’s government is facing growing criticism over a slow, disorganized response — residents report restricted volunteer access and bureaucratic delays holding up international rescue teams, while many of the collapsed buildings were government-built housing that residents say used styrofoam as mortar between concrete slabs.

⛩️ ASIA

The Indo-Pacific is the most consequential region on earth right now. Here’s what you need to know.

• Japan’s government is making a massive economic bet: it’s dropping its old rule of balancing the budget every year, and instead borrowing big to pour roughly $2.3 trillion into things like semiconductors, AI infrastructure, and quantum computing through 2040. At the same time, the Bank of Japan just raised interest rates to 1% — the highest since 1995 — and Tokyo has already spent $73 billion trying to stop the yen from sliding, with no clear sign it’s working.

  • Amanda’s Take: It’s good to see Japan rise to be a true military power in addition to economic and technology power once again.

• China is preparing a new law that would let state prosecutors file civil lawsuits against foreign companies and individuals accused of damaging Chinese interests — the bill, which already passed its second legislative reading and could become law by year’s end, adds to a growing legal toolkit Beijing has built since 2021 to retaliate against Western sanctions, including exit bans, asset seizures, and travel restrictions on foreign nationals.

🕌 THE MIDDLE EAST

The Middle East has been fundamentally remade since October 7th. Here’s what you’re probably missing.

• The US and Iran agreed to halt days of renewed fighting around the Strait of Hormuz and resume peace talks, set for Tuesday in Doha — the violence broke out Thursday when Iran attacked a ship hugging Oman’s coast, escalated into US strikes on Iranian drone and missile sites and Iranian strikes on Kuwait and Bahrain, and ended with Trump warning “the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist” if forced to finish the job militarily; Iran’s Foreign Minister claims Tehran now holds sole authority over the strait, a claim the US disputes, while Hezbollah rejected Friday’s Israel-Lebanon framework and vowed to keep fighting.

  • Amanda’s Take: This pattern will likely hold through at least December or January of next year — continued escalations, then back to negotiations, especially on weekends. We probably won’t see real progress on what’s outlined in the MOU during this stretch, but the talks will keep happening anyway, to keep gas prices down and markets up. In the meantime, regional alliances keep shifting, and Iran still can’t enrich uranium.

• Iraqi security forces arrested 47 officials and lawmakers in dawn raids across Baghdad’s Green Zone, with new PM Ali al-Zaidi using an “anticorruption crackdown” to target pro-Iranian figures — among those detained: a deputy oil minister, the head of the Sunni Al-Azm Alliance, and members of the mainly Shia Reconstruction and Development Coalition, with parliamentary immunity lifted ahead of the arrests.

  • Amanda’s Take: While experts and pundits in the west have meltdowns over the Iran MOU, lifelines to the Iranian regime continue to be cut in the region. This crackdown in Iraq, reports of Kurdish fighters arming and fighting again, and the deal being signed in Lebanon, are all examples of this.

• Israel and Lebanon signed a US-mediated “Trilateral Framework” on Friday, putting Lebanon under a “trust, but verify” system that requires the Lebanese Armed Forces to disarm Hezbollah and reassert sovereign control in pilot zones before Israel progressively withdraws — Lebanon already claimed compliance once last year, which didn’t hold and triggered a new conflict in March.

  • Crucial Context: Hezbollah is still more powerful than the Lebanese Armed Forces, and Lebanon wants to avoid a civil war above all else. Still, this is a tenable agreement for both sides — each acknowledges the other’s right to peace and sovereignty, which matters since Lebanon doesn’t currently officially recognize Israel. If it holds, it could prevent further escalation in southern Lebanon and northern Israel.

• Nuclear weapons expert David Albright pushed back hard on the Democratic talking point that Iran emerged stronger from the war with Israel and the US: before the strikes, Iran had 22,000 centrifuges enriching up to 60% — now it’s enriching nothing, with most centrifuges destroyed and roughly 10 nuclear-weapons-related sites hit. What once would’ve taken Iran months to build a bomb with full certainty now would take at least a year, with no guarantee of success. The remaining test, per Albright: whether Iran admits it ran a weapons program at all — until it does, the regime isn’t serious about a deal.

• Israel’s government unanimously voted Sunday to formally recognize the Armenian genocide, with Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar accusing Turkey of an “institutionalized campaign of denial” — the move lands amid sharply worsening Israel-Turkey relations, with Erdoğan having repeatedly accused Israel of genocide in Gaza, though Sa’ar insists the vote isn’t retaliatory. Azerbaijan denounced the recognition despite its longstanding good standing with Israel.

• Iran’s Strait of Hormuz closure during the 2026 war cut Persian Gulf oil exports far less than feared — the real shortfall was 5-6 million bpd, not the 12-15 million traders braced for — as Saudi Red Sea reroutes, hidden Iraqi/Kuwaiti/Emirati tanker exports, and record US output pushed prices from ~$120 back below $90, even as global inventories sink toward their lowest levels since 2003.

💶 EUROPE

There’s so much more to Europe than NATO skepticism. Here’s what you need to know.

• There are staggering new numbers coming out of the Russia-Ukraine war. The average life expectancy of a new Russian recruit — from arrival at training to death in combat — is somewhere between 10 days and three weeks. Once they hit the battlefield, they survive an average of 20 to 35 minutes. Putin keeps running this meat grinder operation even as Russia’s refining capacity craters, and he’s already spent the war budget proposed for the entire year in just the first quarter. Foreign policy experts believe Putin is unlikely to compromise, and far more likely to escalate against the West instead.

🇺🇸 US FOREIGN POLICY NEWS

Here’s the headlines Washington is talking about.

• The case for prompting deflation in the US: Tony Nash argues that we don’t need to fear falling prices — it needs some deflation to fix the post-pandemic price hangover. The case: headline inflation is still running 4.2%, prices are roughly 14% higher than they’d be on the pre-pandemic trend, and the real culprits are structural — housing supply that hasn’t kept up, a commercial real estate market full of “extend and pretend” loans still not marked to market, and up to $100 billion lost yearly to healthcare fraud. The proposed fix: let bad debt clear, build more housing, crack down on fraud, and have the Fed shrink its balance sheet while cutting rates — rather than just jacking up rates to crush demand.

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For more analysis throughout the week, follow me on Instagram, X, and YouTube!

📰 THIS WEEK’S BIG STORY: This week’s headlines point the same direction: the postwar order Washington built is being renegotiated in real time. Five Eyes intelligence agencies warned that AI capable of crippling governments and businesses isn’t years away — it’s months, as Chinese and Japanese models close the gap faster than expected. China answered the Pentagon’s military blacklist with real export controls and a sweeping new law claiming jurisdiction over “ethnic separatism” anywhere in the world. And across the Middle East, Rubio drew a hard line on Hormuz tolls while Washington tries to broker deals in Turkey and Libya that may not hold. Welcome to the multipolar world we’ve been warned about.

🌎 OUR HEMISPHERE

President Trump re-committed to the Monroe Doctrine in his 2025 National Defense Strategy. Here are the headlines you need to know about what’s happening in our hemisphere.

• A 25-year-old Alberta man opened fire from a Montreal hotel window, killing a police officer and a Jewish bystander before being shot dead by police, in an attack tied to a 104-page manifesto an extremism researcher called “salad bar extremism” — an incel critique of capitalism mixing violent misogyny, anti-government rhetoric, and far-left and far-right ideas, including a call to shoot police officers.

  • Amanda’s Take: It looks like extremist-linked mass shootings aren’t unique to the U.S.

⛩️ ASIA

The Indo-Pacific is the most consequential region on earth right now. Here’s what you need to know.

• A “Team Korea” consortium led by Samsung Heavy Industries won a $2.8 billion contract to build America’s first floating LNG facility off Louisiana, with Japan’s Mitsui O.S.K. Lines taking a roughly 23% equity stake. The State Department is framing the deal as trilateral U.S.-Japan-ROK energy cooperation.

  • Crucial Context: The U.S. and Qatar dominate global LNG supply. With the Strait of Hormuz closure threatening Gulf shipments, Japan and South Korea are diversifying away from Hormuz-dependent supply and deepening energy ties with Washington instead — this deal is a hedge, not just an investment.

• China sanctioned 10 American firms — including rare earth producers MP Materials and USA Rare Earth — and barred 46 more, including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and General Dynamics, from government procurement, retaliating against the Pentagon’s expanded blacklist of Chinese military-linked companies.

  • Amanda’s Take: Chinese sanctions don’t hit the same as U.S. sanctions. Sorry to disappoint the BRICS warriors who claim the dollar will collapse and China will rise. This is a nationalistic impulse — the CCP saving face after the U.S. designated top Chinese companies — and it’s likely being used as leverage ahead of Xi’s September visit to Washington.

• The Wall Street Journal detailed how China’s yuan-based financial architecture lets countries like Iran and Russia evade U.S. sanctions at scale (gift link) — Iran earned up to $43 billion in oil revenue in 2024 despite sanctions, with most sales settled in yuan, shielding the transactions from U.S. banking oversight entirely.

  • Amanda’s Take: It’s puzzled Iran hawks that Trump has allowed Iran to resume selling oil in dollars during nuclear talks — something Tehran hasn’t been permitted to do in 40 years. But this report suggests why: if Iran’s oil money flows through yuan-based systems that Washington can’t see or control, pulling Tehran back into the dollar system may be less about easing pressure and more about denying China another sanctions-evasion lane.

• China defended a new law that takes effect on July 1 that lets Beijing pursue people and groups outside its borders for undermining “ethnic unity” or inciting “ethnic separatism,“ with a senior justice official insisting it isn’t “long-arm jurisdiction.”

  • Crucial Context: Taiwan worries this hands Beijing another legal tool to target perceived separatists on the island it claims as its own. Human Rights Watch sees it as a vehicle for transnational repression — including expanded use of Interpol red notices against dissidents abroad — wrapped around a domestic push to assimilate Tibetans, Uyghurs, and other minorities into a single CCP-defined national identity.

• Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao traveled to Vietnam’s Quang Tri province to launch a joint U.S.-Vietnamese disaster-response mission. This is the same province his father, an official in the South Vietnamese government, fled in 1975 when Cao’s family escaped to the U.S. as refugees.

  • Crucial Context: Cao was welcomed by Vietnamese officials and the Vietnamese People’s Army as a partner, not a relic of the losing side. Fifty-one years after his family fled communism, the son of a South Vietnamese official is standing in his father’s home province as the top civilian face of the U.S. Navy, working alongside the government that defeated the one his father served — a measure of how far U.S.-Vietnam relations have come.

🕌 THE MIDDLE EAST

The Middle East has been fundamentally remade since October 7th. Here’s what you’re probably missing.

• IAI and Rafael, Israel’s two largest state-owned defense companies, are weighing listings on Nasdaq instead of — or alongside — the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

  • Crucial Context: Israel has lost ground in global public opinion since the Gaza war, but demand for its military technology hasn’t followed — the war has been a live demonstration of some of the best defense equipment in the world, and countries want it. As the world goes multipolar and war becomes more common rather than less, defense industries broadly are positioned to be strong investments, and Israeli companies in particular look like good buys.

