Important Takeaways:
- Beijing has the ability to hit the United States with conventional weapons; compromise U.S. infrastructure through cyber-attacks; and target its assets in space, the Annual Threat Assessment by the intelligence community said, adding the Communist dictatorship also seeks to displace the United States as the top AI power by 2030.
- AFP reports Beijing’s “coercive pressure” against Taiwan and “wide-ranging cyber operations against US targets” flag its growing threat to U.S. national security, according to the assessment.
- Beijing’s military is gearing up to challenge U.S. operations in the Pacific and “making steady but uneven progress on capabilities it would use in an attempt to seize Taiwan,” it concluded, even as U.S. President Donald Trump warns that Beijing’s actions will have consequences.
- Russia, along with Iran, North Korea and China, seeks to challenge the U.S. through deliberate campaigns to gain an advantage, with Moscow’s war in Ukraine affording a “wealth of lessons regarding combat against Western weapons and intelligence in a large-scale war,” the report said.
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Important Takeaways:
- Scientists in Beijing have created ‘the world’s most powerful spy camera’ which can pick out facial details from distances exceeding 63 miles (100km).
- It means the spy camera could potentially be in space aboard a floating satellite while clearly seeing faces of people on Earth’s surface.
- It could also take high-resolution images of foreign military satellites operated by other nations that are also orbiting Earth, the South China Morning Post reported.
- The technology, detailed by the scientists in a new paper, could be launched aboard a satellite in the near future.
- Robert Morton, author and member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), called it a ‘massive security concern’.
- ‘Millimeter resolution from 60+ miles up? That’s next-level surveillance,’ he said in a post on X (Twitter).
- The spy camera has been newly developed by China’s Academy of Sciences’ Aerospace Information Research Institute in Beijing.
- It uses a system called synthetic aperture lidar (SAL), a remote sensing technology that sends out a pulse of light energy and then records the amount of that energy reflected back.
- Capable of operating day and night, SAL creates 2D and 3D reconstructions of surfaces of the Earth in various weather conditions.
- Because it relies on optical waves, it’s capable of creating imagery with much finer resolution and better detail – described as a ‘quantum leap’.
- The experts conducted a successful test across Qinghai Lake in China’s northwest, with the SAL device on one side and the target 63.2 miles (101.8km) away.
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Important Takeaways:
- Western experts have publicly called on China to be more transparent about a viral outbreak overwhelming its hospitals — as data shows the virus is growing in the US.
- Beijing has downplayed footage of overcrowded waiting rooms and wards posted on social media, saying respiratory infections are ‘less severe’ and ‘smaller in scale’ compared to last year.
- That has led some to fear there are similarities with the current situation and the Covid outbreak in 2019, which was initially played down by China.
- It is thought China’s outbreak is being fueled by the relatively unknown virus human metapneumovirus (HPMV), which normally causes cold-like symptoms such as a blocked nose, headache, shivering and tiredness.
- Sanjaya Senanayake, infectious disease expert associate professor of medicine at The Australian National University, said it was ‘vital for China to share its data on this outbreak in a timely manner’, including ‘data about who is getting infected.’
- He added: ‘Also, we will need genomic data confirming that HMPV is the culprit, and that there aren’t any significant mutations of concern. Such genomic data will also guide vaccine development.’
- Their warning comes as the US experiences its own increase in HMPV cases, with positive test percentages doubling from the beginning to the end of December.
- According to the latest CDC data, just under 300 positive test results reported during the last week of December, the latest figures available.
- The US CDC said it is ‘monitoring’ the cases in China but believe they are ‘not currently a cause for concern in the US.’
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Important Takeaways:
- China insisted on Monday it would never renounce the “use of force” to take control of Taiwan, after ending a day of military drills around the self-ruled island that Beijing said was a “stern warning” to “separatist” forces.
- Beijing, which claims Taiwan as part of its own territory, deployed fighter jets, drones, warships and coast guard vessels to encircle the island in its fourth round of large-scale war games in just over two years.
- The United States said China’s actions were “unwarranted” and risked “escalation” as it called on Beijing to act with restraint.
- China declared the drills over at around 6:00 pm (1000 GMT), about 13 hours after they had begun.
- “We sincerely strive for the prospect of peaceful reunification, but we will never promise to renounce the use of force and will not leave any space for ‘Taiwan independence'” Ministry of National Defense spokesperson Wu Qian said soon after.
