Geopolitics

Trade deals could squeeze Make in India's public procurement edge

• Retired Government of India secretary Aruna Sharma argues that opening government buying to foreign suppliers under trade deals could clash with Make in India preferences that help local makers, especially MSMEs. Dairy and textiles may be most exposed.
• She notes the EU has long pushed to bring procurement under non-discrimination rules, and that past deals did not always give India equal access in return; India has used safeguards against import surges, including from South Korea.
• Deals with the UK, EFTA and the UAE show procurement is now on the table. She wants any opening tied to real reciprocity, investment and technology transfer, with care in railways, energy, space and defence.

Other side: Local-preference rules can also mean higher prices and weaker competition for taxpayers. Opening tenders may be the price of wider access for Indian exporters, and foreign bidders could bring better technology. Is shelter or competition the faster route to capability?

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Summary based on Mint. Read the full story ↗

Inside Jensen Huang's fall: a spy scandal and a 'feudal' Nvidia

• Nvidia's board met late into the night before Huang quit, ending 33 years at the company he co-founded, the FT reports. US agencies suspected a woman he admitted an affair with, an executive at Singapore client MegaSpeed, of spying for China; reports of an alleged affair with a subordinate followed.
• Insiders describe a 'feudal' Nvidia: 60 direct reports to Huang, family members in senior roles, no formal succession plan and no officially named compliance chief.
• In a New York Times guest essay, biographer Stephen Witt argues hubris undid Huang, and that pushing to lift chip export curbs on China set Washington hawks against him.

Other side: Backers such as Elon Musk defended Huang, and the board and FBI inquiries have not yet reported. Is a private failing being blurred with corporate wrongdoing, and would a more cautious leader have built Nvidia at all?

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Summary based on Financial Times and The New York Times. Read the full story ↗

Sberbank Switzerland rescue: TradeX owners settle after 4-year feud

• In September 2022 Swiss regulator Finma briefly eased sanctions curbs so Sberbank's Zurich arm could be sold. Stephen Lynch and Abdallah Chatila bought it for about SFr130mn and renamed it TradeXBank.
• Chatila financed his side with costly bonds through his m3 group, fell behind on payments and fell out with Lynch, who won an arbitration and froze some m3 shares. By 2025 more than 40% of the bank's shares were pledged to creditors, the FT reports.
• Finma warned in October of possible liquidation. This week the owners settled: Lynch drops his claims for a bigger stake, and Chatila wants to sell out.

Other side: Finma did ringfence the bank, which still operates and says it has no Russian shareholders. Liquidating it in 2022 could have meant years of legal limbo and lost jobs. Was a messy survival really worse than a clean shutdown?

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Summary based on Financial Times. Read the full story ↗

Oil slips below $100 as midterms raise hopes the Iran war fades

• A Times of India column, reposted on Tessellatum, argues the US midterm result raised the odds that the Iran war fades. Brent is back below $100 a barrel from $117 two weeks earlier, though global inventories are still over half a billion barrels below pre-war levels.
• India's energy shock tops 2% of GDP, yet its growth upgrades have been the strongest among big economies. Windfall taxes on fuel exports, disinvestment and strong GST collections should keep fiscal slippage small.
• The June-quarter current account deficit was $4.2bn, as services and remittances offset a wider goods gap. The author blames rupee pressure on over-hedged imports.

Other side: Inventories need over a year to rebuild after the war ends, freight and diesel margins stay far above pre-war levels, and a war that fades is not one that ends. Only June-quarter payments data is complete.

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Summary based on The Times of India. Read the full story ↗

Nvidia board probes Jensen Huang after affair and China spy claims

• Jensen Huang admitted an affair on Sunday after reports that the woman, an executive at a large Nvidia customer, may have been a Chinese intelligence asset. A board committee with outside lawyers will investigate, though the board says it has no reason to think secrets leaked, the FT reports.
• A WSJ timeline runs from a late-2024 Commerce probe into possible chip diversion to China to a classified memo this spring. On Monday, Trump said Huang told him he had no idea she was a spy.
• An FT Lex column argues Nvidia, nearly 7% of the S&P 500, is now systemic and, with no clear successor and directors averaging 18 years, needs a named number two.