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio said no country can charge tolls on the Strait of Hormuz traffic, drawing a hard line against Iran’s push to levy fees on ships passing through the strait, on his trip to Kuwait, Bahrain, and the UAE. Critics of the deal VP Vance is negotiating with Iran, alongside Pakistan and Qatar, have been looking to Rubio for help understanding the deal, trusting him and his hawkish tendencies on Iran rather than Vance’s dovish tone.

  • Crucial Context: The U.S.-Iran memorandum bars tolls for 60 days but says nothing about what happens after — Iran is already testing the boundary by framing the charges as “service fees” rather than tolls. Rubio also said Iran is publicly denying, for domestic political reasons, that it agreed to IAEA nuclear inspections — even as Vance and Trump insist it did.

• The Trump administration is moving forward with a $700+ million sale of GE jet engines to power Turkey’s indigenous Kaan fighter jet, despite objections from House Democrats and some Republicans, ahead of a NATO summit in Turkey next month.

  • Crucial Context: This is a gesture to smooth over a years-long rift — Washington kicked Turkey out of the F-35 program and sanctioned Ankara after it bought Russian S-400 air defenses. Turkey hosts NATO leaders July 7-8 amid alliance tension over defense spending and complaints that some members didn’t pull their weight keeping Hormuz open during the Iran war.

• Secretary of State Rubio is expected to host Libyan representatives from both factions in Washington by month’s end to formalize a U.S.-brokered reunification deal — a plan from Trump adviser Massad Boulos (Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law) that would make Saddam Haftar president while Abdulhamid Dabaiba stays prime minister. Critics say the deal has no real backing among Libya’s tribal leaders or political factions.

  • Amanda’s Take: The NATO war on Libya, pushed by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and America’s European allies under Obama, is the worst U.S. foreign policy decision of the 21st century. Ten time worse than the Iraq War. Gaddafi gave up his nuclear program in a deal with the U.S, then less than a decade later, we went to war against him and let his own people capture and kill him in the street. Why would any country sign a nuclear deal with the U.S. after that? Libya has been a failed state ever since, controlled in parts by radical Islamists, and it’s been a primary corridor for the wave of African migrants reaching Europe. While I’m not bullish this deal will solve the mess we created, I do think it’s important we do something to try and make things right.

💶 EUROPE

There’s so much more to Europe than NATO skepticism. Here’s what you need to know.

• The U.S. Trade Representative launched a Section 301 investigation into Germany over pharmaceutical pricing, arguing Berlin’s reimbursement policies force American patients to shoulder a disproportionate share of global drug R&D costs.

  • Crucial Context: The U.S. struck a similar pricing arrangement with the UK in April. Washington is now using trade law, not just diplomacy, to pressure European governments into paying more for the drugs their citizens use — Germany is the next test case, with a hearing set for September 22.

• The EU signed the U.S.-led Pax Silica declaration on Tuesday, a non-binding initiative aimed at excluding China from AI chip supply chains, with Germany, Greece, and the Netherlands signing bilaterally the same day.

• The U.S., UK, France, and Germany jointly condemned recent Chinese Coast Guard patrols off Taiwan’s eastern coast as “deeply destabilizing,” after Beijing sent ships to inspect merchant vessels and survey undersea cables in Taiwanese waters.

  • Crucial Context: A few years ago, Macron said a Chinese move on Taiwan would be America’s problem, not Europe’s. Now Europe is singing Washington’s tune — maybe over China’s backing of Russia, maybe to stay in Washington’s good graces, maybe because AI has made chips strategic and Europe isn’t a chipmaking power. Whatever the reason, it’s good to see governments calling out China’s encroachment on its neighbors.

• Europe’s heatwave has turned deadly — 40 people have drowned in France since Thursday because they were swimming to cool off, record temperatures topped 40C in Spain and Italy, and France’s Golfech nuclear plant was forced offline after the Garonne River grew too warm to safely cool its reactors.

  • Amanda’s Take: These deaths are preventable. Only about 20% of European households have air conditioning. Climate experts have warned for a decade that heat waves like this would become more common. Europe has two options. One is to double down on net zero policies that might help the climate, even though China, India, and much of the developing world keep emitting regardless. The other is to adapt the way the U.S. and much of Asia already have: push households and businesses to install air conditioning. Units cost a few hundred to a couple thousand dollars, don’t meaningfully strain the grid or emissions, and they save lives. Instead of freaking out about an existential problem like climate change, Europeans (and leftists worldwide) should focus on solvable problems. This is a solvable problem.

• NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte met with Trump in the Oval Office to smooth over tensions ahead of next month's Ankara summit, after Trump renewed threats to leave the alliance and complained that European allies "weren't too nice" to the U.S. during the Iran war.

🇺🇸 US FOREIGN POLICY NEWS

Here’s the headlines Washington is talking about.

• The Trump administration is revitalizing America’s nuclear energy capabilities, offering $17.5 billion in low-interest loans to fund 10 new Westinghouse AP1000 reactors and aiming to get the first online by 2035.

  • Crucial Context: The only AP1000s built in the U.S. so far — Georgia’s Vogtle plant — went from a $14 billion budget to over $30 billion and came online seven years late. China, by contrast, licensed the same design, modified it, and now has 11 reactors under construction. The government is betting cheap financing can fix what cost overruns couldn’t.

🤖 AI COMPETITION

The AI race is as much an economic and national security story as it is a tech story. Here’s what moved this week.

• Japanese startup Sakana AI launched Fugu and Fugu Ultra, AI systems that orchestrate multiple frontier models rather than building one standalone model, claiming performance comparable to Anthropic’s Mythos and Fable on several benchmarks.

• The Five Eyes issued a rare joint warning that frontier AI capable of crippling governments and businesses is closer than expected, driven by the rapid rise of Chinese and Japanese models. Sakana AI’s Fugu Ultra claims Mythos-level performance by orchestrating public U.S. models, sidestepping export controls. China’s DeepSeek, Minimax, and Moonshot have been accused by Anthropic of distilling Claude’s outputs to cheaply train their own models. And Commerce’s export controls on Fable 5 and Mythos 5 — which led Anthropic to cut off access entirely — may now be making U.S. labs warier of showing their best work.

Thank you for reading! Found this useful? Forward it to one person. Not a paid subscriber yet? Consider becoming one — it directly supports this work. New readers can subscribe here.

For more analysis throughout the week, follow me on Instagram, X, and YouTube!

📰 THIS WEEK’S BIG STORY: It was a big weekend for geopolitics. Keir Starmer resigned as UK Prime Minister — the sixth to fall in a decade. Iran, Qatar, Pakistan, and the US sat down for high-stakes negotiations in Switzerland. And the right notched more wins across South America and the Caribbean.

🌎 OUR HEMISPHERE

President Trump re-committed to the Monroe Doctrine in his 2025 National Defense Strategy. Here are the headlines you need to know about what’s happening in our hemisphere.

• Cuba’s National Assembly unanimously approved over 175 economic reforms, the most significant shift since the 1959 revolution. The measures enable private banks, real estate development, privatization of state enterprises, and expanded private business.

  • Crucial Context: The reforms are backed by the Communist Party and former leader Raúl Castro. Officials are framing this as strengthening socialism, not abandoning it, but the moves come amid economic crisis, inflation, power shortages, and ongoing US sanctions. This is Havana trying to attract outside investment without admitting the model has failed.

• Trump-backed outsider Abelardo De La Espriella appears to have won Colombia’s presidential election by a razor-thin margin, 49.7% to 48.7%, ending four years of leftist rule under Gustavo Petro. Rubio congratulated him Sunday night. Gustavo Petro challenged the election results, blaming Israel for his loss, without evidence.

  • Crucial Context: De La Espriella is a former criminal defense lawyer with no political experience who ran on crushing “narcoterrorists” and restoring security, pulling from the same playbook as Bukele and Milei. The win extends the right’s winning streak across Latin America. There’s a lot of speculation on right-wing Twitter that these wins are because the US cut off Venezuelan oil money and USAID. While it is true that Biden’s State Department supported these left wing candidates, the reason for the right wing push in South and Latin America can be summed up as a response to the recent crime wave.

⛩️ ASIA

The Indo-Pacific is the most consequential region on earth right now. Here’s what you need to know.

• South Korean President Lee Jae-myung asked Trump to take the lead on de-escalating tensions with North Korea during a brief exchange at the G7 summit, and Trump said he would work to address it. G7 leaders followed up with a joint statement expressing “deep concern” over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and reaffirming a commitment to its “complete denuclearization.”

  • Crucial Context: Trump has been signaling he wants to revive direct diplomacy with Kim Jong Un, including posting a captionless photo of the two of them together on Truth Social last week. South Korea’s Unification Minister read that as a sign Trump wants to pursue a Kim meeting once the Iran conflict is resolved. Trump met Kim three times in his first term — Singapore, Hanoi, and the DMZ — but diplomacy collapsed after Hanoi failed to produce a deal on denuclearization and sanctions relief.

• The FBI shut down 13 websites backed by suspected Chinese intelligence operatives that used fake consulting firms to recruit current and former US government and military employees for espionage.

  • Crucial Context: The operatives built out fictitious personas, stolen identities, and AI-generated photos, then dangled large payments for “research reports” while pressuring targets for insider information, with money funneled in from overseas. The FBI says counterintelligence arrests are up 53% over the past two years, and cyber-related indictments are up 158%. This is the recruitment playbook China is running against the US government right now, not a one-off case.

🕌 THE MIDDLE EAST

The Middle East has been fundamentally remade since October 7th. Here’s what you’re probably missing.

• The US Treasury sanctioned Marada Movement leader Sleiman Frangieh and Hezbollah deputy political bureau head Mahmoud Qomati, accusing both of using their influence to stall Lebanon’s peace process and delay Hezbollah’s disarmament. Several companies tied to a Hezbollah financial network in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Oman were also designated.

  • Amanda’s Take: The public pressure campaign is on Israel — stop bombing Beirut, stick to the ceasefire. But behind the scenes, Washington is working a different angle: financially crippling Hezbollah. That matters right now because Iran just got a new revenue stream from oil exports under its MOU with the US, and there are concerns that money flows straight back into funding Hezbollah. Bessent and other administration officials have made the line clear — Hezbollah must disarm for Lebanon to have a future.

• New questions are surfacing about whether the Iran MOU is even legal. The agreement appears to require Congress to vote to repeal US sanctions on Iran — the same structural problem that sank the JCPOA.

  • Amanda’s Take: A lot of people are freaking out about this MOU, and not without reason. But the worst parts of it likely never see daylight, because they’re illegal. Congress isn’t repealing the terror designation on the IRGC.

• The UAE is moving to cut its dependency on the Strait of Hormuz to zero, regardless of whether the strait fully reopens. The plan centers on expanding eastern ports outside the strait — Dibba, Fujairah, Khor Fakkan, and a new harbor — along with new pipelines, rail, and road links, plus a second and possibly third pipeline to Fujairah.

  • Crucial Context: Iran fired close to 3,000 drones and missiles at the UAE during the war — more than any other country — and Hormuz’s effective closure since February has driven up global inflation, since about a fifth of the world’s crude and LNG normally flows through it. The UAE has been using dark-shipping tactics and air cargo to partially route around the strait already. None of this is new behavior for Abu Dhabi — for years, the UAE let Iran bank there to evade US sanctions. It’s been playing both sides of this fence the whole time, and this pipeline push is just the latest version of that hedge.

