Runaway AI Is an Extinction Risk: Experts | Can China Escape the Malacca Dilemma? | South American Currency, and more

Medvedev Says UK Officials Are Legitimate Military Targets for Russia  (George Grylls, The Times)
British officials are a “legitimate military target” for Russian attacks, a former Russian president has said.
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of President Putin’s security council, said British military support for Ukraine constituted “an undeclared war against Russia”. He said the UK was an “eternal enemy” of Moscow.

Corruption, Pollution and Exploitation: the Fallout from China’s Push into Africa  (Samuel Lovett and Simon Townsley, The Telegraph)
Sierra Leone’s experience with China is common to much of Africa. While the US and its allies have been busy enjoying the end of the Cold War, China has spent much of the past 30 years putting down roots across the African continent.
Through its Belt and Road initiative, China has built infrastructure throughout Africa and established lucrative supply chains to several dozen nations. Over the past two decades, China has invested £123.85 billion in sub-Saharan Africa, research suggests.
But this expansion into Africa has not always been positive, despite the vital investment it brings. In Sierra Leone, deception, corruption and intimidation, as with the British in the 1800s, have all been deployed to advance and consolidate the Chinese agenda.

Runaway AI Is an Extinction Risk, Experts Warn  (Will Knight, Wired)
Leading figures in the development of artificial intelligence systems, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, have signed a statement warning that the technology they are building may someday pose an existential threat to humanity comparable to that of nuclear war and pandemics. 
“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war,” reads a one-sentence statement, released today by the Center for AI Safety, a nonprofit. 
The idea that AI might become difficult to control, and either accidentally or deliberately destroy humanity, has long been debated by philosophers. But in the past six months, following some surprising and unnerving leaps in the performance of AI algorithms, the issue has become a lot more widely and seriously discussed.

Can China Escape the Malacca Dilemma?  (Ho Ting Hung, National Interest)
Beijing is quite conscious that the Strait of Malacca can act as an effective chokepoint in China’s economic network, and is trying to find a solution to this thorny geopolitical problem.

Is This Latin American Conservatives’ Last Chance?  (Joseph M. Humire, National Interest)
With a rising China and other bad actors on its shores, this could be Latin America’s last chance for lasting progress. It’s time for the new Right in Latin America to rise to the occasion.

Prigozhin Erupts: Has a Russian Succession Struggle Begun?  (Anatol Lieven and George Beebe, Responsible Statecraft)
Is the post-Putin era in Russia at hand? Probably not yet, barring an unlikely collapse of Russian forces in Ukraine. But a furious public attack on Russia’s entire war effort and its elites by Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the private Russian militia group “Wagner,” is a sign that some Russian factions are beginning to position themselves for a struggle over who might succeed the Kremlin leader.
Should the struggle end in fighting, Prigozhin, as the commander of a private army, may be in a strong position. Wagner has also just gained new prestige after taking the lead in the bloody and long-drawn-out, but ultimately successful battle for the town of Bakhmut.

Brazil’s Lula Proposes South American Currency  (DW)
Heads of state from 12 South American countries have gathered in the Brazilian capital to discuss regional integration. The summit is an attempt to revive the Unasur bloc now that the region has more left-wing leaders.