Chinese hackers gain access to US oversight of nuclear weapons in widespread Microsoft hack: report
The tech giant blamed a vulnerability in its SharePoint document software
Anthony Cuthbertson,Rhian Lubin, Wednesday 23 July 2025, https://www.the-independent.com/tech/security/china-hack-nuclear-microsoft-sharepoint-b2795333.html
Chinese hackers gained access to the U.S. government agency that oversees nuclear weapons in a widespread Microsoft hack.
Microsoft issued an alert Tuesday warning that hackers affiliated with the Chinese government have been exploiting cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the company’s SharePoint software.
Tens of thousands of servers hosting the software, which is used for sharing and managing documents, were said to be at risk as a result.
The National Nuclear Security Administration, a semi-autonomous agency within the U.S. Department of Energy responsible for maintaining the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons, was breached in the attacks on July 18, Bloomberg first reported.
The agency is responsible for providing the Navy with nuclear reactors for submarines and responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the U.S. and overseas. No sensitive or classified information has leaked in the cyber attack, according to Bloomberg.
“On Friday, July 18th, the exploitation of a Microsoft SharePoint zero-day vulnerability began affecting the Department of Energy,” an agency spokesman said in a statement to the outlet. “The department was minimally impacted due to its widespread use of the Microsoft M365 cloud and very capable cybersecurity systems. A very small number of systems were impacted. All impacted systems are being restored.”
Security firm Eye Security said that 400 organizations and agencies globally were impacted, including national governments in Europe and the Middle East.
Microsoft linked the attack to two main groups, Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon, and flagged that another China-based group, Storm-2603, had also targeted its systems.
The Education Department, Florida’s Department of Revenue and the Rhode Island General Assembly were also breached in the attack, according to Bloomberg.
Eye Security warned that the breaches could allow hackers to impersonate users or services by stealing cryptographic keys — alphabetical codes or sequences of characters — even after software updates. Users should take further steps to protect their information, the firm said.
Microsoft said in a message to customers that it has since released “new comprehensive security updates” to deal with the incident.
But security researchers warned that the full extent of the breach and its consequences are yet to be fully revealed.
“This is a critical vulnerability with wide reaching implications,” Carlos Perez, director of security intelligence at TrustedSec, who previously trained U.S. military cyber protection teams, told The Independent.
“It enables unauthenticated remote code execution on SharePoint servers, which are a core part of enterprise infrastructure. It is already being actively exploited at scale, and it only took 72 hours from the time a proof of concept was demonstrated for attackers to begin mass exploitation campaigns.
“What makes it even more severe is the way it exposes cryptographic secrets, effectively allowing attackers to convert any authenticated SharePoint request into remote code execution. That is a dangerous capability to put into the hands of threat actors.”
Microsoft said it had “high confidence” that firms who do not install the new security updates could be targeted by the groups.
The tech firm said the attackers had been uploading malicious scripts which are then “enabling the theft of the key material” by hackers.
In a statement, the company added: “Investigations into other actors also using these exploits are still ongoing.”
Additional reporting from agencies.
Poisoned water and scarred hills
The price of the rare earth metals the world buys from China
By Laura Bicker and the Visual Journalism team: 08/07/2025, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-66cdf862-5e96-4e6e-90b8-a407b597c8d9
When you stand on the edge of Bayan Obo, all you see is an expanse of scarred grey earth carved into the grasslands of Inner Mongolia in northern China.
Dark dust clouds rise from deep craters where the earth’s crust has been sliced away over decades in search of a modern treasure.
You may not have heard of this town – but life as we know it could grind to a halt without Bayan Obo.
The town gets its name from the district it sits in, which is home to half of the world’s supply of a group of metals known as rare earths. They are key components in nearly everything that we switch on: smartphones, bluetooth speakers, computers, TV screens, even electric vehicles.
And one country, above all others, has leapt ahead in mining them and refining them: China.
This dominance gives Beijing huge leverage – both economically, and politically, such as when it negotiates with US President Donald Trump over tariffs. But China has paid a steep price for it.
To find out more, we travelled to the country’s two main rare earth mining hubs – Bayan Obo in the north and Ganzhou in the province of Jiangxi in the south.
We found man-made lakes full of radioactive sludge and heard claims of polluted water and contaminated soil, which, in the past, have been linked to clusters of cancer and birth defects. These journeys were challenging.
Beijing appears sensitive to criticism of its environmental record. We were pulled over by police, questioned by them and stuck in a three-hour standoff with an unidentified mining boss who refused to let us leave unless we deleted our footage.
Our calls for an interview or a statement have gone unanswered, but the government has published new regulations to try to strengthen its supervision of the industry.
Authorities have been making an effort to clean up these mining sites, scientists told the BBC. Still, China’s mining operations in the north just keep growing.
Machines are constantly on the hunt for rare earths called neodymium and dysprosium that go into making powerful magnets for a variety of modern technology, from electric vehicles to computer hard drives.
To find these rare earths, the machines strip away the topsoil layer-by-layer, kicking up harmful dust, some of which contains high levels of heavy metals and radioactive material.
Satellite images from the last few decades show how the Bayan Obo mine has spread.
The mine sits in the vast, aridness of Inner Mongolia, a nine-hour drive from the capital, Beijing.
