Flagship

Zelenskyy to meet European leaders

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will meet the leaders of France, Germany, and the UK in London today, as he faces US pressure to agree a peace deal with Russia. Kyiv is pushing for changes to a White House-backed plan, which critics said was too sympathetic to the Kremlin’s demands; US President Donald Trump complained that Zelenskyy “hasn’t yet read the proposal.” Europe’s military powers are concerned that the US will push Ukraine to give up territory, and have mostly presented a united front in voicing willingness to offer future military support and security guarantees. Much of that backing has yet to materialize, however, with key divisions remaining over putting troops on the ground and using frozen Russian funds to help Kyiv.

Washington’s anti-Europe worldview

Washington’s new security doctrine makes explicit that Europe is no longer a US ally. The Trump administration has for months been critical of its erstwhile partner, but its National Security Strategy published last week makes that stance official. It argued that Europe was too weak to be reliable, that the continent was facing “civilizational erasure” via mass immigration, and that the EU undermined national liberty. The document “landed like a bucket of cold water in European capitals,” The Wall Street Journal reported, with an expert saying “the traditional trans-Atlantic relationship is dead.” One analyst said the document represented “a wholesale adoption of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s worldview disguised as US doctrine.”

Renewed fighting risks US peace deals

Renewed fighting in Africa and Southeast Asia is undermining two US-brokered agreements that President Donald Trump has used to bolster his peacemaking credentials. An intensifying conflict between Rwanda-backed rebels and the Congolese army risks undoing a deal signed in Washington just last week. The conflict, which has displaced thousands in recent days, also threatens the US goal of gaining control of DRC’s critical mineral deposits. Meanwhile, Thailand’s overnight strikes on Cambodia left a peace agreement overseen by Trump in October “in danger of collapse,” CNN reported, with experts fearing that a rise in hostilities could reignite the conflict that left dozens dead and hundreds of thousands displaced this year.

China’s expanding military might

China appeared to be growing its military footprint across land, air, and sea in multiple geographies. The country’s armed forces have built or upgraded several high-altitude airfields in its western regions, ostensibly part of efforts to project military power across the Himalayas — where it has a contested border with India — and in its own frontier provinces, The Wall Street Journal reported. And according to Reuters, Beijing’s navy has ramped up its deployment of naval forces across East Asian waters, including in disputed maritime territory, in an apparent show of force amid heightened tensions with Taiwan and Japan. “There’s a big outing,” one source told the outlet.

China’s trade surplus grows

Chinese exporters further diversified away from the US as the country’s trade surplus topped $1 trillion, underscoring Beijing’s adaptation and resilience to American pressure. Exports overall grew year-on-year despite plummeting sales to the US, new data showed: A trade truce between the world’s two biggest economies has proved durable so far, but tariffs on Chinese goods imported into the US remain at about 47.5%, while levies on American exports to the country are above 30%. Chinese firms have instead ramped up sales to the EU, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is today expected to unveil a long-awaited aid package for US farmers who have been badly hit by plummeting sales to China.

Abu Dhabi seeks place on world stage

Abu Dhabi today kicks off a week that will seek to cement the UAE capital’s increasingly central role in finance and geopolitics. A laundry list of big names in banking and investing are attending the city-wide Abu Dhabi Finance Week. The event follows the finale to the Formula 1 season in Abu Dhabi, and recent talks between the US and Russia, highlighting the breadth of its ambitions. Yet it is also facing criticism: Skeptics argue that its heavy reliance on state capital — its sovereign wealth funds have more than $2 trillion in assets — crowds out private investment, and there is growing international opprobrium over its alleged role supporting paramilitaries in Sudan’s civil war, charges it denies.

Semafor is mapping the new class of economic power across Washington as it reshapes the global economy.

Are Republicans straying from the economic agenda Trump ran on? Sen. Josh Hawley is worried about it, Semafor’s Burgess Everett reports. The Missouri Republican is the Senate’s purest iteration of Trump-style populism; he’s embraced pandemic-era direct payments and tariff rebates, and now he wants to exempt medical expenses from taxes. He’s worried the GOP is losing its connection to the working-class voters it won last year. “I think it is at risk. I think there’s no doubt about that. The president knows it’s at risk,” Hawley told us. Without a course correction, Hawley warned, the GOP will lose in the midterms.

PC prices set to rise amid storage race

Major PC manufacturers are planning price hikes as demand for AI data centers increases the cost of digital storage. AI is very memory-intensive; using cheaper but slower hard disks rather than faster RAM chips creates “preposterous bottlenecks” in using the technology, New Scientist reported. Major semiconductor companies have pivoted to produce memory for AI, leading to a shortage of memory chips for home computers, devices that will need them to use on-device AI. RAM prices have quintupled in recent months, and processor chips have also shot up: Dell, HP, and Lenovo are all expected to boost prices in the next few weeks, Gizmodo reported.

Mexican cartels embrace drones

Mexican cartels have ramped up their use of drones as they vie for territorial control, the latest indication of how the technology is reshaping global security. Experts say an arms race between the cartels — which generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue each year — has pushed some to send members to train as drone operators in Ukraine, which has become the global hotspot for drone warfare. Meanwhile the plummeting price of the devices has made them widely available from South America to Africa, forcing authorities globally to adapt quickly to the mounting challenge: The French military shot down a drone over a nuclear submarine base, while Irish authorities are investigating unusual aerial activity during the Ukrainian president’s visit to Dublin last week.

Porsches in Russia hit by satellite failure