Other side: The board sees no sign of leaks, the White House is backing Huang, and an affair is not espionage. If the probe clears him, pushing out the leader investors trust most could do more damage than the scandal.

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Summary based on Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. Read the full story ↗

Signing FTAs is the easy part for India's exporters

• With pacts with the UK and New Zealand in force and the EU deal awaiting implementation, exporters from Surat textiles to auto parts are chasing certificates and learning rules of origin to qualify for lower tariffs, Mint reports.
• The record is weak: Bank of America estimates only 20-30% of eligible exports use FTA preferences. Small firms face certification costs, carbon audits, suppliers who won't open their books and imported Chinese parts that muddy proof of origin.
• Exporters also blame customs disputes and costly inputs; one think tank head suggests cutting India's many import duty rates to a handful.

Other side: Low use may say more about price than paperwork. If Indian goods still cost more than Vietnamese or Chinese ones, easier forms won't win orders, and skipping the perk can be a rational choice.

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Summary based on Mint. Read the full story ↗

Why does America hate AI? Gillian Tett on the US and Asia attitude gap

• In an FT Weekend essay, Gillian Tett argues American hostility to AI is not universal. Anger at data centres helped shape this week's midterms, yet China, much of Asia and most emerging markets are far more optimistic.
• Her first explanation is economics and policy: ageing Japan and Korea welcome automation, rich service economies fear for white-collar work, and the US does little to share AI gains or retrain workers, unlike Singapore.
• Her second is culture: traditions that see humans and machines as linked, and low trust in officials, make machines feel less threatening. Attitudes can shift, she adds.

Other side: Survey optimism can reflect less freedom to object, as Tett notes for China. And enthusiasm in Asia and emerging markets could fade quickly if AI starts taking jobs there too, or a major AI accident hits.

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Summary based on Financial Times. Read the full story ↗

Hackers heat fridges at French blood banks and European supermarkets

• Cold rooms at three French blood service sites were driven to very high temperatures on 2 November, Wired reports. Alarms and staff caught it and the blood was unharmed. Supermarkets in at least 11 European countries have binned food after similar attacks.
• Many hacks used internet-exposed Danfoss temperature controllers on outdated firmware, some with weak passwords based on the date. Stores on US military bases were hit in August.
• Who is behind it is unclear. Some researchers see signs of Russia- or Iran-linked actors; the Kremlin denies involvement.

Other side: The blood service's alarms and fail-safes worked, which shows layered defences limit the harm. Spoiled groceries are costly but recoverable; the real test is whether operators patch before attackers aim at something less forgiving.

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Summary based on Wired. Read the full story ↗

Wall Street banks pile into dim-sum bonds, building a global yuan

• Bloomberg columnist Andy Mukherjee notes that the world's biggest banks have sold nearly triple last year's total of offshore yuan (dim-sum) bonds in Hong Kong so far this year, led by Citigroup, Barclays and BNP Paribas.
• The draw is no longer currency arbitrage but China's vast pool of savers, short of returns at home, who can buy offshore through Southbound Bond Connect while staying in yuan.
• Beijing wants deep yuan markets to blunt Western sanctions. The irony, he says: as Washington frets, US megabanks help build them.

Other side: The yuan is still a sliver of global reserves, and capital controls set the ceiling: the 2016 liquidity squeeze showed Beijing can drain offshore yuan when it chooses. Banks borrowing cheap yuan may be opportunism, not a vote of confidence.

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Summary based on Mint. Read the full story ↗

Free Chinese AI models nearly match OpenAI's best at hacking networks

• Vals, which measures AI capabilities, set models loose on mock corporate networks. OpenAI's gated cyber model Daybreak completed 81% of tasks; the open-weight DeepSeek managed 73% and tied it on some.
• Vals says open models do the job for about a tenth of the cost, under $3 a run, partly because they can run on one's own hardware.
• That undercuts the idea, behind Anthropic's limited release of Claude Mythos Preview, that gated access buys defenders much time. Real attackers still mostly use older, cheaper models.

