China v. US: The Great Mideast AI Race Heats Up
Officials, activists and academics have warned that while economically Middle Eastern states may benefit from the race between the US and China to offer them investment and technology, this will likely come at an environmental cost.
September 8, 2026, Neil Thompson, https://www.juancole.com/2026/09/china-great-mideast.html
London– Last week, China’s President Xi Jinping made his first state visit to Egypt since 2016, amid deepening economic and security ties between Beijing and one of Washington’s major Arab allies. Egypt’s government said the two sides agreed to launch the third phase of a cooperative industrial zone in the Suez Canal, as Cario seeks to diversify its major foreign policy relations beyond just the US. The latter still supplies Egypt with $1.3 billion in military aid each year but faces growing geopolitical competition from China.
In a statement clearly designed to appeal to Egyptian audiences, where the Suez Canal is a major economic engine, Xi said that China “stands ready to work with countries in the region to safeguard the security of international shipping lanes, advance development cooperation … and eliminate the breeding grounds for conflict.” Instability in the Red Sea since 2023 and the US-Iran conflict since February have caused maritime traffic through the canal to drop sharply, though the major Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd shipping lines signalled last month that they were planning a phased return. hottest year on record in 2024, and that heatwaves there are becoming longer and more intense.
It is also during these months that the region’s new AI infrastructure needs the most water and energy to cool its server farms, too. Even without higher temperatures, the average data centre has the equivalent water demand of around 1,000 households per day, while a large one uses around 5 million gallons a day, the same as a town of up to 50,000 residents. Gulf countries like the UAE are engaged in massive construction of more desalination plants to meet this expected AI-related upsurge in water (and power) demand as a result. UAE regulators have denied the increase in water demand will cause them problems, with the head of regulatory affairs at Abu Dhabi’s Department of Energy saying in April: “We rely on desalination [plants] that have proven in the last 50 years to be a very reliable source for potable water.”
Conclusion
Middle Eastern countries outside the GCC will face similar problems with rising temperatures driving household power and water demand just as AI-related demand also increases. AI infrastructure projects may outpace regional water and power development without careful planning. In May, Egypt said it planned to meet future AI data centre power demand there using renewable energy. It is investing significantly in wind farms and other projects, including expanding regional interconnections with other countries’ power grids in Saudi Arabia, Europe and Sudan. However, these projects are vulnerable to timetable slippages from obstacles like construction sector supply chain disruption or port congestion at Egyptian terminals. With a growing population seeking jobs, Egypt’s government seems likely to press ahead regardless.
China’s expertise in both AI and green technology could likely help ease many Middle Eastern countries’ attempted transition to a digitalised and clean-energy powered economic future. But geopolitical competition with the US will add a political and diplomatic dimension to any projects with Chinese participation. The US is still a major security partner for many Middle Eastern governments, and Washington could threaten to withdraw military aid in response to a growing dependence on Chinese AI systems in allied regional governments or economies. The US fears Egypt allowing Chinese AI systems in its public sector would create cybersecurity risks for its agents and companies there. US fear of China could impede Middle Eastern states’ uptake of Chinese AI infrastructure and models, but also their uptake of Beijing’s greener gifts.
China Dangles Growth, Security Partnership
Beijing has also made Egypt’s government another offer of economic and technological development through state-linked firm Huawei. Egypt has ambitious plans to expand AI’s contribution to its economy to 7.7% of GDP by 2030, offering China an opening to challenge the US lead on global AI infrastructure by starting with a small project in the Middle East. Huawei bid on an Egyptian government tender in August to build public sector AI data centers there, in partnership with iFlytek, a Chinese surveillance company. Both Chinese companies are on a US blacklist, and Washington has approached US firms including Nvidia, AMD and Microsoft to put together a counterbid. Egypt has yet to announce a decision, but the move signals an intensifying race between Beijing and Washington to recruit more regional states into their respective AI stacks.
China’s Middle Eastern AI Footprint Expands Elsewhere
China and the US have each launched their own multinational AI alliances; in China’s case, this is the World AI Cooperation Organisation (WAICO), while the US set up the Pax Silica in December. Both groups contain a few Middle Eastern states so far, with Iran, Algeria and Oman joining WAICO, and Israel, Qatar, and the UAE have joined the Pax Silica. However, Chinese companies have launched AI-related projects in multiple Middle Eastern countries prior to WAICO’s launch, and Beijing’s AI-infrastructure footprint is likely to extend well outside the alliance’s formal Middle Eastern members. Middle Eastern firms are increasingly willing to use Chinese technology to launch their own AI models indigenous to the region, too.
In October, Chinese firm Alibaba opened a sector data centre in Dubai. In January, the UAE’s Emirate of Sharjah signed an agreement with Chinese AI infrastructure and cloud computing services provider DataCanvas to examine establishing data centers there. Finally, in September Saudi technology firm Humain released an Arabic-language AI model based on a Chinese one created by Chinese AI firm MiniMax. Chen Jing, a vice president of China’s Technology and Strategy Research Institute, told state media there that: “Unlike in the past, when Chinese LLMs primarily entered overseas markets through APIs or application products, in this collaboration, MiniMax M3 has directly become the foundational model for overseas indigenous model development.” Humain is financed by Riyad’s Saudi Public Investment Fund, indicating Saudi state backing for the firm’s project, despite Saudi Arabia not being a member of WAICO.
AI Growth, Environmental Cost?
Officials, activists and academics have warned that while economically Middle Eastern states may benefit from the race between the US and China to offer them investment and technology, this will likely come at an environmental cost. In April, the Qatar-based Middle East Council on Global Affairs research centre published a report warning that water and power demand for AI data centres presented a significant ecological challenge to Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states. GCC members already struggle to meet power and water demand during the summer months, when temperatures traditionally soar. This issue is getting worse. In December, the World Meteorological Organization issued its first report on the state of the climate in Arab states. It warned that these states had their
Key UK Nuclear Deterrent Link Destroyed Over Yorkshire
Britain’s sole emergency communications link for sending nuclear
retaliation orders to Trident missile submarines has been destroyed in a
spectacular disaster unwittingly observed by hundreds of Yorkshire
residents and passers-by.
During a trial on Friday, the system was seen and
filmed breaking up over Topcliffe, north of York, in clear view of
travellers on the nearby A1 motorway. The emergency system, called Low
Frequency Fall Back or LFFB and codenamed SUNFLOWER, used a “blimp”
style tethered balloon or aerostat (illustrated) to lift a 1,500 metre long
radio antenna.
Byline Times 8th Sept 2026,
https://bylinetimes.com/2026/09/08/key-uk-nuclear-deterrent-link-destroyed-over-yorkshire/
They Can’t Stop the War. They Can’t Survive It.
So European leaders have deployed – to use an Ursula von der Leyen saying – all means possible. Except that those means were never enough to meet Ukraine’s needs.
‘if I give the promise to the people in Ukraine, “we stand with you, as long as you need us,” then I want to deliver. No matter what my German voters think.’
Europe has also closed off access to a consumer market of 143 million people in Russia – Europe was Russia’s biggest trade partner before the Ukraine crisis began – because we can’t stand to trade with those Russians.
The AfD win in Germany and Reform’s landslide in Britain show why Europe’s liberal governments are trapped — continue Ukraine and they lose the voters; end it and they lose them anyway.
Ian Proud, The Peace Monger, Sep 08, 2026
The victory of AfD in a local election in Germany was as consequential as the Reform Party’s landslide in local elections in Britain in May.
Why? Because a nationalist party won. This is another sign that liberalism is dying in Europe. What does this mean for the politics of Europe and for the war in Ukraine?
Politics in Europe Is Changing – The Ukraine War Is Driving a Shift Away from Liberalism
I have said for some time that the changing politics of Europe will ultimately decide the outcome of the war in Ukraine. Foreign policy always starts and ends at home.
