Vladimir Putin has a theory of victory in Ukraine. It’s not the Russian president’s first theory – that was a quick, dayslong campaign – nor his second or third, which involved different land offensives in the east that quickly petered out. Instead, Putin’s latest hypothesis is that the relentless bombing of Ukrainian cities will impose […]

The post Polling: scorched earth isn’t driving Ukrainians to sue for peace appeared first on Asia Times.

America’s mid-term congressional elections on November 3rdwill mark the beginning of the final two years of the Trump administration and thus the nearing of a potentially historic moment of reckoning for that country’s estranged allies. The reckoning may seem like a long way ahead, but in what historians will see as just the blink of […]

The post Time for the West to plan ahead for post-Trump 2029 appeared first on Asia Times.

Recently, Kim Yo-jong, the younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, warned that Pyongyang could take strong retaliatory measures if Seoul continues activities it considers provocative. To casual observers, this may appear to be just another routine exchange of verbal threats between the two Koreas. However, a closer examination of the current situation suggests […]

The post Is the Korean Peninsula moving closer to war? appeared first on Asia Times.

Russia is courting the Taliban with one hand and arming the Taliban’s neighbor with the other. Moscow was the first country to recognize the Taliban, a diplomatic coup it has since tried to turn to its advantage. Now it is rushing weapons and border equipment to Tajikistan to guard against threats from Afghan soil. The […]

The post Russia torn between wooing Taliban and protecting Central Asia appeared first on Asia Times.

Indonesia’s leaders promise that the country will be a world power by 2045, the centennial of its independence. Yet when shares plunge or smoke drifts abroad, officials reflexively blame foreigners. That blame game asks nothing of those in charge. Who really owns our listed companies? Who wins contracts through political connections? Who burns the peatland? […]

The post Chasing foreign phantoms in Prabowo’s embattled Indonesia appeared first on Asia Times.

Anthropic, developer of AI chatbot Claude, has filed its prospectus and is expected to go public on Wall Street in November at a valuation of up to US$2 trillion. That would make it the highest-valued initial public offering (IPO) ever, ahead of SpaceX’s $1.77 trillion listing in June. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is expected […]

The post Anthropic’s record $2tn IPO could bring global risks to a head appeared first on Asia Times.

A leader who stood up to US President Donald Trump just won an election in Latin America’s biggest country, reversing a trend of new right-wing governments in the region over the past two years. Incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, having narrowly lost to Flavio Bolsonaro in the first round of voting on October 5, […]

The post How Lula turned the tables on Brazil’s Trump-inspired right appeared first on Asia Times.

The US needs to creatively combine two counter-drone capabilities it already has and do it quickly to deal with swarm attacks of drones and cruise missiles. The Russians are already doing it. Counter-drone warfare is changing as the push for solutions gains momentum in the United States and worldwide. In modern combat scenarios, drones are […]

The post Combo interceptors best bet for US drone and missile defense appeared first on Asia Times.

The European Union is preparing to extend its curbs on Chinese imports of chemicals, furniture and machinery to fight a “China Shock 2.0,” after Beijing agreed in closed-door talks earlier this month to cap its hybrid car exports to the bloc. The European Commission plans to use safeguard measures to cut imports of chemicals, furniture […]

The post Beijing softens on EU curbs to avoid blame for Europe’s unrest appeared first on Asia Times.

It has been a wild few weeks for the US-Ukraine relationship as Trump, more and more, has been able to be what he always wanted to be: a friend and supporter of Vladimir Putin. It started openly with the diesel deal, which drove a coach and horses through the sanctions regime leveled on Russia, a […]

The post In the Starlink case Trump reacted to pressure, not flattery appeared first on Asia Times.

In 1996, Israel’s then-Prime Minister Simon Peres appeared to be on his way to victory in parliamentary elections that would keep him and his center-left Labor Party in power. On the key issue of peace, he had pledged to provide West Bank and Gaza Strip territory to the Palestinians for a sovereign state. The “land […]

The post Netanyahu hopes voters forget October 7, 2023 appeared first on Asia Times.

China and Russia opened new bridges to North Korea a month apart, a sign that the two countries are competing for the favor of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The Yalu River bridge to China sat unused for more than a decade after its completion in 2014, until Russia began rewarding North Korea for […]

The post Two new bridges show China and Russia competing for North Korea appeared first on Asia Times.

Pro-democracy campaigners urged governments around the world, including in the US, to formally recognize Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva victory in Sunday’s runoff election as his far-right challenger, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, refused to accept the results, sparking fears of political violence and another coup attempt. “It is impossible to recognize the results. I […]

The post US urged to recognize Lula’s Brazil win as foe demands annulment appeared first on Asia Times.

On the eve of a party plenum that has purged 45 of 376 members, China faces its most pressing question: is the model it has adopted right for its historical phase? Beijing is uncertain. Domestically, it faces many problems, and foreign examples offer little reassurance. If the US offers a positive model, Beijing might reconsider, […]

The post The right cat for China? appeared first on Asia Times.

Three weeks ago, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s political obituaries had all been written. The far-right presidential candidate, Flavio Bolsonaro, son of the jailed former President Jair Bolsonaro, had come out of the first round of the presidential election with a lead that looked impossible to overcome. At 80 years old, Lula seemed […]

The post Why Lula’s ‘miracle’ win matters well beyond Brazil appeared first on Asia Times.

Japan’s debate over nuclear-powered submarines is gaining momentum, but political deliberation should not be mistaken for a done deal. As Tokyo prepares to revise its three principal national security documents by the end of 2026, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has opened the door to a long-politically sensitive capability. On October 14, she told parliament that […]

The post Does Japan need nuclear subs? The debate is bigger than China appeared first on Asia Times.

There appears to be little prospect of lasting peace between Iran and the United States while Donald Trump remains in the White House. This is a view that an increasing number of serious actors across the region now seem to share. Eight months into the Iran war, Washington has neither broken Tehran’s resolve nor found […]

The post Why the Middle East is already waiting out Trump’s presidency appeared first on Asia Times.

On October 22, the US Treasury proposed adding biotechnology to the list of Chinese sectors that American capital may no longer finance. A week earlier, China’s Ministry of Commerce had proposed barring the foreign sale of five biomedical technologies, including cell and gene therapy platforms. Two governments that agree on almost nothing moved in the […]

The post The US-China biotech trade war that isn’t appeared first on Asia Times.

Two years ago, every argument about AI was about quality. The machines hallucinated court cases, absorbed biases from their training data, misspelled words in their own images, drew hands with six fingers, and couldn’t count the letters in strawberry. The confident claims that biases and hallucination errors were inherent to machines already sound quaint. Those […]

The post From slop to non-slop: The new big AI theme is quantity appeared first on Asia Times.

A growing share of the world’s electric-vehicle batteries contains nickel from Obi, an Indonesian island where the mining company Harita Group has long paid for goodwill, according to alleged leaked documents published on October 22 by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). When accusations of such payments reach an Indonesian courtroom, accountability usually […]

The post Green batteries built on dirty dealings in Indonesia appeared first on Asia Times.