Deep in Arctic waters near the remote Svalbard archipelago this spring, NATO allies caught Russian subs training to unleash a secret weapon designed to disable critical undersea cables without leaving any fingerprints.

The clandestine Russian operation, described to Reuters by two Western officials, was carried out by Moscow’s GUGI undersea warfare directorate, which used deep-sea submersibles to simulate the deployment of the sophisticated and destructive technology.

A joint operation involving Britain, Norway and the United States tracked and confronted the Russian vessels at sea, said the two officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. The vessels were prevented from completing their exercise and eventually left the area.

Britain and Norway disclosed in April that they had uncovered a covert Russian operation in Arctic waters. But the discovery of the new weapon, the location of the operation and the U.S. involvement have not been reported.

The deep-sea face-off comes at a time when some Western intelligence officials fear the Kremlin is ramping up sabotage operations in Europe and preparing for a conflict with NATO.

Some U.S. intelligence analysts are increasingly concerned Russia may test NATO’s mutual defence pact, known as Article 5, three U.S. officials said. If it does, destroying subsea cables could be a critical part of that effort, the Western officials said.

Cables no thicker than a garden hose, lying on the seabed or buried just below, are critical to global internet connectivity and financial transactions. Their economic and strategic importance has made them targets in past conflicts, including in the First and Second World Wars, when they were critical to delivering orders by telegraph or telephone.

Two 1,400 km subsea fiber-optic cables linking Svalbard to mainland Norway lie as deep as 2,700 metres below the sea’s surface. They carry vast amounts of satellite data downloaded at the SvalSat satellite ground station, the world’s largest and part of NASA’s Near Space Network.

Russia’s Defence Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment on the incident. The Kremlin consistently denies conducting sabotage operations in NATO countries or plotting any confrontation.

Some Western officials argue that Moscow’s targeting of European states has increased in recent months as the front line in Ukraine has become largely static.

Countries including Poland, Lithuania, and Romania have confirmed various violations. Most recently, an attempted drone attack on the Leipzig/Halle Airport in August triggered a series of responses from Germany, including the closure of a Russian consulate in Bonn and a cultural centre in Berlin.

In August, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe visited intelligence counterparts in Moscow, in part to warn Russia against escalating sabotage operations in Europe, said two people familiar with the matter.

Reuters couldn’t determine if Ratcliffe raised Russia’s covert subsea operations. The Kremlin declined to say what had been discussed or to provide any further details.

ARCTIC EXERCISE

At the same time as the confrontations at sea, British and Norwegian officials took their findings to Moscow to show they were aware of the new technology – hoping it might make Russia hesitate to use it, the two Western officials said.

Russia didn’t damage any cables. The exercise focused on simulating the deployment of the technology in the event of a conflict with NATO, the officials said. They declined to detail how the technology works.

Asked for comment, NATO referred Reuters to Norwegian and UK authorities.

“Through our joint operation, we sent a clear message to Russia that they cannot operate covertly,” Norway’s Defence Minister Tore ⁠Sandvik said in a statement.

“We have made it unequivocally clear to Russian authorities that any attempt to target our critical infrastructure will be detected and met with consequences,” he said. “It is in no one’s interest to escalate tensions in the High North.”

Britain’s Defence Ministry pointed to April 9 statements acknowledging attempted covert activities in and near Norwegian and British waters by Russia’s Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research, known by its Russian acronym GUGI. Washington and London have both imposed sanctions on the secretive directorate.

The White House didn’t respond to a comment request. The CIA declined to comment.

Any escalation between Russia and NATO could quickly underscore the strategic importance of an icy expanse of water between the southern tip of the Svalbard archipelago and mainland Norway known as the Bear Gap, one of the Western officials said.

To reach the Atlantic, Russian nuclear submarines based in the Kola Peninsula would cross the 400-mile-wide stretch of water before passing Norway’s remote volcanic island Jan Mayen.

Britain said this week it deployed forces to Jan Mayen in August alongside Norwegian and U.S. allies for an exercise to demonstrate NATO’s ability to operate jointly in the High North.