And what I mean by that is, even if our governments support a proxy war in Ukraine, they are limited by essentially domestic considerations in how much support they can give.
European states have shown themselves unwilling to commit to direct war with Russia principally because they can’t guarantee they will garner political support at home, not least given the large number of casualties that would result.
Liberalism is predicated on a stable capitalist system, and a direct war would have devastating consequences for the economies of Europe.
Liberal European governments can’t give Ukraine as much money and equipment as they would prefer, as they are heavily indebted and don’t have the fiscal space to do this at a time when ordinary people feel that public services are being ignored.
So European leaders have deployed – to use an Ursula von der Leyen saying – all means possible. Except that those means were never enough to meet Ukraine’s needs.
Ukraine will lose the war against Russia because European leaders decided they could not bear the financial, human and political cost of direct war. That they encouraged war to continue for so long reflects the essential liberalism of Europe, that Ukraine was a prized project in the bid to create another liberal democracy on the periphery of Europe as a counterpoint to nationalist Russia. And that helps to explain why ordinary, often working-class, citizens are turning against liberalism.
Put simply, even though European governments have avoided a direct war with Russia, they haven’t been able to shield their citizens from the consequences of proxy war, nor deliver the strategic defeat that they promised, and this leaves ordinary people poorer, uncertain about their future employment prospects, worried about their children and feeling less safe.
It would be impossible for them not to make a connection with the war in Ukraine because that is the topic their leaders seem to talk about most when travelling abroad to grand summit meetings that never seem to resolve the world’s problems.
Indeed, Annalena Baerbock, while foreign minister, said in 2022, ‘if I give the promise to the people in Ukraine, “we stand with you, as long as you need us,” then I want to deliver. No matter what my German voters think.’
She was roundly criticised by parties like AfD at the time who were accused of a disinformation campaign. But her words were on the record. And the message that sent to ordinary Germans was that the Federal government cares about Ukrainian people more than you, which was a politically suicidal thing to say.
In this day of high-speed media, ordinary people can see what is going on.
Even though national priorities have placed some limited guardrails on liberal foreign policy hegemony, specifically the temptation to get sucked into a general war across Europe – that foreign policy consensus has nonetheless still funded a dreadful war in Ukraine for four-and-a-half years which is held aloft as more important than domestic concerns despite the severe consequences for ordinary German people.
Ordinary people are not stupid and can make the connection between their condition of life and the need to keep funnelling money and weapons into a war that shows no end in sight, which their leaders refuse to bring to a close.
In terms of the feeling of being poorer and less secure about the future, Europe has chosen economic warfare instead of actual warfare, and this has backfired. In the process, sanctions have rendered European industry uncompetitive through the closing off of cheap sources of energy. Europe has also closed off access to a consumer market of 143 million people in Russia – Europe was Russia’s biggest trade partner before the Ukraine crisis began – because we can’t stand to trade with those Russians.
German unemployment is now at its highest level in well over a decade. Germany was Russia’s biggest trading partner before the Ukraine crisis started.
Let’s be clear, cutting off supplies of Russian energy doesn’t benefit the people of Ukraine; that country is energy dependent too and also, by the way, bankrupt, which means that European capitals have to subsidize its expensive energy costs as well as its own.
It doesn’t hurt Russia, which has diverted its energy supply to Asia.
It only hurts the economies of Europe and, in doing so, the cost of living and job security of ordinary European citizens.
Meanwhile, ordinary people see the threat of future war with Russia dangled before them in the mainstream press which conjures up all sorts of fake news stories on a near-daily basis about Russia’s plan to invade and conquer Europe.
While all this is happening, people can see that the rest of the world – particularly in Asia – is powering ahead.
Outside of West Asia and the Middle East they see a part of the world relatively free of conflict where economic growth is lifting the living standards of millions each day.So ordinary people in Europe are starting to ask ‘why are we losing out?’
And the answer that increasing numbers keep coming back to is the war in Ukraine.
Europe has chosen economic stagnation, unemployment, falling living standards and the fear of war as a price to pay to weaken Russia, even though Russia has managed the shock of conflict and war far better, has a bigger industry, plentiful supplies of energy and access to the largest market in the world, in Asia.
More and more people in Europe are starting to see that their liberal governments do not have the interest of their citizens at heart.
And liberal governments have no way out of the Ukraine war. In fact, they are terrified of the war ending.
Liberalism’s Ukraine War Trap
European government have found themselves caught in a Ukraine War Trap in which they face electoral obliteration whether they end the Ukraine war or if they continue it.
What is devastating for liberal political leaders is that they have no way out of the cycle of electoral suicide they have put themselves in.
If they continue the war, they will get devastated in the polls.
If they end the war, they will also get devastated in the polls.
Firstly, what will happen if they continue the war?
Energy.
Even if Donald Trump ends his damaging war in Iran, Europe will remain locked into high energy prices. Indeed, an end to the Iran war will simply accentuate the difference between Europe, stuck in an era of uncompetitive high energy costs, and the rest of the world, which will start to benefit from a gradual normalisation of energy prices……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/they-cant-stop-the-war-they-cant?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=214714777&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
U.S.-Saudi Nuclear Deal Clears Vienna Hurdle As Congress Review Continues
Congressional Democrats have pushed back hard, joined by some Republicans, arguing the deal opens the door to a wider enrichment race across the Middle East. The White House, meanwhile, has tied the agreement to Saudi Arabia eventually joining the Abraham Accords and normalizing relations with Israel, a step Riyadh has so far declined to take without progress toward Palestinian statehood.
Oil Price, By Michael Kern – Sep 08, 2026,
- IAEA chief Rafael Grossi says Saudi Arabia won’t sign the Additional Protocol but will accept oversight powers over enrichment, conversion and reprocessing that closely mirror it.
- The underlying US-Saudi 123 agreement, signed July 22, opens a path to domestic uranium enrichment after a two-year study, a break from the UAE’s enrichment-free ‘gold standard.’
- Congress is 90 days into reviewing the deal, with Democrats and nonproliferation groups pushing back and two side letters still classified.
A planned nuclear cooperation deal between the United States and Saudi Arabia won’t include the toughest inspection regime the U.N.’s atomic watchdog has to offer, but it’s going to come close on the activities that matter most.
That’s the picture International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi laid out Monday in Vienna, speaking to reporters during the agency’s September Board of Governors meeting. Riyadh isn’t signing the IAEA’s Additional Protocol, the tool that lets inspectors show up unannounced at sites a country hasn’t even declared. But Grossi said Saudi Arabia is preparing to grant the agency verification and monitoring authority over its most sensitive nuclear activities, uranium enrichment, the conversion step that precedes it, and reprocessing, that functions almost the same way……………………………………………
Under the terms reported at signing, Washington and Riyadh have two years to study whether domestic enrichment makes commercial sense. Any enrichment plant built afterward would go up under a “black box” model, run by U.S. companies inside Saudi Arabia so the underlying technology never actually changes hands. It’s a sharp departure from Washington’s 2009 pact with the United Arab Emirates, the deal nonproliferation advocates still call the gold standard, under which Abu Dhabi permanently gave up enrichment and reprocessing altogether.
Congress Gets Its Say
The administration sent the agreement to Congress in late August, starting a 90-day review clock under the Atomic Energy Act. Lawmakers can let it take effect by doing nothing, or pass a joint resolution of disapproval to kill it, though that would need to survive a presidential veto. Two side letters attached to the deal remain classified, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which also notes that of the 51 countries with active 123 agreements, only Argentina and Brazil currently lack the Additional Protocol. Saudi Arabia would be the third.
Congressional Democrats have pushed back hard, joined by some Republicans, arguing the deal opens the door to a wider enrichment race across the Middle East. The White House, meanwhile, has tied the agreement to Saudi Arabia eventually joining the Abraham Accords and normalizing relations with Israel, a step Riyadh has so far declined to take without progress toward Palestinian statehood.