Other side: Mock networks are not real breaches, and an Edera co-founder notes the closed labs probably hold stronger unreleased models. Cheap open models also help defenders, who can run them to find holes first.

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Summary based on Wired. Read the full story ↗

China's K-shaped economy: world-class tech on top, weak jobs and demand below, James Crabtree finds

• After two weeks in China, Crabtree sees a widening K: Shenzhen's EVs, AI and drones on top; falling investment, a property slump and weak private spending below, despite reported 4.5% growth.
• Economist David Daokui Li puts real unemployment at 10.2% against an official rate a little over 5%; the FT counts 53m people in food delivery and ride-hailing. Michael Pettis sees a Japan-style slow decade as the optimistic case.
• Brutal domestic price wars push Chinese firms abroad, and Beijing has new rules to monitor tech exports, covering AI, including open-weight models.

Other side: Crabtree calls these quick reflections from one trip, and estimates of real unemployment vary widely. China's strength in physical AI and manufacturing may matter more to the world than its slump at home.

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Summary based on James Crabtree (Substack). Read the full story ↗

Europe is falling behind on AI and tech, and Britain must chart its own path, says Keegan McBride

• Keegan McBride, writing with Sam Cash, says frontier AI scales with compute, capital and energy, and Europe is short of all three; Goldman Sachs puts AI-related capex at just under $8tn over five years.
• He cites DIGITALEUROPE research finding Europe behind in seven of eight critical technologies, including old strengths such as robotics and space.
• With only the US and China offering full tech ecosystems, countries must pick partners. Britain, he argues, should become a "tech-enabled state": bet on space, quantum and life sciences, stay close to the US, and rebuild government with AI.

Other side: The case leans heavily on aligning with the US. Sovereignty advocates argue that depending on American firms is itself a strategic risk, and Europe's caution on rules could look wiser if AI harms mount.

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Summary based on Technology, Geopolitics, and Bureaucracy (Substack). Read the full story ↗

After a blue wave, data centre fans look to space

• Democrats won widely on Tuesday, taking the US House and Senate and doing well in Texas, a data-centre hot spot, with many winners campaigning against the industry, Wired reports.
• Elon Musk, who spent more than $400 million backing Republicans who all lost, posted that data centres in space now look appealing; investors, researchers and fans joined the chorus.
• Experts told Wired change in Texas may be limited: Republicans still hold the state senate, developers' permits carry strong vested rights, and counties lack zoning power over data centres.

Other side: Orbit is no quick escape: Wired notes space data centres cost far more, cannot reach hyperscale size and depend on launches. With a split Texas legislature, change may be slower than either side expects.

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Summary based on Wired. Read the full story ↗

Binance says fake job interviews opened the door to its $6.3bn heist

• Binance's own investigation says the thieves behind last week's theft, which the FBI blames on the North Korea-linked group TraderTraitor, posed as recruiters and gave an engineer an interview task laced with malware.
• That foothold, plus an earlier tampered download on another engineer's laptop, let them use Binance's in-house AI tool to take over colleagues' machines and trigger the attack on 29 October.
• The exchange says it has rebuilt its wallet systems and AI tools, set aside money to cover users' losses and reopened withdrawals.

Other side: This is Binance describing its own breach, and it is keeping some security details private. Its account may stress the attackers' cunning over its own control gaps; an independent review would tell more.

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Summary based on Financial Times. Read the full story ↗

Europe's supermarket freezer hacks: what we know so far

• On Monday hackers remotely pushed freezer temperatures as high as 55C in almost 100 stores across Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Belgium, Luxembourg and Estonia, weeks after a similar overnight wave hit French supermarkets.
• The trick was simple: known flaws in internet-linked temperature controllers. Danfoss and Copeland confirmed affected systems; shops kept off the public internet or behind private networks were spared.
• No one has claimed it. A Sentinel researcher suspects a Russia-linked group seeking deniable disruption, and EU officials call it an attack on food security.