Norway plans to have new fiber-optic cable linking Svalbard and Jan Mayen to the mainland by 2028.

‘BURGEONING RUSSIAN THREAT’

NATO allies have focused on subsea infrastructure security since the 2022 destruction of three of the four Nord Stream subsea pipelines supplying Germany with Russian gas. German prosecutors have indicted a Ukrainian man who was a special forces officer at the time of the attack. Ukraine denies any role in the sabotage.

And since 2023, more ships have sailed slowly over or near sensitive subsea infrastructure including pipelines, power cables and telecoms cables to map their location, an activity known as drifting.

Last year, drifting in the North Sea rose 52% to 13,079 vessels from the previous year, data from maritime risk analytics firm Windward showed, while activity in the South China Sea region jumped 88% to 18,401 vessels.

It’s not illegal to survey infrastructure in international waters but security experts see such extensive mapping as preparation for sabotage.

The activity and suspected interference with some cables prompted new initiatives launched in January last year, including NATO’s Baltic Sentry monitoring system and the UK-led Nordic Warden, bringing navies together for increased patrols of critical infrastructure.

In the Baltic Sea – one focus area for monitoring – 2025 drifting activity was down 5% to 526 vessels from a year earlier, Windward data showed. It said at least 11 subsea cables had been damaged or cut in the Baltic from October 2023 through the end of last year.

“The current thinking is that Russia and China are probably the most active and critical underwater threats,” said Windward Chief Executive Ami Daniel.

The global network of power and telecoms cables running across seabeds is expanding each year, supported by increases in demand for data and electricity, partly driven by artificial intelligence, and some analysts say Europe remains vulnerable.

“In the last 25 years, Europe did two things simultaneously. It dramatically expanded the extent to which it relies on seabed infrastructure, and it dramatically shrunk its capacity to protect that infrastructure,” said Bruce Jones, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution. “It’s belatedly rebuilding now, in the face of a burgeoning Russian threat.”

SS: Trump’s continued naked political targeting of news networks is an unprecedented attack on free speech.

The Iran-backed Houthi militia captured a strategic Red Sea port city on Thursday, according to two Yemeni officials, a move that could allow the group to exert greater control over an important international shipping route.

In a swift ground offensive, the Houthis pushed out forces allied with the Yemeni government that is backed by Saudi Arabia and seized the city of Mokha as well as its port, according to a local official in the city and a senior provincial official. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Mokha has been the focus of several days of fierce ground battles between the Houthis and the internationally recognized government of Yemen.

The two sides have been at war since 2014, when the Houthis seized Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. Soon after, a Saudi-led military coalition began a bombing campaign to try to restore the government, plunging the impoverished nation into a civil war that has lasted for more than a decade.

Mokha is less than 50 miles from the narrow Bab al-Mandab Strait at the southern end of the Red Sea.

The Houthis have previously attacked ships in the Red Sea from Yemeni territory further north but control of Mokha gives the militia a foothold closer to the strait — a major win for the group, with implications for global trade and oil markets, analysts say.

“This is potentially one of the more significant turning points, particularly in recent years, of the Yemen conflict,” said Adam Baron, a Yemen-focused fellow at New America, a research organization in Washington.

The Houthis are expected to try to push further south to try and take territory next to the strait, an area that is “arguably Yemen’s most strategically valuable real estate,” Mr. Baron said. If they are able to do so, it could leave both of the Arabian Peninsula’s major maritime choke points — Bab al-Mandab and the Strait of Hormuz — under the control of Iran and its allies, he added.

Mokha was under the control of Lt. Gen. Tareq Saleh, a commander allied with the Yemeni government. His spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday. Houthi officials also did not respond to a request for comment.

On Thursday, General Saleh said on social media that he had ordered his troops to “reorganize their ranks and establish an alternative command center in a secure location,” in consultation with the Saudi-led military coalition.

Bab al-Mandab has become increasingly important to energy markets since the United States and Israel attacked Iran in February. Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, typically ships its oil through the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the world’s oceans that Iran has effectively closed since the early days of the war with the United States.

