While President Trump seesaws between punishing or not punishing Canada and Mexico with tariffs, he has shown no such hesitation when it comes to China. Upon returning to the Oval Office, he doubled the 10% tariff on Chinese exports to …
Trump’s reverse-Nixon manoeuvre
As the world reels from the scenes of the televised boxing match between Zelensky and Trump, with Vance egging the fight on, we are in danger of losing sight of what the encounter reveals about Trump’s priorities. Though it was …
The roots of Trump’s realpolitik
President Trump’s attempt to end the war in Ukraine has enraged liberal internationalists on both sides of the Atlantic. Dealing directly with the Kremlin and going over the heads of America’s European allies, publicly belittling Ukraine and its leader, and …
Pete Hegseth and the defence revolution
“It was just a fucking mess.” That’s how Pete Hegseth, President Trump’s new Defense Secretary, describes America’s post-9/11 wars. We are aboard his plane, flying home to Washington from Guantanamo Bay, where he had spent the day overseeing migrant-removal operations. …
China is back in business
In his glory days, Jack Ma, billionaire founder of Alibaba, was hailed as the embodiment of Chinese innovation. The young and online christened him “Daddy Ma”, and dreamed of emulating his rags-to-riches life story — from a humble English teacher …
Keir Starmer’s foolish China strategy
Last month’s release of DeepSeek’s latest AI model shattered assumptions about Silicon Valley’s technological exceptionalism. Some have even called it China’s “Sputnik moment”. But China’s rise to the frontier of AI is no accident. It is the product of decades …
Steve Bannon is ready for war
“Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant. He wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, values, or traditions.” Steve Bannon doesn’t hold back when I meet him in the basement of …
China’s unstoppable STEM army
Donald Trump called it a “wake-up call”; Marc Andreessen called it a “Sputnik moment”. By all accounts, the release of DeepSeek’s R1 model was a bombshell. Not only is the Chinese AI model highly intelligent, but it was supposedly far …
TikTok girls like me are just fine
As a 16-year-old girl living in New York City, I’m part of a cohort that’s often talked about — as a matter of head-shaking concern among politicians, academics, and journalists — but rarely heard from: as creatures with greater agency …
A trade war could crash China
Even though it is Chinese New Year this week, Beijing has wasted no time in hitting back at Trump’s additional 10% tariff on all US imports from China. For now, though, this remains a mere skirmish, yet to escalate into …
How DeepSeek triggered a tech tantrum
A few days before the Lunar New Year, and barely a week into the new Trump administration, China dropped a bombshell. With most of the West completely transfixed by the promise of AI, and stock market valuations now completely tethered …
TikTok: weapon of mass distraction
For thousands of years, humans sought to subjugate their enemies by inflicting pain, misery and terror. But as our understanding of psychology has developed, it has become easier to evoke other emotions as a method of control. As such, even …
Will China go to war with Trump?
It’s still before dawn when hundreds of Chinese missiles begin to rain down on Taiwan. Much of the self-governing island’s air and naval forces are obliterated in a matter of minutes. Chinese special forces storm the residence and offices of …
Is Elon the new Enoch?
In the opening of E. H. Gombrich’s A Little History of the World, there’s a lovely metaphor of the work of an historian. History, he writes, is like a bottomless well stretching into eternity, visible only by human recollection falling …
China’s stooges: the real Covid conspiracy
The World Health Organisation ended 2024 by reminding us that it is five years since it discovered a virus was sweeping through the Chinese city of Wuhan. These were the first signs of the pandemic that went on to destroy …
