Claudia K 🦋

🇺🇸 3 people died and 18 first responders were hospitalized, with 2 in serious condition, after exposure to an unknown substance in Mountainair, New Mexico. Authorities say it may spread through contact.

The Beijing talks have concluded without a grand bargain. Yet, this is precisely the main outcome. During the negotiations, China made no concessions where the stakes truly mattered. Taiwan remained a rigid red line. U.S. export restrictions on chips and AI were not lifted, but China offered no strategic concessions in return. Control over rare earth elements remained in Beijing’s hands. The trade war is not over. The Strait of Hormuz has not been stabilized. Formally, both sides agreed to "continue dialogue," but in practice China secured a pause favorable to itself. The problem for the United States is that this pause works in China’s favor. American and European economies remain critically dependent on Chinese production chains - from rare earth elements and magnets to batteries, solar panels, industrial components, and parts of AI infrastructure. China controls not only raw materials, but also the bottlenecks of global processing and manufacturing. Building alternatives will take years. At the same time, the war in Ukraine exposed the weakness of the Western military-industrial base: the United States and Europe face challenges in the production rates of ammunition, air defense systems, and missiles, as well as rapidly scaling defense industries. Today, the United States is forced to manage several theaters of tension simultaneously. Russia is draining Europe and NATO through the war against Ukraine. Iran creates risks for Hormuz and global energy markets. North Korea continues to pressure the security environment in Asia. In this configuration, Beijing does not even need to formally coordinate these crises. It is enough that they simultaneously drain American resources, political attention, and military capabilities. Beijing views the historical balance of power as gradually shifting in its favor and is building a parallel architecture of power: alternative financial systems, the Belt and Road Initiative, control over critical minerals, its own AI models, technological autonomy, and infrastructure and debt dependencies across the Global South. At the same time, China is promoting an international order in which it would hold a monopoly on defining rules and norms. The main conclusion of the Beijing summit is that China increasingly behaves like a state preparing to outlast the transformation of the world order and take the place of a hegemon.