In October 2024, China’s first comprehensive regulation to tighten state control over the critical sector of rare earth resources took effect. Coming amid the global transition towards clean energy, the regulation demonstrates China’s increased leverage of its rare earth monopoly to outpace its geopolitical rivals like the United States, which remains far behind China in this sector. Intensified competition for rare earth elements risks overshadowing collaborative efforts to develop clean technology.

Mountain Pass, owned by MP Materials, is the only large-scale rare earth mining and processing facility in North America. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

In the race to develop clean technology, major polluting countries like the United States and China compete to lead in producing renewable energy products, striving to achieve environmental goals while enhancing national competitiveness. Rare earth elements (REE) — a group of 17 soft, heavy chemical elements — are major components for clean technologies like wind turbines, electric vehicles, and solar panels. The International Energy Agency projects that demand for REE could rise to 3–7 times current levels by 2040. Consequently, Western powers, such as the United States and the European Union, are under increasing pressure to secure essential REE for clean technologies needed to transition to a low-carbon economy. However, limited access to REE could hinder their ability to meet these goals.

China’s Monopoly in the Rare Earth Sector

Despite US dominance in rare earth mining from the 1960s to 1980s, environmental movements and regulatory pressures eventually led companies to relocate to China or close the US mines. Subsequently, China’s low costs, fuelled by state subsidies and lax environmental standards, allowed it to surpass the United States in the rare earth industry. Currently, China dominates the rare earth supply chain, controlling approximately 60 per cent of global mining operations, over 85 per cent of processing capacity, and more than 90 percent of permanent magnet production.

Trade frictions between China and the United States, the world’s two largest greenhouse gas emitters, are particularly hindering progress in the clean energy transition. In September 2024, the United States raised tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles to 100 per cent and significantly increased tariffs on other Chinese green technologies, including solar products. However, heavy reliance on China for the rare earths needed for the United States to independently produce these technologies has raised concerns that this dependency could become a significant vulnerability in the escalating tech war.

Global reserves of rare earths outside China include 19 per cent in Vietnam, 18 per cent in Brazil, 6 per cent in India, and 4 per cent in Australia. However, while alternative sources exist among these countries that the United States or its allies are friendly with, scaling up production to meet increasing demand remains a substantial challenge. For instance, China’s exceptional processing capacity of 220,000 tonnes per year — five times the combined capacity of the rest of the world — would take other countries years to match.

China’s Leverage of Rare Earth Elements

China is increasingly weaponising its dominance in REE to impose costs on its rivals in trade disputes. The resulting market dynamics are seen as producing externalities that adversely affect foreign clean technology businesses dependent on Chinese rare earth exports, potentially slowing the transition to renewable energy.

In October 2024, China’s first comprehensive regulation on rare earth resources took effect. As illegal mining and smelting have persisted in the country, the regulations introduce stringent rules governing the mining, refining and separation, metal smelting, integrated utilisation, product distribution, import and export of rare earths. Companies violating the regulations may face fines of 5–10 times their illegal gains. Consequently, rare earth supplies are expected to tighten, and prices of REE are expected to increase.

The regulation is seen as a move that could undermine the competitiveness of foreign clean technology products reliant on China-supplied rare earths as business would pass these higher costs on to their customers. Ultimately, the adoption of clean technologies like wind turbines and electric vehicles in countries like the United States could be slowed.

Earlier, in June 2024, Beijing declared rare earth resources to be state-owned and placed the industry under government oversight, ensuring product traceability. While framed as securing national and industrial interests, the move is widely seen as ensuring leverage in the ongoing trade dispute between the United States and China.

The new regulation extends China’s previous leverage over its control of the entire rare earth supply chain. In December 2023, China banned the export of technology for manufacturing rare earth magnets, which are essential components in many clean energy technologies, such as wind turbines. Additionally, in January 2022, Beijing banned foreign direct investment in rare earth mining projects. The ban was described as having “injected even more urgency” into Western efforts to diversify their mineral supply chains away from China.

Furthermore, the Chinese government is reportedly planning to offer direct grants and low-interest loans to its rare earth industry. Such a move would lower operating costs and allow Chinese companies to thrive in market conditions that are challenging to others, thereby dominating global processing capacity.

Obstacles to US Efforts to Reduce Dependence on China

China’s geopolitical rivals view Beijing’s rare earth monopoly as “a risk to national security” because of their strong dependence on Chinese exports.

As a challenger of China in the competition for developing clean technology, the United States is actively investing in various stages within the REE supply chain to reduce its reliance on China. Through its Manufacturing Capability Expansion and Investment Program, the US Defense Department (DOD) has launched a five-year strategy to establish a full domestic rare earth supply chain, covering sourcing, separation, processing, metallisation, alloying and magnet manufacturing. Australia’s Lynas Rare Earths, the only commercial-scale source of separated rare earths outside of China, received over US$258 million from the DOD to establish a production facility in Texas. Additionally, the DOD awarded US$45 million to MP Materials, which claims to be the “only scaled producer of rare earth materials in the Western Hemisphere”, to enhance domestic light and heavy rare earth processing capacity.

However, such efforts would not result in immediate challenges to China. The United States still lacks a complete domestic value chain from mining to magnet production. One of the primary reasons is that mining projects in the United States often have long lead times, with records indicating it takes around 16 years to complete permits and construction for production to begin.

The United States has also launched the Minerals Security Partnership (MSP) with key countries like Australia, which ranks just behind China in “exploration investment, reserves, and capital expenditure”; India, known for its manufacturing capabilities; and Japan, which plays a major role in financing. This partnership aims to address supply chain vulnerabilities in essential minerals like REE.

Nevertheless, as of 2024, MSP has seen minimal investment and lacks technological expertise, raising doubts about the partnership’s capacity to be a feasible alternative to China. Additionally, environmental concerns could be a significant hurdle to developing the partner countries’ rare earth mining or production capability. Each ton of rare earth produced generates 13 kilograms of dust, 9,600–12,000 cubic metres of waste gas, 75 cubic metres of wastewater, and one ton of radioactive residue, all of which have harmful health effects. Notably, Mountain Pass, the only large-scale rare earth mine and separation facility in North America, closed in 2002 after a toxic waste spill and remained shut for years. US mining companies are also struggling to recruit skilled workers, slowing down the US ambition to boost its domestic production capability.

