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As Israeli airstrikes pound Rafah, a top Hamas political official says the militant group would lay down its weapons if a two-state solution is implemented.
…The Chinese military is reorganizing for information warfare, but Beijing is mum on Washington’s anti-TikTok legislation.
…Sources say Anduril and General Atomics beat out Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman for an Air Force award to work toward building a new unmanned aircraft.
…And Secretary of State Antony Blinken raises concern over China’s unfair trade practices during a visit to Shanghai.
The Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen have resumed their campaign of anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) and drone attacks against commercial shipping vessels and U.S. military assets over the past 48 hours in the Gulf of Aden.
Details are still emerging around an attack Thursday on a commercial ship in waters about 15 miles off Yemen’s coastline — a strike that came hours after the Houthis circulated a video claiming the group was carrying out fresh attacks on U.S. and Israeli vessels in the area.
A U.S. naval coalition is actively countering the strikes and the Pentagon’s Central Command said Thursday that a coalition vessel had “successfully engaged” one ASBM “launched from Iranian-backed Houthi terrorist-controlled areas in Yemen.” European Union forces separately shot down a drone launched from Houthi territory on Thursday.
The Houthis have launched more than 50 attacks on shipping, seized one vessel and sank another since November, claiming their campaign is in solidarity with the Palestinian terror group Hamas, which is also backed by Iran.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry is refusing to answer questions about the U.S. ultimatum ordering China-based ByteDance to sell the American arm of its wildly popular video-sharing app TikTok or face a ban in the United States.
In contrast with the loud approach Beijing and the app’s supporters have previously pushed, foreign ministry officials on Wednesday refused to elaborate in answer to reporters’ questions about TikTok and what ByteDance ought to do.
The crackdown on ByteDance passed Congress on Tuesday when the Senate advanced a foreign aid package with a provision designed to force TikTok to separate itself from its corporate parent in Beijing. President Biden signed the measure Wednesday, starting a one-year legal clock for TikTok’s owners to determine its fate.
China is engaged in a reorganization of the People’s Liberation Army that involves the establishment of a new strategic service arm in charge of information warfare, according to the Beijing Defense Ministry and state media.
Reports indicate the new information support force and three other military components will replace the relatively recently created Strategic Support Force, set up just nine years ago to coordinate information, cyber and space warfare activities.
Chinese President Xi Jinping unveiled the reorganization last week, saying information operations conducted by the new military arm represent a vital power in modern warfare, the official China Daily reported. Mr. Xi described the move as part of efforts to strengthen the army, which he has ordered to become an advanced military force by the 2030s.
Nigerian authorities continue to detain U.S. citizen Tigran Gambaryan, a former IRS investigator whom Nigerian authorities are attempting to try for alleged money laundering and tax evasion in the African nation’s vast cryptocurrency market.
Mr. Gambaryan was arrested two months ago after being invited to the country by Nigerian officials to help settle disputes they had with his current employer, the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Sources tell Threat Status that Mr. Gambaryan is now being held in Nigeria’s famous Kuje prison, where Boko Haram and ISIS fighters have been detained, as he awaits trial. They also say his case has become a subject of major hand-wringing for the State Department.
A podcast published earlier this week from Recorded Future News dives into the intricacies of the affair, raising questions about why the U.S. government is not doing more to intervene on the American citizen’s behalf.
Asian governments are increasingly concerned by growing nuclear threats posed by China, North Korea and Russia, and a U.S. extended deterrence is key to preventing the emergence of new nuclear-armed states in the region, according to Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell.
Some nations in Asia also could decide to build nuclear arms based on concerns about “where the United States is headed,” Mr. Campbell said in remarks to the Hudson Institute on Wednesday, noting regional concerns about the viability of the U.S. nuclear protection guarantees to its allies in the region.
The government’s top watchdog has ruled that Mr. Biden has not broken the law by slow-walking construction of the Mexican border wall, but did say he has left hundreds of millions of dollars approved by Congress still unspent.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says that while Mr. Biden has said he doesn’t want to build more of the border barrier, he is moving ahead with construction of some wall-based projects, even if it is too slow for Republicans’ tastes.
The Washington Times’ Stephen Dinan reports that some congressional Republicans have said Mr. Biden’s slow-walking violates the Impoundment Control Act, which orders the president to spend money the way Congress designed in its appropriations bill. GAO is the official arbiter of violations of the act, and it ruled that Mr. Biden has not crossed any lines yet.
The U.S. transition away from traditional sources of energy — including coal — means more cash for Beijing and more dependence on China for the United States, according to columnist Michael McKenna, who writes that the “regime in Beijing owns, controls or processes 80% of global production of minerals and raw materials needed to produce alternative energy.”
All the while, China permitted more new coal plants in one quarter last year than it did in all of 2021 and global coal consumption hit an all-time high in 2023, Mr. McKenna writes: “Demand for coal increased by about 1.4%, driven mainly by China, which accounts for more than half of global coal use. The world’s principal coal users — China, India, South Africa and Indonesia — continue to expand their coal infrastructure, mostly because it is their most affordable and reliable option.”
The killing of Americans in an ISIS-K suicide bombing in 2021 could have been stopped, according to columnist Rowan Scarborough, who eviscerates the Biden administration’s recent assertion that the murders of 13 American service members at the Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate “was not preventable at the tactical level.”
Mr. Scarborough walks through an ongoing House Foreign Affairs Committee investigation into the incident, writing that U.S. intelligence had warned that ISIS-K would attempt suicide bombings, and that U.S. military officials were relying on the Taliban to spot ISIS-K infiltrators.
• April 30 — The Trajectory of India-Russia Ties Amid the War in Ukraine, U.S. Institute of Peace.
Correction: An earlier version of this newsletter misspelled PissedConsumer.com CEO Michael Podolsky’s last name.
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