China is rebuilding how occupied Ukrainian territories function — step by step.
It installs 6,000 Huawei base stations, replaces dollars with yuan, and keeps factories running with Chinese engineers. no ownership, no formal role, but everything depends on Chinese tech, Babel. 1/
Telecom comes first. Huawei supplies servers, antennas, routers.
Russia cuts Ukrainian networks when it captures a city. Miranda-Media reconnects it using Chinese infrastructure — across cities, villages, and roads. 2/
Industry: Karansky quarry in Donetsk operates on Chinese equipment. Chinese engineers maintain it. Without them, production stops. Russia uses the output to build roads and housing. 3/
Historian Niall Ferguson: Magyar’s victory over Orbán is good not because the left defeated the right.
What happened is that a non-corrupt populist who is not a lackey of Putin and Xi defeated one who became both corrupt and a lackey of our adversaries. 1/
Ferguson: This is a great day not just for Hungary. It is a great day for Ukraine and for everybody who believes in liberty.
If populists can lose elections, they are not fascists. There is hope here for Europe and for the wider democratic world. 2X
Petraeus: The real future of war is in Ukraine. The mass of unmanned systems there is incomparably greater than anything else on earth.
Ukraine is using nearly 10,000 unmanned systems a day, and traditional combined-arms warfare no longer works on that front. 1/
Petraeus: This is now the most lethal front line in history. You cannot drive through the 35-kilometer death zone.
Drones spot you, then come suicide drones, bomber drones, and glide bombs. Even resupply and casualty evacuation now go by remote vehicle. 2/
Petraeus: The next phase is autonomous warfare: machines replacing remote pilots, then systems of systems where sensors and algorithms make decisions at machine speed.
I visited three major drone makers. One company alone will build 3 million drones this year. 3X
Petraeus: The [Hormuz] blockade was the right call. Ending this war with Iran militarily wrecked but still controlling Hormuz would leave Tehran strategically stronger.
We cannot let Iran decide who sails the strait or turn it into a private Panama Canal and charge tolls. 1/
Petraeus: The benchmark is not insurance cost. It is whether crews live.
CEOs told me they will not send sailors into that risk, and about eight crew members have already been killed by Iranian attacks on ships in the Gulf. That alone is enough to freeze traffic. 2/
Petraeus: Two red lines dominate the talks: Hormuz must be restored as an untaxed international waterway, and Iran must give up the roughly 1,000 pounds of 60% enriched uranium.
That is one turn away from weapons grade. The pressure has to continue. 3X
Keane on Iran: We have about two weeks to complete the operation, with roughly 25% still to go and we now have twice the combat power in the region that we had when we started.
It is time to go back to full military operations and keep the blockade on. 1/
Keane: Opening the Strait without a nuclear deal is not progress at all. After weeks of negotiations, it is pretty obvious the Iranians will never propose a deal we can accept.
All they want is regime survival and the chance to recover enough to become a threat again. 2/
Keane: We keep assuming pain will force Tehran to bend. That is the mistake. They do not care about gas lines, blackouts, or the suffering of their people.
They believe time is on their side: oil prices stay high, pressure rises in the US, and Washington blinks first. 3/
Bolton: I’m not sure Trump knows where he is, because I’m not sure he knew what his objectives were going in.
If you do not know where you are going, any road will do. He wants this over, but because he does not think strategically, he is at a loss over what to do next. 1/
Bolton: The only long-term answer to Iran threat is regime change. New faces are not a new regime.
The ideology is the same. Trump failed to do what a serious regime-change effort required before hostilities, but he still has time to work with and resource Iran’s opponents. 2/
Bolton: It is impossible for me to believe Trump was not told Iran would try to shut Hormuz. Everybody knew that threat was there.
The danger is not just mines. It is anti-ship missiles, fast boats, and drones. Better late than never, but this should have been hit earlier. 3X