Conclusion

Geopolitical tensions over resources and technology are hampering the clean energy transition. Energy transition is not intended to be a zero-sum game as all can benefit from clean energy products in a free trade situation, and therefore from reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions. However, growing supply chain fragmentation increasingly sees major economies prioritising supply security through the lens of national self-interest. Additionally, the intensified drive for rare earth extraction could further environmental degradation, thereby undermining global efforts to achieve net-zero carbon emissions.

Although it is unlikely that other countries will surpass China in rare earth production in the foreseeable future, a promising pathway to create a less polarised geopolitical landscape around REE and to reduce pollution is emerging in the form of recycling this resource from obsolete equipment.

From an economic perspective, recycling processes can be implemented more rapidly than the development of new mines, which typically requires decades for them to become commercially viable. From an environmentally friendly perspective, recycling reduces the need for new rare earth mining, thereby decreasing both the environmental and energy footprints associated with extraction and processing.

China’s strategy of leveraging its rare earth monopoly is highly effective in the short term but it may not retain the same level of influence over the long term. By 2050, reuse and recycling strategies could meet 30–40 per cent of rare earth mineral demand in the United States, China, and Europe. Although Beijing is likely to maintain its monopoly in the rare earth supply chain, increased circularity could gradually reduce other countries’ dependence on China, ultimately diminishing its geopolitical leverage over this critical resource.

Hu Xinyue is a Senior Analyst in the China Programme at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS), S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS).

The post Rare Earth Supremacy: China’s Ace in the Clean Technology Competition appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

The first use of drone-based lidar in Central Asia has enabled archaeologists to uncover details of two newly discovered medieval trade cities high in the mountains of Uzbekistan.

The team used this cutting-edge technology to map the archaeological scale and layout of the cities, which are among the largest ever documented in the mountainous parts of the Silk Road, a broad network of ancient trade routes that connected Europe and Eastern Asia.

The research, led by Michael Frachetti, professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and Farhod Maksudov, director of the National Center of Archaeology in Uzbekistan, was recently published in Nature.

High-Resolution Insights into Ancient Urbanism

The drone-lidar scans provided remarkably detailed views of the plazas, fortifications, roads, and habitations that shaped the lives and economies of highland communities, traders, and travelers from the sixth through 11th centuries in Central Asia. The two cities are located in rugged terrain 2,000 to 2,200 meters above sea level (roughly comparable to Machu Picchu in Peru), making them unusual examples of thriving mountain urbanism.

Unveiling the Complexities of Mountain Urbanism

The smaller city, today called Tashbulak, covered about 12 hectares, while the larger city of Tugunbulak reached 120 hectares, “making it one of the largest regional cities of its time,” Frachetti said.

“These would have been important urban hubs in central Asia, especially as you moved out of lowland oases and into more challenging high-altitude settings,” he said. “While typically seen as barriers to Silk Road trade and movement, the mountains actually were host to major centers for interaction. Animals, ores, and other precious resources likely drove their prosperity.”

“This site had an elaborate urban structure with specific material culture that greatly varied from the lowland sedentary culture,” Maksudov said. “It’s clear that the people inhabiting Tugunbulak for more than a thousand years ago were nomadic pastoralists who maintained their own distinct, independent culture and political economy.”

Technological Advancements in Archaeological Exploration

Lidar technology is commonly used to map archaeological landscapes blocked by dense vegetation, but it has additional value where vegetation is sparse, such as the mountains of Uzbekistan. “Drone operation is strictly regulated in Uzbekistan, so this discovery is also thanks to the political support and permissions we received through local partners and government,” Frachetti said.

The centimeter-level scans allowed for advanced computer analysis of the ancient archaeological surfaces, providing an unprecedented view of the cities’ architecture and organization. “These are some of the highest-resolution lidar images of archeological sites ever published,” Frachetti said. “They were made possible, in part, because of the unique erosion dynamics in this mountain setting.”

A Blend of Modern Tech and Ancient Discovery

Frachetti, Maksudov, and their team first discovered the highland cities using predictive computer models and old-fashioned foot surveys between 2011 and 2015, tracing presumed routes of the Silk Road in southeastern Uzbekistan. The project took years to materialize. The extra time ultimately proved to be a blessing, allowing the researchers to make the most of the latest advances in drone-based lidar. “The final high-res maps were a composite of more than 17 drone flights over three weeks,” Frachetti said. “It would have taken us a decade to map such large sites manually.”

Frachetti and graduate students in his Spatial Analysis, Interpretation, and Exploration (SAIE) Lab compiled the drone-lidar data into 3D models, which were passed to Tao Ju, a professor of computer science and engineering, and Xiaoyi Liu, an undergraduate student, both at the McKelvey School of Engineering at WashU. Ju and Liu applied computational algorithms to analyze the archaeological surfaces and auto-trace millions of lines to predict likely architectural alignments. The final step was to match the digital output with comparable architectural cases, revealing a huge ancient city otherwise invisible to the naked eye. “The project reflects a truly interdisciplinary effort,” Ju said. “The analysis techniques have potential applications in many domains that utilize lidar scans.”

Future Excavations and Implications

Both cities warrant much closer inspection, Frachetti said. Preliminary digging at one of the fortified structures at Tugunbulak suggests that the fortress — a building protected by three-meter-thick rammed earth walls — might have been a factory where local metalsmiths turned rich deposits of iron ore into steel. Such industry would have been a key feature of the city and its economy.

It’s already clear that Tashbulak and Tugunbulak weren’t just remote outposts or rest stops. “The Silk Road wasn’t just about the endpoints of China and the West,” Frachetti said. “Major political forces were at play in Central Asia. The complex heart of the network was also a driver of innovation.”

Frachetti hopes to use the same combination of on-the-ground detective work and drone-based lidar to get pictures of other high-altitude settlements along the Silk Road and beyond. “We could really change the map of urban development in medieval Asia,” he said.