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Important Takeaways:
- The U.S. Navy maintains carrier superiority over China, but Beijing has demonstrated its ability to track American carriers, raising concerns. In 2015, a Chinese Kilo-class submarine shadowed the USS Ronald Reagan for over 12 hours near Japan, highlighting China’s growing submarine capabilities.
- While China’s naval modernization is significant, the defensive architecture of U.S. carriers ensures robust protection against potential threats in the Western Pacific.
- The U.S. retains carrier superiority over its adversaries, both in the size and capabilities of its fleet.
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Important Takeaways:
- Orban, a longtime Trump supporter, also visited Kyiv, Moscow and Beijing in the past two weeks on a self-styled ‘peace mission’ to end the Russia-Ukraine war which has angered Hungary’s NATO allies.
- Orban’s so-called peace initiative has irked many members of the European Union, whose rotating presidency Hungary took over at the start of this month.
- Hungary’s Viktor Orban has met with former US President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida where they discussed the “possibilities of peace”, the latest stop in the prime minister’s solo run to secure a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war.
- “It was an honor to visit President [Donald Trump] at Mar-a-Lago today. We discussed ways to make peace. The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!” Orban said on X.
- On Friday, Germany’s foreign ministry said Orban had already caused damage in the first 12 days of his country’s rotating EU presidency.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who said he was not informed by Orban of his onward trip to Russia, has dismissed the prime minister’s ambition of playing the peacemaker.
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Important Takeaways:
- China is rapidly becoming more aggressive in its rhetoric and actions across Asia, the out going head of the US Indo-Pacific Command said, as Beijing turned up the heat on Washington just before Secretary of State Tony Blinken heads to the country for high-stakes visit.
- “We all need to understand that it’s moving very fast,” Admiral John Aquilino told reporters
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Important Takeaways:
- China sent 43 warplanes and seven ships near Taiwan on Wednesday in yet another large drill maneuver directed against the small island nation that Beijing claims rights over.
- Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said 37 of the aircraft crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait and entered the country’s airspace in the early morning hours.
- Taiwanese officials said its armed forces “monitored the situation” and deployed aircraft, navy vessels and ground missile systems in response to the perceived aggression.
- The U.S., which does not recognize Taiwan as an independent country but commits to supporting it, has warned of China seeking to unify with Taiwan, potentially by force.
- Washington is preparing for a potential war with China in the next few years over the island nation’s sovereignty and is rapidly seeking to modernize its forces, as Beijing does the same.
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Important Takeaways:
- Our Response to China Must Be Overwhelming, Not ‘Proportional’
- Biden meeting Xi at this time would be a mistake…. Anything Beijing wants cannot, by definition, be good for America.
- How, exactly, can Biden “stabilize relations” with a militant regime that has declared America to be its enemy?
- Worse, China’s regime thinks it is already at war with the U.S.
- Now, therefore, is the time to use all the resources of the federal government. The Secretary of the Treasury, for instance, can designate, pursuant to Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act, Chinese banks to be of “primary money laundering concern.” Designated banks can no longer clear dollar transactions through New York, where every dollar transaction clears.
- Such designations would put the large state banks out of business everywhere outside China. If large state banks were to fail, so would China’s state-dominated banking system. The failure of the banking system would undoubtedly mean the end of the Chinese economy and financial system. The end of the political system would soon follow.
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Important Takeaways:
- The BRICS grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa will add six nations to its ranks next year, as Beijing and Moscow push for the loose collection of emerging economies to evolve into a robust counterweight to Western global dominance.
- Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will join as members in January
- For Beijing and Moscow, adding members is part of a long-running — and often frustrated — effort to turn a largely symbolic grouping into a vehicle for remolding international trade and finance structures to protect their interests against future sanctions from the United States and its allies.
- Sanctions targeting Russia over the war in Ukraine have added urgency to China’s effort to create alternative global financial structures and supply chains resilient to Western disruption.
- China and Russia have found some developing nations more receptive to their concerns about American dominance, which is part of the motivation for more members
- The war and China-U.S. trade tensions mean that Washington has shifted its focus to the Group of Seven and is less interested in the Group of 20, creating an opportunity for BRICS to become a better platform for large developing countries to speak up
- The “China-U.S. contest may still be locked in a stalemate, but the end result is inevitable”
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