Gaza’s evacuees are racing south with nowhere safe to go | The Path to AI Arms Control | Mongolia’s Search for a Third Way | China says Israel's actions in Gaza are 'beyond self defense' as U.S. races to avert wider conflict

View online | Unsubscribe (one-click).
For inquiries/unsubscribe issues, Contact Us

Gaza’s evacuees are racing south with nowhere safe to go - The Economist

IN JUST NINE days of war Hassan Abu Selmiyeh has already been displaced three times. First he moved to his brother’s house in Shati, a crowded refugee camp by the sea in northern Gaza. When that area felt unsafe he left for his daughter’s place inland. Then, on October 13th, he heard that Israel had called on the entire population of northern Gaza, more than 1m people, to flee south (see map). He thought it was a rumour—until he saw his neighbours start to leave.

With no taxis to be found, the 66-year-old made his way south on foot, walking 10km amid what he describes as “constant bombing” by the Israeli army. “It was devastating, whole neighbourhoods were wiped out, whole buildings were demolished,” he says. “It looked like one of Ukraine’s massacred cities. Gaza has turned into a ghost town.”

Since 2007, when Hamas, a militant Islamist group, took control of Gaza, war has been a tragic constant for the territory’s more than 2m inhabitants. They have lived through two big conflicts with Israel and numerous smaller ones. But this war, Gazans say, is unlike anything they have seen before. It is not just that the bombing is fiercer and the death toll higher; it is also that there is no electricity, barely any fuel and little to eat or drink.

Continued here

Want to accelerate software development at your company? See how we can help.

The Path to AI Arms Control - Foreign Affairs

This year marks the 78th anniversary of the end of the deadliest war in history and the beginning of the longest period in modern times without great-power war. Because World War I had been followed just two decades later by World War II, the specter of World War III, fought with weapons that had become so destructive they could theoretically threaten all of humankind, hung over the decades of the Cold War that followed. When the United States’ atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki compelled Japan’s immediate unconditional surrender, no one thought it conceivable that the world would see a de facto moratorium on the use of nuclear weapons for the next seven decades. It seemed even more improbable that almost eight decades later, there would be just nine nuclear weapons states. The leadership demonstrated by the United States over these decades in avoiding nuclear war, slowing nuclear proliferation, and shaping an international order that provided decades of great-power peace will go down in history as one of America’s most significant achievements.

Today, as the world confronts the unique challenges posed by another unprecedented and in some ways even more terrifying technology—artificial intelligence—it is not surprising that many have been looking to history for instruction. Will machines with superhuman capabilities threaten humanity’s status as master of the universe? Will AI undermine nations’ monopoly on the means of mass violence? Will AI enable individuals or small groups to produce viruses capable of killing on a scale that was previously the preserve of great powers? Could AI erode the nuclear deterrents that have been a pillar of today’s world order?

At this point, no one can answer these questions with confidence. But as we have explored these issues for the last two years with a group of technology leaders at the forefront of the AI revolution, we have concluded that the prospects that the unconstrained advance of AI will create catastrophic consequences for the United States and the world are so compelling that leaders in governments must act now. Even though neither they nor anyone else can know what the future holds, enough is understood to begin making hard choices and taking actions today—recognizing that these will be subject to repeated revision as more is discovered.

Continued here

Don't like ads? Go ad-free with TradeBriefs Premium

Mongolia’s Search for a Third Way - Foreign Affairs

The visit in early July of Russian Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov to Beijing would have gone largely unnoticed but for an unexpected announcement. Krasnov revealed that he and his Chinese colleagues had discussed the need to counteract the increasing Western influence on their “inner neighbor,” Mongolia. To this end, Krasnov said, he had already forwarded a proposal to his Mongolian counterpart to help strengthen ties with both China and Russia.

Krasnov’s remarks triggered alarm bells in Mongolia. For the past three decades, Mongolia has tried desperately to keep itself at arm’s length from its two neighbors, in part by exploiting their differences and in part by pursuing closer relations with the West. But now, as China and Russia grow ever closer, Mongolia’s space for maneuvering is rapidly shrinking.

This vast, resource-rich country of just over three million people in the heart of Eurasia still clings to a vision of the more open world that existed for about 30 years after the end of the Cold War. In those decades, Mongolia had a degree of freedom in choosing friends, trading with everyone, and benefiting from the prosperity produced by the rules-based international order. But it now faces many uncertainties in an era of great-power competition and hardening geopolitical divisions. In recent conversations with officials in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, we detected a creeping sense of resignation and fears that any rash move may invite intolerable pressure from Beijing or Moscow and further limits on the country’s ability to act independently.

Continued here

China says Israel's actions in Gaza are 'beyond self defense' as U.S. races to avert wider conflict - CNBC

China urged Israel to stop its collective punishment of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, as the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken raced through the Middle East over the weekend in an attempt to stave off a wider war in the region.

It's been more than a week after the Hamas militant group staged its worst assault on Israel since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, killing at least 1,400 mostly civilians in the Jewish state.

In retaliation, Israel last week pounded Gaza in airstrikes that have killed at least 2,670, cut off food, water, fuel and electricity to the Palestinian enclave, and ordered civilians to evacuate northern Gaza ahead of an expected ground assault aimed at eradicating Hamas.

Continued here

You are receiving this mailer as a TradeBriefs subscriber.
We fight fake/biased news through human curation & independent editorials.
Your support of ads like these makes it possible. Alternatively, get TradeBriefs Premium (ad-free) for only $2/month
If you still wish to unsubscribe, you can unsubscribe from all our emails here
Our address is 309 Town Center 1, Andheri Kurla Road, Andheri East, Mumbai 400059 - 93544947