Reference: “Large-scale medieval urbanism traced by UAV–lidar in highland Central Asia” by Michael D. Frachetti, Jack Berner, Xiaoyi Liu, Edward R. Henry, Farhod Maksudov and Tao Ju, 23 October 2024, Nature.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08086-5

The expedition was supported by the National Geographic Society.

Source

The post Researchers Discover Enormous Ancient Cities Hidden in Uzbekistan’s Mountains appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

A former U.S. Navy chief petty officer has been court-martialed and sentenced to 18 years in a military prison for attempted espionage and violating orders, according to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). It is the latest in a series of high-profile spying cases involving Navy personnel, and by far the most serious prison sentence. 

In January, Chief Fire Controlman (Aegis) Bryce Steven Pedicini was charged with multiple counts of attempted espionage for mishandling or disclosing classified information. 

Pedicini was a former destroyer crewmember who worked on the Aegis combat system, the Navy’s premier integrated radar and weapons control platform. The technology is closely held, and shared only with America’s closest military allies. Top-end Aegis variants can target ballistic missiles in mid-flight, and in his LinkedIn biography, Pedicini described himself as a “ballistic missile computer technician.”

In 2022, while assigned to the Mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center (MARMAC) in Norfolk, Pedicini allegedly passed classified documents to an “employee and national of a foreign government” seven times, operating under the pretense of writing “research papers” for a private party. According to NCIS, a “research paper” consulting request is a tactic used often by America’s foreign adversaries to pay servicemembers to give up classified national defense information.  

In 2023, while assigned to the destroyer USS Higgins at Yokosuka, Pedicini allegedly entered a secure information room aboard a Navy barge with a personal electronic device. He then allegedly tried to transfer photographs of a high-security computer screen to a foreign government employee. 

Pedicini was arrested shortly after this event and court-martialed in January 2024. Last month, he was convicted of charges under Article 103a (Attempted Espionage), Article 92 (Failure to Obey a General Order), and Article 80 (Attempted Violation of a General Order). He has now been sentenced to 18 years in prison, plus a dishonorable discharge and reduction in rank to E-1. 

“This sentence holds Mr. Pedicini to account for his betrayal of his country and fellow service members,” said NCIS Director Omar Lopez in a statement. “The criminal act by this lone individual should not diminish the incredible sacrifices made by our service members and their families on a daily basis to protect our nation.”

A fourth charge (communication of defense information) is still subject to an appeal, but NCIS does not expect the outcome to affect Pedicini’s sentence.

Source: Maritime-Executive

The post Chief Petty Officer Gets 18 Years for Betraying U.S. Navy Secrets appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

The seriousness of the debate can be seen at the UK sponsored conference on AI at Bletchley Park. Following this was the adaptation of the European law on Artificial Intelligence. 28 countries at the summit, including the United States, China, and the European Union, have issued an agreement known as the Bletchley Declaration, calling for international co-operation to manage the challenges and risks of artificial intelligence. Emphasis has been placed on regulating “Frontier AI”, a term for the latest and most powerful AI systems. Concerns that have been raised at the summit include the potential use of AI for terrorism, criminal activity, and warfare, as well as existential risk posed to humanity as a whole.

Having such a platform between the world’s two largest players in AI will be increasingly important as global efforts to regulate AI and manage the associated risks gather momentum. Earlier this year, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a landmark resolution on AI without a vote, capping off a period that saw several global summits being held on issues related to AI, such as the Responsible AI in the Military Domain (REAIM) summit at The Hague and the AI Safety summit at Bletchley Park in the United Kingdom.

While these circumstances should not be surprising, the question remains: what can be meaningfully achieved in terms of global governance and arms control for AI? Platforms such as the REAIM summit and AI Safety summit have featured norm-building efforts such as a call to action and declaration, respectively, while the Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) discussing the regulation of LAWS at the UN adopted 11 guiding principles in 2019.

Nevertheless, the overall temperature of relations will continue to play a part in how effective subsequent bilateral talks on AI will be. Managing both related and unrelated derailers will be important, especially since it is impossible to fully compartmentalise dialogue on specific issues like AI from the broader state of bilateral relations.Some of the questions ringing loud include the systemic failures of Israel’s intelligence community and its sophisticated early warning systems to detect Hamas’ operational plans in advance, Israel’s prolonged political fragmentation and internal protests that undermined military readiness, and why the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) units deployed in the “Gaza Envelope” were overran.

By William Schrodinger  

The post The Internet eats their Young appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

Researchers have tracked more activity by an influence campaign linked to Russia that spreads disinformation and propaganda in the U.S., Germany and Ukraine through a vast network of social media accounts and fake websites.

The campaign, attributed to the Russia-linked influence operation network called Doppelgänger, has been active since at least May 2022. The U.S. tech company Meta previously referred to Doppelgänger as the “largest” and “most aggressively persistent” malign network sponsored by Russia.

Researchers from Recorded Future’s Insikt Group are currently tracking over 2,000 inauthentic social media accounts associated with Dopplegänger, but say the actual number could be even higher. The Record is an editorially independent unit of Recorded Future.

According to Insikt, the impact of Doppelgänger’s activity on users in Germany, Ukraine, and the U.S. is limited.

“Despite the campaign’s high volume, we did not identify any significant engagement from authentic social media users,” researchers said in a report published Tuesday. “Viewership and other engagement metrics — reshares, likes, and replies — were negligible across the network.”

And yet, Doppelgänger’s activity is worth paying attention to, researchers said, as its operators are constantly improving their tools and tactics and are “willing to invest in extra measures to evade detection.”

Meta warned last week that foreign groups are looking to expand their influence operations as 2024 is an important year for elections around the world.

Insikt did not specify which social media networks the Doppelgänger operation used.

Fake tales of decline

In the campaign analyzed by Insikt, Doppelgänger focused on three targets — Ukraine, Germany and the U.S.

In an operation against Ukraine, a Russia-linked threat actor created over 800 social media accounts that shared links to fake articles impersonating multiple reputable Ukrainian news organizations. These articles “spread narratives undermining Ukraine’s military strength, political stability, and international relationships with Ukraine’s Western allies.”

