Last year, I wrote a 100+ page thesis on China's AI industrial policy. It covers Beijing's spending across: (1) basic R&D, (2) chips, (3) B2G partnerships, and (4) traditional subsidies. Over the next few days, I'll break down the paper's findings, starting today with R&D.🧵

Read together with Yascha Mounk esp this new piece that picks up several themes he’s explored in other recent work thedispatch.com/article/trump-…

Why Vietnam Will Not Balance Against China – The Diplomat thediplomat.com/2025/07/why-vi…

1/ A gruesome vid appeared online showing uniformed fighters in Suwayda forcing 3 Druze men to jump to their death from a balcony. Some claim it's an old ISIS-clip. It is not. I found the exact location, I identified the victims &spoke to their family members. Thread:

About freaking time

"So how should 🇨🇳 respond? It comes down to three characters—the first is “expose” [破]. What does this entail? It means exposing #Taiwan’s #democracy as fake democracy—a low-quality, dysfunctional version of democracy." This is Part 2 of Zhong Houtao's talk: [KEY POINTS] 🧵

Wild stuff

Important & useful 🧵

Forced labour is STILL happening. This video shows that state-imposed forced labour isn’t fading – it’s expanding. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism The New York Times went through tens of thousands of videos on Chinese social media (posted by Uyghurs), govt docs & company statements. What they found is shocking:

Chinese-made engines are being covertly shipped via front companies to a state-owned drone manufacturer in Russia, labelled as "industrial refrigeration units" to avoid detection in the wake of Western sanctions, according to 3 European security officials reuters.com/business/aeros…

Great new piece from Aaron Rhodes in Foreign Policy on the Trump administration & #HumanRights foreignpolicy.com/2025/07/24/tru…

It's almost like these international institutions are intentionally trying to make themselves irrelevant & ridiculous by insisting that states do things that they are not actually obligated to do and which these institutions have no capability to enforce. 🤦🏼‍♀️

Why is ⁦Treasury Department⁩ delisting Burmese arms traffickers who manage the supply of Russian weapons to the regime? What is going on? ofac.treasury.gov/recent-actions…

Seems Jensen just wants to make sure he’s getting paid thru the front door instead of having to deal with the hassle of smuggling chips to the CCP/PLA

CLEO PASKAL: A U.S. governor from American soil just died suddenly. He was fighting CCP infiltration in the Northern Mariana Islands, where Chinese nationals can still enter visa-free. Billion-dollar casinos. Fake IDs. Even illegal entry to U.S. military bases. Cleo Paskal

Here is Spain’s Minister of Transportation calling the French Jewish children who were kicked off the plane “Israelis.”

April 24 letter from US Gov Palacios requesting FBI Director Kash Patel be asked to do "intensive investigations of public corruption" in CNMI, mentioning he has "considerable evidence to provide". July 1 FBI letter CLOSING CNMI corruption investigation. July 23 Gov. Palacios dies.

lol yes