Wow, that's extremely rare for a U.S. treaty ally.

South Korea's president, addressing Israel: "It’s disappointing that you don’t even once reflect on the criticisms from people around the world who are suffering and struggling due to your relentless anti-human rights and anti-international law actions."

He said this after posting this yesterday (x.com/Jaemyung_Lee/s…), a video of IDF soldiers throwing a young Palestinian off a rooftop and commenting that "there is no difference between this and the Japanese wartime sexual slavery issue we raise, the massacre of Jews, or wartime killings."

Israel's Foreign Ministry responded that his post was "unacceptable" but President Lee obviously - and courageously - chose to double down 👇

Also probably says a lot about where U.S.-South Korea relations are at right now. He's backed by other senior South Korean political figures, like Choo Mi-ae (the first female leader of South Korea's Democratic Party) 👇

https://x.com/ChooMiAe/status/2042874800805499317?s=20

So, if I got that right, here's the narrative:

- A US F-15E fighter jet got shot down over Iran, despite Trump saying 2 days beforehand in his nationwide address that Iran has "no anti-aircraft equipment. Their radar is 100% annihilated." (apnews.com/article/donald…)

- The plane's weapons systems officer - a "highly respected Colonel," according to Trump - ejected from the plane and got "seriously wounded" (still according to Trump: truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTru…)

- He still managed to "hike up a 7,000-foot [2.1km] mountain ridgeline and hide in a crevice" in the Zagros Mountains, despite his wounds (time.com/article/2026/0…)

- U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drones started killing all "Iranian military-aged males believed to be a threat who got within three kilometers of [the American's location]" (x.com/ByChrisGordon/…)

- To retrieve him the U.S. managed to seize an "abandoned airport," 200 miles deep inside Iran, near Isfahan (bbc.com/news/articles/…), which happens to be where Iran's largest atomic scientific center is located (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isfahan_N…)

- They landed two MC-130 military transport planes in that airport (theaviationist.com/2026/04/05/u-s…) in an operation involving "hundreds of special forces troops and military personnel" (time.com/article/2026/0…)

- Both MC-130 planes got "stuck in the sand" and the U.S. destroyed them themselves "to prevent them from falling into Iranian hands" (theaviationist.com/2026/04/05/u-s…)

- They deployed "three new aircraft to extract all the U.S. personnel" on the ground (theaviationist.com/2026/04/05/u-s…)

- There are videos circulating online of "heavy clashes" with presumably Iranian missiles raining down in Kohgiluyeh County, in the Zagros Mountains during that night (x.com/Afshin_Ismaeli…)

- Iran sent pictures of the aftermath at the "abandoned airport" and it's a sight of utter destruction, with US plane and MH-6 helicopter parts scattered all over the ground, still smoking (turkiyetoday.com/region/wreckag…). Iran claims they are the ones who in fact destroyed all the aircraft.

- Meanwhile a second U.S. plane, an A-10 Warthog, also crashed on Friday near the Strait of Hormuz according to two U.S. officials speaking to the NYT (nytimes.com/live/2026/04/0…). In that instance too the lone pilot was apparently "safely rescued."

- In all this, after the multiple planes and helicopters destroyed or shot down, the documented heavy clashes, the "hundreds of special forces troops and military personnel" operating deep inside Iran, not a single US soldier was reported killed "or even wounded" (according to Trump: truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTru…).

- And the 'highly respected Colonel' this was all for? No name. No photo. No interview. Nobody has spoken to him nor knows who he is.

So to sum up: anti-aircraft equipment that supposedly didn't exist shot down an F-15 (and, apparently, an A-10 Warthog the same day). A seriously wounded man climbed a 2.1km mountain. The US seized an airfield 200 miles inside a country it's at war with, next to one of its most strategic nuclear sites, and deployed hundreds of troops all apparently unimpeded. Lost two planes to "sand" and destroyed their own helicopters. Videos show heavy clashes, missiles raining down - but not a single person got "even wounded". And the man at the center of it all? Nobody knows who he is, completely anonymous, zero pictures, but Trump says he is "SAFE and SOUND." And so is the rescued A-10 Warthog pilot, who also remains anonymous.

Trump concludes this all proves the US has "achieved overwhelming Air Dominance and Superiority over the Iranian skies" (truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTru…), despite the whole episode only happening because Iran shot his planes out of the sky.

Basically, the only thing that's "overwhelming" here is the audacity of the storytelling... The planes that got "stuck in sand"

https://x.com/hippyygoat/status/2040905019545866395?s=20

The ultimate proof that Iran has, in fact, escalation dominance here.

Iran already said "there has been no direct or indirect contact" with Trump (). He basically chickened out after Iran's threats on desalination.

Incredibly, Iran took on the US symmetrically and won.iranintl.com/en/liveblog/20… By the way, the fact that everyone's first instinct, including in the US, is to automatically assume Trump is lying and to wait for Iran's statement to understand what's going on is immensely telling in and of itself.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but if infrastructure like this 👇 gets blown up, as of this moment it will take at least a decade to recover from this war - and the truth is that the world's energy picture is probably changed forever.

This single facility 👇produced roughly 20% of global LNG supply (aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/18…) and, as of 2011, had taken $70 billion to build (energyintel.com/0000017b-a7be-…).

What makes this even worse is that Iran's strike on this was retaliation after Israel attacked their South Pars gas field which draws from the same natural gas reservoir, which is the world's largest by far (9,700 km² - about the size of Qatar itself).