For example, some of them suggested that the U.S. prioritizes the war in Israel more than the one in Ukraine or sowed doubts about Ukraine’s ability to win the war.

In a campaign that targeted Germany and the U.S., a Russian network operator created fake news outlets producing propaganda content, which was then shared on social media, the researchers said.

Unlike impersonating existing Western news sources, as commonly seen with Doppelgänger so far, these outlets appear to be an attempt to create seemingly new and original sources, researchers said. “This evolving approach likely aims to establish a long-term influence network by evading detection efforts to identify inauthentic impersonators.”

The campaign’s goal in Germany was to share fake narratives of “Germany’s domestic decline due to migration, economic policies, and continued support for Ukraine,” Insikt said.

In the U.S., the threat actor promoted hostile articles criticizing the LGBTQ+ movement (which was recently outlawed in Russia) and raised doubts about U.S. military competence. One of the fake websites linked to Doppelgänger produced election-related content, which was likely generated by artificial intelligence (AI).

“This campaign likely intends to exploit US societal and political divisions ahead of the 2024 US election,” researchers said.

Kremlin-approved tactics

Influence operations like Doppelgänger are common tactics used by Russia as part of its information warfare.

Doppelgänger was previously linked to two Russian companies: Structura National Technologies and Social Design Agency, whose clients include several Russian government agencies, local government entities, state-owned enterprises and private companies.

Both companies were sanctioned by the European Union in August for their involvement in Doppelgänger.

In November, the U.S. government also linked these two entities to a disinformation campaign across Latin America aimed at undermining support for Ukraine and discrediting the U.S. and NATO.

In its previous campaigns, Doppelgänger also targeted the U.S. and seven European countries, with a specific focus on Germany and France. The network’s most common tactic is the impersonation of media outlets or political organizations, such as the French Ministry of Public Affairs, the German Ministry of the Interior, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The network’s evolution indicates that it can “have long-term societal impacts,” while the likely use of generative AI to create written content demonstrates “the evolving use of AI in Russian information warfare campaigns.”

“As the popularity of generative AI grows, malign influence actors, including Doppelgänger, will very likely increasingly leverage AI to produce scalable influence content,” researchers said.

Source: The Record

The post Russia-linked ‘Doppelgänger’ social media operation rolls on, report says appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

They might as well have been sitting ducks.

They are the tatzpitaniyot, mostly female soldiers stationed on the IDF bases near the Gaza Strip, their eyes glued to security cameras and other feeds of the border. Last Saturday morning, the Hamas terrorists who entered some of those bases with hang gliders shot at cameras and jammed some communications systems. They shot at the combat soldiers who were stationed at those bases, as well as at the tatzpitaniyot.

“Yes, they surprised us, and we weren’t ready for it,” said a female soldier at one of the bases who shared her harrowing story on social media. “Half of the force was home for Sukkot…and we had no intelligence about this…I took care of the injured while terrorists walked around my base, my second home, and murdered my friends. I prepared for this moment for two years, but nothing can prepare you for the moment of truth.” 

As Israel readies for a possible ground invasion of the Gaza Strip following the massive surprise attack last Saturday that killed some 900 Israelis and left the country reeling, Israelis are grappling with how the soldiers in the south were left so unprotected, and how the intelligence lapse — one that carries an eerie echo of the Yom Kippur War surprise attack almost 50 years ago to the day that Hamas brazenly struck southern Israel — was so glaring.

Some details of the initial cabinet meeting on Saturday night have leaked, and ministers were reportedly blindsided, having not been given any indication that an invasion or war was on the way in their weekly briefings with the prime minister’s military secretary. Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis asked flat-out in the meeting: “What happened to Israel’s intelligence?” 

The full picture will likely become clearer when the fog of war dissipates and a commission of inquiry investigates, as has become the custom in Israel after wars in the past 50 years. In the short term, as Israelis ask themselves, “How did this happen?” several possible explanations have already come to light.

The Conceptzia

“We were apparently dependent on a conceptzia that Hamas wanted money from Qatar and was deterred,” former IDF Military Intelligence Directorate head Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin told JI. “For every surprise, the surprisers come up with a distraction, and that is what we saw.”

After the Yom Kippur War, one of the answers to how Israel was surprised by an attack from Egypt and Syria was the “conceptzia.” The word literally translates to “preconception,” and it refers to groupthink or an idea that captivated the whole cabinet, without consideration of the alternatives.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu combatted reports on Monday that the extent of the conceptzia was such that he did not heed a warning that war was coming. According to AP, Egypt had warned Israel that “something big” was coming from Gaza, but the IDF was too busy with terrorism in the West Bank. The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said he had not received any warnings and had not spoken with Egyptian Intelligence Minister Abbas Kamel since returning to office this year. 

“We were apparently dependent on a conceptzia that Hamas wanted money from Qatar and was deterred,” former IDF Military Intelligence Directorate head Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin told JI. “For every surprise, the surprisers come up with a distraction, and that is what we saw.”

Israel built its defense plans “on the idea that Hamas was not interested in a war. They distracted us and kept us busy with other violations on the [border] fence,” Yadlin said.

“It’s clear that there was a tactical and conceptual surprise that led to a strategic failing — though it can be turned around,” he added.

Hamas “duped” Israel intentionally over the past two years, by pretending that economic incentives such as aid from Doha and increased permits for Gazans to work in Israel were working, Reuters reported. In the meantime, Hamas trained 1,000 terrorists for the invasion, reportedly without telling them exactly what they were preparing to do.

Former National Security Adviser Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror, a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, said in a briefing to reporters that Israel’s allies had claimed Hamas had “more responsibility,” and was busier managing the Gaza Strip than preparing to fight Israel.

“We stupidly began to believe that it was true, so we made a mistake,” Amidror said. “We won’t make this mistake again and we will destroy Hamas, slowly but surely.”

A senior defense official who left his post this year spoke on condition of anonymity because he only wanted to support the war effort on the record. 

