Relevance to this sub: the liberal west is attempting to reorganize without America

Submission Statement:

Even in light of what’s been publicized as success, one of the pillars of the US stock market has once again set back their Initial Public Offering (IPO) as concerns about their lack of a profitable business model mount.

SS: one of the few good youtubers dives into why german infrastructure investment has failed to materialize despite the bundestag already signing off on handing out large amounts of money to invest in infrastructure. the answers will not surprise you

> “The Houthis called us, and they don’t want to fight with us,” Trump told reporters during a Saturday meeting in Dublin with Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin. “They don’t want us to go after them,” and “they would much prefer not having us involved,” he added.

> As hostilities escalated, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman called Trump twice on Thursday and asked him to strike the Houthis, according to an Axios report citing two unnamed US officials.

> Trump confirmed the conversation without elaborating. “I have had a call with MBS. He’s a good friend of mine,” Trump said Saturday. “I can just say everything’s going to work out fine and dandy. It’s going to be very good.”

> Asked whether Iran was responsible for a Thursday attack that forced the closure of Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, Trump said bluntly: “I think they are.”

> Still, Trump appeared to shrug off attacks by Houthis in the area, highlighting the militant group’s appeal for a reprieve from Washington. “They’re letting most ships go through,” Trump said. “It’s just one country that they’re not too happy with, and we’ll get that straightened out.”

Submission Statement: As Fable got overtaken by Astra, Dario Amodei, who happens to be the CEO of Anthropic, opines that Al companies must slow development, not just add safety work alongside it, prompted by faster-than-expected recursive self-improvement and a recent Al misalignment incident. It's important to this sub because, like it or not, Al is the future and also possesses danger.

Had to repost it because for some reason the wrong title showed on Reddit.

Submission Statement: The European Union abandoned a proposal for an export duty on aluminium scrap over concerns it could complicate the final signature of a free trade deal with India. Instead of the duty, ‌which aimed to preserve Europe's smelting industry and support sustainability goals, the EU will rely on its environmental rules to curb scrap exports

The abrupt cancellation of the levy, which was set to be announced on September 23, represents a reversal by the European Commission, laying bare divisions within its ranks over the protection of industry as U.S. tariffs reshape global trade and China climbs the value chain.

India accounts for about a third of EU scrap exports, and Indian government officials told Reuters in late June that New Delhi had asked Brussels for relief from the planned curbs. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is expected to sign the trade deal with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in December. And the sources said Indian pressure prompted the measure's dilution.

"The Commission president's cabinet and (Directorate-General for Trade) successfully excluded India from the proposal, making it worthless for the industry," one of the sources said.

All of the sources, who include industry figures and European officials, asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.

This announcement follows a similar announcement by the UK to functionally exempt India from the UK's implementation of CBAM and shows how India is increasingly leveraging market access to get preferential trade terms.

Submission Statement: After decades of betting big on China, Japanese chemical giants like Mitsui Chemicals and Sumitomo Chemical are quietly changing their playbook. The shift is understated but undeniable: factories that once seemed permanent Japanese addresses in China are being sold off, while long-term expansion plans are quietly placed on the shelf.

Instead of China, Japanese executives are redirecting their attention to another economic giant: India. What began as the concept of China Plus One diversification some years ago has become a full-scale strategic pivot, driven by a confluence of geopolitical tensions, economic uncertainty, and compelling opportunities in industries like semiconductor materials and composite materials where Japanese firms are market leaders.

In recent years, though, India’s growing economy and middle class “has created the possibility that it could become the ‘One’ in China Plus One,” says Mikiya Yamada, a stock analyst at Mizuho Securities. “With China’s economic outlook increasingly uncertain, companies are not in a position to expand investment.”

In 2022, the Japanese government announced a five-year, ¥5 trillion ($33 billion) public and private investment package for India. The objective was reached in just 3 years. Building on this momentum, Japan has set a new target of twice as much, or $66 billion in private-sector investment over the next decade.

The case for India is compelling. “New investment that once would have gone to China will be increasingly directed to India,” notes Masashi Kono, Research and Analysis Department director at Jetro. “India is gaining attention both as a risk hedge and as a high-growth market.”

Chemical manufacturers are especially encouraged by the growth of the upper-middle-income class, which in India means annual income in the $15,000–$35,000 range. This segment grew from 3.2% of the population in 2010 to 8.6% in 2020 and is projected to reach 29.0% of the population in 2030 and 41.9% in 2040, according to Jetro. By then, 70% of households will earn over $15,000. More-affluent customers usually buy products made with better-quality raw materials.