Heck, on the list of the 25 largest natural gas fields (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_n…) this single reservoir holds roughly 40% of their combined recoverable reserves - and is nearly 6 times bigger than the 2nd biggest field in the world. And, unlike many of the others on the list, it's only at 10% depletion (meaning 90% of the gas is still there).

Which means that, probably for many years, a huge share of the gas from the world's largest reservoir simply won't be extractable, as infrastructure on both sides - Qatar's and Iran's - has now been blown up.

From a global energy supply perspective, we're deep into worst-case scenario territory. Even Trump realizes just how catastrophically bad this is 👇.

He fails to mention it's entirely caused by himself, though. A totally avoidable war he started.

https://x.com/i/status/2034453527892791768

I don't know if people understand just how insanely egregious this is.

First of all, 1) not only are NATO spending targets NOT legally binding (nothing in any NATO-related legal text mandates a specific GDP-based threshold for defense spending), but on top of this 2) Spain requested AND RECEIVED an exemption from the 5% target at the 2025 Hague Summit - NATO changed the declaration's language specifically to allow Spain to sign while publicly declaring it would not comply (jurist.org/news/2025/06/n…)

This means that, legally speaking and according to NATO's own rules, Spain is doubly within its rights: there is no binding obligation to begin with, and Spain was excused from even this non-binding obligation.

That's the first point: Germany's chancellor just endorsed - from the Oval Office - the U.S. punishing a fellow EU nation for refusing to comply with an obligation that doesn't exist in law, under a political pledge Spain was excused from at a NATO summit.

The second point is that this 5% target has nothing to do with "defense", quite the contrary in fact: it is pretty explicitly an imperial tribute to the U.S. that will actually **weaken** European defense.

That was Spain's main argument for refusing to comply: Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said that "committing to 5% would not make us any safer" because it "would only reinforce our dependence" on the U.S. (tiempoar.com.ar/ta_article/ped…)

That's the insane thing about EU defense spending: in recent years, the more it has spent on defense, the more that spending has flowed to American contractors as opposed to European ones, making the EU defense industry weaker (x.com/adam_tooze/sta…). Increasing spending to 5% doesn't strengthen European defense: it accelerates exactly this transfer.

All the more insane given the well-documented production backlogs in the U.S. defense industry and its inability to produce at scale: US defense analysts - including from Trump-adjacent think tanks like AEI (aei.org/research-produ…) - openly acknowledge that European customers would be deprioritized behind U.S. ones in any real conflict.

AND, critically, a defense industry from a country that's increasingly hostile to Europe - explicitly so in its National Security Strategy - and whose weaponry has "kill switches" that allows for remote disabling.

I mean, the sheer madness of it: anyone with an ounce of common sense can see that DOUBLING your defense spending to enrich a foreign arms industry that has kill switches on your weapons, can't meet its own military's needs, and increasingly treats you as an adversary, is not even remotely a defense strategy - it's suicide.

That's why having Merz - in the oval office, sitting next to Trump - endorse economic coercion against the one EU country that's still sane enough to see through this madness is so egregious, and frankly straight-up traitorous.

For those who know Asterix and Obelix, Spain is the "one small village still holding out against the invaders" and Merz is Cassius Ceramix, the self-described "gallo-roman" Gaul village chief who's the incarnation of all sycophants after his tribe were conquered by the Romans.

I'm with Asterix, and all Europeans should be too. The "one small village still holding out against the invaders"

https://x.com/POLITICOEurope/status/2028921805893767623?s=20

This strange square 👇 is undoubtedly the most extraordinary work of literature in human history. Yet, unfortunately, barely anyone in the West has ever heard of it.

There was this woman poet in 4th century China called Su Hui (蘇蕙), a child genius who had reportedly mastered Chinese characters by age 3.

At 21 years old, heartbroken by her husband who left her for another woman, she decided to encode her feelings in a structure so intricate, so beautiful, so intellectually staggering that it still baffles scholars to this day.

Came to be known as the Xuanji Tu (璇璣圖) - the "Star Gauge" or "Map of the Armillary Sphere" - it's a 29 by 29 grid of 841 characters that can produce over 4,000 different poems.

Read it forward. Read it backward. Read it horizontally, vertically, diagonally. Read it spiraling outward from the center. Read it in circles around the outer edge. Each path through the grid produces a different poem - all of them coherent, all of them beautiful, all of them rhyming, all of them expressing variations on the same themes of longing, betrayal, regret, and undying love.

The outer ring of 112 characters forms a single circular poem - believed to be both the first and longest of its kind ever written. The interior grid produces 2,848 different four-line poems of seven characters each. In addition, there are hundreds of other smaller and longer poems, depending on the reading method.

At the center a single character she left implied but unwritten: 心 (xin) - "heart." Later copyists would add it explicitly, but in Su Hui's original the meaning was even more beautiful: 4,000 poems, all orbiting the space where her heart used to be.

Take for instance the outer red grid of the Star Gauge. Starting from the top right corner and reading down, you get this seven-character quatrain:
仁智懷德聖虞唐，
貞志篤終誓穹蒼，
欽所感想妄淫荒，
心憂增慕懷慘傷。

In pinyin, it is:
Rén zhì huái dé shèng yú táng,
zhēnzhì dǔ zhōng shì qióng cāng,
qīn suǒ gǎnxiǎng wàng yín huāng,
xīn yōu zēng mù huái cǎn shāng.

Notice how it rhymes? táng / cāng / huāng / shāng

The rough translation in English is: "The benevolent and wise cherish virtue, like the sage-kings Yao and Shun, With steadfast will I swear to the heavens above, What I revere and feel - how could it be wanton or dissolute? My heart's sorrow grows, longing brings only grief."