“At some point in recent months, Hamas changed their strategy from supporting stability and quiet, as it did in Operation Shield and Arrow” — in May, when only Palestinian Islamic Jihad attacked Israel — “to an all-out war. They are giving their maximum,” he said.

The ex-official speculated that the “change in policy is connected to trying to destroy Israel’s ability to make peace with Saudi Arabia, which is a clear Iranian goal.”

While he said his former colleagues indicated to him this week that there was an inkling of Hamas’ plans, the official said the intelligence gap “disturbs me, because it goes deep.”

In addition, he argued that the IDF should have been able to defend the towns close to the Gaza border even if they were totally surprised.

“I don’t know why there were not enough soldiers in the towns. It could be that they were in the West Bank, but we should have been prepared regardless of the intelligence,” he said.

After an Egyptian police officer crossed into Israel and shot three IDF soldiers in June, “we should have known that our front positions were not working as they should.”

Blinded lookouts

Another element of Hamas’ attack that delayed Israel’s ability to respond effectively was its targeting of bases in the south where tatzpitaniyot, who watch cameras and other feeds of the border, are stationed.

“In my worst dreams, I could not have imagined something like this,” one tatzpitanit wrote. “I woke up for a 4 a.m. shift that turned out to be a nightmare. I never thought I’d see something like this from my lookout point in my life. I did the best I can, until a sniper shot my camera.”

One tatzpitanit who finished her service earlier this year told JI that she was going back to her old base, because there was no one left who knew how to do the lookouts’ job.

Some of the tatzpitanyiot on bases attacked by Hamas told harrowing stories on social media.

“In my worst dreams, I could not have imagined something like this,” one wrote. “I woke up for a 4 a.m. shift that turned out to be a nightmare. I never thought I’d see something like this from my lookout point in my life. I did the best I can, until a sniper shot my camera.”

She described “crazy noise, blood everywhere,” while she spent “16 hours locked in a small war room with a lot of hope and prayers.”The Hottest Place in Hell, an Israeli independent investigative journalism site, published a message it received from another tatzpitanit, who had only finished her training four days before the war began.

“We received a message that there was an invasion, that terrorists entered Israel…all along the line there were large numbers of terrorists and the forces weren’t making it in time to stop them, it was a psychotic number of terrorists. They started shooting at our cameras, until we weren’t able to look out. They told us the only thing to do is to run to the war room, while we heard rocket sirens and rockets fell by us. I ran like I had never run before,” she said.

All of the tatzpitaniyot were told to leave their positions and hide behind their large computer systems, as combat soldiers came to protect them.

“There was a Golani unit and they were all erased, very quickly, killed one after the other. They started bringing the injured to our war room. I started helping take care of them as much as possible because I was afraid to get out from behind the computer[.] I feared for my life.” 

The soldiers, according to the accounts in Hottest Place in Hell, did not eat for 26 hours and did not have enough water, were in a hot room with no air conditioning because of the power outage and had to use cups and trash cans because there was no toilet.

At one point, the terrorists tried to light the building on fire, and the soldiers had to decide whether to stay in a building on fire or run out to where they would be shot or captured, but soldiers managed to put out the fire quickly. Terrorists shot at the doors, and the soldiers saw that they were stealing IDF uniforms.

“There were so many terrorists and so many killed and injured. No one knew what to do, and we were all crying and hysterical. I don’t know how I survived,” she said.

Eventually, they were evacuated under fire: “We saw corpses on the way to the bus,” she recalled.

The retired officer who predicted it all

From the start of the war, an interview with Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yitzhak Brick on an Israeli Jewish-interest cable news channel Hidabrut went viral. In the video from July, the former IDF ombudsman seemed to predict exactly what happened on Sunday.

Brick, 76, was an Israeli general who fought in the Six-Day War, Yom Kippur War and the First Lebanon War, officially retiring from the army in 1999. He then became the IDF ombudsman in 2008-2018, after which he began publicly criticizing the IDF for its lack of preparedness. 

A series of newspaper op-eds, as well as a lengthy article in the journal Hashiloach that Brick wrote in 2020, drew significant attention in Israel for its warning that the IDF, especially its highest-ranking officers, has lost its fighting spirit.

In the last month, Brick wrote articles warning that Israel is not prepared. In Haaretz, he wrote: “Netanyahu, the next war is near. Declare a national state of emergency.” In Maariv: “Though the political leadership abandoned our security, I will continue to fight without fear.” In Israel Hayom the headline was: “Residents of the north, prepare to defend yourselves ahead of the next war: No one else will do it.” 

In the viral video, Brick chillingly describes the nightmare scenario that came true this week.

“A massacre can happen here and the State of Israel doesn’t understand it,” he said.

Hamas is preparing “to enter a number of towns on foot. The likelihood it will happen is very high, whether they come in the thousands or hundreds,” he said.

“If you’re a resident sitting in a shelter, they’ll come to the shelter, throw a grenade and you’re dead. Not just you, everyone, they’ll sit there and be slaughtered,” Brick warned.

He called on Israelis to prepare to defend their towns.

“No one else will be there,” Brick continued in the video. “The army won’t be there. The army is small today, and the things it wants to send won’t arrive because of roadblocks…You have to be able to fight with your own body to defend your town, and in order to be able to do that you have to prepare the town to fight.”

“The army won’t be there for you in a war,” he emphasized. “In the first hours, you will be in the shelters because of the rockets, but the moment that word gets out that [terrorists] are on the ground, get into position and fight for your lives.”

Brick said that towns near the Gaza border should dig trenches and set up positions, have backup water and medical supplies, and more.

He criticized the IDF for taking local security teams’ weapons, a decision the military made two years ago because of theft. Brick said that “everyone under 70, most of whom were in the army and know how to shoot,” should have access to a weapon and should be trained.

“No one is saying this, and we’re in a lawless situation,” Brick lamented. “[The security establishment] is just telling people ‘hide,’ but not what to do if a terrorist arrives. Who will stop the terrorists? The army can’t do it today.”

“All kinds of details are coming out about all of [Hamas’] preparations, distractions by holding demonstrations by the border fence, shooting at cameras, taking over the Southern Command base and disrupting its ability to command the whole area,” Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University said.

