WORLD ROUNDUPChina’s New Era of Social Control | Poland’s Reparation Debate | The State of Russia’s Military, and more

Published 20 September 2022

··  Pentagon Pushes Defense Companies to Limit Use of Chinese Supplies
Finding China-made alloys in F-35 jets has put U.S. officials on alert as they seek to limit vulnerabilities

··  Surveillance State—Inside China’s Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control
China building a total population surveillance system

··  China Accelerates Global Campaign to Sway Foreign Media
Indonesia and Malaysia are vulnerable, while the Philippines is more resilient, Freedom House finds.

··  Simultaneous Climate Hazards Are Supercharging Global Systemic Risk
Climate catastrophes are becoming routine

··  What’s Behind Poland’s Reparation Debate?
The reparations issue is formally and morally unambiguous

··  The ‘New School’ Far-Right: A Transnational Model on Telegram
Russian invasion of Ukraine prompts emergence of transnational far-right

··  Trump Associate Heads to Trial Over Alleged Illegal Foreign Lobbying
Thomas Barrack is accused of trying to illegally influence White House policies on behalf of the United Arab Emirates

··  Here’s What We Know About the State of Russia’s Military
Ukraine’s recent victories expose even more systemic failures

Pentagon Pushes Defense Companies to Limit Use of Chinese Supplies  (Doug Cameron, Wall Street Journal)
The Pentagon is intensifying efforts to decouple U.S. defense companies’ global supply chain from China, according to executives and department officials. The Defense Department said it has started using artificial intelligence to improve the way it analyzes whether aircraft parts, electronics and raw materials used by U.S. military contractors originate in China and other potential adversaries. Defense contractors, encouraged by the Pentagon and lawmakers, have also said they are weaning themselves off microelectronics and specialized metals from China, one of the biggest global suppliers. In the U.S., new facilities are under development to process rare-earth minerals, most of which remain widely sourced from China.

Surveillance State—Inside China’s Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control  (Josh Chin, Liza Lin, Jessica Batke, & Orville Schell, ChinaFile)
Watch video of this discussion of Josh Chin and Liza Lin’s new book, exploring the political and social control the Chinese Communist Party is building by collecting and harnessing personal data from facial recognition, personal genomes, digital footprints, AI, and other forms of surveillance.

China Accelerates Global Campaign to Sway Foreign Media  (BenarNews / RFA)
China is intensifying its campaign to influence and manipulate news and information worldwide, and using an array of tools to project a positive image of itself abroad, a U.S.-based watchdog group said in a report released Thursday.
In Southeast Asia, Indonesia and Malaysia were vulnerable to Beijing’s influence campaigns from early 2019 through the end of last year, while the Philippines was more resilient, according to the new report by Freedom House, a non-profit headquartered in Washington.

Simultaneous Climate Hazards Are Supercharging Global Systemic Risk  (Robert Glasser, The Strategist)
The year so far has brought a string of headline-grabbing environmental catastrophes. Flooding from relentless monsoon rains in July and August left a third of Pakistan under water and 33 million people in need of assistance. The record heatwave that ravaged China for more than 70 days affected around 900 million people in at least 17 provinces.
More than 400,000 Japanese evacuated their homes due to this year’s record floods. And in Europe, thousands of people in 21 countries died from the extreme heat. (Cont.)