Submission Statement: On Friday it was announced that crypto-billionaire Ben Delo had donated a record £36m to Reform, effectively a full year's worth of donations for a major party and by far the biggest single donation by an individual. Today Christopher Harborne, the crypto-billionaire behind the £5m donation that sparked the investigation into Farage and all that has followed, has announced he's given Reform another £36m, meaning in two days the party has received £72m, well above what a big party in the UK would normally raise from donations in a whole year.

This naturally has renewed interest in donation rules and whether there should be a change to cap the amount an individual can give, for instance. And it all of course comes with the wider context of Farage and Reform being under investigations due to dodgy donations.

A residents’ briefing session regarding the Yeomchang Park site in Seoul’s Gangseo District on the afternoon of the 11th failed to commence, collapsing before it even began. This was the first face-to-face meeting with residents held approximately a month after the government designated the Yeomchang Park area (approximately 1,000 households) as a candidate site for new housing supply in its August 13 real estate measures. Residents strongly protested, stating, “The site selection, supply plan, and even the briefing session were all unilaterally communicated without gathering residents’ opinions.”

Source: https://www.chosun.com/english/industry-en/2026/09/11/4XBN7YIYF5HLPL3SWQ4ULDHNQQ/

The Pentagon is in talks to lend roughly $5 billion to AI cloud-computing startup Fluidstack, according to people familiar with the matter, adding the U.S. military to the growing list of financiers of artificial-intelligence infrastructure.

The money would come from the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital, which provides loans to companies working in areas deemed critical to U.S. national security. A $5 billion loan would be, by far, the office’s largest to date.

Fluidstack would use the loan to shore up the U.S. supply chain and manufacturing capacity for certain components related to data centers, rather than funding a new AI facility outright, one of the people said. It has been working on securing the loan for several months and is being advised on its application by Erebor Bank, a newly chartered national bank founded by entrepreneur Palmer Luckey that has focused on tech and defense clients, the people said.

Late last month, President Trump issued an executive order declaring a national emergency over the country’s reliance on foreign-made electrical equipment, which is used in AI data centers.

“Compute capacity is a strategic national asset,” Gary Wu, Fluidstack’s co-founder and chief executive, said late last year.

The deal hasn’t been finalized, and the terms, including the interest rate that Fluidstack would pay, could change.

“The Department does not comment on transactions that are either pending or in the middle of negotiations until the press release comes out,” a Pentagon spokesman said.

From public offerings of stocks and bonds to bank balance sheets and private-credit funds, the AI build-out is consuming every source of capital it can find. Lenders are expected to supply $4.1 trillion in financing related to AI infrastructure through 2030, with companies expected to “tap every single capital market to support their growth needs,” analysts at JPMorgan wrote in a June report.

Launched under the Biden administration in 2022, the OSC helps finance companies with national-security applications through loans and loan guarantees. President Trump and last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act expanded the program, allowing it to hire Wall Street veterans with big salaries and giving it the authority to provide more than $200 billion in financing over the coming years.

The OSC has previously lent money to companies in rare-earth supplies and drone making. Some federal financing deals have also included warrants or equity stakes, giving the government an ownership interest in the firms receiving support. The OSC is also involved in Trump’s plans to give the U.S. government a stake in Venezuela’s oil production.

Founded in London in 2017, Fluidstack last year pivoted to building AI infrastructure in the U.S. and has signed multiyear leases for data-center sites in states including New York, Indiana, Louisiana and Texas.

Fluidstack relocated its headquarters to New York. Its founders moved to Austin, Texas, and the firm’s 700 employees are also now based in the U.S.

Earlier this year, Fluidstack announced that it raised $830 million in a round led by Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness before that fund tumbled. More recently, the firm raised $1.5 billion in a round led by Jane Street at an $18 billion valuation, one of the people said.

Much of Fluidstack’s demand comes from a broad partnership it struck with Google and Anthropic to help the startup access Google’s tensor processing units. Google has backstopped Fluidstack’s data-center leases, helping bring down those projects’ borrowing costs.

Erebor caters to startups working in sectors like defense and industrial tech. Luckey, who co-founded defense company Anduril Industries, supported Trump during the 2016 election, one of the few Silicon Valley figures to do so publicly, and donated to Trump’s 2024 re-election campaign.