Brick is a controversial figure. Some of the responses to his video claim that he is attempting to deflect blame from Netanyahu, since Brick said the problems began when National Unity Party leader Benny Gantz and MK Gadi Eisencot, also of National Union, were IDF chiefs of staff.

One former senior defense official who spoke with JI said “Brick says so much nonsense that sometimes some of it ends up being right.”

Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, said in a conversation with JI that, while Brick correctly predicted part of what happened, much of it still remains unexplained.

“The security in the towns is really problematic and not developed enough,” he said. “In places with more guns and people who were better trained, they were able to kill terrorists. But the things Brick spoke about are more about the local level of supplies and fighting. It doesn’t explain what happened here.”

“All kinds of details are coming out about all of [Hamas’] preparations, distractions by holding demonstrations by the border fence, shooting at cameras, taking over the Southern Command base and disrupting its ability to command the whole area,” Michael said, “but I still don’t understand how an event like this can happen, how they can shut down the whole border fence and why it took three hours for more forces to arrive. I have no answers. So many senior officers were killed.”

Michael and Yadlin both said that an investigation is likely.

“I think a lot of heads will roll,” Michael said.

Now, the government must set “totally different goals” to the fighting between Israel and Hamas since 2009, Michael said.

“The reaction will be totally different and the result must be totally different. It can be that some good can come out of all of this bad. We can create a reality where we improve the army. Now, we understand the army is too small and we need a bigger IDF for our missions, just like the Ukrainians understood in their war,” he said. 

Michaeli warned that Israel is “heading into a long campaign that will exact a price. There are no free lunches. We need a lot of patience and unity and wisdom from our leaders – military and political – and I want to believe that we will find it and in the end, from this whole mess, we can hope for something good.”

Source: Jewish Insider

The post Israel’s Intel Failure: ‘How Did This Happen?’ appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

Much like its ideological counterparts at HispanTV (Iranian-owned) and Actualidad RT (Russian-owned), Telesur wraps its incitement into a sophisticated and slick twenty-four-hour news platform through its website, broadcasts, and social media presence. Though it is difficult to gauge its influence, numbers suggest that Telesur’s message is impactful. Telesur has two million followers on its Spanish X account, 117,500 on its English X account, and more than half a million on Instagram. Its YouTube account has over 1.7 million subscribers, with 100,000 new subscribers and almost 7.4 million video views since October 7 (It also posts its videos on the Daily Motion).

The network traditionally pushes out conspiracy theories, fake news, “whataboutism,” and disinformation that serve a common agenda: demonize the West, undermine the credibility of Western news outlets, paint Western leaders as hypocrites, and promote a narrative of global resistance against America and its allies. Aware that a worldwide audience of half a billion Spanish speakers—including almost sixty million in the U.S.—could be receptive to its anti-imperialist spin, Telesur began broadcasts in 2005. Since then, Telesur has routinely packaged its allies’ imperialism as resistance, their terrorism as anti-terrorism, and their authoritarianism as democracy. It has platformed conspiracy theorists, like Thierry Meyssan, the French author of the 2002 screed, 9/11: The Big Lie, the earliest 9/11 “truther” libel, accusing the United States of orchestrating the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers. It has also peddled anti-Semitic tropes, insinuating that “the Zionist Lobby” manipulates and controls U.S. media, falsely accusing Israelis of trafficking children and Israel of supporting ISIS.

Telesur news coverage since October 7, then, is hardly surprising. However, it has gained a new obsessive intensity, broadcasting a daily media diet of hatred. In its breaking news report on Hamas’ October 7 massacre, Telesur news anchor described that morning’s atrocities as an operation by the Hamas “resistance movement” in response to “continued Israeli aggressions.” The broadcast defined the event as “a new stage in the Palestinian struggle against Zionist occupation.” It then showed its viewers a news segment produced by their Syria-based correspondent, which made no mention of atrocities or Israeli civilian casualties. Telesur’s initial denial and distortion set the stage for the ensuing news coverage, which amplified a pro-Hamas narrative.

For example, after Western media corrected their reporting about Palestinian claims that on October 17, Israel bombarded the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza, killing 500 people, Telesur doubled down, relying on a report from Al Jazeera.

Opinion pieces have been even more inflammatory than news segments, consistently espousing bigotry. Telesur commentators have routinely compared Israel to Nazism, denying and, at the same time, justifying the October 7 massacre. On October 9, as the gory details of Hamas atrocities were emerging, a blog entry celebrated them as a “very special page” in the history of the great battles for freedom. On October 15, TeleSur’s special envoy in Lebanon wrote a column entitled “Agony of a macabre implant,” where, after defining Israel as a European colonial-settler “implant” and accusing it of committing genocide, he proceeded to dismiss Hamas’ atrocities, lamenting a “Western media narrative, which focuses on Hamas, and not on the unprecedented fact of the united action of all Palestinian resistance organizations.”

After denial comes the systematic demonization of Israel through the casual recourse to antisemitic tropes, with Israel described as a worthy successor of Nazi Germany. 

On October 16, another blog post accused Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of pursuing a final solution in Gaza and pleaded that the international community should not allow “the Jews to continue murdering the Palestinians in their land.”

On October 21, another commentator evoked the old Antisemitic canard of Jewish control of world media to denounce what its author considered a global media coverup of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Those controlling the “spiral of silence” in the mainstream media were, according to the author, “the transnational Jewish lobby.” On November 3, the theme of a conspiracy of silence orchestrated by Israel, the United States, and “the hegemonic media” recurred in another column. Its goal, thundered the author, was to enable Israel to turn Gaza into “a Palestinian cemetery.” The next day, Telesur published another blog post accusing Israel, whose creation the author described as the machinations of the “international Zionist oligarchy,” of committing “the third largest genocide in history.” And on November 7, Chilean columnist Pablo Jofre Leal (an author frequently posting on HispanTV as well and a government advisor to Gabriel Boric’s ministry of health in Chile) attacked what he labeled “the Ukraine-Israel national socialist-national Zionist alliance,” called the Hamas massacres a “legitimate action of the Palestinian resistance,” and described Israel’s response as a modern version of 1942 Wannsee Conference, the Nazi gathering that finetuned Hitler’s final solution.