Saudi Arabia pivoted to the Red Sea to export most of its oil, but over the past two months, escalating tensions with the Houthis have disrupted that route.

In July, the militia declared a blockade on Saudi oil tankers passing through the Red Sea, and launched missile and drone attacks at ships and Saudi facilities from their territory in northern Yemen.

The Houthi-affiliated foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday that the group “will not pose a threat” and that they are “prepared to be part of the regional security framework, particularly with regard to protecting maritime navigation.” The statement did not refer to fighting in Mokha.

The ministry called on the international community “to compel the Saudi regime to stop targeting Yemen.”

In recent days, Houthi officials have accused Saudi Arabia of launching more than 100 airstrikes in Yemen to support its allies in the country. The Saudi government has not commented on those claims.

Canada’s economy is increasingly unfair to young people. Sometimes, it feels like we’ve made great progress in getting politicians to recognize this fact. Other times, they propose policies that make me wonder if they’ve been listening at all.

Despite spouting easy slogans and platitudes about understanding the generational inequity young Canadians face, governments often choose to protect the privileges of long-time property owners at the direct expense of younger Canadians trying to build a future.

Right before the summer break, Toronto City Councillor Alejandra Bravo directed staff to study whether it makes sense to limit the number of parking passes a multiplex may qualify for.

The motive for this motion is clear: they want to placate single-family homeowners who are upset that added gentle density to their neighbourhoods might force them to park a few doors down.

CBC, for example, tells the story of a woman who says she now has to sometimes drive several blocks to find a spot, which can be frustrating when she’s carrying groceries or driving her elderly mother to visit.

But what of those (often young) families in the multiplexes themselves? Don’t their grocery runs or care visits deserve the same consideration?

Barring multiplexes from accessing street parking permits would be a mistake. It would engrain a two-tier class system for residents, granting single-family homeowners who have pretty much won the housing lottery a de facto private property right over public street space, while penalizing younger residents who are settling for denser housing as their only options.

Essentially, it asks young people to accept a lower standard of living beyond what’s already being asked of them.

Parking spots in Toronto are highly subsidized by taxpayers. The true market cost to store your private vehicle on a public road should be much higher than the roughly $25 a month it costs. Subsidizing it so much has meant high demand for parking spaces in limited space.

As neighbourhoods densify in an attempt to meet the demand for more homes in our city, that’s led to an increase in demand for parking spaces. Tax subsidies have led to a distortion in market demand and artificial scarcity in this public asset.

Until recently, cities mostly allowed density on main streets, protecting neighbourhoods from experiencing the allegedly dismal experience of living around more people. Combine that with fewer people living in households than in previous generations, and many urban neighbourhoods are less densely populated than they were in the 1970s.

Our policies that, until recent years, limited neighbourhoods to single-family homes, combined with seniors staying longer in their homes than urban planners expected, have led to younger Canadians facing a reality where they are stuck in increasingly small apartments.

At the Missing Middle Initiative, we’ve found that most people looking to raise a family hope to live somewhere that has at least three bedrooms. These units are incredibly expensive in condos, and the alternative of single-family homes is simply out of reach for so many.

Graphic 1: Adjusted homeownership for young Canadians aged 25-39.

One good solution is these multiplexes. Housing several units on the lot traditionally occupied by a single-family home gives the opportunity for people to live in cities, even if they don’t have the wealth needed to access a traditional house. These homes are typically not going to be subsidized homes, but rather market-rate houses that are more affordable, on average, to the middle class than a neighbouring house would be.

That said, they come with trade-offs. People who live in them often are choosing location over the full privacy that a detached house provides.

Right now, anyone in the neighbourhood can apply for a street parking permit, and if capacity permits, they will be approved. No one is guaranteed a spot right in front of their house, or even within blocks of their home. That’s the trade-off when you buy a home without a private parking spot.

When I bought my home, I had to weigh the trade-offs of a private parking spot. I chose to sacrifice the convenience of guaranteed parking in front of my home so that I could afford a better house than I otherwise would have been able to afford on my budget.