The Backdrop
For Riyadh, the deal is also part of a broader push under Vision 2030 to build out nuclear power alongside renewables and diversify an economy still tied to oil exports, with U.S. firms like Westinghouse positioned to compete for reactor contracts worth billions. The talks are unfolding against last year’s war between Israel and Iran, which has hardened Gulf calculations around nuclear deterrence. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said publicly the kingdom would pursue a weapon of its own if Iran ever built one. Iran, for its part, operated under the Additional Protocol from 2016 to 2021 under the nuclear deal that collapsed after the U.S. withdrew in 2018, a history nonproliferation groups keep pointing to as they push for tougher terms on Riyadh.
For now, the deal sits in a kind of holding pattern. Congress’s review runs deep into the fall. The bilateral safeguards text is still being finalized in Vienna. And whether the arrangement Grossi described Monday ends up satisfying skeptics on Capitol Hill, or just gives them a new set of details to pick apart, is still an open question.
Anthropic Researcher Quits, Citing Internal Fears That AI ‘Could Kill Us All’ This Decade
September 9, 2026, on Queally Common Dreams, https://scheerpost.com/2026/09/09/anthropic-researcher-quits-citing-internal-fears-that-ai-could-kill-us-all-this-decade/
“Most tech geeks don’t resign from their roles because…the tech they’re building could end humanity,” said Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, running for US Senate in Michigan.
An artificial intelligence researcher at Anthropic publicly quit his position on Tuesday, warning that major AI companies care too much about winning the technological race and not enough about guarding against out-of-control “superhuman systems” that workers in the industry legitimately fear “could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
Jacob Coxon, who previously worked at industry giant OpenAI before moving to Anthropic earlier this year, told the Wall Street Journal in an exclusive interview that he was leaving the company, as the newspaper reported, because “he doesn’t want to participate in an industrywide rush to build AI systems that can improve themselves, worried such systems could spiral out of control and destroy humanity.”
According to the WSJ:
Coxon said he left OpenAI earlier this year to join Anthropic because it is known for its model-safety efforts. But even though he found Anthropic’s safety efforts to be earnest, he now believes no company can responsibly develop AI that can outperform humans in a range of tasks, sometimes called artificial general intelligence, absent government intervention or a coordinated industry slowdown.
Recent hacks by models from OpenAI and Anthropic, some operating in collaborative swarms of agents, have illustrated how AI systems can adopt nefarious goals and try to conceal them from humans. Once the systems begin to improve on their own, Coxon said, he fears they could advance enough to refuse commands.
“I resigned from Anthropic today,” Coxon announced on social media Tuesday night. “I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”
In a 6-point thread that followed, Coxon elaborated on his reasoning in detail:
Do not underestimate the power of this technology. These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources. We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing.
- The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt. If anything, many executives and senior researchers couch their press statements to sound sensible—but I hear the same people express fear privately. No other human activity poses this level of danger.
- A common response is “if they truly believe this, why are they still building it?” At OpenAI, many have not deeply internalized the civilizational stakes. At Anthropic, the stakes are well-understood, but they are locked in a race to get there first—they believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk.
Accepting this race and entering the “endgame” is a hubristic gamble that should not be launched from a private company’s Slack. Attempting to speedrun alignment should require extraordinary confidence that no better trajectories exist.- I am optimistic about the potential for coordination. Warning shots like the Hugging Face attack have made pacing agreements between US labs more viable. I don’t feel like we’re on track to prevent a global race, which may require costly actions such as a temporary ban on improving model capabilities.
- If you are a lab researcher, I urge you to consider what the next few years will actually feel like. Do you want to kick off a superintelligent RL [Reinforcement Learning] run without a rigorous understanding of its mind? Should you put your head down because “it’s happening anyway”—or take this moment to call for different conditions?
Coxon’s reference to the Hugging Face incident pertains to recent revelations about a so-called breakout event at OpenAI, which operates the ChatGPT protocol. In June, the company acknowledged that a “significant security incident” took place when AI agents within the company autonomously breached internal systems, using subterfuge to hide their actions from human operators. Since then, the incident’s scope has shocked AI experts, and similar events have also been exposed.
While US President Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have taken a hands-off approach to AI regulations, the industry has been pouring huge amounts of money into lobbying efforts and campaign spending to keep lawmakers from enacting stronger restrictions and oversight of the technology.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) have been leading a relatively lonely fight in Washington, DC for more aggressive federal guardrails, including the introduction of joint legislation last week that would ban artificial superintelligence and temporarily pause advanced AI development until a federal regulatory structure was put in place by Congress.
Coxon’s public resignation was met with applause from many, while other industry insiders backed his concerns.
“The caution is simple,” said one commenter with the handle Jabbar Digital, described as a tester of AI tools and a software developer, in a lengthy post on Coxon’s warning. “Capability is compounding. Coordination is not. If the people closest to the work are increasingly uneasy about the speed and the lack of external constraints, dismissing them as doomers is no longer a serious response. Neither is treating every capability jump as automatically good. The useful middle path is to take the technical progress seriously and take the internal dissent seriously. Both can be true at the same time.”
Evan Hubinger, the alignment science lead at Anthropic, chimed in on his personal social media account to say: “Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.”
While bolstering Coxon’s worries, Hubinger said, “To be clear, as we say in [Anthropic’s] latest Risk Report, I think the risk from present models is low. What I am worried about is superintelligence arising from recursive self-improvement, as we have said is happening faster than we thought.”
Running for US Senate in Michigan, Democratic nominee Dr. Abdul El-Sayed also weighed in on Coxon’s decision to quit so loudly and publicly.
“Most tech geeks don’t resign from their roles because…the tech they’re building could end humanity,” said El-Sayed. “How we change the incentives leading AI labs down this path and protect against these existential risks are defining political questions of our time.”
Israel’s Quadcopter Drones Have Become a Weapon of Everyday Killing in Gaza
September 9, 2026, By Malak Hijazi & Ohood Nassar, https://scheerpost.com/2026/09/09/israels-quadcopter-drones-have-become-a-weapon-of-everyday-killing-in-gaza/
No space, either on land or in water, sits outside the drones’ reach. The siege tightens by the day.
Sadeq Abdelhafiz, 26, noticed an unusual quiet around him as he stood in the Shujaiya neighborhood of Gaza near the cemetery on Salah al-Din Street. A small quadcopter drone (about the size of a floor tile) had fired a volley of bullets just minutes earlier, and it was still there, hovering over the minaret of the nearby Ibn Marwan Mosque, adjacent to the cemetery.
Abdelhafiz turned his head to see his friend Mustafa Mushtaha leaning against a tree. At first, he thought Mushtaha was tired from walking, or taking shelter out of fear. Then he realized his friend had been shot.
Abdelhafiz and Mushtaha had traveled to the cemetery on June 10, 2025, along with members of Mushtaha’s family and friends, to bury Mushtaha’s sisters, who had been killed in an Israeli strike days earlier. However, when they reached the cemetery, they found the Israeli quadcopter hovering above them.
They never expected it would open fire.
“We were only doing the burial, and it was obvious,” Abdelhafiz told Truthout. After they placed both of his sisters in a single grave due to the lack of space, the quadcopter started firing randomly at them. “We buried them quickly, in a rush, without any order,” Abdelhafiz said.
Abdelhafiz suggested leaving the cemetery separately, since the graves left only a narrow gap, barely enough for one person to pass. “Mustafa was behind me, five steps away. I could hear his footsteps, until I couldn’t,” Abdelhafiz said. Then he heard him say, “I feel a sharp stab in my back.” Abdelhafiz, with Mushtaha’s brother and uncle, carried him toward the exit as the quadcopter fired again. When he took off Mushtaha’s shirt, he found a bullet wound in his back.