Now read it from the bottom to the top and you get this entirely different seven-character quatrain:
傷慘懷慕增憂心，
荒淫妄想感所欽，
蒼穹誓終篤志貞，
唐虞聖德懷智仁。

The pinyin:
Shāng cǎn huái mù zēng yōu xīn,
huāngyín wàngxiǎng gǎn suǒ qīn,
cāngqióng shì zhōng dǔzhì zhēn,
táng yúshèngdé huái zhì rén.

It rhymes too: xīn and qīn, zhēn and rén

And the meaning is just as beautiful and coherent: "Grief and sorrow, longing fills my worried heart, Wanton and dissolute fantasies - is that what you revere? I swear to the heavens my constancy is true, May we embody the sage-kings' virtue, wisdom, and benevolence."

That's just 2 poems out of the over 4,000 you can construct from the Xuanji Tu!

At the very center of the grid, the 8 red characters wrapped around the central heart, she "signed" her poem with a hidden message:

詩圖璇玑，始平蘇氏。 "The poem-picture of the Armillary Sphere, by Su of Shiping."

Or reversed:
蘇氏詩圖，璇玑始平。 "Su's poem-picture - the Armillary Sphere begins in peace."

Many scholars, and even emperors, throughout Chinese history have been completely obsessed by Su Hui's puzzle.

For instance, in the Ming dynasty, a scholar named Kang Wanmin (康萬民) devoted his entire life to the poems (kangshiw.com/contents/461/2…), ending up documenting twelve different reading methods - forward, backward, diagonal, radiating, corner-to-corner, spiraling - and extracting 4,206 poems. His book on the subject ("Reading Methods for the Xuanji Tu Poems", 璇璣圖詩讀法) runs to hundreds of pages.

Empress Wu Zetian herself, the legendary woman emperor of the Tang dynasty, wrote a preface to the Xuanji Tu around 692 CE (baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%87…).

Incredibly, there's even far more complexity to the Xuanji Tu than just the poems:

- The name 璇玑 (Xuanji) - Armillary Sphere - is astronomical in meaning and the way the poems can be read mirrors the way celestial bodies orbit around a fixed center. It's a model of the heavens.

- Her original work, with the characters woven on silk brocade, was in five colors (red, black, blue/green, purple, and yellow) which correspond to the Five Elements (五行) - the foundational Chinese philosophical system that explains how the universe operates. So it's also a model of the entire cosmic order according to ancient Chinese philosophy.

- It's also of course deeply mathematical with this 29 x 29 perfect square grid, with sub-squares, lines and rectangles, and a structure which allows for symmetrical reading patterns in all directions

- Last but not least, the content of the poems themselves contain multiple registers. On top of expressing her personal grief and longing for her husband, it's also filled with accusations against the concubine (Zhao Yangtai) he left her for, reflections on politics (with many references to sage-kings) and philosophical reflections.

So the Star Gauge is simultaneously:
- A love letter (expressing personal longing)
- A legal brief (arguing her case against her rival)
- A cosmological model (structured like the heavens)
- A Five Element diagram (encoding the fundamental structure of the world according to ancient Chinese philosophy)
- A mathematical construction with perfect symmetry and precision

And yet, for all this complexity, we should not forget this was all ultimately in service of the simplest human message imaginable: a 21-year-old woman asking the love of her life "come back to me".

Her husband did, eventually. According to what empress Wu Zetian herself wrote in her preface to the Xuanji Tu, when he received Su's brocade he was so "moved by its supreme beauty" that he sent away his concubine and returned to his wife. As the story goes, they lived together until old age.

The heart at the center was filled after all.
🤣

https://x.com/i/status/1999343911702266048

This is big. The final U.S. National Security Strategy was just published and the refocus on the Western Hemisphere (i.e. the Americas) is confirmed.

The document clearly establishes this as the U.S.'s number 1 priority, saying that the U.S. will now "assert and enforce a 'Trump Corollary' to the Monroe Doctrine."

In terms of military presence, they write that this means "a readjustment of our global military presence to address urgent threats in our Hemisphere, and away from theaters whose relative import to American national security has declined in recent decades or years."

On China, a couple of points.

The most striking aspect to me is that China is NOT anymore defined as "the" primary threat, "most consequential challenge," "pacing threat," or similar formulations used in previous such documents.

It's clearly downgraded as a priority. Based on the document's structure and emphasis, the top U.S. priorities could be characterized as:
1) Homeland security and borders (migration, cartels, etc.)
2) Western Hemisphere (Monroe Doctrine restoration)
3) Economic security (reindustrialization, supply chains)
4) China and Indo-Pacific

To be clear they don't define China as an ally or a partner in any shape or form but primarily as 1) an economic competitor, 2) a source of supply chain vulnerabilities (but also a trading partner) and 3) a player who regional dominance should be "ideally" denied because it "has major implications for the U.S. economy."

Interestingly, I believe for the first time ever, they mention the possibility of being overmatched militarily by China:
- They write that "deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority": "ideally" clearly means that it's ideal, but not necessarily a given. The fact that they call deterring conflict over Taiwan merely "a priority" also suggests, by definition, that it's no more a top strategic priority, or a vital interest.
- On Taiwan they also clearly imply that if the U.S.'s "First Island Chain allies" don't "step up and spend - and more importantly do - much more for collective defense", then there might be "a balance of forces so unfavorable to us as to make defending that island impossible."

They still maintain that "the United States does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait" but, clearly, there's a widening gap between what the US says it opposes and what it's actually willing to do about it.

