Keane: Five weeks of talks have produced almost no progress.
Iran still refuses to dismantle its nuclear enterprise, wants indefinite control of Hormuz, and wants the US to finance regime recovery through reparations, unfrozen assets, and sanctions relief. 1/
Keane: A deal like that would favor Iran and set back both the Iranian people and US interests.
Tehran would use the money to rebuild its nuclear program, ballistic missiles, and proxies — the very things this war was launched to stop. 2/
Keane: After all this time trying to negotiate, Washington should recognize that no deal meeting its objectives is available.
The best option is to return to full combat operations, finish what we started, and go full throttle with Israel for one to two weeks. 3/
If the US and Europe keep Kyiv funded and armed, Ukraine can negotiate from strength.
The fastest way to prolong the war is to offer Putin an exit that preserves his system — The Telegraph. 1/
Putin sells inevitability. The parade showed vulnerability.
Ukraine can now hit deep inside Russia. Putin avoided parking real hardware at a known place and time. 2/
After the spectacle, Putin said: "I think that the matter is coming to an end."
He still calls this war a "special operation." The language stays. The capacity shrinks. 3/
Belarus already gave Russia territory for the 2022 assault on Kyiv, launched missiles from its soil, repaired Russian tanks, and treated wounded soldiers.
But Putin appears to want more and is pressuring Lukashenko[Putin’s puppet] to deepen Belarus’s role in the war, Times. 1/
Ukraine now fortifies the 1,080 km Belarus border with mines, trenches, anti-tank barriers, sensors, barbed wire, and anti-drone defenses.
The Rivne crossing, once used by thousands daily, now sits behind minefields and armored patrols. 2/
Zelenskyy: Belarus is building roads toward Ukraine and placing artillery near the border.
Ukraine also reported “unusual activity” on the Belarusian side on May 2. 3/
The Iran war unresolved, the Strait of Hormuz still closed, tariffs failing.
Xi holds the cards, including a near-monopoly over rare earths and critical minerals. — Gideon Rachman, FT.
1/
When Trump imposed 145% tariffs on Chinese goods, Beijing restricted mineral exports.
US factory production lines shut down within weeks. Within months — a trade truce.
2/
China's AI models are now roughly six months behind US rivals. Electric vehicles — China is ahead. Nvidia is lobbying to soften chip export restrictions, arguing it will lose markets to Chinese competitors.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp met with Zelenskyy and Fedorov in Kyiv. Ukraine is scaling AI for warfighting with real data.
Palantir is helping Ukraine to analyze air attacks. Now the task is to integrate AI into defense tech projects and deep strikes, using intelligence data at scale. 1/
Ukraine builds feedback loops. Drones and missiles produce data. Analysts turn it into targets and defenses. The system learns. If the loop runs faster than Russia adapts, Ukraine wins time and lives. 2/
Fedorov showed Brave1 Dataroom — a pipeline that lets Ukrainian developers train models on battlefield data. More than 100 companies already use it. That is an industrial base for military AI, not a demo day. 3/