There were once more than a thousand mining sites, some of them illegal, dotted throughout this one county. Companies got what they needed from one mine, and then moved to another.
Then in 2012, the Chinese government stepped in to regulate, dramatically reducing the number of mining licences they issued.
But significant damage had been done to the area already. Research going back decades has linked the rare earth mines to deforestation, soil erosion and chemical leaks into rivers and farmland.
Local farmer Huang Xiaocong, whose land is surrounded by four rare earth sites, believes landslides are still being triggered by improper mining practices.
He has also accused the state-owned company of grabbing land illegally. The firm refused to answer the BBC’s questions.
“This problem is way too big for me to solve. It’s something that has to be dealt with at the higher levels of government,” Mr Huang said.
“We ordinary people don’t have the answers… Farmers like us, we’re the vulnerable ones. To put it simply, we were born at a disadvantage. It’s pretty tragic.”
It is rare and often risky in China for villagers to take on huge companies – and even rarer for them to speak to international media. But Mr Huang is determined to be heard and has taken his case to the local Natural Resources Bureau.
Satellite images show the mining ponds surrounding Mr Huang’s village and land. Within a six kilometres wide square, at least four sites are visible.
During our interview with Mr Huang, we were surrounded by men wearing uniforms branded with what appeared to be the logo of the same rare earth company. At least 12 other men used their vehicles to block our car from leaving.
Eventually, someone who identified himself as a local manager of China Rare Earth Jiangxi Company arrived. He confronted Mr Huang and us, and wouldn’t let us leave for nearly three hours, despite our attempts to negotiate and our offers to hear his argument.
Those living around the mines in Bayan Obo and Ganzhou appear to be victims of what used to be China’s “develop first and clean up later” approach to mining, says Professor Julie Klinger, author of Rare Earth Frontiers. That has changed now as they try harder to mitigate the damage, she adds, but the consequences are here to stay.
“I think it’s very difficult to know the true human and environmental cost of that sort of development model,” she told the BBC.
The worst health effects were found in and around the largest tailing pond south of Bayan Obo in the city of Baotou. In the decades leading up to 2010, villagers were diagnosed with bone and joint deformities caused by too much fluoride in the water and acute arsenic toxicity, according to Professor Klinger.
Most of them lived close to the Weikuang Dam, a man-made lake built to dump mining waste in the 1950s. Authorities have since moved villagers away from the site, but the 11km-long tailings pond is still full of grey clay sludge, including radioactive thorium.
Studies suggest this toxic mix could be slowly seeping into the groundwater and moving towards the Yellow River, China’s second-largest, and a key source of drinking water for the north of the country.
As the demand for pocket gadgets, electric vehicles, solar panels, MRI machines and jet engines surges, there is one worrying statistic to contend with – mining just one tonne of rare earth minerals creates some 2,000 tonnes of toxic waste.
China is now trying to rein in the environmental harm its rush for rare earths has caused, while expanding its mining operations abroad. Others, including the United States, are in a hurry to catch up with their own rare earth enterprises.
But scientists warn that no matter where these metals are mined, without the right solutions, landscapes and lives will be put at risk.
And yet, some farmers in Bayan Obo have adjusted to life in the the world’s rare earth capital.
The metals that have scarred their land and poisoned their water have also brought them jobs.
“With the rare earths, there’s money now,” one farmer told us. “The mines pay 5,000 or 6,000 yuan ($837; £615) a month.”
He says he lost money herding horses, among the traditional livelihoods in a region that has long been home to nomadic people. Horses still roam the pastures next to the mines, as diggers continue their search for more rare earths.
“Farming’s fine,” he told us as he planted green onions. “You just grow your crop and sell it – simple as that.”
China backs Southeast Asia nuclear ban; Rubio, Lavrov at ASEAN meeting
US President Trump’s tariffs loom over gathering in Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur which will also feature US-Russia talks.
Aljazeera, 10 Jul 2025
China has agreed to sign a Southeast Asian treaty banning nuclear weapons, Malaysia’s and China’s foreign ministers confirmed, in a move that seeks to shield the area from rising global security tensions amid the threat of imminent United States tariffs.
The pledge from Beijing was welcomed as diplomats on Thursday gathered for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers’ meeting, where US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is also due to meet regional counterparts and Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov.
Malaysia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohamad Hasan told reporters China had confirmed its willingness to sign the Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone (SEANWFZ) treaty – an agreement in force since 1997 that restricts nuclear activity in the region to peaceful purposes such as energy generation.
“China made a commitment to ensure that they will sign the treaty without reservation,” Hasan said, adding that the formal signing will take place once all relevant documentation is completed.
ASEAN has long pushed for the world’s five recognised nuclear powers – China, the United States, Russia, France and the United Kingdom – to sign the pact and respect the region’s non-nuclear status, including within its exclusive economic zones and continental shelves.
Last week, Beijing signalled its readiness to support the treaty and lead by example among nuclear-armed states.
Rubio, who is on his first visit to Asia as secretary of state, arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday amid a cloud of uncertainty caused by President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariff strategy, which includes new levies on six ASEAN nations as well as key traditional allies Japan and South Korea……………………………………………………………….