Interestingly as well, contrary to previous such document, there is zero ideological dimension in the document when it comes to China. No "democracy vs. autocracy" framing, no "rules-based international order" to defend, no values-based crusade. China is treated as a practical issue to be managed, not an ideological adversary to be defeated.

In fact the document explicitly mentions, I think for the first time ever as well, that US policy is now:
- "not grounded in traditional, political ideology"
- that they "seek good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories"
- and that they seek "good relations with nations whose governing systems differ from ours."

Which is quite a stunning departure from the rhetoric of the past few decades. We all knew this but it's now amply clear that the era of missionary liberal internationalism in US foreign policy is dead and buried.

The competition with China is primarily described in economic terms, explicitly so: they write the competition is about "winning the economic future" and that economics are "the ultimate stakes."

Notably, they admit that the tariffs approach "that began in 2017" when it comes to China essentially failed because "China adapted" and has "strengthened its hold on supply chains."

The new strategy, as described in the document, is to build an economic coalition against China that can exert more leverage than the US economy alone - a tacit admission that America just isn't powerful enough on its own anymore.

The contradiction is however obvious: unclear how you build an economic coalition against China while simultaneously waging trade wars against your coalition partners, demanding they shoulder more of their own defense, and treating every allied relationship as a deal to be renegotiated in America's favor.

At some point these "allies" will be asking a very obvious question: why sacrifice our economic interests to prop up an America that can no longer compete on its own - and that offers us less and less in return?

The document can be found here: whitehouse.gov/wp-content/upl…


Good summary for the lazy readers 😊

https://x.com/BobgonzaleBob/status/1996832802113831071?t=qjDFHyjCmIxonlENhIosmA&s=19

In a normal world, this should be an immense scandal in Europe.

Le Monde has a long article (lemonde.fr/international/…) describing the hellish life of Nicolas Guillou, a French judge at the ICC in The Hague, due to U.S. sanctions punishing him for authorizing arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant for war crimes in Gaza.

Guillou's daily existence has been transformed into a Kafkaesque nightmare. He cannot: open or maintain accounts with Google, Amazon, Apple, or any US company; make hotel reservations (Expedia canceled his booking in France hours after he made it); conduct online commerce, since he can't know if the packaging is American; use any major credit card (Visa, Mastercard, Amex are all American); access normal banking services, even with non-American banks, as banks worldwide close sanctioned accounts; conduct virtually any financial transaction.

He describes it as being "economically banned across most of the planet," including in his own country, France, and where he works, the Netherlands.

That's the real shocking aspect of this: the Americans are:
- punishing a European citizen
- for doing his job in Europe
- applying laws Europe officially supports
- at an institution based in Europe
- that Europe helped create and fund

and Europe is not only doing essentially nothing to protect him, they're actively enforcing America's sanctions against their own citizen - European banks closing his accounts, European companies refusing him service, European institutions standing by while Washington destroys a European judge's life on European soil.

Again, in a normal world, European leaders and citizens should be absolutely outraged about this. But we've so normalized the hollowing out of European sovereignty that the sight of a European citizen being economically executed on European soil for upholding European law is treated, at best, as an unfortunate technical complication in transatlantic relations. I already wrote about this when I visited the ICC this summer 👇

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1957865502631428327?s=20

We're on the edge of Europe's most humiliating moment in history.

The White House is apparently about to achieve a comprehensive peace deal with Russia which Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian negotiator, say is "a much broader framework [than just a ceasefire agreement], basically saying, 'How do we really bring, finally, lasting security to Europe, not just Ukraine.'"

So in effect it looks like this is an agreement which redraws the entire European security architecture.

The thing, however, is that Europeans are NOT part of the discussions and, when asked about them, the White House replied: “We don't really care about the Europeans.”

This would make it probably the first time EVER in history that Europe's security is decided completely by outside forces, as a proxy with zero say in its own fate (indeed with explicit contempt for its input).

I actually looked into this for my August article "Not at the table: Europe's colonial moment" (arnaudbertrand.substack.com/p/not-at-the-t…). The only comparable parallel I could find is the fall of Constantinople in 1453. But even this was a somewhat “classic” military defeat where the victor simply dictated terms. At the time, there wasn't another external power negotiating with the Ottomans about how to carve up Byzantine territory - it was at least a straightforward conquest.

Don't misunderstand me. I'll be the first to applaud if the Ukraine war comes to an end. It was, as I have argued since day 1 (x.com/RnaudBertrand/…), one of the most predictable and therefore one of the most avoidable wars in history.

BUT, and this is a huge "but", having your continent's security architecture redesigned without you sets a catastrophic precedent: it defines Europe as nothing more than geography to be bargained over by others.

This is the natural consequence of decades of appalling strategic choices by Europeans, starting with the fundamental decision to outsource their security to NATO - effectively to Washington - rather than building genuine strategic autonomy. This shaped how Europe dealt with both Russia and Ukraine: following hawkish US policy, dictated by its own interests to keep Eurasia divided ("divide and conquer"), as opposed to Europe's own interests which clearly lay in continental integration and stability.

Now we see the wages of these choices: a continent whose opinion literally doesn't matter when its security is being negotiated.

Src for the screenshot: politico.com/playbook Caveat: Tass (Russia's official news agency) says "Russia has no OFFICIAL information from US about some 'agreements'" 👇
x.com/imetatronink/s…

The emphasis on "official" is mine because this means there is *unofficial* information, which is indeed the case here given that the talks between Steve Witkoff (Trump envoy) and Kirill Dmitriev (who runs Russia's sovereign wealth fund) are backchannel negotiations.

