WORLD ROUNDUPA Deal with the Houthis Is No Deal at All | Can Europe Break Free from China’s Rare-Earth Grip? | How Strategists Think About Keeping the Peace in the Taiwan Strait, and more

European Critical Infrastructure Still Struggles with Chinese ICT Vendors  (Natasha Buckley, Pia Huesch, and Jamie MacColl, The Strategist)
Five years after the height of debates on banning Huawei from European 5G infrastructure, Spain has quietly handed the Chinese tech giant a contract to store and manage police wiretaps, the legal interceptions of communications ordered by Spanish judges. For €12.3 million, Huawei’s OceanStor servers will now store some of the country’s most sensitive law enforcement and intelligence data.
This decision, made under Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, flies in the face of much of Europe’s approach to telecoms security and Chinese technology vendors. EU member states (including Spain) and Britain have committed to removing Huawei from sensitive 5G telecoms infrastructure, citing the company’s close ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Despite this, Spain continues to integrate Huawei into a core component of its national security apparatus. This latest contract builds on a longstanding relationship between Huawei and Spain’s legal intercept systems which stretches back to 2004.
Lawful intercept platforms are attractive targets for foreign intelligence agencies, because they support counterintelligence operations. Indeed, in 2024, US lawful intercept platforms were apparently targeted by Salt Typhoon, a Chinese cyber espionage unit, albeit unsuccessfully.

Can Europe Break Free from China’s Rare-Earth Grip?  (Christina Lu, Foreign Policy)
Brussels is worried it could be Beijing’s next target.

Why Israel Keeps Attacking Syria  (David E. Rosenberg,Foreign Policy)
Despite military wins, fear remains a key driver of Israeli policy.

How Strategists Think About Keeping the Peace in the Taiwan Strait (David Ignatius, Washington Post)
In 1914, the world stumbled into a war that hurt all combatants. Is it on the same path now?

A Deal with the Houthis Is No Deal at All  (Mark Dubowitz, and Koby Gottlieb, National Interest)
Until the Houthis see the costs of their aggression, the Yemeni Islamist group will continue to threaten stability in the Red Sea.

Israel’s Gaza War Faces an Inflection Point (Seth J. Frantzman, National Interest)
The IDF’s exhaustion and Hamas’ dogged survival points to the likelihood of a Gaza ceasefire in the next two months.