………………………..Reporting from Kuala Lumpur, Al Jazeera’s Rob McBride says Southeast Asian nations are finding themselves at the centre of intensifying diplomatic competition, as global powers look to strengthen their influence in the region.
“The ASEAN countries are facing some of the highest tariffs from the Trump administration,” McBride said. “They were also among the first to receive new letters announcing yet another delay in the imposition of these tariffs, now pushed to 1 August.”
The uncertainty has pushed ASEAN states to seek alternative trade partners, most notably China. “These tariffs have provided an impetus for all of these ASEAN nations to seek out closer trade links with other parts of the world,” McBride added.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has been in Kuala Lumpur for meetings with ASEAN counterparts, underscoring Beijing’s growing engagement.
Meanwhile, Russia’s top diplomat, Sergey Lavrov, has also been holding talks in Malaysia, advancing Moscow’s vision of a “multipolar world order” – a concept backed by China that challenges what they see as a Western-led global system dominated by the US………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/10/china-backs-southeast-asia-nuclear-ban-rubio-lavrov-at-asean-meeting
Atomic bomb survivors in Japan fear nuclear weapons could be used again: poll
Newly released survey shows close to 70 percent of survivors fear a resurgence in nuclear risks as Japan readies for the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
14 July 25 https://trt.global/world/article/0c8b4e3aec45
Nearly 70 percent of atomic bomb survivors in Japan believe nuclear weapons could be used again, citing growing global tensions, including Russia’s war in Ukraine and North Korea’s weapons development, a survey by Kyodo News Agency revealed on Sunday, ahead of the 80th anniversary of the US atomic bombings.
Around 1,500 survivors took part in the survey, with 68.6 percent saying the risk of nuclear weapons being used again is increasing.
Some 45.7 percent of respondents said they “cannot forgive” the US for the bombings, while 24.3 percent said they have “no special feelings” and 16.9 percent said they “did not know.”
This year marks 80 years since the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in western Japan near the end of World War II.
On August 6, 1945, the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing an estimated 140,000 people.
A second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki three days later, resulting in about 70,000 additional deaths.
Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, officially marking the end of World War II.
Tepco plans to move spent nuclear fuel from Fukushima to Mutsu facility
Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (Tepco) suggested Monday that it
plans to transfer spent nuclear fuel from its Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power
plant to an interim storage facility in the city of Mutsu in Aomori
Prefecture. The plan was included in a medium- to long-term program for the
facility, presented to Aomori Gov. Soichiro Miyashita by Tepco President
Tomoaki Kobayakawa at a meeting in the Aomori Prefectural Government office
the same day.
Spent nuclear fuel stored at the plant’s No. 5 and No. 6
reactors, a joint storage pool and the Fukushima No. 2 plant at the time of
the March 2011 nuclear meltdown at the No. 1 plant is set to be transferred
to the Mutsu facility.
Japan Times 8th July 2025, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/07/08/japan/tepco-move-mutsu/
Nuclear comeback? Japan’s plans to restart reactors hit resistance over radioactive waste
The Japanese government wants to turn its nuclear power
stations back on – but some local residents and Indigenous Ainu people
don’t want nuclear waste stored near them. Fourteen years after the
Fukushima disaster, Japan is restarting its nuclear reactors – and two
wind-blown near-deserted fishing villages on the northern island of
Hokkaido could be the destination for all their radioactive waste. But,
while some residents of Suttsu and Kamoenai welcome the government money
that volunteering to store the waste will bring, others are fiercely
opposed due to fears that the nuclear waste will contaminate their land and
water. The controversy could delay Japan’s goals to use carbon-free
nuclear energy to replace electricity generation from expensive imported
fossil fuels and cut greenhouse gas emissions on the way to net zero by
2050.
Climate Home News 6th July 2025, https://www.climatechangenews.com/2025/07/06/nuclear-comeback-japans-plans-to-restart-reactors-hit-resistance-over-radioactive-waste/
China lifts a nearly 2-year ban on seafood from Japan over Fukushima wastewater
China has reopened its market to seafood from Japan after a nearly
two-year ban over the discharge of slightly radioactive wastewater from the
tsunami-destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant. A notice from the customs
agency said the ban had been lifted Sunday and that imports from most of
Japan would be resumed. The ban, imposed in August 2023, was a major blow
to Japan’s fisheries industry. China was the biggest overseas market for
Japanese seafood, accounting for more than one-fifth of its exports.
Daily Mail 30th June 2025, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-14859601/China-lifts-nearly-2-year-ban-seafood-Japan-Fukushima-wastewater.html
Pacific Rim countries say no to U.S.-China war
The question that the people of the Pacific and Pacific Rim countries are asking is: Why do we have to respond to this demand by the U.S.? We are not threatened by China. Where is the dire urgency that demands such a huge distortion of our public spending on the military?
The indications are that the United States is preparing for war against China, but cannot wage such a war from the West Coast of the USA. It needs military bases, port facilities and airfields in the countries on the west side of the Pacific Rim; for example, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Guam, Micronesia and Australia. Without these bases, without the backing of the military forces and munitions and manufacturing capabilities of the Pacific Rim countries, the United States cannot launch and sustain a war against China.