• VP JD Vance said Iran agreed to let UN nuclear inspectors back in, possibly this week, calling it a “major milestone” toward ending Iran’s nuclear program. Talks in Switzerland also produced a mechanism to prevent renewed Israel-Hezbollah fighting in Lebanon and a communication channel to avoid escalation in the Strait of Hormuz. Throughout the weekend, Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz closed, though ships remained transiting it.

  • Crucial Context: Inspectors have been barred from Iran’s three bombed sites — Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan — since the US and Israel struck them last June. Access matters most for tracking Iran’s near-weapons-grade enriched uranium stockpile. Talks nearly collapsed Sunday after Trump threatened to restart strikes, but Iran stayed at the table.

• If you are wondering what the US accomplished in the Iran War, Washington Post’s Marc Theissen lays out US accomplishments in this piece (provided with a gift link). The short version: the US buried Iran’s nuclear material so deep that senior officials reportedly told the author Iran can’t even reach it to hand it over; destroyed over 85% of Iran’s defense industrial base; sank Iran’s navy and grounded its air force; damaged centrifuges and decimated ballistic missile capabilities, conventional forces, and the regime’s internal repression infrastructure; killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, following through on Trump’s threat, along with dozens of other senior Iranian officials; and left Iran’s regional power-projection capability reduced to what CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper called a mere “nuisance” capability.

💶 EUROPE

There’s so much more to Europe than NATO skepticism. Here’s what you need to know.

• The European Parliament has replaced Google with French search engine Qwant in an effort to reduce its dependence on American tech firms.

  • Crucial Context: Qwant generates its results by querying Microsoft’s Bing API. Europe’s flagship move toward tech sovereignty just swapped one US tech giant for another.

• Finland’s parliament voted 125-61 to lift its Cold War-era ban on nuclear weapons, allowing NATO allies to station nuclear weapons on Finnish soil.

  • Crucial Context: The move aligns Finland’s laws with its NATO allies and is aimed at deterring Russia, which it borders for 830 miles. The Kremlin already warned Finland would become “a threat” if it hosts nuclear weapons.

• Ukraine launched one of the largest drone attacks of the war on Moscow, shutting down the capital’s four airports for hours and striking an oil refinery that covers roughly 40% of the city’s gasoline needs. Russia said it downed 992 drones and four cruise missiles — the largest single-attack total of the war.

  • Crucial Context: Zelensky framed the strike as retaliation for an attack this week on Kyiv’s Pechersk Lavra monastery, one of Orthodox Christianity’s holiest sites, and warned “if Ukraine burns, then your Moscow will burn as well.” Russian hard-liners are now pushing the Kremlin to escalate further, with one lawmaker calling to “bring the entire industrial sector to its knees.” Ukraine’s drone production has scaled up enough to overwhelm Moscow’s air defenses, and persistent refinery strikes are already causing fuel rationing and gas lines across multiple Russian regions.

• Keir Starmer announced his resignation as UK prime minister and Labour leader, just under two years after leading Labour to one of its biggest election victories in history. He’s the sixth prime minister in a decade to resign early. Andy Burnham has already been sworn in as a Member of Parliament and is the heavy favorite to succeed him.

  • Amanda’s Take: The next prime minister will likely face the same challenges Starmer and his predecessors did, because of how the UK’s state is set up. There’s essentially a “deep state” that doesn’t answer to the prime minister. Starmer himself admitted he pulls levers and nothing happens. The UK likely needs to reform its bureaucratic state if it wants a real chance at reform.

🇺🇸 US FOREIGN POLICY NEWS

Here’s the headlines Washington is talking about.

• Sen. Tom Cotton is calling for a DOJ investigation into a network of American nonprofits — funded by Shanghai-based tech mogul Neville Singham — running a years-long influence campaign against US AI infrastructure and chip export controls on China.

  • Crucial Context: The network includes Code Pink, the People’s Forum, and Tricontinental, and has driven campaigns blaming data centers for health problems and helped halt data center projects in Maryland and North Carolina. The NYT identified Singham in 2023 as a hub of a “global web of Chinese propaganda.”

• A new book by NYT reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reports Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent privately mocked Zelensky, calling him a “little fucker,” “special needs kid,” and “Mr. Bean on Crack,” and pushed Trump not to let him into the Oval Office before signing the minerals deal.

  • Crucial Context: Bessent reportedly clashed with Zelensky directly in Kyiv beforehand, and separately compared Trump to George Soros, telling associates “they are the same animal.” A rare glimpse behind the curtain of how the administration actually views Zelensky.

🤖 AI COMPETITION

The AI race is as much an economic and national security story as it is a tech story. Here’s what moved this week.

• The US believes one of ASML’s advanced EUV lithography machines — or key components — may have illegally ended up in China. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told ASML executives directly that he doesn’t think the company is acting in good faith, and that the US has evidence to back the claim. ASML denies it, says it has never shipped an EUV machine or specially designed components to China, and says it complies with all export controls.

  • Amanda’s Take: If this is true, it’s a massive deal — way bigger than some Nvidia chips slipping through the cracks. EUV machines are the single chokepoint in the entire chip war. They’re the only tech on earth that can print frontier semiconductors. If China actually has one, the export control regime the US has spent years building just got blown wide open.

• Chinese AI models have overtaken ChatGPT and Gemini in global token usage, per OpenRouter data. DeepSeek V4 Flash leads, followed by MiniMax M3 and Xiaomi’s MiMo-V2.5. Anthropic is the only US company in the top five.

  • Crucial Context: Chinese models are winning on price. Meanwhile, US firms like Microsoft, Uber, Amazon, and Meta are capping token usage to control AI costs. Goldman Sachs predicts a 24-fold jump in token consumption by 2030, which could trigger a chip supply crunch.

Thank you for reading! Found this useful? Forward it to one person. Not a paid subscriber yet? Consider becoming one — it directly supports this work. New readers can subscribe here.

For more analysis throughout the week, follow me on Instagram, X, and YouTube!

📰 THIS WEEK’S BIG STORY: We’re still talking about the Iran MOU, plus, Is Europe waking up to the threat of a China shock and their immigration crisis?!

🌎 OUR HEMISPHERE

President Trump re-committed to the Monroe Doctrine in his 2025 National Defense Strategy. Here are the headlines you need to know about what’s happening in our hemisphere.

• Jamaica is in talks with the US to act as a transit hub for third-country deportees, with Deputy PM Horace Chang confirming an MOU (not a binding deal yet) that would let the US transfer up to 25 people every two weeks, capped at 10 in Jamaica at a time, while travel to another country or their home nation is arranged. The US covers all costs, and Chang says people with criminal backgrounds won’t be accepted.

  • Crucial Context: Jamaica follows El Salvador, Belize, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, and St. Kitts and Nevis as Caribbean and Central American nations cutting deals to host US deportees. El Salvador’s version held over 200 Venezuelans in an anti-terrorism prison for four months — Chang says Jamaica drew “lessons” from that.

⛩️ ASIA

The Indo-Pacific is the most consequential region on earth right now. Here’s what you need to know.

• China’s economy is doing really poorly. China’s consumer debt has tripled since 2015, hitting nearly $12 trillion and now equal to 58% of GDP, up from 39% — even as real estate values have fallen sharply. The debt squeeze is crimping consumption, pushing the regime to lean even harder on exports to keep growth alive — and this is getting worse, as the US has levied tariffs on China, and Europe is looking like they may begin doing the same.

  • Crucial Context: These are China’s own self-reported numbers, and Beijing has a long history of lying about its economic data. The real picture is likely worse than what’s stated here — and the demographics make the underlying problem even harder to escape.

• Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi met briefly with Trump at the G7, where leaders reaffirmed opposition to changing the status quo across the Taiwan Strait. Trump reportedly defended her directly to Xi after Tokyo got nervous about his softer China approach.

  • Crucial Context: China has spent years trying to bully Japan and other Pacific nations into distancing themselves from Taiwan. It’s not working — they’re pulling Taiwan closer, and putting it on the agenda at bigger and bigger stages like the G7. Japan has real stakes in the Iran ceasefire too — 38 Japan-linked vessels are stranded in the Strait of Hormuz, and Tokyo’s weighing whether to send minesweepers.

• Kenya pulled the visas of Taiwanese marine scientists invited to a conference in Mombasa at the last minute, detaining them for 20+ hours and confiscating their passports and phones. Taiwan says the CCP pressured Kenya to do it.

  • Crucial Context: Kenya recognizes China and owes it a lot of infrastructure debt — leverage Beijing uses to box Taiwan out of even non-political events like ocean science conferences.

• The Bank of Japan raised its policy rate to 1% from 0.75%, a 31-year high, in a 7-1 vote to fight inflation risk from the Iran war’s energy price spike. The yen weakened anyway, still hovering near the critical 160 mark against the dollar despite the hike and record government intervention.

  • Crucial Context: Borrowing costs haven’t been this high since 1995. Japan spent three decades trapped in near-zero and even negative interest rates, fighting deflation rather than inflation — a defining feature of its economy since the 1990s asset bubble collapse. This rate hike marks a real break from that era.

• The US military’s top Pacific commander told Congress China’s threat is growing and the US needs $122 billion in new weapons — including missiles, space-based missile warning, and tech to counter Chinese command systems.

  • Crucial Context: This blunt warning clashes with the Trump administration’s friendlier approach to Beijing — the two sides announced a “strategic stability” partnership in May. This is also likely a consideration for the administration and military when Trump mulls a “pause” in the conflict with Iran.

🕌 THE MIDDLE EAST

The Middle East has been fundamentally remade since October 7th. Here’s what you’re probably missing.

• **Oil prices are falling as shipping resumes through the Strait of Hormuz, following Trump and Iran’s MOU signing.**

  • Amanda’s Take: A lot of the analysis on this deal is, in my opinion, flawed. Those upset about this deal, because the war did not reach maximalist objectives of regime change and the administration’s roll out of this has been sub-par to put it lightly (they won’t release the exact terms of the deal, and many of the talking points used by JD Vance sound like the points made by the Obama administration when selling the JCPOA), have no answer or solve for the global energy crisis we are facing if the status quo continues. Those saying we achieved nothing, forget that bombing Iranian military targets heavily for 6 weeks and killing a lot of their top leadership undoubtably set Iran’s ambitions back for some amount of time. Democrats mad about this deal, because they are correctly saying that we can’t trust Iran to follow the deal, do so while defending the JCPOA, which Iran of course did not follow. I personally don’t think there is a perfect deal to be taken right now, but avoiding a global energy should be top priority, and this deal accomplishes that. We can always go back at another time, when these financial constraints do not exist.

• Eli Lake on the Iran deal: “You can’t really compare whatever emerges from this MOU with Iran to the JCPOA. Trump still gets enormous credit for militarily destroying a nuclear program that Obama’s deal legitimated. That said, both presidents had to pretend Iran’s thugs and terrorists are statesmen.

• Lindsey Graham on the deal: I just had a very lengthy and productive discussion with @SEPeaceMissions @SteveWitkoff about the state of play regarding Iran. After this discussion, it is my opinion that signing the MOU will be beneficial to the United States, in as much as the Strait of Hormuz will begin to open, and the hostilities with Iran will stop. Whether or not the United States can reach an acceptable, verifiable deal with Iran regarding its nuclear program and other issues is yet to be determined, but I see little downside to trying. The economic stability that comes from opening up the Strait and the cessation of hostilities could create a pathway to peace well beyond the Iranian conflict. The expansion of the Abraham Accords and normalizing relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel is President Trump’s and my ultimate goal. I think that is best achieved by creating economic stability for the United States, the region and the world, as well as the cessation of hostilities. The signing of the MOU is an essential step to make that happen and thus it is worthwhile.”

