China’s Rare Earth Lesson Is About Paperwork, Not Ore
China sold more rare earth magnets in September than in any other month this year, and it did so while every licensing rule it...
France Says It Stayed Out of the Gulf War. Its Budget Didn’t
Emmanuel Macron spent Monday in Kuwait asking for diesel. Two days earlier, rioters had broken into the town hall in Limoges and set it...
Beijing Already Wrote the Terms for a Thaw with Tokyo
When Sanae Takaichi called China “an important neighbor” in her October 5 policy address, the line had to compete with a consumption tax cut...
The AI slowdown Washington is being sold is a cartel with a safety label
Dario Amodei wants the industry he helps lead to slow down. On Saturday the Anthropic chief executive published an essay warning that swarms of...
How Banning Chinese AI Could Hurt American Innovation
The National Security Agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the FBI rarely sign the same document. On September 8 they jointly named...
Trump’s Economic D-Day Threatens Everyone Except China
On Truth Social, Donald Trump announced what he called the most crushing economic operation the United States had ever mounted, promising Iran "economic warfare...
Washington drew Iraq a red line it can’t enforce. It will settle for a photo op
The US-led coalition leaves Iraq on Sept. 30, and Washington has attached a price to the exit: the country's most powerful militias must hand...
Washington and Tehran Now Agree that Sea is Billable
On July 14 the crews of the Mombasa and the Al Bahiyah found out. Two UAE-flagged tankers were hit by Iranian cruise missiles in...
Syria Is Building a Technocracy, Not a Democracy
On Sunday, 210 lawmakers took the constitutional oath in Damascus and elected Abdul Hamid al-Awak, a judge who defected from Assad's justice ministry and fled...
Macron’s Warning, Bremen’s Wallet: Europe’s New Space-Defense Era
When French President Emmanuel Macron inaugurated France’s Space Command in Toulouse on 12 November 2025 and declared that “space is no longer a sanctuary;...