Telesur, whose broadcast includes an English language channel and a Washington, DC, based correspondent, continues to spread misinformation and incitement through the ether, the internet, and social media. Washington, whose battle against disinformation has taken multiple steps to curb Russia’s and Iran’s misinformation channels in the anglosphere, seems mostly oblivious to Spanish language propaganda by Maduro’s Venezuela, despite its ability to shape public opinion in Latin America.

Downplaying the importance of the battle of ideas in Spanish will have long-term implications, especially in Latin America, where the Maduro regime continues to leverage a long history of anti-Americanism to its own advantage. Commenting on Russia’s Spanish language propaganda in Latin America, Southern Command’s General Laura J. Richardson recently said, “In 2020, Russia Today (RT)’s Spanish-language media outlets more than doubled their social media followers from 7 million to over 18 million. These disinformation campaigns are just one part of Russia’s broader efforts to influence national elections throughout the region this year.”

With much of the region’s political winds blowing leftward, the pro-Iran and pro-Hamas echo chamber of the Maduro regime should draw as much urgent attention from the White House and State Department as Russia’s disinformation does.

If Washington does wake up to the threat, it can take three initial steps to address it. First, it can slap sanctions against Telesur, much like it did against Iran’s Press TV, for its key role in supporting censorship and televising forced confessions, and Russian state-owned propaganda outlets for their role in Russia’s disinformation campaign. Second, it can lobby the telecom private sector to have Telesur de-platformed. Third, it can appeal to U.S.-based social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, X, the Daily Motion, and YouTube, to ensure they restrict Venezuelan regime disinformation.

The pro-Hamas, pro-Iran disinformation that Telesur spews daily is inflammatory, inciteful, and rife with antisemitic hatred. Telesur should be treated as a foreign state influence operation of the Maduro dictatorship for its continued rhetoric inciting hatred against Jews and driving global antisemitism. It should not be given free rein. Washington has sanctioned similar media disinformation campaigns before. Telesur should not be an exception.

Source: FDD

The post Telesur’s Pro-Iran Propaganda appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

President Emomali Rahmon spoke on December 1 at the plenary session of the twenty-eighth Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Dubai, his press service reports.

According to him, water-related natural disasters annually cause great financial and material damage to our country, and in some cases lead to loss of life.

“Tajikistan annually faces floods, landslides, avalanches and other water-related disasters. Pursuing the goal of reducing the negative impact of climate change on the social and economic spheres of the country, the Government of Tajikistan is implementing the National Strategy for Adaptation to Climate Change for the period until 2030.” – he said at the summit.

He reminded the participants that Tajikistan’s share in greenhouse gas emissions is small, and the republic ranks 130th in terms of the low volume of such emissions. That is, thanks to the small amount of this waste, Tajikistan occupies a leading position in the world.

Emomali Rahmon emphasized that the Republic of Tajikistan is one of the leading countries in the world in terms of the percentage of “green energy” production.

“Tajikistan produces 98 percent of its electricity from hydroelectric power plants and ranks sixth in the world in terms of the percentage of green energy generated from renewable sources,” he noted. “Our country continues to increase its achievements in this area and intends to double its green energy production capacity in the future “as the main basis for promoting the green economy.”

For these purposes, according to the president, the government of Tajikistan has adopted and is implementing the “Green Economy Development Strategy for 2023-2037,” which is aimed at the efficient use of natural resources and attracting “green” investments and technologies.

He drew the attention of those present to the obvious truth: climate change, first of all, negatively affects sources of water resources. In this context, it was emphasized that the depletion of water resources due to the rapid melting of glaciers is one of the negative indicators of climate change.

As a clear indicator of this process, he mentioned the complete melting of one thousand glaciers over the past decades out of 13 thousand glaciers in Tajikistan, which are the source of 60 percent of the water resources of our region.

In his speech, the Tajik President also focused on our country’s latest initiative aimed at protecting water sources. “At the initiative of Tajikistan, a resolution of the UN General Assembly was adopted to declare 2025 the International Year of Glacier Conservation and March 21 as World Glacier Day, and the International Trust Fund for the Conservation of Glaciers was created,” he noted. The President announced Tajikistan’s decision to make its initial financial contribution to this trust fund. He is convinced that the world community and international organizations will also contribute to the Fund.

Source: Asia Plus TJ

The post Emomali Rahmon: Tajikistan Intends to Double the Production of “green Energy” by Attracting Investment and Technology appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

Tashkent, Uzbekistan, 26 October 2023 – ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a global leading provider of information and communication technology solutions, takes the spotlight at ICTWEEK UZBEKISTAN 2023, where it has unveiled a comprehensive portfolio of efficient, green, and cutting-edge ICT products and solutions. 

Under the theme of “Leading Digital Innovation,” ZTE has showcased its unwavering commitment to meeting the diverse needs of global operators, government agencies, commercial enterprises, and consumers.

ICTWEEK UZBEKISTAN 2023, the Week of Information and Communication Technologies in Uzbekistan, took place in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, from October 24th to 27th, maintaining its status as a significant annual event in Uzbekistan’s ever-evolving information technology landscape since its inception in 2004.

At ICT WEEK 2023, ZTE placed a strong focus on digital innovations and its array of 5G products and solutions. This underscores the company’s dedication to accelerating 5G adoption by simplifying the deployment of 5G sites and enhancing their performance and energy efficiency. ZTE has already introduced a comprehensive range of 5G products designed for various scenarios and frequency bands. These products not only cater to conventional settings like macro coverage, indoor communications, high-density urban areas, and high-speed railway tunnels but also support specialized applications such as aviation communications and Maglev.

ZTE is extensively engaged in the construction of commercial 5G networks and the digital transformation of the economies in both China and other countries. The company is well prepared to leverage its expertise in Uzbekistan. In 2022, ZTE was among the leading providers of 5G technical solutions during the Council of Heads of State of the SCO Summit in Samarkand. To ensure exceptional communication quality for the participants and guests of the SCO Summit, ZTE deployed 5G base stations and the QCell solution.