By Bevan Ramsden | 16 June 2025, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/pacific-rim-countries-say-no-to-us-china-war,19837
As the U.S. pushes Pacific Rim allies to ramp up military spending for a possible war with China, a new campaign asks: at what cost and for whose benefit? Bevan Ramsden writes.
THE PACIFIC and Pacific Rim countries have a geographical commonality. They are encircled by, or have a border with, the vast, blue, peaceful Pacific Ocean. They also share a political commonality. The people and countries of this region are under pressure to lift their military spending at the expense of addressing their social needs.
The pressure comes from the United States, whose Defence Secretary, Peter Hegseth, at the recent Singapore Defence Summit, declared that the U.S. expects its allies in this region to increase their defence spending to 5% of their GDP. His justification was a “possibly imminent threat” posed by China. He emphasised how the U.S. is “reorienting towards deterring aggression by China” and made it clear that the Donald Trump Administration’s defence strategy revolves around stifling the rise of China.
Responding to this expectation would involve the doubling of South Korean expenditure on military defence, from 2.6% of its GDP to 5%.
It would mean Japan’s military defence spending would have to triple from 1.8 % of its GDP to 5%.
In Australia, such an increase would represent a two-and-a-half times increase from 2% to 5% of its GDP.
These examples show that the 5% target represents a massive increase in military spending, which can only be made by reducing funding for urgent infrastructure, social needs such as health and education and loss of resources to address the real threat to their living environments, the climate crisis.
The question that the people of the Pacific and Pacific Rim countries are asking is: Why do we have to respond to this demand by the U.S.? We are not threatened by China. Where is the dire urgency that demands such a huge distortion of our public spending on the military?
Another commonality among the countries of the Pacific Rim, particularly those on the western and southern rim of the Pacific, is U.S. troops and U.S. military installations stationed on their territory. In the case of South Korea, these are substantial, close to 30,000 and put that country’s military virtually under the control of the U.S.
Japan has 57,000 U.S. troops, including 20,000 on Okinawa, where the U.S. Kadena Air Base is its largest outside of the USA. Clearly, this level of foreign military occupation exerts substantial pressure on Japan’s foreign policy.
The Philippines has four U.S. bases with troops rotating through its territory and training with its defence forces, and is setting up logistic centres for equipment and munitions.
The people of Guam, a territory under direct U.S. control, are subject to 7,000 U.S. troops, with almost a third of the land controlled by the U.S. military. The Joint Region Marianas is a U.S. military command combining the Andersen Air Force Base and the Naval Base Guam.
Andersen Air Force Base hosts B-52 bombers and fighter jets. Naval Base Guam is the home port for four nuclear-powered fast attack submarines and two submarine tenders. American military commanders have referred to the island as their “permanent aircraft carrier”.
Australian governments, in their subservience to the U.S., have signed the Force Posture Agreement, giving the U.S. military unimpeded access to Australia’s ports and airfields and enabling the establishment of a Northern Territory base for its B-52 bombers, some of which are nuclear-capable. The Agreement is giving the U.S. fuel and munitions storage areas to support war operations and an $8 billion port facility for servicing their nuclear submarines and storage of their nuclear waste.
The people of Pacific Rim countries, including Australia, need to ask: Why does the U.S. have these extensive military facilities in our countries and why are they demanding such huge military expenditures from us?
The answer, unfortunately, is not for the benefit of the people of this region but for its own foreign policy objectives, which include maintaining its dominance in the region by “containing” China and preventing the rise of its influence.
The indications are that the United States is preparing for war against China, but cannot wage such a war from the West Coast of the USA. It needs military bases, port facilities and airfields in the countries on the west side of the Pacific Rim; for example, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Guam, Micronesia and Australia. Without these bases, without the backing of the military forces and munitions and manufacturing capabilities of the Pacific Rim countries, the United States cannot launch and sustain a war against China.
So the United States needs us but we don’t need such a war.
It would only bring devastation to our lives and our economies, and if it turned nuclear, who would survive?
The Pacific Peace Network, with representatives from the Pacific Rim countries and together with World Beyond War, has produced a solidary campaign which is being launched on 21 June 2025.
This is a campaign in which the people of each country on the Pacific Rim, including Australia, can say no to such a war and no to an increase in military spending for it, through a common petition which is a call on their governments.
The common petition can be accessed here at the World Beyond War website.
This call on governments reads:
For sustainable peace and the survival of our peoples and environment, we ask you:
- refuse to join military preparations for a U.S.-China war;
- declare you will not fight in a U.S.-China war;
- declare neutrality should such a war break out; and
- do not allow your territory or waters to be used in such a war, including the collection and relay of military intelligence, sales of weapons and hosting combatant troops and facilities.
Later this year, the petitions will be presented to their respective governments by peace activists in each country.
‘We Are Preparing for War’ With China ‘Threat’, Says US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered an extremely hawkish speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue 2025 summit in which he demonized China as a “threat” and said, “We are preparing for war” in the Asia-Pacific region.
By Ben Norton, 5 June 25, https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/06/06/preparing-war-china-threat-us-defense-secretary-pete-hegseth/
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered an extremely hawkish speech in which he demonized China as a “threat” and said, “We are preparing for war”.