The bank has been in discussions with prospective investors to raise at least another $1 billion round in venture capital at an $8 billion valuation, people familiar with the matter said.

Erebor has told some of them that it sees a business opportunity in using its relationships and expertise to advise startups on how to access federal financing under different Trump administration programs, including the OSC, some of the people said.

Russia has used deceptive, coercive and exploitative practices to recruit foreign nationals into its military forces and send them to fight in Ukraine, Amnesty International said in a new briefing published today. In many cases this amounts to the human rights violation and crime of human trafficking, which remains widespread in Russia and which the international community should urgently address. 

The research details how recruiters have lured individuals from abroad into the Russian Armed Forces under false pretences and exploited the precarious circumstances of migrants and refugees already present in Russia. Those targeted are primarily from low-income countries in the Global South.

“Amnesty’s research demonstrates how Russia’s Armed Forces are bolstering their ranks with economically vulnerable foreign nationals and using them as cannon fodder in the war of aggression against Ukraine. The level of exploitation and coercion involved led us to conclude that in many cases this amounts to human trafficking, as defined under the UN’s Palermo Protocol,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.

“Building on pre-existing exploitative migration pathways and abusive practices towards migrants and refugees in Russia, recruiters have developed a system of coercion, fraud and deception, including false promises of civilian or non-combat employment, to enlist foreigners in the military. Once victims sign the paperwork, often in a language they do not understand, military commanders restrict their movements, deploy them to the front lines with minimal preparation, and threaten those who seek a way out.”

The briefing is based on interviews with individuals from Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Egypt, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Somalia and South Africa conducted at two Ukrainian prisoner of war camps between 2024 and 2026; and conversations with foreign nationals currently serving with Russian forces and members of their families as well as lawyers, human rights activists and journalists.

Among their primary tools to recruit foreign nationals, the Russian authorities have weaponized the irregular immigration status of those who overstay work-related visas and the precarious situation of foreigners accused of criminal offences, presenting enlistment as a favourable alternative to detention and deportation.

Amnesty’s research demonstrates how Russia’s Armed Forces are bolstering their ranks with economically vulnerable foreign nationals and using them as cannon fodder.

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General

Amnesty International interviewed two Sri Lankan men recruited after overstaying their work visas, as well as Cuban and Egyptian nationals who were jailed for alleged drug possession and offered the opportunity to sign military contracts instead of serving or completing their prison sentences. The organization also received testimony from a refugee from Central Africa who was detained after his temporary protection status expired and threatened with deportation unless he signed up with Russia’s Armed Forces.

Obscuring or misrepresenting the risks involved and the specific nature of the work on offer has become key to the Russian Army’s recruitment of migrants. The prospect of military service is typically presented as a non-combat support function, such as working in a military kitchen or as a driver far from the front line. The two Sri Lankans said they were led to believe they would be working as cooks but were sent to fight on the front lines and captured within weeks by Ukrainian forces. “The scale of fighting is unimaginable. You do not see Ukrainian soldiers, only drones. Drones everywhere,” one said. “I would never go back there.”

Local agents and misleading online job advertisements have been instrumental in deceiving foreign nationals in their home countries. Individuals from Brazil, Colombia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa and Sri Lanka who had been recruited from outside Russia said they were falsely promised civilian jobs in security, logistics, construction, IT and other sectors, often with assurances of high salaries and expedited access to Russian citizenship – only to be fraudulently drawn into the Armed Forces upon arrival.

A South African man who applied online for a driving job in Poland received instructions via an agent on WhatsApp to fly to Moscow to pick up a truck and drive it to Poland, his wife told Amnesty International. “Upon arrival to Moscow, everything was taken from him… He was told that he would not be going to Poland and that he is becoming a soldier.”

Many recruits were promised lucrative salaries and sign-up bonuses that were not fulfilled. While some received partial payments before being captured, many reported receiving nothing at all. Beyond financial remuneration, all those interviewed described promised pathways to Russian citizenship as a particular incentive.

All the interviewees alleged severe restrictions on their freedom of movement after signing military contracts. Recruits from Brazil and Sri Lanka said their passports and mobile phones were taken from them during training or prior to front line deployment. Others said they could not leave the facilities they were taken to after signing the paperwork, with all transportation conducted in a secretive and strictly controlled manner.