My point still stands of course: the White House - backchannel or not - is negotiating with Russia without Europe at the table and they did say they "don't really care about the Europeans." Europe wasn't at the table either during Trump's *official* discussion with Putin in Alaska this summer.

Which means that even if this particular deal falls through or the timeline is premature, the pattern is clear: Europe's security is something the U.S. and Russia discuss between themselves and Europe isn't a participant in these conversations - it's the subject matter.

This is a genuinely incredible story: China found in U.S. archives an energy source that could power its entire future for 20,000 years - and they just made it work.

I'm not exaggerating. In the 1960s the U.S. - specifically Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee - invented a revolutionary type of nuclear reactor that could run on thorium instead of uranium (much more abundant and cheaper), with no meltdown risk, generating 50x less waste, and requiring no water. Then, due to messy politics, they killed the program in 1969 and fired the visionary behind it.

Afterwards the declassified blueprints for the project sat forgotten in archives for decades. That is until Chinese scientists found them and decided in 2011 to run an experimental project in the Gansu desert to see if they could make it work.

A few days ago, after 14 years of work, they finally did.

I spent many days researching this and wrote the full story - how the technology works, the bureaucratic politics that killed it in America, and why this could genuinely be game-changing.

Here's the link to the article: open.substack.com/pub/arnaudbert… Preempting many similar "China stole IP" type comments

300 million tourists a year, free to roam everywhere unimpeded in Xinjiang, and still not a single photo evidence of this so-called "Uyghur genocide" 🤔

On the contrary you do get an overwhelming amount of photo evidence of Uyghurs just living normal lives.

Compare and contrast this with Gaza: zero tourist (or journalist, or anyone) allowed in and you still get overwhelming photo evidence.

Because, guess what, in the age of social when people are actually being mistreated and mass murdered, you can't hide it.

You can't hide it in a place that's completely blockaded, you can hide it even less in a place that's fully open to anyone (many foreigners, like almost all European countries, don't even need a visa nowadays to enter China and Xinjiang).

The BBC - which previously pushed the Xinjiang narrative hard - is trying hard to square this circle by claiming "there's a side of Xinjiang" that these 300 million tourists "don't see."

And what is that "side they don't see" according to the article? That even though the Uyghurs are there and Uyghur culture is everywhere, that's apparently not "the real Uyghur culture" because, as they claim, old towns were rebuilt for tourism and tourists see made-for-tourism ethnic performances.

Except this is literally how tourism development works everywhere in China (and pretty much everywhere in the world, frankly). Heck, this is how development - period - works: no-one wants to see the "real" old town from 1970s China because, guess what, it was completely run down and poor AF.

I partially grew up myself in a street of Paris called "rue Mouffetard" in the extremely touristic 5th arrondissement. The name of the street comes from the old French verb "mouffeter", which means to stink: this street used to be famous for smelling like shit because it was a very poor area of Paris back in the old days. Should it have been left as such so that people get to experience the "real" Paris instead of the heavily gentrified "Emily in Paris" version you get today? Anyone with a brain can see how idiotic that is.

Anyhow that's the new - utterly ridiculous - narrative: "the visible Uyghur culture doesn't count because things got redeveloped and updated."

Well, at least the Western media narrative seems to have been downgraded from crimes against humanity to "we don't like their tourism development model" - progress, I guess...

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1984767831095779662

Correction for the French purists ☺️

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1985295364233347319?t=np1UDe5j_Os0whCXn-pDaQ&s=19

I suspect David is right here 👇 And if so it'd be the most ironic possible resolution for the Nexperia debacle.

What the White House factsheet (whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/20…) says about Nexperia is: "China will take appropriate measures to ensure the resumption of trade from Nexperia’s facilities in China, allowing production of critical legacy chips to flow to the rest of the world."

Not a word about the Netherlands or Europe, it says trade will resume FROM CHINA.

So it's entirely possible, even likely, that the deal is that Nexperia China, which effectively split from Nexperia Netherlands after the Dutch seized the company, will become the main contracting party.

Meaning the deal would effectively hand China full operational control of Nexperia's operations while leaving Europe with a hollowed-out shell company.

The theory makes sense: Nexperia China already handled 70% of the actual production for Nexperia overall. The main thing they were getting from Europe were the silicon wafers, which Europe has now stopped sending (reuters.com/world/europe/n…). But those are legacy chips products that Chinese foundries like SMIC and Hua Hong can also produce at scale so the European fabs weren't providing anything irreplaceable.

If this all gets verified, there are so many layers of irony here.

This whole debacle occurred because of the new "BIS 50% rule" introduced by the U.S. in late September that expanded US sanctions to any company that was at least 50% owned by entities on Washington's trade blacklist. Wingtech Technology, the Chinese owner of Nexperia, was added on the blacklist since last December and so Nexperia was going to get sanctioned by the U.S. too. Unless, that is, as the U.S. told the Dutch (ft.com/content/db0198…), they were to seize the company away from its Chinese owners, which is what prompted the Dutch to do exactly that simultaneously to the U.S. introducing the new "BIS 50% rule."

Since then, as part of the deal between Xi and Trump, the U.S. has agreed to suspend this "BIS 50% rule," thereby removing the whole rational the Dutch had to seize the company.

However, probably out of misplaced pride, or rather shame of looking like complete U.S. vassals, the Dutch are ridiculously claiming their seizing the company was unrelated with the "BIS 50% rule" but rather had to do with "mismanagement" by the Chinese CEO of the business who, according to them, was seeking to move Nexperia's manufacturing operations to China and transfer technological knowledge to its Chinese parent company.