Other side: Blame rests on one researcher's reading of thin traces, and the fix is routine patching. Calling it state warfare could overstate what copycats might also pull off.

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Summary based on Financial Times. Read the full story ↗

The new Fragile Five are rich nations, a Mint column argues

• Narayan Ramachandran takes the 2013 label once pinned on Turkey, Brazil, India, South Africa and Indonesia and hands it to France, Italy, the UK, Germany and the US: fragile now in social, not currency, terms.
• Higher rates swell debt costs while inflation and an oil shock squeeze budgets. France's student protests have grown into a cost-of-living revolt against a fiscal deficit above 5% of GDP, and Italy has seen looting and fuel blockades.
• He rates Germany the least at risk of the five.

Other side: Floating reserve currencies and deep bond markets give these nations room the old Fragile Five never had. Street protests are not defaults, and the label may stretch the comparison.

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Summary based on Mint. Read the full story ↗

Is 'Made in China' heading for its 'Made in Japan' moment?

• Bloomberg Opinion's Howard Chua-Eoan, in Mint, recalls when 'Made in Japan' was a joke for flimsy toys, until firms like Nippon Kogaku (now Nikon) and Totsuko (now Sony) made it a badge of quality.
• He sees China at a similar turn: Shenzhen lens maker Viltrox is joining the elite, and Europeans buy Chinese EVs that an HSBC report judged simply better.
• Yet many Chinese brands play down their roots, from Miniso's Uniqlo-like logo to Temu's offshore legal home. He expects that to fade as confidence grows.

Other side: Japan rose in an era of open markets; China faces tariffs, quotas and security worries. Keeping a low profile may be smart strategy, not shyness.

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Summary based on Mint. Read the full story ↗

North Korea-linked hackers steal $6.3bn from Binance in record heist

• Hackers drained Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, on Thursday, taking $6.3bn by its own estimate within minutes. Researchers tie the attack to North Korea's state-backed TraderTraitor unit, also blamed for the earlier record Bybit heist.
• Binance says the way in was an engineer's compromised laptop, though co-chief executive Richard Teng says the attack was more complex and more breach points have surfaced. Paused withdrawals revived memories of FTX online.
• Tether and Circle froze stolen stablecoins fast, catching close to half the haul; the rest was swapped into coins nobody can freeze. Founder Changpeng Zhao says user funds are safe and losses will be covered.

Other side: Binance can absorb the loss and says customers are whole, and the record freeze shows the industry's response tools are getting faster. A rich, well-run state hacking unit may simply be beyond what any single firm can stop.

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Summary based on The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times. Read the full story ↗

How North Korea turned hacking into a state income machine

• Cut off by sanctions, North Korea has built cyber warfare into a way to earn foreign currency, the FT reports. Students strong in maths and science are picked as teenagers and trained for years, some abroad in China and Russia.
• Its record runs from the Sony Pictures hack and a Bangladesh central bank raid to crypto heists at Ronin, Bybit and now Binance. Blockchain firm Chainalysis says its hackers stole about $2bn last year, most of the world's total.
• It also plants fake remote workers in foreign firms. Pyongyang denies all of it.

Other side: Attribution rests on investigators and analysts, and Pyongyang calls it slander. Faster freezes and tracing may also shrink what each heist actually nets, so headline sums overstate the regime's take.

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Summary based on Financial Times. Read the full story ↗

Norway weighs if its $2.3tn oil fund can drop Big Tech on ethics

• An FT column says Norway is drafting proposals on how its oil fund should handle ethics, after its exit from Caterpillar over links to Israel's alleged violations angered US politicians close to President Trump.
• An expert group suggested allowing investment in nuclear-weapons makers in the US, UK and France, and weighing diversification before any exclusion. Central bank research found dropping Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft would have cut returns by about a quarter from 2012 to 2025.
• Critics say that gives the biggest firms a lower ethical bar. A government proposal is due in spring, with a parliamentary debate next summer.