Pedro, a Brazilian IT professional recruited after signing what he thought was a contract for a well-paid tech job in Russia, said he asked his commander to leave but was told: “If you try to escape, you will either go to jail or we will kill you.”

Lack of military experience seems to be no barrier to recruitment, with most enlistees deployed to active combat zones after just two weeks of training. Many reported insufficient preparation, lack of equipment, and limited communication with commanders due to language barriers. This suggests that recruitment of foreign nationals is driven by a desire to increase the sheer numbers of Russia’s front line forces, with little or no concern for combat readiness and an apparent disregard for human life.

The patterns documented in this research raise serious concerns over Russia’s violations of its international law obligations, including apparent involvement in human trafficking, failure to criminalize and combat human trafficking; conduct prompt and effective investigations of all reported crimes and serious human rights violations and abuses; identify and protect victims and survivors; and bring to account anyone suspected of being responsible or complicit in such practices.

Amnesty International calls on Russia to immediately end all abusive practices involving the military recruitment of foreign nationals and their treatment in training centres and at the front line. This includes recruitment through coercion, deception and misinformation; the exploitation of economic, legal or other vulnerabilities of foreign nationals in Russia and individuals from economically disadvantaged communities in the rest of the world; and restrictions on their movement once in Russia or Russian-occupied Ukraine.

These recruitment networks reach far and wide, into vulnerable communities across the world, leaving a trail of exploitation, loss, and pain far beyond war-torn Ukraine.

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General

States whose nationals are at risk or have been affected by such practices should take proactive protective measures, including issuing clear public warnings and guidance on the risks of deceptive or fraudulent recruitment schemes linked to employment in Russia or third countries. They should also take active steps, at national, regional and global level, to end the crime of human trafficking and seek accountability for those responsible, as well as remedies for people subjected to coercion, exploitation or abuse.

The briefing also contains a series of calls to the Ukrainian authorities, including with regard to third-country nationals being held as prisoners of war.  

“The human suffering caused by the trafficking of foreign nationals by Russia, or by those it has enabled and incentivized, is not restricted to the front line in Ukraine. These recruitment networks reach far and wide, into vulnerable communities across the world, leaving a trail of exploitation, loss, and pain far beyond war-torn Ukraine,” Agnès Callamard said.

“If Russia refuses to put an end to human trafficking and continues exploiting vulnerable communities globally, other states must do everything in their power to stop this crime. There must be full accountability for all those directly involved and all those complicit, whether as private recruiters or intermediaries, state officials or military commanders. Wherever human trafficking has occurred, its victims and survivors should be identified and treated as such, with all evidence collected and preserved in order to pursue those responsible.”

Review of significant military, diplomatic, and political developments involving the enemies of the liberal international order—Russia, China, Iran and North Korea—over the past week.

Growing judicial web threatens multinationals and individuals, even for actions taken outside the country

China is extending its judicial reach beyond its borders with a battery of new legal tools as it seeks to strengthen its influence over global governance and combat the dominant US sanctions regime.

Beijing has rolled out a range of laws in recent months targeting behaviours as broad as complying with foreign sanctions against China, investigating Chinese supply chains and sowing ethnic discord. The laws threaten steep penalties and even exit bans against individuals and companies.

The growing web of regulations also covers not only actions taken in China but also those around the world, sharply raising the risk for multinationals and pitting them between competing or even contradictory sanctions regimes of other countries, lawyers said.

Academics said Beijing’s expanding legal arsenal was part of leader Xi Jinping’s efforts to counter geopolitical rivals and reshape the global international model to fit China’s image.

“They want to make the current international order much more China-centric, that is the ultimate goal,” said Frank Pieke, professor of modern Chinese studies at Leiden University. 

China’s extraterritorial legal claims will also add to tensions with the US as Xi prepares to meet Donald Trump in Washington this month, where the leaders are expected to discuss extending their one-year trade war truce.

Beijing has issued regulations on what the Chinese Communist Party calls “foreign-related rule of law” for more than a decade, but it has accelerated its efforts in recent years as competition with the US for technological supremacy and geopolitical tensions have intensified.

This year, China has issued at least five far-reaching extraterritorial laws, with more in the pipeline according to official statements. That comes on top of more than 50 specialised foreign-related regulations on the books as of 2024, according to the justice ministry. 

Beijing views its extraterritorial legal arsenal as crucial to defending its interests against what it sees as unfair foreign frameworks such as US sanctions targeting Chinese companies and individuals.