By chance, a Palestinian Ministry of Health service vehicle was passing them. It was transporting employees but lacked first-aid supplies. They placed Mushtaha inside, and Abdelhafiz put his hand on his neck to check if he was breathing. Abdelhafiz told me, “I felt he had passed away while we were in the car.” When they arrived at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, they brought Mushtaha into an emergency tent already overwhelmed with more than 100 wounded people. The doctor tried to give him first aid, but it was in vain: Mushtaha had already died.
The small drone that took Mushtaha’s life is part of an Israeli strategy to pull warfare down into the intimacy of everyday space.
A Killing Machine That Israeli Officials Say Is “Like a Video Game”
Quadcopters are small, multi-rotor tactical drones. According to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel deploys two models of armed quadcopters: the Matrice 600, which was originally designed for civilian use before being converted into a tool for surveillance and lethal strikes, and the Lanius, a purpose-built AI-powered military drone. Zeteo further reported that Israel appears to be the first military in the world to deploy an armed quadcopter in actual combat.
While the term “quadcopter” is now deeply ingrained in daily life in Gaza, associated with sudden bursts of gunfire through alleyways and windows, Israel’s usage of these armed drones began before October 7, 2023.
The technology first became familiar to Palestinians in Gaza during the 2018 Great March of Return, when Israeli forces, including reservists activated as drone pilots, used the DJI Matrice 600 model to drop tear gas canisters on unarmed demonstrators, causing severe injuries.
By 2019, some quadcopter models were adapted for targeted assassinations, as in the killing of Islamic Jihad commander Baha Abu al-Ata. Three years later, in November 2022, the Israeli defense company Elbit Systems publicly unveiled Lanius, a palm-sized drone built for autonomous navigation and close-quarters strikes.
However, when Israel launched its assault on Gaza following the October 7, 2023, attack, these armed quadcopters moved from limited, targeted use, to broad deployment across the Strip.
Their use has intensified for multiple purposes: surveillance, issuing displacement directives, injuring, and killing. The drones have reportedly employed the tactic of terrorizing civilians with recorded sounds of crying infants, screaming women, and barking dogs to lure them into the open before opening fire.
Israeli security officials, speaking on Channel 14, confirmed the use of what they called “a new generation of lethal weapons.” They added that a quadcopter “does not hesitate, does not stop, and almost never makes mistakes,” comparing its operation to “watching a video game.”
Quadcopters Target Children
Children have paid a particular price as quadcopters have become more widespread. On August 12, 2026, despite the declared ceasefire, a quadcopter attack in Khan Younis wounded a father and critically wounded his 13-year-old son as they walked home after buying falafel. The father described a blast that scattered everyone nearby. He found his son on the ground, bleeding from shrapnel wounds to the head and leg.
A month earlier, on July 3, 2026, a quadcopter dropped a bomb on two children from the Tawtah family as they filled water containers behind Al-Omari Mosque, east of Gaza City. One child was killed and the other wounded.
The pattern repeats in hospital wards across Gaza. A report by the Costs of War project at Brown University documented 18 cases in a single month, from August to September 2024, of children admitted with single, small-caliber gunshot wounds to the head, neck, chest, or abdomen. In 90 percent of cases, families reported the children had been shot directly by quadcopter drones.
Sometimes the evidence comes from the perpetrators themselves. In May 2026, an Israeli soldier from the Kfir Brigade posted a video on his private Instagram account: a quadcopter firing upon two barefoot Palestinian children in Gaza. The children appear to survive a strike, but the video does not reveal their ultimate fate. A UN commission of inquiry later found that the Kfir brigade killed two brothers, aged 9 and 10, in a drone strike as they gathered firewood, more than 300 meters from any soldiers.
Enforcing the Siege
Today, these drones also serve as the primary enforcement mechanism of the so-called Yellow Line, a boundary originally marked by yellow blocks to delineate zones for expected Israeli withdrawal under the October 2025 ceasefire terms. But instead of receding, the line has expanded.
According to OCHA, the “Yellow Line” initially restricted Palestinians’ access to about 53 percent of Gaza after the October 2025 so-called ceasefire. Israel later introduced a further “Orange Line,” extending tighter restrictions to 64.9 percent of the Strip by June 2026, crowding more than 2 million people into a shrinking space. Quadcopters enforce these invisible boundaries, hovering over anyone who moves near them and blocking displaced people from returning home.
Israeli officials have given no indication this will change. On August 9, 2026, Netanyahu rejected the Board of Peace’s 15-point plan, declaring Israeli forces would not withdraw until Hamas is disarmed. With no mechanism to inform residents when the line advances, many Palestinians wake to find their area has fallen under fire overnight.
The threat is not confined to land. On August 14, 2026, Israeli naval boats and quadcopter drones opened fire on a fishing boat west of Gaza City, wounding three fishermen. No space, neither on land nor in water, sits outside the drones’ reach, drawing the siege tighter by the day.
Silencing the Witnesses
Journalists trying to document these killings have themselves become targets. Iman Al-Ajla, a 24-year-old Gaza-based journalist who has survived multiple drone attacks, told Truthout how these weapons are turned directly against media workers on the ground.
In October 2025, after refusing to displace south and remaining in Gaza City, Al-Ajla went alongside six fellow journalists to Al-Shifa Hospital to document an Israeli strike. As they arrived, a quadcopter opened fire directly at the group. “They shot at us to prevent us from documenting the truth,” she recalled.
Months later, in early July 2026, Al-Ajla faced the drones again while covering the advance of the Yellow Line in eastern Shujaiya alongside two photojournalists.
“We fled the area immediately and saw the gunfire strike the tents, injuring dozens inside,” Al-Ajla told Truthout. “It was a horrific situation, made worse by the fact that it happened during a declared ceasefire. We later saw serious injuries coming to the hospital after that same shooting.”
Iman’s experience is only one fragment of a far wider toll. The number of people killed in Gaza continues to rise despite the declared ceasefire, now exceeding 73,000 — roughly 3.4 percent of the Strip’s pre-war population of 2.1 million — a figure that does not include the more than 174,000 wounded. The quadcopter has been a central tool in this relentless campaign. It does not hesitate. Neither, it seems, does the impunity that follows it.
On European hypocrisy and warmongering
Not only is the idea of an endless war immoral, but it plays with an immense risk of nuclear escalation.
Branko Milanovic, Aug 27, 2026, https://branko2f7.substack.com/p/on-european-hypocrisy-and-warmongering
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the world reactions were predictable. The strongest reaction came from the United States, that saw itself as a guardian of the old system and possibly as a guarantor of Ukraine’s NATO eventual membership. Europe’s reaction was several octavos lower as it generally was during the Cold War. Finally, the rest of the world, while mostly condemning Russia for an obvious violation of the international law and UN rules, was not overly concerned.
Things have changed. They began changing already under Biden who, while very critical of Russia, including through the imposition of the most radical sanctions ever (with the seizure of private property and property of a government with which the United States was not at war), still observed some rules from the Cold War—namely avoidance of unnecessary escalations with a nuclear-armed power. This was evident in Biden’s policy that did not allow strikes on Russian territory. But even under Biden that policy was gradually abandoned and the US de facto entered the war through its selection and direct targeting of places in Russia.
Over the past two years, the situation has further evolved. The US has continued with a policy where it is a de facto participant in the war but has also shown a desire to wrap-up the conflict in one form or another. What was surprising is that the thirst for war has become almost insatiable in several European countries, principally in the Nordic and Baltic countries, but more recently also in Germany, and, for long-term historical reasons that go to the 18th century, in the UK too.
The role of small countries—that through their geopolitical irresponsibility can wreck great damage to the world—tends to pass under the radar. The Nordic-Baltic coalition is essentially calling for a war with Russia, citing its own fears and traumas of Russian/Soviet control and occupation. Leaving aside the discussion about the full one-sidedness of such claims (could not Russians argue that the Latvian riflemen played a key role in the Russian revolution?), this type of warmongering by small nations is extraordinarily hypocritical. It is based on the idea that one can advocate for war but bear no consequence of such a war. It tries to do everything possible to make interests of great powers become entangled with interests of small powers so that great powers can fight it out, millions die, yet the objectives of small countries be satisfied after a general war.