Other side: Supporters argue it is consistent: Norway relies on NATO's nuclear umbrella, and a fund held for future generations cannot ignore what exclusions cost it.

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Summary based on Financial Times. Read the full story ↗

China's inflation stays low as an energy shock lifts prices elsewhere

• In a Mint column, economists Puneet Kumar Arora and Jaydeep Mukherjee note China's retail inflation was just 0.9% in September 2026, against 3.7% in the US, 3.8% in the eurozone and 5.5% in India, despite the West Asia energy shock.
• Oil reserves and the shift to electric cars helped, but they argue weak demand matters more: housing is about 70% of household assets, and while factory-gate prices rose 5%, core consumer inflation stayed at 1%.
• With retail sales up 1.1% and exports up 14.6% this year, they warn China may export its disinflation, easing prices abroad but stoking trade fights.

Other side: Factory-gate prices are already climbing fast; if energy stays dear, those costs could reach Chinese shoppers and turn exported disinflation into exported inflation.

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Summary based on Mint. Read the full story ↗

France's 10-year bond yield tops 5% as investors weigh euro contagion

• France's 10-year yield rose above 5% for the first time since 2002, CNBC reports, and its premium over Germany is the widest since the euro crisis. The euro is down almost 5% against the dollar this year, and 2026 growth is forecast at 0.5%.
• A WSJ column by James Mackintosh calls France the weakest link in a world of higher rates: a deficit near 5% of GDP against nominal growth of 3% at best, taxes already near their limit, and voters refusing cuts.
• Most analysts CNBC spoke to see contagion as limited: stronger banks, ECB tools and trusted statistics, unlike Greece in 2009.

Other side: A 5% yield is not panic territory, and the ECB would likely step in long before Italy-style spreads. If a credible spending plan emerges after the next election, today's sell-off could look like a buying opportunity.

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Summary based on The Wall Street Journal and CNBC. Read the full story ↗

China's stocks lose $3.5 trillion as weak demand squeezes profits

• Chinese stocks have shed $3.5tn since a May peak, Bloomberg data in Moneycontrol show, pushing the CSI 300 into a bear market. Reporting MSCI China firms have missed forecasts by 9% on average, led by CATL, while cash-hungry tech giants sell shares.
• A Mint column by IIM Indore's G. Venkat Raman explains why: in September exports jumped 36.3% and industrial output 5.5%, but retail sales rose just 1.1%. Beijing calls it strong supply, weak demand.
• Property gloom and job worries keep households saving, and local rivalry breeds price wars. With growth on target at 4.5%, big stimulus looks unlikely.

Other side: Low valuations, state buying and low bond yields can pull money back fast, and Bridgewater's China arm is cautiously optimistic. A credible push on household incomes from the Fifth Plenum would change the story.

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Summary based on Moneycontrol and Mint. Read the full story ↗

France's riots meet a debt squeeze, and youth want the system fixed

• The WSJ says years of subsidies to cushion prices have left France with one of Europe's biggest deficits, and investors have pushed its 10-year borrowing costs above 5%.
• It adds that stagnant real incomes, a heavy tax burden and pension costs hidden in ministry budgets leave little room for new help.
• The FT's Simon Kuper describes looting in Paris and polls that put Marine Le Pen in line to win next year's election, while a Janan Ganesh column argues the young protesters mostly want a fairer system, not a new one.

Other side: Kuper notes the French often talk radical but act conservative, and Ganesh reads the protests as a bid to make the existing system work. So the anger may be answerable through budget choices, but the bond market may not wait for them.

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Summary based on The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times. Read the full story ↗

US recyclers harvest rare earths from old wind turbines

• The WSJ says Paladin EnviroTech is pulling rare-earth magnets from retired wind turbines in Iowa, hoping to cut US reliance on China.
• Only a fraction of older turbines carry rare earths, but newer, more powerful ones hold much more, so supply grows as fleets are replaced.
• Dismantling huge parts and separating the metals cheaply are the hard parts; most recyclers so far chased copper instead.