• Jared Howe: “Trump killed 50 of Iran’s top leaders, did at least $1 trillion worth of damage to their military equipment and infrastructure, totally wiped out their naval fleet and air fleets, put their government in a state of endemic internal conflict, and left them totally incapable of meaningfully attacking their neighbors in the region any time soon. By the end of it, all Iran could do is rig the strait with mines and take pop shots at passing ships. The loss of insurance coverage had more of an impact on the flow of marine traffic than Iran did. I personally would have preferred the total destruction of the IRGC (which technically isn’t off the table if they decide to FAFO) but it would have been difficult to accomplish without more civilian casualties -- something third worldist leftoids were already complaining (and campaigning) about. In the meantime, consider the following: No boots on the ground. No prolonged conflict. No permanent occupation. No military draft. No lasting impact on energy prices. No multi-trillion dollar boondoggle. None of the things anti-war retards with Israel tunnel vision like Dave Smith and Candace Owens predicted would happen. In addition: Oil and gas prices are falling in time for summer and the midterms. “Free Palestine” third worldists like Graham Platner have less ammo on which to campaign for Congress. Russia is bringing in less revenue. The U.S. got a foot in the door to block China’s Belt and Road projects. Trump has greater latitude to tighten sanctions on Russia without exacerbating supply shocks to energy markets. Europe and America have agreed to increase cooperation in providing for the national defense of Ukraine. Israel isn’t a signatory to the MOU and isn’t bound by its terms, leaving it free to independently defend itself from threats if necessary. America isn’t creating a power vacuum for China and Russia to fill by absconding and surrendering its own influence over the region. The people who say this is a “humiliating defeat” for Trump? Russia, China, Iran, Democrats, the leftist Drudge-led media establishment. All the worst people you know have joined arms and are pretending like Iran pulled one over on the Bad Orange Man in hopes that it will piss off Republicans and Israelis enough to get them to kill the deal themselves. It’s very transparent. Don’t let your enemies control you with such a stupid and obvious Reflexive Control op.”

• James Lindsay: “I’m starting to think Trump is a crazy genius again. My logic here all starts with his seemingly rogue comment about Iran keeping rockets and missiles, which has freaked out many, particularly Israelis and their supporters. I’m betting the Gulf States are really uncomfortable, like Israel is, with that statement. They’re not stupid. They’re also targets, like Israel is. Less, but a lot, and the IRGC are crazy bastards. Makes me think Trump made it for them. The thing is, they didn’t do their parts and aren’t yet. And Trump’s definitely pissed at them because they straight up didn’t help during the war (so far…). They wouldn’t even let us use their airspace and tried to close down our own military bases. Trump didn’t like that and didn’t forget. No way. So Trump letting them feel some legitimate heat that can be resolved by accomplishing his primary goals makes a lot of basic sense. If we remember Trump’s goals and work backwards, it’s actually a little easier to see how this makes sense, even the MOU with it’s big carrot/big stick arrangement that basically nobody believes will stick (thus terrifying Israel but, I’ll bet, also those Gulf States). So what are Trump’s goals? Expand Abraham Accords; KSA allying formally with Israel, which was happening until October 7 disrupted it, thus restoring a pre-10/7 peace agenda; Increase their overall security dependency on US and Israel, thus shifting some of their “hand” in the region to us; Standard Trumpism 101: Make them active participants in their own security arrangements, just like what he’s doing with the EU and Pacific countries (no more America carrying all the weight). The MOU itself creates conditions by which Iran becomes agentic in this. If they behave (they won’t), they get rewarded, which they actually want, bigly. If they misuse that (everyone expects they will), they get a well-deserved stick. Everyone in the region feels this fear and is vigilant about it. If they misbehave (they will), they bring hellfire on themselves. This breaks the strangest force in the known universe: responsibility never sticks to a Muslim who behaved badly, never. It’s very high-risk, but this is a very high-stakes game, one of the highest in decades. The fears people have are real and justified, but Trump’s got them priced in, I think. He knows he holds cards (B-2s, specifically) that let him adjust later if things don’t work right, and by the number of times he’s said so in the last 36 hours, I think he’s well aware he’ll be playing those cards at least sometimes. Tough shit for Iran. I think we need to stop freaking out and let this develop. We need to see how it cooks and how the chef does with it. Plus, I think he just hosed JD, and that’s alright too.”

• Miad Meleki: “A friendly reminder to all parties structuring this memorandum of misunderstanding. The $300B private fund to invest in Iran has a statutory problem: the Trump administration formally determined and reported to Congress in 2020 and 2025 that Iran’s construction sector is IRGC-controlled. Set aside the criminal exposure from IRGC’s FTO designation. IFCA §1245 imposes mandatory sanctions on the sector. The President can waive, but only 180 days at a time. No serious investor commits billions on a rolling six-month waiver cycle. So which is it? Will the administration return to Congress claiming the IRGC vacated Iran’s construction sector overnight? Or will it revoke the IRGC’s FTO designation to clear the path? The deal’s architects need to explain how $300B in committed funds navigates this, or they need every Member of Congress to look the other way.”

💶 EUROPE

There’s so much more to Europe than NATO skepticism. Here’s what you need to know.

• While Trump was in France for the G7 this week, European headlines focused on how China is hurting Europe’s economy, proving Trump’s tariff policy was inherently right. The “China Shock 2.0” is how China is flooding Europe with exports redirected away from US tariffs. China’s exports to the EU are up 16.4% this year, and Macron says they’re “literally killing a large part of European industry.” Europe’s now scrambling for a plan to fight back.

  • Crucial Context: This is worse than the 2000s “China Shock” that gutted American factories — China controls 16% of global exports now (up from 4% then) and has moved into EVs and machinery, going head-to-head with Europe’s best industries. Trump’s tariffs shielded the US from this wave. Europe didn’t build that wall, and now it’s paying for it.

• The EU Parliament passed a reformed Return Regulation, 418-218, updating the 2008 directive to speed up and standardize deportations of illegally staying migrants after enforcement rates sat around just 20%. Right-wing MEPs broke into “send them back” chants in the chamber; left-wing members protested. The measure still needs Council approval, and how much it actually changes depends on whether member states follow through on detention extensions and faster procedures.

  • Crucial Context: A 20% enforcement rate means four out of five people ordered to leave the EU never actually do. This vote is Brussels formally admitting its deportation system has been broken for years — the real test now is whether member states use the new tools or let this become another unenforced directive.

• An independent, survivor-led inquiry chaired by MP Rupert Lowe found that organized grooming gangs — predominantly Pakistani Muslim men — sexually exploited at least 250,000 mostly white British girls since the 1950s, with the pattern documented across at least 149 local authority districts, nearly 40% of the UK. Survivors say police ignored reports and bailed known offenders, social workers placed children in trafficking hubs, and politicians — fearing accusations of racism — suppressed ethnicity data and blocked inquiries for decades.

  • Amanda’s Take: This is significantly worse than anything we’ve heard from the Epstein files, or any other systemic abuse against women in the West in recent years. Worse, mainstream media is not covering this story for the same reason these girls’ claims were not taken seriously by British police and politicians—they are concerned about racism. Stories like this show why tides have turned so dramatically against immigration in recent years.

• Sweden passed a “good behavior” law letting the government revoke residence permits and deport legal immigrants without a criminal charge. Non-criminal conduct like tax debt, benefit fraud, illegal work, or extremist ties is now enough to have legal status in Sweden rescinded.

• Spain has received roughly 900,000 applications under its migrant legalization program — nearly double the 500,000 originally expected, with the total projected to top one million before the program closes in two weeks. Most of these migrants aren’t African or Middle Eastern, they’re from Latin America, so they have a similar language and culture to Spain.

  • Crucial Context: Spain is running this while most of Europe tightens its borders, leaning on migrant labor to sustain growth that’s outpaced its European peers. Only 40% of applicants have permits so far — the state is admitting people faster than it can process them.

🇺🇸 US FOREIGN POLICY NEWS

Here’s the headlines Washington is talking about.

• Anduril just won full production of its FQ-44 fighter jet — the first new company to win a fighter program since the 1970s, and the first semi-autonomous fighter ever to go into serial production. From prototype to production contract in just over two years.

  • Crucial Context: The Pentagon’s betting on cheap, mass-produced semi-autonomous jets instead of just a handful of expensive crewed fighters. They greenlit production months early — that urgency is the real story.

• The Department of War just renamed “INDOPACOM” back to “Pacific Command” — the name it had from 1947 until 2018, when Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis added “Indo” to highlight India’s growing importance. Officials say nothing about the command’s job or territory is changing.

  • Crucial Context: Indian Congress MP Shashi Tharoor asked if dropping “Indo” is “one more nail in the coffin of the Quad.” U.S. officials say it’s just a name change.

🤖 AI COMPETITION

The AI race is as much an economic and national security story as it is a tech story. Here’s what moved this week.

• If you would like a deep dive on the Trump administration vs. Anthropic Mythos issue from last week, this episode of China Talk does a good job of explaining it.

Thank you for reading! Found this useful? Forward it to one person. Not a paid subscriber yet? Consider becoming one — it directly supports this work. New readers can subscribe here.

For more analysis throughout the week, follow me on Instagram, X, and YouTube!

📰 THIS WEEK’S BIG STORY: Here’s everything we know (so far) about the peace deal, that isn’t really a peace deal, to “end” the Iran War… plus some other interesting stories about the good and bad of AI, the U.S. killing drug cartel members, and Taiwanese “spy turtles.”

🌎 OUR HEMISPHERE

President Trump re-committed to the Monroe Doctrine in his 2025 National Defense Strategy. Here are the headlines you need to know about what’s happening in our hemisphere.

• The U.S. military killed Tren de Aragua leader Héctor “Niño” Guerrero in a joint strike with Venezuela, coordinated with CIA intelligence. The operation took place in Bolívar state, a remote mining region where TdA leadership was hiding.

⛩️ ASIA

The Indo-Pacific is the most consequential region on earth right now. Here’s what you need to know.

• Green Berets from the 1st Special Forces Group are actively training Taiwanese special operations forces, not just observing. New evidence confirms U.S. trainers are working with Taiwan’s Army Sniper Teams, National Police Agency Special Operations Group, and Army Aviation and Special Forces Command on Close Quarters Battle.

  • Amanda’s Take: Trump has softened his rhetoric on China and Taiwan, but actions speak louder than words. The U.S. is not only increasing weapons packages to Taiwan — we’re now training Taiwanese forces to defend their island from a potential invasion.

• The U.S. Navy just opened two new bases in Australia to support nuclear submarines rotating through the region as part of the AUKUS alliance between the U.S., U.K., and Australia.

  • Crucial Context: Australia is buying three Virginia-class submarines from the U.S. and five SSN-AUKUS subs under the broader plan. Australian maintainers are already training at Pearl Harbor. The Indo-Pacific is getting a permanent forward-positioned nuclear submarine presence, meant to deter China.