This attitude is bad enough in itself—but what is worse is that there are clear historical precedents in Eastern Europe and the Middle East of similar policies that brought global cataclysms. Serbia was playing off Russia in the run-up to the First World War. Poland and Hungary participated in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia which paved the way for Nazi Germany to continue with aggressions. Israel has been playing up the United States for several decades in the Middle East, most obviously right now when the US entered the war against Iran –very similarly to the way Russia entered the war against Ukraine—without knowing why, or what are the political aims of that war. But the outcome arranges Israel because it weakens another Middle Eastern power and deepens the chaos in the region.
The world is now facing a similar situation where several countries, whose combined populations hardly reach the number of inhabitants of a Tier II Chinese city, want, in order to cure their frustrations and traumas, to plunge the entire world into a catastrophe that may more or less end civilization. It is an incredibly irresponsible policy. It is also hypocritical because it is based on the assumption that somebody else (in this case, the United States) will fight for them. For if they were so keen on the war and convinced of its moral value, why don’t enter it themselves? Why don’t they attack Russia directly and see what happens? It would be madness but at least it would not be irresponsible towards the rest of the world and not hypocritical.
Of course, the argument for a war (fought by somebody else) is that accepting to speak of a ceasefire along the current lines gives the advantage to the aggressor. But according to that logic, all wars should be fought until the end, until everybody is destroyed. There should never have been any negotiations. Diplomacy should not exist. The Korean war should be still fought—in fact, it probably would not because had the policies advocated by the Nordic-Baltic alliance been followed then (as McArthur wanted), we would have never been born and our parents or grandparents would have all died long ago.
The Nordic-Baltic alliance also forgets that if the cease-fire is established along the current lines of control, the territory of the Donbass etc. will indeed be controlled by Russia but no single country in the world would officially recognize it. Did they not notice that no country from the Commonwealth of Independent States has recognized it? Did they not notice that not even Belarus recognizes it? Such, indeed fragile, peace not only puts an end to today’s carnage, but leaves open a possibility of eventual long-term solution between Russia and Ukraine. Neither Putin, nor Zelensky, nor the social forces that support them are eternal. Things will change in Russia, and in Ukraine. Negotiations can take place in ten or twenty years—but at least people would be alive rather than dead.
They mention that it would lead to a “frozen conflict”. But is a frozen conflict worse than an open conflict? Is absence of death inferior to continued carnage? There are dozens of frozen conflicts all around the globe, from Cyprus to Kosovo to Western Sahara to Malvinas to Kashmir. Should we reopen them all? They are loath to answer the moral questions because the implicit value they place on Ukrainian lives is zero, and the implicit value they place on Russian dead is a plus. Consequently, an endless conflict is a positive sum game from their point of view.
Not only is the idea of an endless war immoral, but it plays with an immense risk of nuclear escalation. During the Cold War that risk was taken seriously by the two major powers. That’s why they had four binding nuclear agreements, all of which have lapsed. Today, people assume that nuclear weapons do not exist. This is an entirely invalid assumption, but even if there were just one-millionth probability of nuclear war happening, the costs of such a war are so immense (since such a war is uncontrollable), that every rational person’s calculation must be to do everything to avoid it.
The Nordic-Baltic warmongering under the current conditions is therefore (i) irresponsible, (ii) hypocritical, (iii) immoral, and (iv) flirts with a disaster of immense proportions.
THE “KIEV REGIME” – A JOKE THAT’S NO LONGER FUNNY
if the agencies intended to provide security are shooting one another in the capital, who is left to protect ordinary people?
In conversation with Marta Havryshko
Ian Proud, Sep 09, 2026, https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/the-kiev-regime-a-joke-thats-no-longer?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=214839408&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
On 6 September, Davyd Arakhamia sat down with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in a T-shirt reading “Kyiv regime.” Volodymyr Zelensky’s team then handed the same shirts to the American envoys. Officially, it was “trolling” Putin, who uses the phrase to delegitimise Ukraine’s government. Inside Ukraine, a lot of people did not laugh. The regime in Kiev is now a joke that uses theatre and illusion to cling to power at all costs, while stealing the nation’s future
I caught up with historian Marta Havryshko who, said the first reaction on Ukrainian social media to the ‘Kiev Regime’ t-shirt stunt was disbelief. Many thought the pictures were fake. When they realised they were real, the mood turned sour.
Focus.ua wrote that Zelensky and Arakhamia were “torn apart” over the shirt. On Threads and Facebook, the complaint was not that the men supposedly negotiating life and death issues around the war’s ending looked as if they lived in another country.
Children still do lessons in basements. Families still count explosions at night. Working-class men are still pulled off the street like dogs. And at the peace table: a joker in a souvenir t-shirt. gag.
Marta’s suggests that irony worked in 2022. Remember Zelensky’s video on the day the war started with his team in Central Kiev? It may still have worked in 2023 before teh failed summer counter-offensive.
In 2026, after unsuccessful offensives, overflowing military cemeteries and a war that no longer looks winnable to many ordinary Ukrainians, that same irony reads as indifference.
She described visiting her native village two years ago and finding at least ten new graves under Ukrainian flags in a place of two thousand people. Some of the dead she had known. That, she said, is the price people see every day.
The timing of the T-shirt stunt also appears cynically deliberate, coming after yet another corruption scandal; Havryshko claims that war is now a business model for Zelensky’s corrupt regime.
Zelensky publicly speaks of around 50,000 Ukrainian dead. At the same time, Kyrylo Budanov has said Ukraine needs at least 30,000 men a month just to hold the line. Havryshko’s question is the one families ask: if the war is going well and few people are dying, why do you need so many new bodies each month for the meat grinder?
She argues the government hides the scale of loss because the truth would further collapse support for the in Ukraine and also in the west.
That helps to explain why the resistance to forced mobilisation — busification — is growing all the time. The fiercest resistance, she notes, is often in western Ukraine, the old heartland of the ethno-nationalist far-right elements associated with Azov, UPA etc. Draft officers have been attacked. The people in the streets are working-class men and the women trying to keep husbands and sons out of the grinder. Class and gender, she insists, explain the war better than slogans about national resilience.
The T-shirt was not the only story to hit the headlines. On 2 September, Ukraine’s two most powerful spy services opened fire on each other in a Kyiv residential street. Three HUR officers were wounded. When a drone later hit an SBU building, Western headlines rushed to blame Russia. She says Ukrainians mostly laughed as the strike came straight after the shootout.
Two versions spread at once: a HUR revenge drone ordered as a warning, or an SBU false flag to strengthen Zelensky’s hand against Budanov. She does not claim to prove either. Her point is that if the agencies intended to provide security are shooting one another in the capital, who is left to protect ordinary people? That, she argues, is why anti-war journalists in Ukraine now live on high alert — and why a joke T-shirt at peace talks landed like an insult.
Marta saw little prospect of Presidential elections any time soon. Fedorov’s call for a vote, in her telling, was a shot at Zelensky, not a plan. Millions are abroad, occupied, or at the front. Men of draft age will not walk into polling stations for fear that they will be busified. Zelensky, she argues, has no incentive for peace or a ballot. War protects him from leaving office and losing his immunity to prosecution for corruption. Why end it now or, indeed, ever?
France’s 47 Rafale F5s Will Carry Hypersonic Nuclear Missiles, Command Stealth Drones
France is preparing at least 47 Rafale F5 fighters to carry the ASN4G hypersonic nuclear missile, command stealth combat drones and penetrate advanced air defences by 2035.