As a part of ICT WEEK 2023, ZTE is also showcasing a range of innovative products for broadband networks, including Cloud IP, FTTR, Light ODN, and Real 400G, alongside the 5G Microwave products and solutions. These cutting-edge technologies will enable the development of innovative services based on broadband communications and accelerate the transformation of global fiber optic networks. The transport network is fundamentally crucial for constructing telecommunication networks, and it necessitates continuous expansion to meet the growing service demands and traffic surge expected over the next 5 to 10 years. 

Furthermore, ZTE’s mobile internet products, including 5G MBB and FWA, have achieved the world’s highest market share. The company has also introduced innovative products such as the nubia Pad 3D, the world’s first AI-powered eyewear-free 3D tablet, the nubia Z50S Pro, their flagship smartphone for photography, the RedMagic 8S Pro, their latest gaming phone, the Blade V50 Design, the nubia Neo 5G, and various other new terminal products at this exhibition.

In Uzbekistan, ZTE collaborates closely with major operators and enterprises. The company upholds its fundamental principle that “technology creates value” and continually develops new digital solutions, optimizing them for cost-effectiveness and alignment with specific markets and customer needs. To enhance data transfer speeds within existing networks and facilitate the widespread adoption of 5G technology in Uzbekistan, ZTE champions innovative communication network solutions. ZTE provides next-generation equipment supporting 4G LTE and Massive MIMO carrier aggregation technology, significantly boosting 4G data transfer speeds. Furthermore, ongoing projects involve implementing voice communication services through VoLTE technology, transitioning to the IMS core, incorporating cloud technologies, and adopting advanced solutions for fixed communications, among others.

ZTE has been actively involved in the implementation of the “Digital Uzbekistan 2030” initiative. The company carefully plans and executes projects aimed at deploying mobile networks in the most remote and challenging regions of the republic. ZTE’s primary goal is to ensure that the entire population gains access to state-of-the-art digital services, thereby contributing to the nation’s digital transformation.

ABOUT ZTE:

ZTE helps to connect the world with continuous innovation for a better future. The company provides innovative technologies and integrated solutions, its portfolio spans all series of wireless, wireline, devices and professional telecommunications services. Serving over a quarter of the global population, ZTE is dedicated to creating a digital and intelligent ecosystem, and enabling connectivity and trust everywhere. ZTE is listed on both the Hong Kong and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges. www.zte.com.cn/global

Source: ZTE

The post ZTE Showcases Groundbreaking Digital Innovations and 5G Solutions at ICTWEEK Uzbekistan 2023 appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.

Dubai is calling for a united front to spur the development of generative artificial intelligence to maximise its potential and reap economic benefits, the chief executive of the Dubai Future Foundation has said.

Countries need to come together to prepare society for the innovation and to help bridge the gap between policies and the advancement of the emerging technology, which has a reported business opportunity of as much as $4.4 trillion, Khalfan Belhoul said at the Dubai Assembly for Generative AI conference on Wednesday.

Mr Khalfan Belhoul, chief executive of the Dubai Future Foundation, called for a united front as the foundation launched the Dubai Generative AI Alliance of global technology companies.

The industries with highest AI potential include banking, software and platforms, energy, communications and media, and health, according to the DFF.

Mr Belhoul made his remarks as the foundation launched the Dubai Generative AI Alliance of global technology companies, which aims to accelerate the adoption of emerging technologies and build one of the world’s most advanced and effective tech-enabled governments in line with Dubai’s digital ambitions.

The collaborative effort should bring together key segments of society, which include policymakers, the private sector, entrepreneurs and students, Mr Belhoul said.

“Regulation is extremely important. We need to understand how can we regulate something as big as generative AI. But we need to get started now and look at the challenges [and] understand the risks,” he said.

“The idea is to come up with some kind of an alliance with different partners from all over the world with clear, tangible outcomes of what needs to be done. Our intention is to continue those conversations, but come up with an alliance that also produces tangible results.”

AI has long been used by businesses in their operations, but it has gained momentum with the advent of generative AI, made popular by Microsoft-backed Open AI’s ChatGPT, which became a sensation as it is capable of producing various kinds of data, including audio, code, images, text, simulations, 3D objects and videos.

Generative AI’s potential in regional economies has already been flagged. GCC countries, for instance, are expected to reap about $23.5 billion in economic benefits by 2030 as investments in generative AI continue to grow, PwC unit Strategy& Middle East said in a report last month.

For businesses, the potential is immense. Generative AI could generate value equivalent to anywhere between $2.6 trillion and $4.4 trillion in global corporate profits annually in 63 use cases where the technology could raise productivity, a recent study from the McKinsey Global Institute said.

Verticals involved in this include interactions with customers, the generation of creative content for marketing and sales, and drafting software code based on natural-language prompts, among many other tasks, it said.

That would increase the value of productivity from AI and analytics by 15 per cent to 40 per cent compared to previous generations of the technology – an amount that would roughly double as generative AI spreads “more diffusely” across the global workplace, the global consultancy said.

Investors put more than $4.2 billion into generative AI start-ups in 2021 and 2022 through 215 deals after interest surged in 2019, recent data from CB Insights showed.

Globally, AI investments are projected to hit $200 billion by 2025 and could possibly have a bigger impact on gross domestic product, a recent study from Goldman Sachs Economic Research showed.

That study also indicated that AI investments will possibly take a few years to have a major impact on the economy, rising from a relatively slow starting point.

The technology could also raise global labour productivity growth by more than 1 percentage point per year in the next decade, according to Goldman Sachs.

The assembly also aims to support companies involved in generative AI, including by connecting them with investors and venture capitalists, as well as helping them work with government agencies, Mr Belhoul said.

“How can we accelerate their ideas so they can become something positive for AI? This is something maybe easier said than done, but entrepreneurs are very ambitious; they need to move fast,” he said.

“They have very high burn rates. They need investment and we need all those components to be the catalyst for them.”

Source

The post Dubai Future Foundation Calls for United Global Front to Develop Generative AI appeared first on Tashkent Citizen.