• China’s Ministry of State Security is warning that foreign spy agencies are attaching sensors to turtles and fish to map China’s coastline, and collecting water temperature, salinity, and ocean current data to identify weak points in coastal defenses.

  • Amanda’s Take: The idea of “spy turtles” is hilarious.

• South Korean university students are protesting nationwide after ballot paper shortages at the June 3 local elections. Around 7,000 ballots were missing at dozens of polling stations — the election watchdog chief has resigned, but authorities have refused to hold a new vote.

  • Crucial Context: This was South Korea’s first nationwide vote since President Lee Jae Myung took office following Yoon Suk Yeol’s ouster over his brief martial law declaration. Lee’s liberal Democratic Party won most races but failed to flip the Seoul mayoral seat.

🕌 THE MIDDLE EAST

The Middle East has been fundamentally remade since October 7th. Here’s what you’re probably missing.

• President Trump announced a deal between the U.S. and Iran to end the Iran War and open the Strait of Hormuz has been agreed to. The expected terms include a 60-day ceasefire extension, a 60-day negotiation window on Iran’s nuclear program, removal of the U.S. naval blockade, and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. A final agreement is set to be signed June 19th in Switzerland.

  • Amanda’s Take: The ultra-MAGA pundits calling this a peace deal are wrong, and the Iran hawks calling it a surrender are also wrong. What’s actually happening, is the U.S. is signing a Memorandum of Understanding, reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and then negotiations on the nuclear program, proxies, and sanctions relief continue. If the final outcome includes Iranian oil back on the open market (ending China’s access to discounted barrels), gas prices near $2/gallon, Iran’s navy sunk, air force gone, nuclear program set back, and a large chunk of their leadership structure eliminated — and we’re not locked into permanent sanctions relief — this is a good deal. And probably a necessary one with midterms coming up.

  • Some other takes I agree with, in whole or in part:

    • Haviv Rettig-Gur: “[Trump] may nevertheless have done the right thing from an American perspective. On the larger chessboard, the one where America is curtailing Chinese lines of influence and supply on all fronts, he’s gotten everything he needs. Iran’s nuclear program is also set back dramatically. And worrying about gas prices come November is an extremely valid concern for an American president… Israelis owe the United States a vast and abiding debt of gratitude for what it has done to Iran’s missile and nuclear programs. That this finished on America’s timetable rather than ours, that it was doing it for its own interests and not ours, these don’t diminish the fact that we received from America more than we had a right to ask for. As I argued back in February, the US and Israel weren’t fighting the same war. Roughly 80% of each side’s war overlapped with the other’s. But toward the end, their interests would diverge and America would bow out.”

    • Zineb Riboua: “The “deal” is a ceasefire extension of another 60 days with Iran agreeing for the first time to not weaponize the Strait of Hormuz and with U.S. sanctions in place against both IRGC and China. There are different interpretations of this, but “capitulation” or “end of the war” aren’t accurate ones.”

    • Logan Dobson: “Whatever you think of the details as they emerge, it is fundamentally better to negotiate with Iran — both in getting better up-front terms and also in letting them know the consequences of breach — after having wiped out a huge chunk of their senior leadership.”

    • AG Hamilton: Sets the standards for what a good, mediocre, and bad deal would be.

    • Shay Khatiri: “If the status of the Strait of Hormuz is restored to the status quo antebellum, this war will have been a success. In every aspect, Iran will be significantly weaker than it was before the war.”

    • Trey Yingst explains the differences between this “deal” and Obama’s JCPOA.

💶 EUROPE

There’s so much more to Europe than NATO skepticism. Here’s what you need to know.

• Greek Prime Minister Mitsotakis warned that China now controls 30% of global manufacturing capacity — enough to “destroy industries across the globe” — and called on Europe to stop prioritizing cheap goods over industrial survival.

• Amanda’s Take: The Euros are waking up! I love when they say what Trump told them a year ago, as if it’s a new revelation.

🤖 AI COMPETITION

The AI race is as much an economic and national security story as it is a tech story. Here’s what moved this week.

• Teachers in Louisiana’s Richland Parish are receiving bonuses of up to $50,935 this year, which is directly tied to Meta’s $10 billion Hyperion data center project, which more than doubled the parish’s sales tax receipts (gift link).

  • Amanda’s Take: A rural Louisiana parish that’s been in economic decline for three decades is handing teachers bonuses larger than their annual salaries, because of data centers. Yet most Americans oppose data centers being built in their towns. Probably because we hear much more fear mongering about data centers than good stories like this one…

• The Trump administration shut down Anthropic’s Mythos/Fable 5 — the most powerful AI model ever built — after Amazon CEO Andy Jassy warned the White House that Amazon researchers had jailbroken it to extract restricted cyberattack information. The Commerce Department used export controls to pull the model for all users worldwide, the first time the U.S. government has done this to a commercial AI model.

  • Crucial Context: The White House also suspects a China-linked group used the same jailbreak before it was caught. Anthropic was given 90 minutes to pull the model with no prior warning. Dario Amodei argued the jailbreak was narrow — not a full bypass — and refused to withdraw it, so the government acted unilaterally. This sits on top of an existing standoff: the Pentagon already designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk” after the company refused contract terms that would have allowed its models to be used for autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance. The European fallout has been immediate — France, the UK, and others are now calling for sovereign AI after their hospitals, companies, and researchers were cut off overnight with no notice.

Thank you for reading! Found this useful? Forward it to one person. Not a paid subscriber yet? Consider becoming one — it directly supports this work. New readers can subscribe here.

For more analysis throughout the week, follow me on Instagram, X, and YouTube!

📰 THIS WEEK’S BIG STORY: Trump revealed the U.S. has been secretly running oil tankers through the “closed” Strait of Hormuz at night — over 100 million barrels moved while Iran thought the waterway was shut. Meanwhile Trump threatens to bomb Iran, seize its oil infrastructure, and signals a deal could be signed in Geneva by June 14. Nobody knows which Trump shows up tomorrow.

🌎 OUR HEMISPHERE

President Trump re-committed to the Monroe Doctrine in his 2025 National Defense Strategy. Here are the headlines you need to know about what’s happening in our hemisphere.

• The Trump administration’s pressure campaign on Cuba has the regime on its worst footing since the Soviet collapse — but Walter Russell Mead warns (gift link) that a Cuban regime collapse could trigger mass emigration, cartel infiltration, and political chaos that drags the U.S. into another intervention.

• Keiko Fujimori continues to lead in the Peru election, which is still too close to call. Her win would be the latest in a string of victories for right wing parties throughout South and Latin America.

⛩️ ASIA

The Indo-Pacific is the most consequential region on earth right now. Here’s what you need to know.

• China arrested American scholar U Min Zin on espionage charges on June 3 — less than three weeks after Trump’s Beijing summit with Xi. Min Zin is a Myanmar political scientist and UC Berkeley PhD candidate who wrote extensively on China’s role in Myanmar. China currently holds roughly 200 American citizens under some form of detention.

• Taiwan’s KMT Chair Cheng Li-wun’s U.S. visit fell flat. Her NSC meeting was canceled — reportedly after the Financial Times published an advance story revealing the meeting, triggering a White House policy violation review. She met with a lower-ranking official than the one who received her party rival earlier this year, and never got close to Trump. It got worse: Cheng drew sharp criticism for invoking Jewish influence over the U.S. government in a speech, saying Chinese wisdom “will not lose to them.” The trip has accelerated a shift in how China observers and U.S. policy makers see the KMT — less the anti-communist party of the Cold War, more a party now aligned with Beijing against Taiwanese sovereignty.

• The Pentagon added Alibaba, Baidu, and BYD to its list of Chinese military-linked companies. The designations don’t impose sanctions but bar the Defense Department from contracting with listed firms. Notably, the Pentagon briefly posted this same expanded list in February, then quietly pulled it while Trump’s Beijing trip was pending.

• For the first time ever, Chinese official vessels entered restricted waters around Taiwan-controlled Taiping Island in the South China Sea. Taiwan’s Coast Guard expelled them — but the incursion is a first, and Beijing has been escalating across the region all month.

• Taiwan test-fired American attack drones against ships in the water for the first time last week. The drones — called Altius-600s, made by Anduril — can hit targets nearly 100 miles out and Taiwan has around 2,000 of them. The goal would be to swarm any Chinese invasion fleet before it reaches the shore.

  • Amanda’s Take: The headlines are focused on the holdup in U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. But even with that holdup, we’re still getting Taiwan new technology that will be critical to deterring a Chinese invasion. That matters.

• China has planted a floating platform with an antenna and crew inside Philippine waters near the Scarborough Shoal. The Philippines has confirmed this new territorial creep in the West Philippine Sea.

  • Crucial Context: Structures like this are typically used for surveillance, communications relay, or as a precursor to more permanent installations — the same playbook China used to build its artificial islands in the South China Sea.

🕌 THE MIDDLE EAST

The Middle East has been fundamentally remade since October 7th. Here’s what you’re probably missing.

• We still have no idea what’s going on in Iran. Trump vacillates between claiming a deal is imminent, and strikes on Iran are imminent. He has even threatened to seize Kharg Island, the hub of oil transportation in and out of Iran. If you don’t focus on what Trump is saying, and only his actions, it becomes clear that we’re doing more of the same - which seems to be stalling, and waiting for economic conditions in Iran to worsen. This piece from David Sanger at the NYT is really interesting about the negotiations over the nuclear program (provided with a gift link).

• Trump revealed the U.S. military has been secretly escorting oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz at night — moving over 100 million barrels while Iran thought the waterway was closed. Trump credits the operation with keeping oil at $85-90/barrel instead of $250.

• Over 100 days into the Iran war, with roughly a fifth of global seaborne oil disrupted, Brent crude is still below $100/barrel — well short of the $150-$200 predictions. The biggest reason, according to commodities columnist Javier Blas: China slashed its seaborne crude imports by 40%, acting as a massive relief valve. Strategic reserve releases, pre-war oversupply, and bypass pipelines around Hormuz did the rest.

• Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa heads to Washington Sunday at Trump’s invitation — his third U.S. visit since taking power in Damascus. Sanctions relief and Syria’s economic recovery are on the agenda, along with security coordination and the situation in southern Lebanon.

• A U.S. strike on an oil tanker carrying Iranian crude killed three Indian sailors in the Gulf of Oman, triggering public fury in India and a formal summons of Washington’s chargé d’affaires. India has now urged the U.S. to halt strikes on commercial shipping. The incident lands days before Modi meets Trump at the G7 in France — and into an already strained U.S.-India relationship.

  • Amanda’s Take: If India doesn’t want its sailors in this position, the answer is to stop running Iranian oil through a war zone under active U.S. enforcement, during the blockade of Iran.

💶 EUROPE

There’s so much more to Europe than NATO skepticism. Here’s what you need to know.

• China abruptly canceled two sets of high-level meetings with the EU in Beijing as tensions between the two trade powers escalate. The timing is deliberate — EU leaders meet next week at the European Council summit to discuss a tougher China policy, and Beijing is sending a warning shot ahead of that vote.

  • Amanda’s Take: China lectures the world about global engagement, and a certain pundit class has argued Beijing will step up as the steward of the rules-based international order as the U.S. pursues “isolationism.” Then China cancels diplomatic meetings to bully Europe into compliance. Actions speak louder than words.