Other side: Few turbines carry rare earths, and battery-recycling ventures have stumbled before on supply and cost. This can complement new mines, not replace them.

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Summary based on The Wall Street Journal. Read the full story ↗

India's arms exports to Europe soar on Europe's rearmament

• Bloomberg's analysis of trade data finds Indian makers have shipped at least $872 million of shells, mortar rounds, propellants and explosives to Europe since Russia invaded Ukraine. India is now the No. 2 supplier to a 13-country East and Central European bloc, behind South Korea.
• The Economic Times reports Defence Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh saying exports hit a record ₹38,424 crore (about €3.6 billion), reach over 80 countries, and make India the third-largest arms exporter to Europe.
• Bloomberg notes the sales undercut Russia, India's main arms supplier, and some Indian shells have reached Ukraine via European buyers; officials say end-user rules put that on the buyer.

Other side: Wartime demand can fade when the war does, and much of what India makes still rests on Russian designs. Shells that reach Ukraine through third countries could cost goodwill in Moscow and invite closer scrutiny.

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Summary based on Bloomberg and The Economic Times. Read the full story ↗

Warhound raises $200mn to clone and gene-edit US military dogs

• The FT reports Warhound, conceived by Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey and Colossal Biosciences’ Ben Lamm, has raised $200mn from backers including Sequoia, Ark Invest and the CIA-founded In-Q-Tel to rebuild US supply of military working dogs.
• It plans to clone top dogs and gene-edit them for longevity and performance; Anduril will develop body armour and ‘cybernetics’. Most such dogs now come from European breeders.
• Luckey holds no equity and no daily role; ex-Pentagon data chief David Spirk will run it.

Other side: Lamm argues editing is more humane, since many working dogs fail training today. But it is a promise, not a result: edited dogs still have to prove they outperform well-bred ones.

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Summary based on Financial Times. Read the full story ↗

Is China falling into Japan’s lost-decade trap?

• The FT finds China showing Japan-style malaise: falling property values, deflationary pressure, cautious consumers and a population that began shrinking in 2022. Total debt is near 300% of GDP, by Capital Economics’ count.
• An updated Goldman Sachs ‘Japanisation’ gauge has rated China more Japanised than Japan for years, and household bank lending has fallen outright for the first time.
• Nomura’s Richard Koo calls it a balance-sheet recession needing bold fiscal spending; Beijing is leaning on exports and high-tech bets instead.

Other side: BNP Paribas’s Isabelle Mateos y Lago says the differences matter more: China is poorer, its factories stay competitive, and its very high household savings could be unlocked.

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Summary based on Financial Times. Read the full story ↗

War's hidden squeeze: a sulphur shortage pits EV batteries against food

• ET Prime explains that refineries give out sulphur as a by-product, so with Gulf refineries cut off by the US-Iran war and Russian plants hit, sulphur is short, and nobody can make more on purpose.
• Its acid is needed for phosphate fertiliser and EV battery materials. Buyers who can pass on costs keep running: in China, battery-material plants ran near full while fertiliser plants ran at about a third of capacity.
• Export curbs by Russia, China, India and others deepened the squeeze. The hit to harvests may show up a season later; India has told refiners to supply fertiliser makers first.

Watch next: Ships through Hormuz. If the strait reopens soon and the weather is kind, stockpiles and leaner fertiliser grades may soften the blow; nobody yet knows how big the harvest hit will be.

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Summary based on The Economic Times. Read the full story ↗

Chris Miller: data centres need protection from drone warfare

• Miller notes Ukraine has damaged a Yandex data centre in Russia, while Iran has hit facilities in Bahrain and the UAE, including ones run by US cloud firms.
• Attacks are rising because military and civilian sites blur, campuses are growing costlier and a cheap drone can cause huge disruption.
• The UAE is reworking its plans into a network of smaller sites, and designs may add blast-resistant concrete, jamming gear and missile defence.

Other side: Hardened, dispersed and underground sites may blunt the threat. The real question is how much they add to the cost, not whether building continues.

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Summary based on Financial Times. Read the full story ↗