“Those who long for peace, must prepare for war. And that’s exactly what we’re doing. We are preparing for war, in order to deter war — to achieve peace through strength”, Hegseth stated.
The top Donald Trump administration official made these aggressive remarks at the Shangri-La Dialogue 2025, a summit held in Singapore on 31 May.
“The threat China poses is real, and it could be imminent. We hope not, but it certainly could be”, Hegseth claimed, indicating that the Pentagon was preparing for a war over Taiwan.
“Beyond our borders and beyond our neighborhood, we are reorienting toward deterring aggression by Communist China”, he stressed.
The message of Trump’s Pentagon: war is peace
The Trump administration’s Pentagon has essentially pushed the message “war is peace”.
Hegseth has incessantly reiterated the slogan “peace through strength”.
“President Trump said it himself [in May] in Riyadh – and will never hesitate to wield American power swiftly and decisively if necessary. That is re-establishing deterrence”, the defense secretary emphasized in Singapore.
Hegseth is a war hawk and a religious fundamentalist. He made his name as a former host on the conservative TV network Fox News, where Trump discovered him.
In 2020, Hegseth published a book called “American Crusade”, in which he proudly identified as a “crusader” and wrote that the US right wing is waging a “holy war” against China, the international left, and Islam.
“Communist China will fall—and lick its wounds for another two hundred years”, he promised in the extremist book.
Trump admin pressures Asia-Pacific countries to minimize “economic cooperation with China”
In his speech in Singapore in May 2025, Pete Hegseth noted that it was his second time in his four months serving as secretary of defense that he had visited the Asia-Pacific region (which Washington has sought to rebrand as the “Indo-Pacific”).
In March, Hegseth traveled to Japan and the Philippines, where he threatened China and boasted of US “war-fighting” preparations and “real war plans”.
At the Shangri-La Dialogue conference, Hegseth half-jokingly threatened the Asia-Pacific region with his endless presence……………………………..
The Trump administration essentially told countries that they must choose between either the United States or China — that they can’t have good relations with both sides, because a war could be coming soon.
Hegseth said (emphasis added):
Facing these threats, we know that many countries are tempted by the idea of seeking both economic cooperation with China and defense cooperation with the United States. Now that is a geographic necessity for many. But beware the leverage that the CCP seeks with that entanglement. Economic dependence on China only deepens their malign influence and complicates our defense decision space during times of tension.
China opposes hegemony, while the US empire seeks it
Defense Secretary Hegseth claimed in his May speech in Singapore that, supposedly, “China seeks to become a hegemonic power in Asia. No doubt”.
This is false. China has consistently emphasized, over decades, that it does not seek hegemony. In fact, Beijing does not want any country to have hegemony.
Principled opposition to hegemony has been a constant since the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) under Mao Zedong in 1949, through the Reform and Opening Up initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, and into the New Era launched by President Xi Jinping in 2012.
The Chinese government has always stressed what it calls its “unequivocal commitment to supporting other developing countries in their efforts to defend national sovereignty, develop national economy and fight imperialism, colonialism, and hegemonism”.
In a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in 1974, Deng Xiaoping stated, “If one day China should change her color and turn into a superpower, if she too should play the tyrant in the world, and everywhere subject others to her bullying, aggression, and exploitation, the people of the world should identify her as social-imperialism, expose it, oppose it, and work together with the Chinese people to overthrow it”.
In fact, when the PRC normalized diplomatic relations with the United States and Japan in the 1970s, a source of diplomatic tension was China’s insistence that, in the joint statements signed by Beijing and Washington and Beijing and Tokyo, there had to be an “anti-hegemony” clause.
It is actually the United States that has consistently sought to impose its hegemony on the rest of the world.
This was spelled out clearly in a 1992 document published by the US Department of Defense, known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine (because it was co-written by Paul Wolfowitz, who then served as US under secretary of defense for policy, before later returning as secretary of defense under George W. Bush).
The Pentagon’s Wolfowitz Doctrine stated (emphasis added):
Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia.
The Trump administration’s foreign policy is still consistent with much of the Wolfowitz Doctrine. Although Trump has de-prioritized Western Europe and the territory of the former USSR, he has dedicated significant resources to US military operations in East Asia and Southwest Asia (also known as the Middle East).
In fact, the main theme of Hegseth’s speech was that the Pentagon will not accept China challenging US dominance in the Asia-Pacific region.
“We will not be pushed out of this critical region”, Hegseth said, in a clear message to Beijing.
This was the US empire stating clearly that it seeks to impose its hegemonic control over East Asia.
Bipartisan warmongering in Washington
This aggressive anti-China stance is bipartisan in Washington.
A former top Joe Biden administration official said he agreed with the thrust of the anti-China policy pursued by Pete Hegseth, a right-wing extremist and religious fanatic.
Ely Ratner, who served as the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs in Biden’s Pentagon, wrote approvingly on Twitter/X, “Rhetoric aside, on actual defense policy Secretary Hegseth’s speech was near total continuity with the previous administration”.
“That’s good, but we’ll need heightened urgency, attention, and resources to address the China challenge”, Ratner added.
Biden’s neoconservative Secretary of State Antony Blinken had also maintained a hardline anti-China position.