• Ukraine has recaptured more than 230 square miles of territory in the first five months of 2026. May alone saw Russia’s first monthly net retreat since 2023. Ukraine’s drone campaign is disrupting Russian supply lines and stalling the spring offensive Moscow’s analysts had predicted.

🇺🇸 US FOREIGN POLICY NEWS

Here’s the headlines Washington is talking about.

• The State Department has dismantled birth tourism networks across West Africa, Europe, and North Africa, revoking hundreds of visas from foreign nationals who used fraudulent documents to give birth on U.S. soil and secure citizenship for their children.

  • Crucial Context: The Supreme Court is expected to rule on Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order by late June or early July. Given how easily exploitable our system of birthright citizenship seems to be, as evidenced by this story, if the Supreme Court does not get rid of birthright citizenship, Congress should act to prevent this system from being exploited.

• Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence, Jay Clayton, was a lead attorney on Alibaba’s U.S. IPO — helping the Chinese tech giant raise billions from American investors. This week, the Pentagon added Alibaba to its list of companies with Chinese military ties.

  • Amanda’s Take: Clayton is more qualified than Bill Pulte, the real estate guy Trump floated for the job. But the Alibaba connection is hard to ignore.

• The Trump administration says it has located 146,000 of the 450,000 migrant children who went missing under Biden. Nearly 300,000 are still unaccounted for. DHS Secretary Mullin said some children have reported being raped hundreds of times, and charges have been filed against sponsors who submitted false information to obtain kids.

  • Amanda’s Take: Immigration policy gets debated as a morality play about who gets in. The real moral failure is what happens when you overwhelm the system — children fall through the cracks and into the hands of traffickers. People are spending enormous energy relitigating the Epstein files, but this case is ongoing, and probably deserves more attention. Also worth noting: Xavier Becerra, who oversaw HHS under Biden and had a scandal involving these lost children, is now running for governor of California as the moderate Democrat against Steve Hilton.

Thank you for reading! Found this useful? Forward it to one person. Not a paid subscriber yet? Consider becoming one — it directly supports this work. New readers can subscribe here.

For more analysis throughout the week, follow me on Instagram, X, and YouTube!

📰 THIS WEEK’S BIG STORY: I know a lot is going on in Iran this week - so I break down some articles I’ve found helpful, as well as bring you a lot of analysis on this.

🌎 OUR HEMISPHERE

President Trump re-committed to the Monroe Doctrine in his 2025 National Defense Strategy. Here are the headlines you need to know about what’s happening in our hemisphere.

• Peru’s presidential runoff happened yesterday — Right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori holds a narrow lead over leftist Roberto Sánchez, but the race is too close to call.

  • Crucial Context: Fujimori is the daughter of Alberto Fujimori — Peru’s Japanese-descended president who crushed the Shining Path in the ‘90s but was later convicted of human rights abuses. Keiko served as his first lady at 19. She’s spent a decade fighting corruption charges that were thrown out in January 2025. A Fujimori win would extend a regional right-wing wave that’s swept Ecuador, Bolivia, Honduras, Chile, and Costa Rica since Trump’s return — Peru would be the latest domino

⛩️ ASIA

The Indo-Pacific is the most consequential region on earth right now. Here’s what you need to know.

• The White House is considering buying the Chagos Islands directly from Mauritius, bypassing the UK entirely, according to the Telegraph. Diego Garcia, the U.S.-British air base on the archipelago, is one of the most strategically vital installations in the Indo-Pacific. Trump called the UK’s deal to hand sovereignty to Mauritius a “big mistake” in February. Britain paused the deal in April. The U.S. buying it outright would be an extraordinary assertion of American strategic priority over a nominally British asset.

• A leaked Chinese government dashboard reveals the CCP tracks foreign residents nearly 24/7 — mapping their locations, relationships, and movement patterns down to who they have coffee with. The system profiled ~350 journalists based in Beijing, flagged nationals from Five Eyes countries as a distinct category, and included a “relationship modelling” function visually mapping connections between individuals. Some foreigners were categorized as “key personnel,” those with “penalties,” and “fugitives.” It runs on China’s Skynet urban surveillance network.

  • Amanda’s Take: When people say ‘who cares if China rises in power’, this is why you should care. There’s no way they’ll stop at just tracking Chinese living in foreign countries.

🕌 THE MIDDLE EAST

The Middle East has been fundamentally remade since October 7th. Here’s what you’re probably missing.

• Iran and Israel exchanged fire for the first time since April’s ceasefire — Trump intervened and both sides stood down Monday, but the truce is fragile. Israel struck a Beirut Hezbollah headquarters and an Iranian petrochemical facility. Iran responded with ~30 ballistic missiles targeting Israel; U.S. forces helped intercept them. Israel then hit Iranian air defenses in a large-scale counterstrike. Netanyahu ordered the Beirut strike without U.S. coordination, deepening his rift with Trump. Iran warned that American bases in the region are now “legitimate targets.”

  • Amanda’s Take: A lot of this is bluster. Pro-Israel Twitter spent two months telling us to trust Trump — now he “doesn’t understand the Middle East” because he urged restraint. But Israeli media reported Israel did coordinate the Iran strikes with the U.S. despite Trump’s public warnings. The people screaming for escalation aren’t thinking through what that looks like globally. Striking energy infrastructure means Iranian oil production goes offline for a long time. Leaving 90 million people without power in the middle of summer means immense human suffering and a refugee crisis. Further escalation risks Iranian retaliation against the Gulf pipelines being fast-tracked to reroute oil away from the strait. An energy crisis means global recession — and famine, given that fertilizer also moves through the Strait of Hormuz. We all want a good ending to this. We want Israel and U.S. partners safe. We want Iranians free from the IRGC. But escalation at this stage could cause global disaster. A famine in Asia is not worth a bet on regime change in Iran. Continued economic pressure is probably our best option — but that requires Israel to be disciplined about which attacks it responds to. They’re a regional power now. They need to act like one. That’s a tough needle to thread with Israel in its first election since October 7, but in my view, the risks of escalation are not worth it.

• Is a deal in Iran actually near? Al Jazeera reports a deal has been close at least four separate times, but has fallen apart each time. Trump threatened Bibi not to respond so as to not tear apart a deal between the US and Iran yesterday.

  • Amanda’s Take: I don’t think there’s any way to know if a deal is near or not. One part of me thinks Trump comes out and says a deal is near to try to get oil prices down and to keep the stock market near all time highs. The other part of me thinks we really are negotiating a deal, and my guess is the deal probably isn’t that bad, because if Trump was going to take a bad deal, he would have a greed to one months ago. I don’t think anyone should hold out hope for an incredible deal that makes Iran an invaluable partner that no longer threatens its neighbors at this point. That being said, with so much of their infrastructure and military damaged, if we ceased hostilities for a while, kept up economic pressure, and got the uranium out of Iran, I don’t think that would be a bad deal (although that would be presented as a second Obama deal, wrongly).

• What do I mean when I say Israel needs to be a responsible regional power? In the Middle East, they fight a bit differently than we do here. Symbolic strikes are very normal over there. In my opinion, right now Iran and its proxy in Lebanon Hezbollah are intentionally symbolically striking Israel with low-level strikes intended to draw an intense reaction from Israel, which will further isolate Israel on the global stage. This is difficult right now because Israel’s domestic politics demand a tough response, but pragmatism would say that Israel should carefully consider the regional consequences of continuing to mount large attacks on countries, even if they attack Israel first. At the end of the day, who cares if attitudes towards Israel sour in the US and Europe, if Israel has a better relationship with its Arab neighbors, particularly the Gulf States? This calculus changes if Israel continues to escalate in its region when the Gulf States are not prepared for, or favoring, escalation.

• If you haven’t read Condoleezza Rice’s op-ed on the Iran War in the WSJ from last week, I highly recommend it (linked here with a gift link). She urges Trump to declare victory and come home. Rice writes that Operation Epic Fury has already achieved its core objectives — Iran’s conventional forces, missile stockpiles, and proxies are significantly degraded, its nuclear program is set back by years, and the Arab world has realigned toward Israel and the U.S. She argues the U.S. doesn’t need a nuclear deal to maintain those gains. Her bottom line: strategic patience, continued economic pressure, no sanctions relief, and military readiness to strike again if Iran rebuilds. Reaching no deal is fine. Reaching a bad deal isn’t.

• New analysis from both Al Jazeera and FDD (two sites that don’t typically see eye to eye, to put it lightly) explains why the predicted global energy shock hasn’t materialized — oil sits around $90 a barrel, far below the $200 forecasts made when Operation Epic Fury began.

  • Crucial Context: The U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is holding. ~1,000 commercial vessels have transited in two months without Iranian interference. The blockade is costing Tehran an estimated $500M/day against an annual budget of $56B. Treasury Secretary Bessent announced the $24B in frozen Iranian assets will compensate regional victims of Iranian strikes — not be returned to Tehran. Mass protests are re-emerging across Iranian cities. If this posture keeps up, the maximalist goals the US and Israel have for Iran could materialize, without causing a global energy crisis.

💶 EUROPE

There’s so much more to Europe than NATO skepticism. Here’s what you need to know.

• The European Parliament votes this week on a final EU-U.S. trade deal, the culmination of months of negotiations that began with European threats of retaliation against Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs.

  • Crucial Context: Europe initially vowed to fight back, but they didn’t. The deal heading to a final vote represents a significant capitulation to Trump’s trade posture.

🇺🇸 US FOREIGN POLICY NEWS

Here’s the headlines Washington is talking about.

• The Trump administration is moving to denaturalize 17 U.S. citizens in what it calls the largest such effort in American history — targeting naturalized citizens who concealed criminal records during the application process. Cases include child sex offenders, fraudsters, and money launderers. Between 1990 and 2017, the DOJ averaged just 11 denaturalization complaints per year.

• Trump has cut legal immigration 2.5 times more than illegal immigration, according to analysis from the CATO Institute. Legal immigration cuts make up for 72% of the overall cuts. ****Refugee admissions are down 90%, immigrant visas are down ~50%, student visas are down 40%, and spousal/fiancé visas are down 65%. Illegal border crossings were already down 81% before Trump took office.

  • Amanda’s Take: This will not only affect US domestic policy and national security, but will also likely affect us geopolitically.

🤖 AI COMPETITION

The AI race is as much an economic and national security story as it is a tech story. Here’s what moved this week.

• Anthropic filed confidentially for an IPO on June 1, joining OpenAI and SpaceX in what could be one of the biggest public offering waves in history. Anthropic’s revenue run rate hit $47 billion in May. Its valuation stands at $900 billion — surpassing OpenAI’s $730 billion. The coding focus drove it. SpaceX IPO expected this month, and OpenAI is filing soon after.

  • Amanda’s Take: Despite the global tensions, the markets have been hitting all time highs because of these IPOs. Imagine what markets will look like when this is all

Thank you for reading! Found this useful? Forward it to one person. Not a paid subscriber yet? Consider becoming one — it directly supports this work. New readers can subscribe here.

For more analysis throughout the week, follow me on Instagram, X, and YouTube!

📰 THIS WEEK’S BIG STORY: Today marks the 37th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Remember what the CCP did that day — and look at what it’s still doing now.

