WORLD ROUNDUPA Made-in-China Plan for World Domination | Morocco Is Practicing a Strange Sort of Colonialism | Trump Promises Arab Leaders He Won’t Let Israel Annex the West Bank, and more

A Made-in-China Plan for World Domination  (Economist)
Donald Trump is failing to stop China’s rise as a manufacturing superpower.

Trump Promises Arab Leaders He Won’t Let Israel Annex the West Bank  (Felicia Schwartz, Eli Stokols, Nicholas Vinocur and Hans von der Burchard, Politico)
The president’s pledge came in a closed-door meeting at the U.N.

The Gaza Left and the Gender Left  (Helen Lewis, The Atlantic)
Can groups with different values work together against Britain’s far right?

Why Trump Changed His Mind on Ukraine  (Tom Nichols, The Atlantic)
And why he still might change it again.
David Sanger of The New York Times is probably correct in his evaluation that Trump, rather than increasing pressure on Russia, is “washing his hands of the conflict.” Putin, who, like other world leaders, shows little inclination to take Trump seriously, has no intention of stopping his daily murder of innocent Ukrainians, and so Trump cannot gain any public credit from trying to broker a peace. As Sanger noted, the tell is that Trump ended his message by saying: “I wish both countries well.” That’s Trump-speak for being bored with and exhausted by two nations that seem to have other priorities in the world besides getting a Nobel Prize for President Donald J. Trump.
I hope I’m wrong. But Trump has a well-known tendency to agree with whomever he spoke with last, and his comments may only reflect the immediacy of his meetings with Zelensky and Macron. The only way the world can know if the president meant what he said is if he comes back to Washington and puts America firmly back on the side of NATO and Ukraine with money and materiel. Until then, it’s just talk.

Why China Hawks Love Talking About AI  (James Palmer, Foreign Policy)
Artificial intelligence is not the most important part of the U.S.-China technology race, yet it receives the most attention in Washington.

China Has Weaponized Battery Production Against the United States  (Elaine Dezenski and Josh Birenbaum, National Interest)
China has dominated the global battery supply chain through non-market practices, posing a threat to US economic and national security.

Morocco Is Practicing a Strange Sort of Colonialism  (Economist)
It is enriching Western Sahara in an effort to keep it under control.