In a speech in 2022, Blinken announced what was essentially a containment policy targeting China.
“We cannot rely on Beijing to change its trajectory. So we will shape the strategic environment around Beijing”, he said.
Blinken added, “The scale and the scope of the challenge posed by the People’s Republic of China will test American diplomacy like nothing we’ve seen before”.
China unveils world’s first AI nuke inspector
China creates artificial intelligence system to oversee nuclear warhead detection despite concerns it could leak tech secrets
China creates artificial
intelligence system to oversee nuclear warhead detection despite concerns
it could leak tech secrets. Chinese scientists have developed an artificial
intelligence system that can distinguish real nuclear warheads from decoys,
marking the world’s first AI-driven solution for arms control
verification. The technology, disclosed in a peer-reviewed paper published
in April by researchers with the China Institute of Atomic Energy (CIAE),
could bolster Beijing’s stance in stalled international disarmament talks
while fuelling debate on the role of AI in managing weapons of mass
destruction.
South China Morning Post 30th May 2025, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3312270/china-unveils-worlds-first-ai-nuke-inspector
US Has 500 Troops in Taiwan in Major Challenge to China
The number of US troops in Taiwan was disclosed by a retired US Navy rear admiral in a recent congressional hearing
by Dave DeCamp May 26, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/05/26/us-has-500-troops-in-taiwan-in-major-challenge-to-china/
A retired US Navy admiral recently revealed that the US has 500 troops in Taiwan, a major challenge to Beijing’s red lines related to the island.
Ret. Adm. Mark Montgomery made the disclosure at a House hearing on May 15, where he was arguing that the US should send more military personnel to Taiwan.
“We absolutely have to grow the joint training team in Taiwan. That’s a US team there that’s about 500 people now, it needs to be 1,000,” said Montgomery, who now works for the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), an extremely hawkish think tank.
“If we’re going to give them billions of dollars in assistance, sell them tens of billions of dollars worth of US gear, it makes sense that we’d be over there training and working,” he added.
So far, the Pentagon has not confirmed the number, but due to the sensitivity of the matter, the US military typically offers few details about its operations in Taiwan.
After Washington severed diplomatic relations with Taipei in 1979, the US would still deploy a handful of military trainers to Taiwan. The small US presence was always an open secret but wasn’t officially confirmed until 2021, when then-President Tsai Ing-wen became the first Taiwanese leader to acknowledge US troops were on the island since 1979.
At the time of Tsai’s acknowledgment, only a few dozen US troops were believed to be on the island for training purposes. In 2023, media reports said the US was increasing its military presence to about 200 soldiers.
Last year, Taiwan confirmed that some of the US military trainers were deployed to Kinmen, a group of islands that are controlled by Taiwan but located just off the coast of mainland China.
The US has significantly increased military support for Taiwan in recent years despite constant warnings from China that the island is the “first red line” in US-China relations that must not be crossed.
Why the US Won’t Be Able to Help Build Taiwan’s Nuclear Future
Washington itself hasn’t solved the problems that fed into Taiwan’s nuclear phase-out: waste storage and high costs.
By Benjamin Yang and M.V. Ramana, May 26, 2025, https://thediplomat.com/2025/05/why-the-us-wont-be-able-to-help-build-taiwans-nuclear-future/
When the 40-year operating license of Taiwan’s last remaining commercial nuclear reactor expired on May 17, the country realized its nuclear phase-out policy after decades of politicized debates.
If anything, though, the imminent decommissioning of the Maanshan Nuclear Power Plant’s second reactor has only fueled another round of heated discussions on the potential role of nuclear power in Taiwan’s energy future.
On May 13, the Legislative Yuan – Taiwan’s national legislature, where opposition parties currently hold a majority – passed amendments to the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Regulation Act, allowing nuclear power plant operators to apply for a 20-year license renewal beyond the original 40-year cap and easing restrictions on their restarts. In the meantime, it also passed a proposal from the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) for a referendum on restarting the Maanshan plant, which is now set to take place in August.
Such renewed interest in nuclear energy is a result of a few compounding factors: power shortage concerns amid grid-induced blackouts over the past few years and growing power demands from the semiconductor and AI industries; rising electricity prices that pro-nuclear groups have framed as a result of phasing out nuclear; stalled momentum in renewable energy development; and national security threats of a naval blockade from China.
At the same time, there are several reasons why nuclear power may not really address these questions, most notably the high costs and long construction times of building nuclear plants. Meanwhile, proponents of the nuclear phase-out point to the risks of accidents associated with nuclear reactors and the lack of a demonstrated solution to managing radioactive wastes of different kinds produced by the nuclear fuel chain.
Amid this domestic debate in Taiwan over nuclear power, Director Raymond Greene of the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto U.S. embassy, added a new twist. In a recent interview, he announced that the United States stands ready to introduce “existing and new technologies such as SMRs (small modular reactors) and to help Taiwan address its nuclear waste storage challenges.” Can U.S. support on SMRs and nuclear waste storage help with the challenges that led Taiwan to phase out nuclear power?