🌎 OUR HEMISPHERE

President Trump re-committed to the Monroe Doctrine in his 2025 National Defense Strategy. Here are the headlines you need to know about what’s happening in our hemisphere.

• The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Dan Caine, made his first official visit to Caracas, meeting with Venezuelan interim government leaders and U.S. Embassy staff. Caine emphasized Venezuelan stability, hemispheric security, and the implementation of Trump’s three-phase plan for the country.

• Chinese cyber groups FamousSparrow and NegativeGlimmer have been actively targeting government agencies across Latin America, including Venezuela’s maritime sector and Panama’s government, in operations that escalated following the U.S. military operation in Venezuela. ESET has tracked roughly a dozen targeted countries in the region since early 2025.

  • Crucial Context: China holds claims to about half of Venezuela’s oil production and lost its Panama Canal port contracts when Panama’s Supreme Court ruled the deal unconstitutional. Beijing is using cyber ops to keep eyes on a region it’s rapidly losing economic ground in.

⛩️ ASIA

The Indo-Pacific is the most consequential region on earth right now. Here’s what you need to know.

• The U.S. approved a $100 million maintenance and parts package for Vietnam’s C-130 military transport aircraft, which is a clear sign Hanoi is moving away from Russian military equipment and toward Western suppliers.

  • Crucial Context: Vietnam actually flew C-130s under the South Vietnamese government before 1975. Getting them back is a notable symbol of how much the relationship with the U.S. has shifted. This episode of School of War details the warming of relations between Vietnam and the US well.

• The Five Eyes intelligence alliance — the U.S., UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand — **issued a joint bulletin warning that Chinese military intelligence is using LinkedIn, Indeed, and Upwork to recruit Western government and military personnel as spies.** The operation targets security clearance holders, Indo-Pacific military personnel, journalists, and think tank employees, paying recruits hundreds to thousands of dollars per report before moving them to encrypted platforms.

  • Amanda’s Take: This threat isn’t new, but given some recent Five Eyes behavior — the UK approving a mega Chinese embassy in London, Canada cozying up to Beijing on trade, New Zealand falling short of the 3.5% defense spending target — it’s reassuring to see the alliance still treating Chinese spying as the primary threat.

• Today marks the 37th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. As censorship inside China intensifies under Xi Jinping, a growing network of archives abroad — including the China Unofficial Archives and Stanford’s Hoover Institution — are working to preserve photographs, diaries, and firsthand accounts the CCP is actively trying to erase.

  • Crucial Context: The Li Rui diaries, which were kept by a senior CCP official who witnessed the massacre from a balcony and called it a “black weekend” of soldiers firing randomly, are housed at the Hoover Institution after a CCP-backed legal attempt to return them to China failed in a California court this year.

  • Amanda’s Take: One of the things I can’t stand about how Americans think about Tiananmen Square, is that we act like Americans should know about it, but most just know the photo of the person standing before a tank. Young voters especially don’t understand the significance of this event, and it’s abhorrent we went forward with allowing China into the WTO and become a global power after witnessing this.

🕌 THE MIDDLE EAST

The Middle East has been fundamentally remade since October 7th. Here’s what you’re probably missing.

• Iran launched attacks on Kuwait and Bahrain on Tuesday night, yet both Tehran and Washington are still calling it a ceasefire. When pressed on the contradiction in the Oval Office today, Trump was characteristically direct: “In that part of the world, ceasefire is when you’re shooting in a more moderate manner.”

  • Amanda’s Take: We’re probably not close to an actual ceasefire. Trump calls it one because it moves markets up and oil prices down — and that’s a legitimate tool. But the reality is we’re likely stuck in this loop with Iran for a while. A return to heavy fighting is unlikely — either because munitions stocks on both sides are depleted, or because the administration believes economic warfare can force capitulation without kinetic escalation. Either way, don’t let the word “ceasefire” fool you.

• Trump confirmed the report from Axios journalists Marc Caputo and Barak Ravid that he and Netanyahu got into a heated argument, telling reporters “I did. I always get angry.” The public feud between the two allies has been one of the bigger stories out of the Middle East this week.

  • Amanda’s Take: This actually helps both of them politically. The public fight with Bibi lets Trump tell the Tucker wing there’s distance between the U.S. and Israel, countering the “Trump is bought by Israel” narrative. For Bibi, it’s an off-ramp from Lebanon — no one can run to his right on security without risking the U.S. alliance, and Israelis vote on security. The problem with continuing to go after Hezbollah in Beirut is it alienates the Lebanese who oppose Hezbollah if Israel hits Sunni and Christian areas. So the feud plays well domestically in Israel while giving both leaders cover. Rinse and repeat until Iran collapses, capitulates, or the midterms are over.

💶 EUROPE

There’s so much more to Europe than NATO skepticism. Here’s what you need to know.

• The U.S. is in confidential talks with NATO allies, including Poland and the Baltic states, about deploying nuclear weapons to additional European sites. Washington is signaling openness to expanding beyond the six current host nations as reassurance that reduced conventional troop presence doesn’t mean weakened security guarantees against Russia.

  • Crucial Context: This is nuclear burden-sharing as a substitute for boots on the ground. The current six host nations have held that arrangement since the Cold War. Adding countries that actually border Russia is a significant escalation in deterrence posture.

• The EU is set to formally join Pax Silica, the U.S.-led alliance coordinating AI chip supply chains and export controls against China. Despite weeks of internal resistance — France called it an attempt to “colonize Europe” — EU ambassadors are moving to green-light the initiative, with ministerial sign-off expected as early as next week.

  • Amanda’s Take: I reported on this possibility weeks ago, and now it looks like it’s official. This is another example of the pattern we keep seeing: the U.S. and Europe talk tough about each other in public, but behind the scenes they’re quietly working together on critical matters, like keeping Western technology and industry dominant against China. Don’t get distracted by the media bluster.

• An 18-year-old university student, Henry Nowak, was stabbed to death in Southampton in December. When police arrived, his killer falsely claimed he had been racially abused — and officers handcuffed the dying victim instead of the attacker. Nowak said “I can’t breathe” seven times before dying. His killer was sentenced to life in June.

  • Amanda’s Take: The problem with wokeness is that it’s made us blind to who the real victims in certain circumstances are. The victim in this case was obviously the guy who was stabbed, not the guy who claimed a racial insult was hurled at him. Because of how entrenched DEI has become in the UK, the police didn’t see that distinction, clearly.

🇺🇸 US FOREIGN POLICY NEWS

Here’s the headlines Washington is talking about.

• The DOJ arrested Jamshid Ghomi, a U.S.-Iranian national and CEO of a Tehran-based tech company, for allegedly spending over a decade funneling U.S. computer networking equipment to Iran’s nuclear and military establishment — including the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. He allegedly routed the equipment through UAE front companies, laundered $15 million back into U.S. accounts, and built a $35 million Newport Coast mansion with the proceeds.

  • Crucial Context: Ghomi bought equipment on eBay and PayPal, sourcing from suppliers in Minnesota and Nebraska, and built a mansion in Newport Coast with the proceeds. All to help the IRGC wage war on the West. How many more stories like this are there?

• A whistleblower leaked Stanford University’s private foreign funding records to The Stanford Review, revealing millions in donations from Chinese state-linked firms and CCP-connected political elites including Huawei, State Grid Corporation, and donors tied directly to the United Front Work Department.

  • Crucial Context: The Hoover Institution, which sits inside Stanford and helps oversee $67 million in taxpayer-funded national security research, is among the recipients. Stanford studies Chinese influence operations while taking money from the people who run them.

• Parliament Magazine published a profile on Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s policy chief and one of the administration officials most bemoaned by Washington pundits. Colby is a geopolitical realist who views China as the central threat, Europe as a region that must learn to defend itself, and U.S. power as something to be husbanded — not spent on endless continental commitments.

  • Amanda’s Take: The profile is worth a read if you want to understand the strategic logic behind the U.S. pullback from Europe, and happens to be one of the Trump advisors the mainstream foreign policy despises and fear mongers over the most.

🤖 AI COMPETITION

The AI race is as much an economic and national security story as it is a tech story. Here’s what moved this week.

• Bloomberg reports that at least seven Chinese universities with direct ties to the People’s Liberation Army are actively pursuing Nvidia’s H200 chips, including two Commerce Department-blacklisted institutions from China’s “Seven Sons of National Defense.” They’re going around export controls by seeking remote compute leases, which technically don’t require the chips to cross a border.

  • Crucial Context: This is the direct consequence of Trump’s decision to allow H200 sales to vetted Chinese buyers after heavy lobbying from Jensen Huang. The vetting process has a gaping loophole: remote access leases bypass export control law entirely. Congress is paying attention, but the chips are already being sought.

Thank you for reading! Found this useful? Forward it to one person. Not a paid subscriber yet? Consider becoming one — it directly supports this work. New readers can subscribe here.

For more analysis throughout the week, follow me on Instagram, X, and YouTube!

📰 THIS WEEK’S BIG STORY: We have evidence China is arming Iran, despite Xi’s promises to Trump that they aren’t involved. The Treasury Department disagrees.

🌎 OUR HEMISPHERE

President Trump re-committed to the Monroe Doctrine in his 2025 National Defense Strategy. Here are the headlines you need to know about what’s happening in our hemisphere.

• Billionaire investor Peter Thiel has relocated his family to Buenos Aires, purchased a mansion, and enrolled his kids in a local school — citing concerns about California’s proposed wealth tax, nuclear war, and an AI meltdown. He’s met privately with President Milei and Argentina is reportedly considering offering him citizenship.

  • Amanda’s Take: The coverage treats this like Thiel is defecting, but maybe people should calm down. He’s an eccentric billionaire doing eccentric billionaire things — this is the same guy who’s been hosting lectures about the Antichrist in San Francisco and in Rome. His weirdness is probably what made him a great investor. It doesn’t mean the rest of us should read geopolitical doom into his latest escapade in Buenos Aires.

• Colombia’s presidential election is heading to a runoff after outsider Abelardo de la Espriella pulled off an upset, taking 44% of the vote against left-wing senator Iván Cepeda’s 41%. De la Espriella has pledged to build maximum-security jungle prisons and allow U.S. forces to conduct joint operations on Colombian soil.

  • Crucial Context: This is another data point in a two-year streak of right-wing electoral wins across Latin America. That’s good for the U.S. on two fronts: the Latin American right tends to be more pro-America, and these wins are a direct response to failed socialist governance and the post-2020 crime surge that swept the region.

• Canada enters a recession. GDP shrank for a second consecutive quarter, declining 0.1% annualized in Q1 following a larger-than-expected 1% contraction in Q4 2025.

  • Crucial Context: Carney is the only G7 leader whose economy is in recession. Every other G7 country is navigating the same tariff environment and global uncertainty — none have contracted two quarters running. Canada’s struggles predate the trade war: industrial carbon taxes, restrictive development policy, and deficit spending have weighed on growth for years.

⛩️ ASIA

The Indo-Pacific is the most consequential region on earth right now. Here’s what you need to know.

• Taiwan’s main opposition leader Cheng Li-wun arrives in the U.S. today carrying a message Beijing would recognize as its own — that Taiwan’s constitution already supports “one China” and that she is best positioned to guarantee cross-strait stability.

