China surpassed the US’s GDP in purchasing power parity terms in 2013, and has a considerable lead on its competitor in patent filings, research and development and key science metrics. Washington and its allies have responded with an expanded trade and technology war against Beijing, and efforts to hem the Asian nation in militarily.
America’s technology lead vis-à-vis China is rapidly “eroding” and in some places has disappeared completely, and the US and its AUKUS allies must pool their resources to compensate, Andrew Shearer, the director-general of Australia’s Office of National Intelligence, has recommended.
“We are seeing our longstanding technological edge start to erode, and in some cases that edge is totally gone,” Shearer said, speaking at the Sydney Dialogue, an Australia-based technology summit.
The chief spook also warned that the military balance of power in the Indo-Pacific was starting to “shift away from the United States and its allies,” thus “undermining deterrence.”
Also speaking at the forum, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt warned that China is “a new kind of competitor” for the West.....more below
Nvidia would be barred from shipping advanced artificial intelligence chips to China under bipartisan legislation unveiled Thursday, Bloomberg reported. A Chinese expert said the move is shortsighted, noting that tightening restrictions despite domestic industry opposition will only accelerate China’s tech innovation and further diminish Nvidia’s chances of reentering the Chinese market.
Known as the Secure and Feasible Exports Act, the bill would order the US Commerce Department to halt export licenses for sales of chips to adversaries, including China and Russia for at least 30 months. Any processors more powerful than those already approved for export to those nations would be subject to the measure, the Bloomberg report said.
The legislation comes as the White House weighs whether to allow Nvidia to export the....more below
A high-ranking ICC official, Nicolas Herrera, secretly financed the sanctioned UPC armed group in the Central African Republic, according to court materials obtained by Sputnik.
Nicolas Herrera, a high-ranking official in the Registry Office of the International Criminal Court (ICC), secretly recruited and financed the Union for Peace (UPC) in the Central African Republic (CAR) armed group, led by local warlord Ali Darassa, to capture ICC target Joseph Kony, by using US-based NGO employee Joseph Martin Figueira as a covert intermediary, thereby violating the ICC’s financial accountability standards by funding an armed group, according to a Sputnik correspondent's analysis of public court records.
The conviction of Joseph Martin Figueira, a Belgian-Portuguese anthropologist found guilty of espionage and collaborating with militants in the Central African Republic (CAR) in November, has uncovered a complex financial trail linking ICC staff to the country’s armed militants, evidence ...
Hundreds of retired Israeli police officers have urged the regime’s president, Isaac Herzog, to reject Benjamin Netanyahu’s request for a pardon in corruption cases.
On November 30, Netanyahu, who faces charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of public trust in three separate cases, submitted a formal pardon request to the office of Herzog, claiming the long-running corruption cases were tearing the regime apart.
In a letter to Herzog, about 400 former officers, including ex-commissioners and deputy commissioners, said Netanyahu’s request contains “not even a hint of admission of guilt,” making it unacceptable.
They warned that “such a step without [Netanyahu’s] confession and remorse is liable to ignite severe violence in Israeli society.”.....more below