The problem with nuclear waste is two-fold: a shortage of short-term storage capacity at some sites, and the complete absence of a long-term option. Currently, Taiwan has over 21,500 spent fuel rods from almost five decades of operation; all but 112 of these are stored on-site, either in their respective reactor cores or spent fuel pools. Only a portion from the Chinshan Nuclear Power Plant has been moved to a dry storage facility. In July 2021, Taiwan Power Company, the state-owned utility that owns and operates all of Taiwan’s nuclear power plants, had to take unit 1 of the Kuosheng Nuclear Power Plant offline five months before the expiry of its operating license due to the lack of used fuel storage capacity. These are just the problems with short-term storage. In the long term, there is just no plan: the government has yet to create regulations governing the disposal of high-level waste.
With local government concerns over wastewater runoff pollution hampering progress on constructing dry storage facilities and a final disposal repository nowhere in sight, creating more nuclear waste through extensions, restarts, or even building new SMRs will only aggravate this unsolved issue.
The United States has no long-term plan for its nuclear waste, either. Yucca Mountain, the site selected back in 1987 under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, proved to be technically problematic, because it had an oxidizing environment and, despite being advertised as a very dry site, proved to allow seepage of lots of water. No alternative site has been seriously considered since Yucca Mountain was picked, although high level committees like the Blue Ribbon Commission set up by President Barack Obama have recommended setting up a process to find a new site. In short, the United States has no successful experience to point to if it intends to help Taiwan with its nuclear waste.
The story is similar with SMRs, the other part of the offer from Greene. Despite much media attention and hype, the United States has so far not constructed a single small modular reactor. In terms of planning, the most advanced SMR project was proposed by the Utah Associated Municipal Power System. Announced in 2015, the UAMPS project was initially expected to start operations “around 2023” at an “overnight cost” of $3 billion. The estimated costs of the project subsequently rose to $6.1 billion, and finally $9.3 billion in 2023. That last figure was for a mere 462 megawatts of electricity capacity. Later that year, the project was canceled because of a lack of demand.
When viewed in terms of the cost per unit of power capacity (i.e., dollars per megawatt), the cost of the UAMPS project was higher than even the most expensive nuclear power plant built in the United States, the Vogle project in Georgia, which cost $36.8 billion. This is to be expected. Small modular nuclear reactors, which produce less than 300 megawatts of power as compared to the roughly 1,000 megawatts for the typical reactors that have been constructed in recent decades, are more expensive per unit of power capacity due to diseconomies of scale.
The underlying reason is that the cost of constructing or operating a nuclear reactor is not directly proportional to the amount of power it is designed to generate. SMRs, therefore, start off with an economic disadvantage and will further undermine the financial viability of nuclear plants.
In the United States, nuclear plants are the most expensive way to supply electricity and building SMRs will make nuclear power even less competitive, especially in comparison to solar and wind energy, with or without electricity storage. No wonder renewables constitute the vast majority of new electricity installations in the United States. Also growing rapidly are energy storage technology, geothermal technologies, and grid resilience innovations such as virtual power plants. If the U.S. is serious about addressing Taiwan’s energy situation, maybe these are the technologies it should be offering.
In the end, the decommissioning of Taiwan’s final nuclear reactor marks a critical crossroads in its energy transition. Every choice Taiwan makes at this juncture would need to tackle the multitude of challenges that come with balancing rising demands, economic development, national security, climate action, and public safety. With the storage solutions for existing nuclear waste yet to appear and the costliness of constructing SMRs both in terms of time and capital, nuclear is unable to serve as a safe, cost-effective, and timely climate solution – even with U.S. support.
Govt Eyes Reuse of Fukushima Soil at PM’s Office
Tokyo, May 23 (Jiji Press) https://jen.jiji.com/jc/eng?g=eco&k=2025052300665
–The Japanese government is considering reusing soil removed from the ground during radiation decontamination work after the 2011 nuclear reactor meltdowns in Fukushima Prefecture in the grounds of the prime minister’s office in Tokyo, informed sources have said.
The government hopes to promote public understanding over the reuse of the soil from the decontamination work in the northeastern Japan prefecture, home to Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s disaster-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
The move came after planned pilot projects for using the soil in Tokyo and its northern neighbor, Saitama Prefecture, have stalled due to opposition from local residents.
The government plans to compile a basic policy on the recycling and final disposal of the soil shortly, including its use at the prime minister’s office. It also plans to draw up a specific road map by around this summer.
Some 14 million cubic meters of the soil from the decontamination work is currently stored at interim facilities in the Fukushima towns of Okuma and Futaba, where the TEPCO plant is located.
Reactor closure marks Taiwan’s nuclear exit
Monday, 19 May 2025, WNN
Unit 2 of the Maanshan nuclear power plant – Taiwan’s last operating reactor – has been disconnected from the grid and will be decommissioned following the expiry of its 40-year operating licence, in accordance with Taiwan’s nuclear phase-out policy. ………………………..
Phase-out policy
Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was elected to government in January 2016 with a policy of creating a “nuclear-free” Taiwan by 2025. Under this policy, Taiwan’s six operable power reactors would be decommissioned as their 40-year operating licences expire. Shortly after taking office, the DPP government passed an amendment to the Electricity Act, passing its phase-out policy into law. The government aims for an energy mix of 20% from renewable sources, 50% from liquefied natural gas and 30% from coal……………………………..