  • Crucial context: She can act like she speaks for Taiwan, but according to a new Taiwanese Mainland Affairs Council poll, she doesn’t. The poll shows that 87% of Taiwanese reject unification with China, 88% say Taiwan’s future is Taiwan’s decision alone, and 71% support increasing their defense budget. The data is unambiguous.

• Defense Secretary Hegseth addressed the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, doubling down on the Trump administration’s consistent message: pragmatic, interest-driven alliances built on shared threat assessment and credible deterrence — not values-based diplomacy and human rights lectures. He praised allies who are “capable, clear-eyed, and ready to defend their national interests.” It’s the same message Rubio and Vance delivered at the Munich Security Conference, and the same sentiment Elbridge Colby laid out in his book.

  • Amanda’s Take: While pundits still freak out every time an administration official gives a speech like this, it’s important to note that our allies in Asia took the speech well, according to Congressman Michael Baumgartner, who was at the speech. At a certain point, the journos and DC pundits need to understand that we know they don’t like the speeches. They don’t have to keep reminding us of this.

• The U.S. and China are expelling each other’s journalists. After Beijing forced out New York Times correspondent Vivian Wang — reportedly over a Taiwan-related event she had no involvement in — the Trump administration revoked the visa of a U.S.-based Xinhua journalist. The Times now has one correspondent left in mainland China, down from 12 a few years ago.

  • Amanda’s Take: The surge in “China is winning” coverage directly tracks with the collapse of Western press presence inside China. Historically, the more time Western journalists spend living in China, the more critical of the CCP they become. But from the outside looking in, I guess it’s easy to admire the idea of China.

🕌 THE MIDDLE EAST

The Middle East has been fundamentally remade since October 7th. Here’s what you’re probably missing.

• The U.S. struck Iranian radar and telecommunications facilities at Goruk and Qeshm Island overnight, targeting drone command and control sites. CENTCOM framed the strikes as self-defense following Iran’s downing of a U.S. MQ-1 drone over international waters. Despite these strikes, we are still technically in a ceasefire with Iran and negotiating an end to the conflict.

• A U.S. F-15 shot down over Iran last month was likely struck by a Chinese-made shoulder-launched missile, according to three sources familiar with the matter. China may also have provided Iran with a long-range radar capable of detecting stealth aircraft. Trump’s response: “President Xi has promised me that he’s not sending any weapons to Iran. That’s a beautiful promise. I take him at his word.”

  • Crucial Context: While Trump was talking nice to Beijing, Treasury was quietly designating a Chinese procurement network for MANPADS transfers to Iran on May 8th — corroborating the exact “groundless smears” China’s embassy denied. China has supplied enough parts and components to Iran, Russia, the Houthis, and Venezuela that many of their weapons systems are essentially Chinese — just assembled elsewhere. It’s how Beijing keeps U.S. adversaries capable and troublesome without firing a shot itself.

• Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa spoke with President Trump on Sunday according to Syrian media, discussing Syria’s expanding regional economic role and increased U.S.-Syria bilateral cooperation. Al-Sharaa is set to attend next month’s G7 summit in France — another sign of Syria’s rapid reintegration into the international community.

  • Amanda’s Take: I’m going to keep repeating this because it’s still crazy that it’s true: who would have thought two years ago that Syria, lead a former Al Qaeda guy, would be the most stable country in the region?

💶 EUROPE

There’s so much more to Europe than NATO skepticism. Here’s what you need to know.

• Ukrainian President Zelensky is pushing for a major U.S. drone deal, arguing that Ukraine’s battlefield experience combined with American AI and military technology would be a game-changer for both countries. Ukraine is on track to produce 7 million drones this year. He’s also warning of a massive Russian air attack — potentially tonight — after Russia hit Ukraine with 600 drones and 90 missiles last weekend.

  • Amanda’s Take: We’ve rightfully asked what Ukraine brings to the table, especially when the American taxpayer was footing the bill, and this is a tangible answer. Ukraine has more real-world drone warfare experience than anyone on earth. A manufacturing partnership that helps the U.S. get ahead on cheap, scalable drone production directly serves American defense priorities.

• The UK banned American political commentator Hasan Piker from entering the country, revoking his visa hours before he was set to attend SXSW London. Jewish advocacy groups and a Labour MP had pushed for the ban over his comments on Israel and Hamas. The Home Office complied without publicly explaining its reasoning.

  • Amanda’s Take: So I guess Britain’s social media bans don’t just apply to conservatives! And Kier Starmer has found an Islamist he disagrees with!

🇺🇸 US FOREIGN POLICY NEWS

Here’s the headlines Washington is talking about.

• The June 4th Memorial Museum in Los Angeles — dedicated to the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre — was broken into and vandalized on May 30th. Museum director Wang Dan reported that the perpetrator disabled surveillance cameras before beginning the attack. This was a premeditated attack, likely carried out by a CCP agent or sympathizer on US soil.

  • Crucial Context: Tiananmen Square was when the Chinese Communist Party turned tanks on its own student protesters in front of the entire world — at the exact moment the West was courting China toward WTO membership and deeper integration. The massacre drove countless Chinese citizens into exile, into underground churches, into dissident movements. Pastor Ezra Jin, one of the Christians being held unjustly by the CCP who Trump tried to get released on his China trip, is one of them. The West responded by continuing to deepen its relationship with Beijing anyway, treating Tiananmen as a talking point rather than a reason to question how close we were becoming with China. This year marks the 37th anniversary.

• Candace Owens is in Russia.

  • Amanda’s Take: What is it with the podcast right’s infatuation with losers? They take the losing side in every conflict, and act like they’ve discovered greatness.

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📰 THIS WEEK’S BIG STORY: Everyone’s watching Trump and Iran negotiate in public, but in my opinion, you should keep watching Cuba…

🌎 OUR HEMISPHERE

President Trump re-committed to the Monroe Doctrine in his 2025 National Defense Strategy. Here are the headlines you need to know about what’s happening in our hemisphere.

• The Pentagon has quietly positioned the assets needed to invade Cuba, all it needs is Trump’s go-ahead. The USS Nimitz carrier strike group is in the Caribbean, guided missile destroyers are in position, and 2,500 Marines are preparing for deployment. Rubio called Cuba “a failed state 90 miles from our shores” at a Cabinet meeting Wednesday. The clock is ticking: ships are approaching 10 months at sea with the Navy already stretched across the Middle East.

• Colombia’s election will be held this Sunday, and a right-wing upset is looking likely. Leftist Ivan Cepeda leads the first round, but right-wing Abelardo De La Espriella beats him 50-41 in a projected runoff. Colombia would join a broader rightward shift sweeping South America over the past year, driven by the same thing everywhere: voters exhausted by rising crime, gang violence, and the failure of left-wing governments to deliver security.

⛩️ ASIA

The Indo-Pacific is the most consequential region on earth right now. Here’s what you need to know.

• After Rubio’s trip to India, the Quad foreign ministers — the U.S., Australia, India, and Japan — announced a package of joint initiatives: satellite-based maritime surveillance to track dark shipping, transparent Pacific port funding to counter Belt and Road, and a clean energy supply chain to reduce dependence on Chinese critical minerals. China wasn’t named directly — India’s non-alignment posture requires that courtesy — but nobody was confused about the target.

• China used electronic interference and verbal warnings to expel the Dutch frigate De Ruyter from the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea. So they are picking a fight with a NATO ally whose country makes the machines that manufacture the world’s most advanced AI chips.

• Taiwan arrested three people for smuggling Nvidia chips to China using Japan as a transshipment point — the first arrest to expose Japan as a smuggling route, and a problem since Singapore and Malaysia have started cracking down, forcing networks to find new paths. Japan’s customs enforcement is supposedly airtight, and Tokyo hasn’t said a word about it.

• China is expanding travel restrictions to top AI professionals at private companies, not just state firms. Beijing is treating its best engineers like state secrets, locking down human capital the same way it locks down financial capital. Between freezing domestic wealth and grounding its top minds, the picture is the same: nothing leaves.

• Washington Post columnist David Ignatius makes the case for why the post-Trump-Xi summit narrative — that China is winning and America is declining — doesn’t hold up. America keeps falling uphill: financial crashes, failed wars, COVID, and it still bounces back. Meanwhile China’s gleaming skyline hides half-empty towers, a demographic time bomb, and a population that can’t consume the surplus it produces. Basically, China isn’t as strong as it looks, and America isn’t as weak. Highly recommend.

🕌 THE MIDDLE EAST

The Middle East has been fundamentally remade since October 7th. Here’s what you’re probably missing.

• The U.S. has struck Iranian military sites twice in three days, taking out attack drones over the Strait of Hormuz, hitting a drone control station in Bandar Abbas, and hitting small boats reportedly laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. officials say the ceasefire remains in effect despite these strikes.

• Iranian state media is reporting that the Trump administration is giving into their maximalist demands during negotiations. These reports are likely the basis for Western pundits to say Trump lost the Iran war. Surprise, surprise.

  • Amanda’s Take: This should go without saying, but you probably shouldn’t take what Iranian media is claiming about the deal at face value. And maybe don’t trust Trump either! But definitely don’t take Iranian state media at their word.

• Israel is escalating in Lebanon, again — they struck 150+ Hezbollah targets struck in a single day, and issued evacuation warnings issued for two major southern cities.

💶 EUROPE

There’s so much more to Europe than NATO skepticism. Here’s what you need to know.

• A record heat dome is smashing temperature records across Western Europe — London hit 35.1C, shattering its previous May record by over 2 degrees, France has reported heat-related deaths, and wildfire risk is rising in Portugal. The UN climate chief called it a “brutal reminder” of the climate crisis.

  • Amanda’s Take: More Europeans die from heat-related illness every year than Americans die from gun violence. Maybe the Euros should spend less time existentially dreading climate change, and more time installing air conditioners in their homes. They don’t have to live like this.

🇺🇸 US FOREIGN POLICY NEWS

Here’s the headlines Washington is talking about.

• After receiving a Treasury subpoena over a trip to Cuba, Twitch streamer Hasan Piker went live for six hours and accidentally named Neville Roy Singham, an American Marxist tech millionaire living in China, as the money behind CodePink, the ANSWER Coalition, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Singham has funneled an estimated $278 million into the network since 2017. These are tax-exempt nonprofits with strict legal limits on political activity. Piker just confirmed that’s exactly what they’re doing.

• An American journalist who spent over a decade in China, writing for state media outlets including Xinhua and CGTN under a pseudonym, has been charged with acting as an unregistered Chinese government agent. He told the FBI he was 80% sure a contact he helped place inside the Trump administration would hand classified information to Beijing. That contact currently works for a U.S. government agency. No charges against them have been announced.

• A new UN Watch report finds that UN Special Rapporteurs — the so-called “crown jewel” of the UN human rights system — have been accepting funding from China, Russia, and Qatar and pushing their interests. These are the same experts whose reports are cited by the ICC, the ICJ, and courts worldwide as authoritative.

🤖 AI COMPETITION

The AI race is as much an economic and national security story as it is a tech story. Here’s what moved this week.

• New polling on AI policy should reframe the discourse: 56% of Americans fall into a pro-innovation coalition — 41% want basic safety standards that keep American companies competitive, 15% want minimal regulation. The “strict regulations” and “slow or stop AI” camps combined only reach 41%. That majority holds across Republicans (62%), Democrats (51%), and Independents (55%). While the doomer voices are loud on social media, they are not the majority.

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