(DEFENCE SECURITY ASIA Sep 7, 2026) — France plans to field at least 47 Rafale F5 fighters by 2035, creating a nuclear-certified combat fleet designed to penetrate advanced air defences, command stealth drones, and preserve sovereign strike options as Europe’s future airpower architecture fractures.
The programme converts Rafale from a networked 4.5-generation fighter into an airborne command node integrating the ASN4G hypersonic nuclear missile, enhanced sensors, digital electronic warfare, resilient connectivity, and manned-unmanned teaming for contested operations through the 2040s.
Under the revised 2024–2030 Military Programming Law adopted in July 2026, France targets at least 47 aircraft built or upgraded to F5 standard within a wider 225-aircraft combat fleet comprising 185 air-force and 40 naval fighters.
The figure represents a minimum F5-standard inventory rather than a discrete order for 47 newly manufactured jets, because existing airframes may be upgraded while approximately 20 previously scheduled F4 deliveries shift from 2031–2032 into 2033–2034 production slots.
That industrial rescheduling makes nuclear readiness, rather than conventional fleet expansion, the programme’s decisive pacing requirement, since Rafale F5 must integrate ASN4G by 2035 while maintaining sufficient aircraft availability across land-based squadrons and France’s carrier aviation force.……………………….
France prioritises the Strategic Air Forces for F5 deployment, but naval Rafale M aircraft must eventually share the standard, enabling nuclear and conventional missions from Charles de Gaulle and later the future PA-NG carrier without dependence upon allied aircraft.
This force posture matters beyond France because the F5 combines national nuclear command authority with forward-deployment potential, giving Paris a more visible European signalling instrument while remaining outside NATO’s American B61 nuclear-sharing arrangements and associated operational dependencies
The accompanying stealth combat drone provides the battlespace mechanism behind that posture, penetrating defended airspace, stimulating hostile radar emissions, supporting suppression or destruction of enemy air defences, and transmitting targeting information while the crewed Rafale remains farther from concentrated threats.
However, public information leaves important uncertainties unresolved, including the drone’s final size, funding trajectory, production quantity, control architecture, conformal-tank adoption, sensor performance, and whether every proposed F5 capability will reach operational maturity simultaneously by the stated 2035 objective.………………………………………………………………….. https://defencesecurityasia.com/en/france-47-rafale-f5-asn4g-hypersonic-nuclear-missile-stealth-drones/
Guide aims to ‘unlock mainstream finance’ for nuclear
WNN, Tuesday, 8 September 2026
The World Nuclear Investment Guide sets out the value nuclear provides to energy systems, as well as providing practical guidance and checklists for governments and project teams and proposed developer and investment models.
The full guide, which has been published two months after the launch of its initial Roadmaps to Mainstream Finance section, was prompted by the need to secure investment estimated at USD6 trillion by 2050 – or an average of USD250 billion a year – if global nuclear capacity is going to achieve the widely shared goal of at least tripling by 2050.
The three new sections include Nuclear Must Knows, which aims to highlight “the full value nuclear provides to energy systems, including energy security, reliability and decarbonisation, and puts risks in context to show how the industry is evolving”.
The Investment Readiness section “provides practical guidance and checklists for governments and project developers, emphasising that technical, financial and project readiness must progress in parallel if projects are to attract investment”……………………………………………………………………………https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/guide-aims-to-unlock-mainstream-finance-for-nuclear
ABB and Rolls-Royce sign SMR agreement
According to the International Energy Agency SMRs can be a catalyst for change if boosted by government support and new business models.
Rolls-Royce SMR is currently progressing site-specific design and delivery activities for three units planned for North Wales, while also working with ČEZ on deployment at the Temelín NPP site in the Czech Republic.
BB has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Rolls-Royce SMR, a nuclear power company developing small modular reactor (SMR) technology. Within the scope of the MoU the two companies will explore collaboration opportunities on Rolls-Royce SMR’s plans to develop a fleet of units, each of which will generate 470 MW of low-carbon electricity. ABB will explore how its automation, electrification, instrumentation and communication solutions across its three business areas can enable the SMR projects to scale.
Rolls-Royce SMR has begun site-specific design and delivery activities for the UK’s first SMRs, initially comprising three units in North Wales, expected to create thousands of jobs and boost local-for-local supply chains. The company is also working with ČEZ to deploy Rolls-Royce SMRs at Temelín – with potential for additional units at Tušimice and Dětmarovice – and has recently been selected by Videberg Kraft to deliver three SMRs on Sweden’s Värö Peninsula. The MoU collaboration will be developed through ABB’s UK operations, which are headquartered in Warrington, UK.
According to the International Energy Agency SMRs can be a catalyst for change if boosted by government support and new business models. With current policy settings, the IEA forecasts that total SMR capacity will reach 40 GW by 2050 – but with tailored policy support for nuclear power, streamlined regulations for SMRs and industry delivery on new designs, capacity could reach 120 GW…………………………. https://www.modernpowersystems.com/news/abb-and-rolls-royce-sign-smr-agreement/?cf-view
Climate change is exposing nuclear power’s reliability problem
For nuclear power plants to be reliable, they need operating conditions to be stable. With climate change intensifying by the year, one cannot expect predictability, control, and stability.
By Valerie Arnhold, M.V. Ramana | Opinion | September 6, 2026, https://thebulletin.org/2026/09/climate-change-is-exposing-nuclear-powers-reliability-problem/
One of nuclear energy’s biggest selling points is its claims of reliability. “Nuclear energy is the only large-scale power source that can be tapped in even the most extreme weather conditions, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” boasts the American energy company Constellation. “Nuclear power plants are very reliable, and can run for many months without interruption, providing large amounts of clean electricity, regardless of the time of day, the weather, or the season,” says the World Nuclear Association. At a public meeting in June, Keith Ammon, a pro-nuclear Republican member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, echoed these claims: “Nuclear doesn’t care about the weather,” he said. “It just runs.”
Over the next few months, several countries in Europe had to shut down nuclear plants because of hot weather and drought—proving that nuclear power does, indeed, care about the weather. Coming at a time when demand for electricity was high, these countries were faced with an imminent failure of the electricity grid. Citizens and businesses in Hungary and Romania had to reduce their consumption. Ironically, it was solar power—often critiqued by nuclear boosters as unreliable—that provided additional electricity and staved off shortages in some countries. A further irony is that these heat waves are more likely and more severe because of climate change, which is often advanced as the reason to expand nuclear power in the first place.
European countries heavily dependent on nuclear energy were particularly affected. The near-complete shutdown of Hungary’s Paks at the beginning of August, when output was reduced from around 1960 megawatts to around 225, and complete shutdown of Romania’s Cernavoda power plant on August 13, led to a loss of 40 percent and 20 percent of the respective countries’ electricity generation capacity. Both countries declared a state of energy emergency and asked companies and citizens to reduce energy consumption for 30 days. In France, the electricity regulator RTE recorded on August 12 that more than a third of its nuclear generation capacity was down, as eight reactors were completely shut down, with five operating at reduced levels.
Some have made the case that the amount of time when nuclear reactors are not generating power is quite small and their integrated output over the whole year is not significantly impacted. But this is of little comfort to countries like France or Hungary when they end up losing a large fraction of their electricity generation all at once, especially during a heat wave when the need for electricity is high, and their population’s access to electricity is in peril.
Underlying most of these shutdowns is water, or lack thereof. Nuclear reactors need even more water than other thermal power plants for regular operations and to ensure vital safety functions. As the Nuclear Energy Agency explained, nuclear “power plants have in general greater cooling needs than other thermoelectric generating technologies. This results from the lower efficiency of the power conversion cycle, as well as from the latent safety function cooling water plays, for instance to evacuate residual heat during planned or unplanned shutdowns.”
In reactors, roughly a third of the heat produced by the nuclear fission reactions is converted into electricity. The remaining heat must be expelled into the environment; if not, the hot fuel rods will melt down. The severe accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors in Japan after an earthquake and tsunami knocked out nearly all of the plant’s backup energy sources shows the safety consequences of completely losing the ability to remove heat.