Which is laughable: since when does a government seize an entire company because it wants to produce in China, all the more a company that was already producing 70% of its output in China and had Chinese ownership for years? Apparently the Dutch suddenly discovered in September 2025 - coincidentally within 24 hours after the U.S. introduced its "BIS 50% rule" - that a manufacturing footprint established years earlier now posed an urgent national security threat.

If this resolution gets confirmed it's ironies upon ironies:
- Washington created the BIS 50% rule to decouple Chinese firms from Western supply chains. In practice, it may have just decoupled from the Dutch middleman while leaving China with more control
- The Dutch justified their action by claiming it was done to prevent Nexperia moving operations to China and the result of their action seems to have caused this exact outcome
- Trump suspended the BIS 50% rule after having pressured the Dutch to act on it, leaving them holding the bag for a decision made to satisfy American strategic interests that America itself has now walked back
- Europe positioned itself as defending its technological sovereignty and it looks like they'll end up losing both the company and its credibility as a sovereign actor, all the more since the resolution was negotiated between Trump and Xi in South Korea with Europe completely absent from the table Boom: this just got essentially confirmed by Nexperia China in a statement

https://x.com/zzbar/status/1984822064881008689

Extraordinary words by Nvidia's CEO.

In polite terms, he effectively says that the chips export controls on China were one of the most self-destructive decisions ever taken by the US government: x.com/Yuchenj_UW/sta…

He says it caused Nvidia to go "from 95% market share to 0%" in China, and that he "cannot imagine any policymaker thinking that’s a good idea. That whatever policy we implemented caused America to lose one of the largest markets in the world to 0%.”

In a separate interview (linked below) he effectively says that might have lost the US the AI race. Because, as he puts it, "winning" the AI race means that "80% of the world uses the American tech stack" and that, given that China on its own is "50% of AI research" and "30% of the technology market", then them not using the American tech stack means that by definition America is "forfeiting and conceding" the AI race.

In that separate interview he also completely ridicules the narrative - used by the US to justify the export controls - that they were to prevent "dual use" of advanced Western chips for military purposes by China, saying that "no government, surely the Chinese government, is going to be building their defense on Western technology nor does the Pentagon use Chinese chips to build our national security."

So to sum up: in a foolish attempt to slow China's AI development, not only did the US lose its largest market, they may have lost the AI race itself. The other interview 👇

She supports the U.S. waging war against her own country for regime change (theguardian.com/world/2019/may…).

The Nobel "Peace" Prize, being its usual mockery of itself. Basically a reward for the most rabid defendents of a western liberal order, "peace" being a distant afterthought. x.com/NobelPrize/sta… The ideological aspect is crystal clear, see 👇 "Democracy is a precondition for lasting peace"

By which they mean liberal democracy, of course. And it couldn't be more false: the countries that have waged the most wars, by far, over the past few decades were liberal democracies (the US first and foremost).

https://x.com/NobelPrize/status/1976574190049247348

Ok, I looked into this because sometimes claims that "China invents Y" can be somewhat exaggerated. But this is real, and completely insane.

This technology called "Bone 02" (inspired by the well-known "502 glue" in China) has been developed for the past 9 years by a team of orthopedic surgeons in Zhejiang province. The team leads are Professor Fan Shunwu (范顺武, Director of the Orthopedics Department at Zhejiang University) and Lin Xianfeng (researchgate.net/profile/Xianfe…).

It's inspired by oysters because the researchers noticed their extraordinary ability to firmly attach themselves in harsh underwater environment by secreting a special adhesive known as bio-cement, which creates a strong chemical interaction with surfaces and hardens quickly.

The properties of the glue are almost miraculous (sources: news.cn/20250910/1df93… and news.ifeng.com/c/8mVMq4PBdmJ):
- Nearly instant adhesion in blood-soaked wet physiological environments (it just takes 2-3 minutes)
- Extremely strong adhesive properties (bonding tensile force of over 400 pounds - over 181 kg)
- Complete biodegradability that naturally absorbs after about 6 months as the bone heals (no need for secondary surgery previously required in conventional treatments)
- Vast reduction of infection risks related to the traditional metal plates and screws normally needed for bone surgery
- Minimally invasive and rapid surgery since you just need a small opening large enough to apply the glue (as opposed to a complex surgery attaching metal fixations)

This glue could be especially useful for fractures with small bone fragments which are very difficult to fix with metal plates and screws.

The glue has already undergone a proper "prospective, multicenter, blinded, randomized, parallel-controlled, non-inferiority clinical trial" with over 150 patients (c.m.163.com/news/a/K95S9C0…). They've announced positive results - the glue "achieved seamless bonding of all fracture fragments" - and will soon publish the peer-reviewed paper in an orthopedics journal detailing full trial data.

They've launched a company for the product called 源囊生物 (Yuannang Bio) which just raised 2 weeks ago RMB100 million in Series A financing (bydrug.pharmcube.com/news/detail/ef…). 😅 x.com/LaowaiLaogai/s…

They could also do:
- "Yes, China's bone glue works, but at what cost?" (a classic)
- "China's bone glue is part of its biological warfare on the West"
- "Congress demands investigation into 'Dual-Use' nature of Chinese oyster technology"
- "Did China just weaponize oysters?"
- "Oysters are a Western mollusk: experts say China's bone glue violates the Convention on the Law of the Sea"
- "Oysters evolved in Europe 60 million years ago -here's how China stole their essence"

The Guardian isn't even trying anymore, just going for basic "darkness v light" propaganda, including the holy halo around the head of the pro-EU politician 😅

The story (theguardian.com/world/2025/sep…) focuses entirely on supposed "Kremlin interference" but doesn't as much as mention that:
- a) the current pro-EU government just barred two pro-Russian political parties just 2 days before the elections (and one day before this article was written)
- b) that Moldova literally has its elections supervised by the EU on the ground, including (according to Kaja Kallas: x.com/RnaudBertrand/…) a "specialist team... to address illicit financing around the elections" and "a hybrid rapid response team [fighting] against the foreign interference"

So the side of the "light" is literally banning opposition parties at the last minute, and having foreign teams actively helping them shape electoral outcomes on the ground.

