East Asia

Nigeria-Chhina-trade-imbalance

Nigeria’s China Problem

Trade statistics rarely tell a dramatic story on their own, but Nigeria’s latest import figures come close. In the first quarter of 2026, China supplied N5.10 trillion worth of goods to Nigeria compared with N2.81 trillion from the United States – already a substantial gap. By the second quarter, that […]

AI-safety-US-China

When The Builders Sound The Alarm

There’s something structurally unusual about a stock selloff triggered not by a competitor’s bad news or a disappointing earnings report, but by the industry’s own leading executives publicly warning that their product might be dangerous. That’s essentially what happened Monday, as AI-linked stocks fell across every major market – Wall […]

US-Taiwan-F-16- Lockheed-Martin

Politics Limits Arms Deliveries To Taiwan

On March 28, 2025 a rollout ceremony took place at Lockheed Martin’s F-16 production facility in Greenville, South Carolina. Two F16V block 70 jets were ready for final testing, and the ceremony marked the formal handover to Taiwan. The Greenville ceremony was attended by Taiwan’s Defense Minister and by Taiwan’s […]

China-economy-overproduction-AI-race

China’s AI Ambitions Widen A Dangerous Economic Gap

China’s economy is pulling in two directions at once, and July’s data makes the split harder to ignore. On one side, household spending is barely growing and the property sector remains locked in a multi-year collapse. On the other, factories are running hotter than ever, with high-tech manufacturing surging at […]

Europe-AI-US-China-Lagarde

The Leverage Nobody Has Ever Held: Lagarde’s Warning About Europe’s AI Dependency

Christine Lagarde doesn’t typically frame central bank speeches around geopolitical vulnerability, but her address in Vienna this week did exactly that. The European Central Bank president argued that Europe’s growing reliance on American and Chinese artificial intelligence isn’t just a competitiveness gap – it’s a strategic exposure that could hand […]

Five Reflections On The 25th Anniversary Of 9/11

It was a defining moment in the modern era that radically changed the course of history. The largest terrorist attack in modern history occurred a quarter-century ago when Al Qaeda operatives hijacked several planes and then crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Everyone remembers where they […]