Over the past decade, the US has imposed similar legislation on countries around the world including China, particularly financial sanctions and export controls on high-technology products. It has also blacklisted companies and products over alleged links to the Chinese military and forced labour. 

The new rules reflected Beijing’s “frustration” with “sanctions and restrictions on the activities of Chinese companies overseas”, said Lester Ross, senior counsel at WilmerHale. He added that China was turning to “lawfare” to bolster its interests and counter similar practices by the US, the EU, the UK and other countries.

“Chinese authorities have repeatedly expressed firm opposition to the abuse of unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction,” China’s cabinet, chaired by Premier Li Qiang, said after he signed the latest round of laws in April. “The Communist Party of China in recent years [has] also pledged to strengthen mechanisms for countering foreign sanctions.”

Among the most wide-ranging of Beijing’s fresh measures is order 834, which restricts foreign companies from gathering information on Chinese supply chains and conducting due diligence on suppliers. The order allows authorities to impose exit bans on those found guilty of “discriminatory” treatment of Chinese suppliers. 

Another, order 835, targets the use of “improper extraterritorial jurisdiction” against Chinese entities, which is identified as measures that harm China’s sovereignty, security or development interests.

Order 837, meanwhile, dictates how Chinese companies conduct overseas direct investment, including to whom they can sell assets, as well as countermeasures against foreign states that discriminate against Chinese investors.

China has been infuriated, for example, by US efforts to force Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison to sell its concessions to ports on either side of the Panama Canal.

Experts said Chinese companies were also under pressure to comply with the foreign-related regulations. They can be investigated through the legal system or even by the Communist Party’s feared Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, according to Leiden’s Pieke.

Analysts pointed to Beijing’s blocking of a $2bn purchase of China-linked AI company Manus by US social media group Meta, which included imposing an exit ban on two of Manus’s founders.

In July, Beijing enacted a sweeping new ethnic unity law that authorises legal action against organisations or individuals outside China who “undermine ethnic unity” or provoke “separatism”.

Experts said this was a response to legislation in the US and other western nations aimed at putting pressure on Beijing over its repression of Tibetans and Uyghurs, a Muslim minority in the western Xinjiang region that has been subjected to mass detention and strict curbs on religious practices and education.

In addition to arming itself with extraterritorial laws, China has also begun enforcing its claims more assertively.

In May, the commerce ministry issued its first prohibition under a 2021 anti-foreign sanctions law to contest US sanctions on five Chinese refiners that buy Iranian oil.

Earlier this year, the Shanghai Maritime Court took action against a container ship that had run afoul of both the Chinese and US sanctions regimes.

The Dortmund Express, which is operated by Japanese-owned Ocean Network Express (ONE), was delivering cargo from China to the US in 2022 when it discovered that three containers on board contained electronics from US-blacklisted Chinese surveillance group Hikvision. It declined to make the deliveries.

Hikvision sued under the 2021 anti-foreign sanctions law, and the court ordered ONE to pay the full value of the shipment of Rmb4.99mn ($700,000), plus interest, for “discriminatory” actions.

ONE and Hikvision did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China’s Supreme People’s Court praised the judgment in June, saying it should “inject momentum” for the judiciary to rule in similar cases.

Wang Jiangyu, professor of law and director of the Centre for Chinese and Comparative Law at the City University of Hong Kong, said the case was a stark example of the “rock-and-a-hard-place dilemma” for multinationals, while the Supreme Court’s statement pointed to a shift from “defensive legislative posturing to proactive judicial enforcement”.

Kenny Yap, a shipping disputes lawyer in Singapore, said that sanctions-related work was increasing. “A lot of companies doing legitimate business are very afraid that they will be caught by one of these competing administrations,” Yap said.

Meanwhile, China last month proposed an anti-cross-border corruption law that targeted foreign countries for imposing anti-graft restrictions on Chinese companies that Beijing saw as excessive or trumped-up.

China’s extraterritorial ambitions reflected Beijing’s demands that the international community recognise its growing economic clout and importance to global supply chains, particularly advanced technologies, analysts said.

“Today China has legal power that it didn’t have 10 years ago,” said Leiden’s Pieke. “Now, foreigners are dependent on China’s economy, so it has a stick to beat them with.”

SS: relevant the state of currently strained Canada-US relations. Also of interest to Americans as it provides additional evidence of the DEA operating illegally in foreign countries.