And they make the story all about "Russian interference". This isn't even remotely journalism, this is just stenographing for one side. And then there's this 👇 Only 2 polling stations opened in the whole of Russia for Moldovans who live there to vote, vs 301 in the EU

https://x.com/DD_Geopolitics/status/1972175689404370969?t=RTO7B7NHGQ5zCbodAnFBZw&s=19

Yesterday we had a fascinating tour of the ICC, in The Hague, with the opportunity to speak with some senior people there.

The main reflection I get from the visit is that this place is a fascinating - yet tragic - illustration of the paradox between our ability to institutionalize idealism and our inability to surrender cynicism.

In many ways this place is a monument to what we could be if we weren't what we are.

First of all, there's no overstating how ambitious - even idealistic - the vision for the ICC is. When you think about it, it's even incredible it ever got created: a court that can prosecute sitting heads of state in order to transform the logic of "might makes right" into something closer to "right constrains might."

Together with the UN, I really can't think of a more ambitious attempt to change the operating system of international relations itself.

But here comes the cynicism and the limitations: the place created to constrain might doesn't have any might itself, it relies on that of those whose might it is tasked to constrain... In some way we created a referee who needs to control a game where the players ultimately decide whether fouls count.

This tension is very palpable when you're on site, and particularly when it comes to the Palestine case which the institution is obviously shaken by.

As a reminder, the U.S. and Israel are pulling all the stops to impede the procedure: the U.S. imposed unprecedented sanctions on ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan in February 2025 (whitehouse.gov/presidential-a…), followed by four judges in June (state.gov/releases/offic…) - including asset freezes, travel bans extending to their families, and threats to any individual or entity that dares to work with them.

The U.S. is, of course, not an ICC member state but what I could measure when visiting is the extent to which member states - EU countries in particular - have been complicit in both the intimidation campaign and the practical neutering of the Prosecution and the court.

It would for instance be enough for the EU to use its Blocking Statute to issue directives to their financial institutions and businesses to not apply the U.S. sanctions relating to the ICC, its Prosecutor and Judges for the sanctions to lose most of their bite. After all, what is the U.S. going to do - sanction the entire European banking system and all EU businesses? They would effectively be sanctioning themselves.

The fact that this hasn't happened, that to my knowledge no EU leader has even suggested it, illustrates not only once more the pathetic weakness of EU leaders but also the tragic truth at the heart of this whole enterprise: we built an institution that in-fine relies on the willingness of politicians to stand for principles when standing costs something. It may work when you have some actual De Gaulle-like statesmen in charge but not with the current crop of unprincipled managers of decline. And in any case, any institution whose survival depends on the courage of politicians is by definition built on sand.

A common criticism of the ICC is that it mostly goes after weaker African states. I believe that it was at some point even nicknamed the "International Caucasian Court" for that reason.

But when you look at the very architecture of it, you understand much better why that might be the case. Not because there's some actual evil intent there - the people we saw are all surely very committed to their principles and to justice - but simply because the court can only function where power permits it to function. It's like asking why a sailboat only sails where there's wind - it's not the captain's preference, it's physics. The ICC doesn't have an Africa bias; it has a weakness bias.

And, as we've seen, the moment it tried to expand beyond those boundaries, suddenly everyone discovers sovereignty and they get sanctions, threats, etc.

Which means that the world as it currently works effectively cannot tolerate international justice but merely a sophisticated form of victor's justice, dressed in the robes of universality, despite the best intentions of those who staff it, who find themselves cast as both the guardians of humanity's conscience and the proof of its absence.

In the end, the ICC is exactly what I said at the beginning: a monument to what we could be if we weren't what we are, maintained by people brave enough to pretend, if only within those walls, that we're already something better.

It's arguably better than nothing: even monuments to our hypocrisy remind us that we know what we should be doing instead, so that we might - might - one day do it. While in The Hague, we also went to check out the ICJ, the other big international law organization based here (in the so-called "Peace Palace").

Unfortunately in that case we couldn't visit the building, we just took some pictures from the outside.

That's probably one of least known yet coolest facts about China: in almost all large cities (that I've seen) people swim or fish in the rivers.

This is Liangma river in Beijing 👇 Other example (my video) in Shenyang 👇

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1677953679272611841

I have to say, there's something immensely ironic about the Dalai Lama arguing his reincarnation should be determined by a tax-exempt Swiss foundation incorporated in Zurich (dalailamafoundation.org/who-we-are/the…), while Beijing insists on maintaining the traditional centuries-old Golden Urn selection process.

And the even bigger irony is that everyone will doubtlessly denounce China for "destroying Tibetan traditions and culture" for doing so. 👇

To illustrate just how nonsensically these tariffs were calculated, take the example of Lesotho, one of the poorest countries in Africa with just $2.4 billion in annual GDP, which is being struck with a 50% tariff rate under the Trump plan, the highest rate among all countries on the list.