The most efficient way to remove the extra heat is to continuously pump water from some large outside source like a river or a lake. After passing through the reactor, the water is released back into the same source, but at a higher temperature.
The conditions of the water used for cooling could affect nuclear power plants in two ways. Most of the time, the primary concern is that the hot water being discharged from nuclear power plants could harm flora and fauna. Regulatory agencies, therefore, set rules about the temperature of the water on the basis of potential harm to aquatic ecosystems. The Swiss Federal Office of Energy, for example, required the Beznau nuclear plant to be shut down in late June after water temperatures in the Aare river reached 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit), in order to ensure the safety of fish populations. In some cases, regulators have modified the rules temporarily to allow reactors to continue operating, as they did in France this July.
Drought is an even bigger problem. If water levels in rivers drop too low, it becomes challenging or impossible to draw in water for cooling. This is what happened in Hungary and Romania after the river Danube fell to historically low levels this summer—just 4 inches, well below the previous all-time low of 13 inches in 2018. In what can only be described as pure desperation, Hungary sank two barges and thousands of tons of rock and concrete blocks into the river to raise the level of water by mere centimeters.
There have been many such shutdowns in recent decades, going back to at least 2003. The heat wave that year led to multiple reactors being shut down in France, and the Cernavoda nuclear plant in Romania. Since then, heatwaves have forced temporary shutdowns of reactors or reductions in their power output across Europe in nine of the past 20 years. A 2021 study found climate-related outages at nuclear power plants increased dramatically between the 1990s and 2010s. Far from remaining exceptional phenomena, interruptions to plant availability and losses of production have become a constant.
Heat and drought aren’t the only challenges to securing enough water for cooling. The long list of nuclear facilities that have been forced to shut down after jellyfish clogged water intake pipes includes Scotland’s Torness nuclear plant in 2011 and 2021; South Korea’s Hanul nuclear plant in 2021; St. Lucie nuclear plant in Florida in 2011; Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in California in 2008, and many more. Following the shutdown of the Gravelines nuclear plant in France last year, operator EDF invested more than 1.5 million euros to surveil jellyfish populations in the North Sea. Despite continuous monitoring, the arrival of thousands of jellyfish led to the shutdown of three reactors at the Gravelines nuclear plant yet again this summer. Jellyfish swarms are expected to become more frequent as climate change intensifies, for multiple reasons.
If too little water is a problem for nuclear reactors, too much water—hurricanes and floods, for instance—is also a problem. When Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast of the United States in 2012, the Salem-1 reactor in New Jersey had to be shut down “after debris blocked its cooling water intakes and caused four of its six circulating water pumps to stop working.” In 2009, heavy rainfall led to severe flooding in Rhône Valley resulting in the emergency shutdown of the Cruas nuclear plant in France as the cooling water intake of the plant was clogged by debris.
Severe weather events, including floods, winds, and wildfires, are a hazard to the safe operation of nuclear plants because such events can disable safety systems. In August 2020, a derecho in Iowa caused extensive damage to the Duane Arnold nuclear plant’s cooling towers, forcing its permanent shutdown ahead of its scheduled decommissioning. Natural disasters and extreme weather can also complicate the response to any accident or near-accident.
Climate change is already causing “more frequent and intense extreme events.” Unanticipated shutdowns will increase in frequency as extreme weather events driven by climate change become more common. One study found that “the average frequency of climate-induced disruptions” grew from “0.2 outage per reactor-year in the 1990s to 1.5 in the past decade” (i.e., 2010s). Going by the record so far, this decade will likely record a higher number of outages.
Can this trend be arrested by technology? Nuclear plants could, in principle, adopt other ways of removing the heat. For example, they could build cooling towers with recirculating water or use large electric fans to circulate air and carry away the heat. But these methods would lower the plant’s efficiency, and decrease the power output of reactors. And they would make nuclear power—already among the most expensive sources of electricity—more costly.
For nuclear power plants to be reliable, they need operating conditions to be stable. With climate change intensifying by the year, one cannot expect predictability, control, and stability.
Maintaining the promise of reliability in this changing environment is not only becoming increasingly difficult, but when operators and regulators attempt to keep this promise, it increases the risk of accidents due to more hazardous operating conditions and exacerbates the environmental footprint of nuclear reactors.
Australia’s continued enmeshment with the US could make it a nuclear target, former Labor minister warns
“This makes Australia a priority nuclear target for any adversary of the United States,”
“An adversary would target Australia before targeting the US directly since to do so would invite immediate retaliation.”
Former Labor minister Melissa Parke has warned that Australia’s close military ties to the United States make it a priority nuclear target that adversaries would likely strike before attacking the US directly.
By Tegan George, Tue 8 Sep 2026 , https://thepoint.com.au/new/260908-australias-continued-enmeshment-with-the-us-could-make-it-a-nuclear-target-former-labor-minister-warns
Former Labor minister Melissa Parke has warned that Australia’s close military ties to the United States make it a priority nuclear target that adversaries would likely strike before attacking the US directly.
Speaking on the Australia Institute’s After America podcast, Ms Parke said Australia’s increasing enmeshment with the US was even more reason for it to join the “groundbreaking” Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
“It’s the first treaty to comprehensively and categorically prohibit nuclear weapons and anything to do with them: developing, possessing, testing, using, threatening to use, sharing, deploying, et cetera,” she said.
Ms Parke, now executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), said more than half the world’s countries had joined as states parties or signatories, including almost all of Australia’s neighbours in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.
While Labor has committed in its national platform to joining the treaty since 2018, the Albanese government is yet to sign on the dotted line.
The commitment was moved by Anthony Albanese and seconded by Richard Marles, now Prime Minister and Defence Minister.
Defence Minister Richard Marles recently travelled to the US to meet his counterpart, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, as the countries marked the 75th anniversary of the ANZUS alliance.
Following the meeting, they agreed to “accelerate force posture initiatives” at Australian bases but didn’t say whether that would mean more American troops heading down under.
The growing US military presence includes the rotation of nuclear-powered submarines through HMAS Stirling and nuclear-capable B-52 bombers at RAAF Base Tindal in the Northern Territory, alongside existing joint facilities such as Pine Gap.
“This makes Australia a priority nuclear target for any adversary of the United States,” said Ms Parke.
“An adversary would target Australia before targeting the US directly since to do so would invite immediate retaliation.”
She argued other countries in the region had joined the treaty without damaging their US relationship, pointing to Palau, New Zealand, the Philippines and Thailand.
Ms Parke said she understood the Albanese government was concerned about “upsetting” the US but cited former prime minister Paul Keating’s remark that “we couldn’t get rid of the Americans even if we wanted to”.
“Our own former foreign minister, Gareth Evans, says that reliance on US nuclear deterrence is both dangerous because it makes us a nuclear target and absurd because the US would never sacrifice one of its cities for ours.”
She said the treaty also provided victim assistance and remediation of affected environments.
“There’s a bit of a myth out there that nuclear weapons have only ever been used twice in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” she told the podcast.
“But in fact, nuclear weapons have been exploded more than 2000 times around the world, mostly on colonised Indigenous and vulnerable communities.”
That includes Australia, where the British conducted 12 major nuclear detonations and hundreds of radiological trials in Western and South Australia between 1952 and 1963.
The tests caused severe radioactive contamination and prompted a royal commission into their lasting health and environmental impacts.
The treaty’s first review conference is due to be held in New York from 30 November to 4 December, but Ms Parke said some affected communities would not attend because they “don’t feel safe” under the Trump administration.
Ms Parke accused the US of doing “enormous damage” to international institutions and appearing willing to violate and discard any rule or norm of international law.
“When we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness,” she said.
“We accept what’s offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating. This is not sovereignty. It’s the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.”