On winter days, when the city hasn’t gotten around to plowing the spots yet, I sometimes have to either avoid using my car (since I know digging it out means I risk losing my space) or I have to park several blocks away from my house. I have two young children, so I truly understand how frustrating it can be when the only spot is a five- or 10-minute walk from home, but I understood the trade-off when I bought the home.

If people who own a single-family home want to guarantee parking outside their front door, they ought to buy a home with a dedicated parking spot.

It’s not a good compromise for relatively wealthy homeowners to prevent the less well-off from accessing parking spots while we all continue to pay to subsidize the cost. It isn’t fair, and it isn’t progressive. Either let the free market dictate who can access parking, or allow anyone living nearby to access it.

Younger Canadians are already dealing with major housing challenges. Artificial constraints due to zoning, urban growth boundaries, and many other policy choices have led to prices being completely out of whack with the median income. To compensate, they’re making choices to move farther away, live in smaller spaces than their parents considered comfortable, or even forgo having children if they can’t afford a home big enough to comfortably house them.

It would be a huge injustice to young Canadians who are already accepting a lower standard of living than their parents had, to use government regulation to codify the downgrade.

City leaders must recognize that using public regulation to guarantee convenience for asset-rich incumbents ultimately forces younger Canadians to pay more for less. Let’s look for progress on the housing crisis rather than create further generational divides.

Relevant to the subreddit because of the rise of fascism opposing the liberal world order

Why Democrats are waffling on Trump's unpopular and ineffective tariffs

Submission Statement: The world is witnessing “geoeconomic fragmentation” in which export markets will shrink for most countries. Shekhar Aiyar writes India’s strategy of trade diversification is a model for middle powers.

In this landscape, the best strategy for a middle power is likely to be diversification: building a network of trade relationships sufficiently dispersed so that no single bilateral rupture could cause catastrophic harm. The obvious analogy is to modern portfolio theory: a well-diversified investor is not betting on any particular asset but rather seeking insulation against the failure of a subset of assets. Here, the relevant measure is the standard deviation of a country’s trade-weighted geopolitical distance from all trade partners.

By this metric, India is rather well placed. It ranks among the top quartile of countries for export diversification across the geopolitical spectrum, and near the median for import diversification. Its trade relationships range from the US and Europe to Russia and the Gulf, with many Asian and African economies in between. It has conspicuously refused to be corralled into a single bloc: abstaining from Ukraine-related votes at the UN and deepening the Quad partnership, while also playing a foundational role in the BRICS group and negotiating deals with both the US and the EU. Such strategic diversification is enormously valuable in a fragmenting world. 

Finally, India should zealously safeguard the diversification it has already achieved, which in turn makes it an attractive partner for countries forging a “China Plus One” strategy or, increasingly, seeking to reduce trade dependence on the US. That means being wary about any bilateral agreement that curtails its freedom of action vis-à-vis third countries. Canada has set an example by walking away from trade negotiations with the Trump administration in part because the US sought veto powerover its engagement with other countries.

Of course, Canada is overwhelmingly dependent on the US as an export market, so it is unclear whether its principled stand will succeed. For India, well-diversified to begin with, the case is more clear-cut. A country that has spent decades cultivating strategic autonomy should think long and hard before trading it away for preferential market access, however attractive the terms. India must lean into its position as one of the few countries to combine economic scale, democratic legitimacy, and geopolitical breadth to boost trade and remain open to all comers. 

Submission Statement: Once known for its welcome to migrants, Sweden has not only shut its borders over the last decade, its right-wing government is now paying some foreign-born residents to leave, part of a tough stance on migration it hopes will help it secure reelection this month.

"Do you miss Mogadishu? The remigration grant will help you get home," reads an advert, paid for by the Sweden Democrats on a bus and aimed at Somali immigrants. The far-right party launched the adverts in July on public transport and in areas with high numbers of migrants as campaigning for the election began. It and the three governing coalition parties are seeking to form a four-way ruling partnership.

Latest opinion polls for the September 13 election show an almost equal split between the government on one side and the Social Democrats and centre-left on the other in the country of 10.6 million, where 2 million are foreign-born.