WORLD ROUNDUPIs Wagner Pivoting Back to Africa? | China Is Remaking Its Chip Business | South Korea’s Drone Worry, and more

Russian Guerrillas Are Trying to Violently Overthrow Putin  (Anchal Vohra, Foreign Policy)
Since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, mysterious attacks have occurred across Russia. Explosives have derailed trains, blown up power lines, and damaged a bridge connecting Crimea to Russia. Arsonists have also thrown Molotov cocktails at military enlistment centers. Russian opposition groups later claimed credit for these attacks as part of a larger armed rebellion. 
But who are these groups? How strong are they, and do they receive Ukrainian and Western support, as Russia has claimed?

‘De-Americanize’: How China Is Remaking Its Chip Business (Chang Che and John Liu, New York Times)
Seven months after Washington unveiled tough curbs, Chinese companies are doubling down on homegrown supply chains and drawing billions in cash from Beijing and investors.

Taiwan Is Running Low on a Strategic Asset: Engineers  (John Liu and Paul Mozur, New York Times)
Taiwan’s world-dominating microchip sector was built by TSMC’s skilled employees. But a demographic crisis, demanding work culture and flagging interest threaten its lead.

South Korea Will Be Vulnerable to North’s Drones for Years, Leak Warns  (Alex Horton, Min Joo Kim and Michelle Ye Hee Lee, Washington Post)
An incursion late last year exposed extensive weaknesses and shortcomings in South Korea’s air defense, U.S. intelligence indicates.

China Is a Loan Shark with No Legs Left to Break  (Christina Lu, Foreign Policy)
In the messy world of international development finance, no country has disrupted the existing setup quite like China, which in the past decade has eclipsed both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the world’s largest creditor by lending out hundreds of billions of dollars.
Beijing now, for the first time, has the keys to the car. The problem is that the car is jacked up, on blocks, and the key doesn’t actually work. China’s gamble on checkbook diplomacy turned out little different from a Las Vegas weekend, except none of it stayed in Vegas.

Is Wagner Pivoting Back to Africa?  (Colin P. Clarke, Raphael Parens, Christopher Faulkner, and Kendal Wolf, Foreign Affairs)
Russia’s infamous Wagner paramilitary company may be headed for defeat in Ukraine. The group has sustained enormous losses in the last five months, and its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is embroiled in a high-stakes feud with Russia’s top military brass, who have accused him of indirectly aiding Ukraine by “sowing rifts” among Russian forces. Late last week, Prigozhin publicly castigated Russia’s senior military leadership for not supplying Wagner with enough ammunition and threatened to withdraw his forces from the city of Bakhmut. According to the British Ministry of Defense, the Kremlin may be looking to replace the Wagner contingent in Ukraine with forces from another private military company—one that it can more tightly control.
But even if it is sidelined in Ukraine, Wagner is unlikely to fade into obscurity. The group has demonstrated global ambitions—and much closer to American shores than many realize. It has considered working in Haiti and sought to purchase weapons from Turkey, a NATO ally. But the region where Wagner has made the deepest inroads—and where it is likely to refocus its efforts in the event of a setback in Ukraine—is Africa.
The group is probably already playing a role behind the scenes in the crisis in Sudan, where it has forged links with paramilitary leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (also known as Hemedti) and his Rapid Support Forces, one of the two main factions in the brewing civil war. Wagner has also entrenched itself in the Central African Republic and Mali, two former French colonies where it has largely filled the void left by departing French and international forces. And it has sent fighters to Libya and Mozambique, among other fragile states where governments and infrastructure need protecting.

How Spies Took Down Putin’s Most Insidious Weapon Against the West  (Gareth Corfield, The Telegraph)
The Snake malicious software (malware) network, used by Russia’s FSB spy agency, was knocked offline by the West’s Five Eyes espionage alliance on Tuesday in a multinational swoop codenamed Operation Medusa.
Their takedown has disabled a vital Kremlin tool for interfering in Western elections, disrupting businesses and gathering intelligence on Moscow’s enemies – ending a two-decade-long cyber spying campaign that indiscriminately targeted businesses and Western governments alike.