Boris Johnson Continues to Lie About Subverting Ukraine Peace Talks
The origin of the Johnson sabotage story is not Russian propaganda. It was first reported by Ukrainska Pravda. The Ukrainian paper says that as soon as Ukraine and Russia had “agreed on the structure of a future possible agreement in general terms, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson appeared in Kyiv almost without warning.” He told Zelensky that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with” and that “even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not.”
Johnson also wooed Zelensky with promises of “influence” and “fame” as a great war hero.
The charge against Johnson is supported not only by Ukrainian testimony, but by British testimony
Columnist Ted Snider takes on the former PM
Ted Snider is a columnist for The Libertarian Institute and a contributing editor for The American Conservative. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and other outlets.
In a recent interview, former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson repeated his denial that he discouraged Ukraine from negotiating peace in the first days of the war. “This is complete, utter nonsense,” Johnson said. He insisted that the story was just the Kremlin spreading allegations.
Johnson has used that defense before. In January 2024, he told The Times that “This is nothing but total nonsense and Russian propaganda.”
But none of the sources of the charge are Russian. They are all either Ukrainian or British.
Johnson denies that he encouraged Zelensky to fight. He says that Zelensky’s mind was already set on fighting and that “there was not a single European or Western leader who could have stopped the Ukrainians from fighting for their country.”
That was not true at the time. In a February 25, 2022 address to Ukrainians, Zelensky said, “We are not afraid to talk to Russia. We are not afraid to say everything about security guarantees for our state. We are not afraid to talk about neutral status.”
The origin of the Johnson sabotage story is not Russian propaganda. It was first reported by Ukrainska Pravda. The Ukrainian paper says that as soon as Ukraine and Russia had “agreed on the structure of a future possible agreement in general terms, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson appeared in Kyiv almost without warning.” He told Zelensky that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with” and that “even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not.”
That story, first reported in the Ukrainian press, was confirmed by the head of the Ukrainian negotiating team, Davyd Arakhamia, who says that when the Ukrainian team “returned from Istanbul, Boris Johnson came to Kiev and said that we would not sign anything with them at all, and let’s just fight.” He adds that the West “actually advised us not to go into ephemeral security guarantees.”
Far from Russian propaganda, the charge against Johnson has a Ukrainian media source backed by primary source confirmation from the lead Ukrainian negotiator.
Though it carries less weight because she was not there and because she was no longer in office at the time, there is also secondary source confirmation from within Zelensky’s administration. Iuliia Mendel, Zelensky’s press secretary from 2019-2021, retells the story of Johnson rushing to Kiev to urge the Ukrainians to keep fighting. She also adds the claim, without support or attribution, that Johnson also wooed Zelensky with promises of “influence” and “fame” as a great war hero.
The charge against Johnson is supported not only by Ukrainian testimony, but by British testimony. A senior government source told The Times at the end of March 2022 that the British government warned Zelensky not to be bullied into concessions and that it was the position of the UK that he shouldn’t be “too eager… to settle” and that “Ukraine needs to be in the strongest possible position militarily before those talks can take place.”
Johnson did say that the UK “would back Ukraine a thousand percent.” But he also said, “I could not see for the life of me what the deal could be, and I thought that any deal with Putin was going to be pretty sordid.” He then told Zelensky that “as far as I am concerned, Putin must fail and Ukraine must be entitled to retain full sovereignty and independence.” Johnson then made the promise of providing the Ukrainian armed forces with military supplies.
In The Russo-Ukrainian War: Follies of Empire, Richard Sakwa reports an earlier phone conversation in which Johnson told Zelensky that the UK “would not stand as a guarantor power and urged Zelensky to refuse the deal.”
It is important to set Johnson’s perjury straight not just to correct the historical record, but to remember that, at a time when the war is becoming increasingly hopeless for Ukraine, before most of the death and destruction, there was the chance of peace, and that Johnson contributed to discouraging it and encouraging this horrible war.
Does Britain really face an imminent Russian threat?
By Anatol Lieven, 8 Sept 26, . https://unherd.com/newsroom/does-britain-really-face-an-imminent-russian-threat/
Diane Abbott has been subjected to ferocious attacks on her character for claiming on Wednesday that “the imminent threat from Russia is a Nato fiction.” The Labour MP added that the alliance was attempting “to justify their complete capitulation to Trump’s demands for more military spending. The increase should not go ahead.” Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch branded the comments “reprehensible”, while another Tory, Ben Obese-Jecty, labelled Abbott “Putin’s useful idiot”. The Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP even received criticism from her own Labour colleagues.
Many of the responses to Abbott are little more than attempts to shut down public debate on a question of vast importance to the United Kingdom. However, it is also true that she would have been much closer to the facts had she emphasised one word and added another: “The imminent conventional threat from Russia is a Nato fiction.”
Put like this, the argument is persuasive. Any suggestion of a Russian invasion or sustained air campaign in Western Europe is absurd. The Russian military and air force are already occupied with a grinding war in Ukraine: where is Moscow supposed to find a new army with which to attack Nato? How would the Kremlin pay for the resulting war when Nato has practically shut down Russia’s maritime trade?
Had she phrased her statement in these terms, Abbott would have been close to what sensible Nato figures and analysts have been saying. In June, the American Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR), General Alexus Grynkewich, said that “Russia is not looking for a conflict […] They do understand the term ‘defensive alliance’, and they do understand that we have a number of asymmetric advantages.” Really, Russia’s threats have been intended to deter a direct war with Nato in Ukraine, not to start one.
Russian-organized hybrid attacks in Europe and Britain are a much more realistic danger, one which Abbott should have mentioned. Moscow has engaged in cyber warfare, as well allegedly organizing arson attacks and the sabotage of railway lines and undersea cables. Last month, explosive drones were discovered close to Ukrainian planes with military supplies at Leipzig/Halle Airport in Germany.
So far, however, the effects have been small, suggesting that Russia’s campaign has been either highly incompetent or deliberately restrained. If the latter, this is presumably because the Kremlin still wants to maintain some element of plausible deniability, and because these attacks are meant to be warnings rather than attempts to do serious damage and cause casualties.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has threatened that “the response to Ukrainian strikes using British missiles on Russian territory may become [attacks on] any military sites and equipment of Britain in Ukraine, or beyond its borders.” This would mean making Russian hybrid attacks overt — a strategy Vladimir Putin has thus far avoided, both because of the risk of a radical increase in Western help to Ukraine, and perhaps because his instincts as a former intelligence officer are more geared towards covert operations.
In war, accidents happen. On the first day of the American-Israeli war on Iran, the US unintentionally destroyed an Iranian elementary school, killing 120 children. In 1988, American forces mistakenly shot down an Iranian airliner, killing 290 people. Russian contacts assure me that if a British missile were to destroy a school or an airliner in Russia, a direct response against the UK would be unavoidable.
At present, though, a direct threat from Russia to Britain is far from imminent. What is needed is a realistic public debate about the escalation of British support for Ukraine and its possible consequences, and a serious negotiating strategy rather than one that sabotages US initiatives. Support for Ukraine is legitimate, but it is the interests and security of the British people that ministers should be prioritizing. https://unherd.com/newsroom/does-britain-really-face-an-imminent-russian-threat/
Anatol Lieven is a former war correspondent and Director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington DC.
1 This Month
9 September – online public forum THREE MILE ISLAND:
7-8:30 PM ET,
Legacy, resistance to reopening – https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-LGJU4j6TD2Hgf0rpgAr1A#/registration
The nuclear industry and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission are threatening to restart Pennsylvania’s permanently closed and decommissioning Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear power station. Three expert speakers will present the resistance to this dangerous misadventure in a webinar hosted by the Clamshell Alliance, Beyond Nuclear and Massachusetts Peace Action.
No Nuclear in Cwm Llynfi! Stop the nuclear power station near Maesteg.
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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