Why? Does Lesotho apply extortionate tariffs on U.S. products and the U.S. is merely being "reciprocal" here? Not at all, despite what Trump is saying, it's NOT the way these tariffs are defined.

As a matter of fact Lesotho, as a member of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), applies the common external tariff structure established by this regional trade bloc.

Which means it applies the same tariffs on U.S. products as South Africa does, as well as the 3 other members of the bloc: Namibia, Eswatini and Botswana.

So since the tariffs charged by these 5 countries on U.S. products are exactly the same, they must all be struck with a 50% tariff rate by the U.S., right? Not at all: South Africa is getting 30%, Namibia 21%, Botswana 37% and Eswatini just 10%, the lowest rate possible among all countries.

So what gives? Again, the way these tariffs are calculated has absolutely zero relationship with actual tariffs imposed by these countries on U.S. products. Instead, they appear to be simply derived from trade deficit calculations.

Looking at Lesotho specifically, every year the U.S. imports approximately $236 million in goods from Lesotho (primarily diamonds, textiles and apparel) while exporting only about $7 million worth of goods to Lesotho (wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile…).

Why do they export so little? Again this is an extremely poor country where 56.2% of the population lives with less than $3.65 a day (databankfiles.worldbank.org/public/ddpext_…), i.e. $1,300 a year. They simply can't afford U.S. products, no-one is going to buy an iPhone or a Tesla on that sort of income...

The way the tariffs are ACTUALLY calculated appears to be based on a simplistic and economically senseless formula: you take the trade deficit the U.S. has with a country, divide it by that country's exports to the U.S and declare this - falsely - "the tariff they charge on the U.S."

And then as Trump did in his speech last night, you magnanimously declare that you'll only "reciprocate" by charging half that "tariff" on them.

As such, for Lesotho, the calculation goes like this: ($236M - $7M)/$235M = 97%. That's the "tariff" Lesotho is deemed to charge this U.S. and half of that, i.e. roughly 50% is what the U.S. "reciprocates" with.

It's extremely easy to see why this makes no sense at all.

First of all, there's nothing Lesotho can do about it: they can't change tariffs they allegedly charge the U.S. to reduce the tariff rate the U.S. "reciprocates" with because, again, it's NOT based on any tariff that they charge.

Similarly they can't do much about reducing the trade deficit they have with the U.S. because, again, they simply don't have enough money to buy U.S. products.

Also the main rational Trump gave for the tariffs is to get production back to the U.S., to "bring manufacturing back". 47.3% of Lesotho's exports are diamonds: how do you bring the "manufacturing" of that "back to the U.S."? Anyone can see it makes just about zero sense.

The Lesotho example exposes the fundamental economic incoherence of these tariffs. Rather than addressing actual trade barriers, they punish countries based on trade deficits that arise from structural economic realities. All the more countries like Lesotho which pose zero competitive threat to American industry.

Worse yet, these tariffs will likely make these structural realities even worse: the U.S. is Lesotho's second most important export destination so it's a fair bet that applying 50% tariffs on their products will make people in Lesotho even poorer, and therefore even LESS able to afford U.S. products.

But perhaps the most unfair and detrimental aspect of all this is that these tariffs represent a complete reversal of longstanding U.S. development policy, and therefore a betrayal of countries - like Lesotho - who chose to follow U.S. advice in the past.

For decades the U.S. has used preferential trade access to encourage economic development in the world's poorest nations, recognizing that trade, not just aid, could get them out of poverty and ultimately put them in a position where they too could afford iPhones or Tesla.

They're now effectively penalizing countries for following previous U.S. policy, a lesson which I bet they won't forget anytime soon.

So all in all the irony is painful: in the name of fighting unfair trade, America has just demonstrated what truly unfair trade looks like.

This isn't something designed to address genuine trade issues, but simply a mechanism based on arbitrary math to punish countries for the affront of selling more to the United States than they buy. The arbitrary math used to define the tariffs (which has nothing to do with tariffs charged on the U.S.) was just unwittingly confirmed by Deputy White House Press Secretary Kush Desai, in a way that shows he himself doesn't understand it 👇😅

https://x.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/1907657860793696281

This could potentially be quite transformational for peace in Ukraine and for Europe generally: welt.de/politik/auslan…

German newspaper Welt Am Sonntag, citing "EU diplomatic sources familiar with the matter", reports that "China proposed to the EU to participate in the 'Coalition of the Willing'" so as to "increase Russia's acceptance of peacekeeping forces in Ukraine."

Russia has so far vehemently rejected the idea of European peacekeeping troops in Ukraine but could indeed potentially be swayed if China were to be part of the coalition.

Such a move would also of course have the potential to fundamentally change the nature of EU-China relations and mark a huge shift in the continent's security architecture, where China would be an alternative security partner to the US in European affairs.

It would also strategically position Europe in a much more enviable position were it wouldn't be at the mercy of Washington's every whims, and could leverage competition between Beijing and Washington in a way that'd enhance its sovereignty and bargaining position.

All that being said, given the EU's proven history of diplomatic incompetence and strategic inertia, this scenario is more likely than not to remain theoretical. Some people reply that this could be fake news because this is inconsistent with China's historical position BUT it isn't: China was already one of the guarantor states in the 2022 draft "Treaty on Permanent Neutrality and Security Guarantees for Ukraine" negotiated in Istanbul (see screenshot, from here static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/d…).

2022 treaty on which Lavrov said a peace deal must be based ("Our approach to the potential settlement has not changed: we are ready for dialogue on the basis of the 2022 agreements", mid.ru/en/foreign_pol…) 🤷