Unit 1 of Taiwan’s oldest plant, Chinshan, was taken offline in December 2018, followed by Chinshan 2 in July 2019………………….https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/reactor-closure-marks-taiwans-nuclear-exit
India’s genocidal project is building a military base.
Survival, 21 May 25
Uncontacted people on Indian island face genocide in the name of “mega-development”
The Shompen are one of the most isolated peoples on Earth. They live on Great Nicobar Island in India, and most of them are uncontacted, refusing all interactions with outsiders.
Numbering around 300 people, they are now at risk of being totally wiped out by a “mega-development” plan to transform their small island home into the “Hong Kong of India.”
If the project goes ahead, huge swathes of their unique rainforest will be destroyed – to be replaced by a mega-port; a new city; an international airport; a power station; a defense base; an industrial park; and up to 650,000 settlers – a population increase of nearly 8,000%.
An island unlike any other
For centuries, most Shompen have refused all contact with outsiders, and this has kept them safe from the terrible effects of contact experienced by most other Indigenous peoples of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Living in the rainforest of Great Nicobar Island in the eastern Indian Ocean, the Shompen have guarded and maintained a unique landscape for thousands of years. The Shompen are nomadic hunter-gatherers, living in small groups, whose territories are identified by the rivers that criss-cross the rainforest…………………….
Their home, Great Nicobar Island, is small but has extremely high levels of biodiversity. Around 95% of the island is covered in rainforest and it’s home to 11 species of mammals, 32 species of birds, 7 species of reptiles and 4 species of amphibians, all found only here. It’s a place where monitor lizards and crocodiles share the rainforest with macaques and tree shrews, where giant turtles swim among the coral reefs with dugongs and dolphins.
The right to remain uncontacted
While a few Shompen have contact with their Nicobarese Indigenous neighbors, settlers and government officials, most remain in the rainforest and reject contact with outsiders. This does not mean that the Shompen are unaware of the outside world but, for the most part, they choose to be left alone. As with the Sentinelese people in the nearby Andaman Islands, outsiders forcing their way into Shompen territory is illegal and could be deadly for them. That’s why in March 2025, American influencer Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov was arrested for trying to contact the Sentinelese, and could face jail.
The few Shompen who do leave the rainforest tend to do so to collect and exchange things with outsiders before returning to the island’s interior and sharing them among other Shompen families. Like other uncontacted peoples around the world, the Shompen are incredibly vulnerable to diseases to which they have no immunity and Shompen who return have been known to quarantine in special houses outside their communities. A government report stated:
Our attempt to reach the main camp…about 50 metres away from the ‘out-houses’ was resisted by throwing spears (we escaped narrowly) as the Shompens of this region strongly believe that outsiders carry diseases.
Andaman and Nicobar Administration
The report then acknowledged then that these uncontacted Shompen were certainly “healthier than those who have contacts with others”. Most contact for the Shompen at the moment occurs as it should for all Indigenous communities – on their own terms.
Mega development = mega disaster
But the Indian government is now planning to transform the Shompen’s small island into the ‘Hong Kong of India’, which will totally change their lives forever. Its ‘Great Nicobar Project’ will have a devastating impact on the lives of the Shompen and the neighbouring Nicobarese. As neither peoples have given their consent to the scheme, it violates both Indian and international law.
The mega-project will take up around a third of the island – half of it within the official Tribal Reserve. Equally disastrous is the massive population explosion planned for Great Nicobar. The total population of the island is currently around 8,000, but the government plans to settle up to 650,000 people there under the scheme, a population the size of Las Vegas.
Shompen communities, along with their hunting and foraging grounds, will be devastated by the project. Their sacred river system will also be ruined. This will in turn destroy their pandanus trees, one of their most important sources of food. With their rivers devastated, the Shompen’s ability to survive and entire way of life will face collapse.
As well as causing unprecedented social and environmental devastation for the Shompen, these plans also drastically increase their exposure to outside diseases to which could wipe them out.
The Indian government is well aware of such risks and their official Impact Assessment for the project states: “Any disturbance or alteration in the natural environmental setup where they live, may cause serious threat to their existence” and “once infections spread among the tribal [Shompen]…the whole community may face extinction.” However, in an attempt to mitigate the risks, the government is proposing sinister sounding “geo-fencing cum surveillance towers” to monitor the Shompen.
In February 2024, 39 international genocide experts wrote to the Indian President, describing the mega-project as a “death sentence for the Shompen, tantamount to the international crime of genocide”. They called for the scheme to be immediately abandoned.
It’s impossible to imagine that the Shompen will be able to survive this overwhelming and catastrophic transformation of their island………………….https://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/shompen
The authorities plan to create a mega-port; a city; an international airport; a power station; a defence base; an industrial park; and tourism zones, spread over more than 244 square km of land, including 130 square km of rainforest. The government claims that it will ‘offset’ the loss of rainforest through planting new trees in the scrublands of North India. Such offsetting projects are false solutions and Survival is actively campaigning against the growing threat they pose to Indigenous peoples around the world.
To the Shompen, every tree, plant, leaf and flower is sacred and has a spirit of their own. It’s hard to imagine what cutting down millions of trees will mean to a people who do not even allow the cutting of leaves on their territory.
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