Scotty

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/5018646

Archived link

From Thailand to Brazil, a surge of imports from Chinese electric vehicle (EV) producer BYD has the familiar pattern of being followed by the destruction of domestic automotive jobs. The UK is unlikely to be the exception. This week’s news that Britain has become the number one market for BYD should ring alarm bells. Our domestic automotive producers, that have already announced thousands of job losses this year, are unlikely to emerge unharme.

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Chinese EV producers have a track record of flooding previously open automotive markets in Thailand, Turkey, and Brazil, with supply quickly outstripping demand. The domestic automotive industry then pays the price of increased Chinese market share with job losses and factory closures.

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[In Brazil], in the same month that BYD’s car carrier arrived in the country, Brazilian prosecutors announced plans to sue BYD and two of its contractors for ‘slave like conditions’ at a factory site. BYD has previously said it has ‘zero tolerance for violations of human rights and labour laws.’

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Seeking to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted, Turkey and Brazil have imposed tariffs on foreign EV imports and introduced other restrictions with limited effect in resurrecting their domestic automotive industries. The UK will soon face a similar choice between erecting tariffs and increasing taxpayer support to keep its domestic automotive sector afloat, or letting it wither further on the vine.

...

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/5018646

Archived link

From Thailand to Brazil, a surge of imports from Chinese electric vehicle (EV) producer BYD has the familiar pattern of being followed by the destruction of domestic automotive jobs. The UK is unlikely to be the exception. This week’s news that Britain has become the number one market for BYD should ring alarm bells. Our domestic automotive producers, that have already announced thousands of job losses this year, are unlikely to emerge unharme.

...

Chinese EV producers have a track record of flooding previously open automotive markets in Thailand, Turkey, and Brazil, with supply quickly outstripping demand. The domestic automotive industry then pays the price of increased Chinese market share with job losses and factory closures.

...

[In Brazil], in the same month that BYD’s car carrier arrived in the country, Brazilian prosecutors announced plans to sue BYD and two of its contractors for ‘slave like conditions’ at a factory site. BYD has previously said it has ‘zero tolerance for violations of human rights and labour laws.’

...

Seeking to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted, Turkey and Brazil have imposed tariffs on foreign EV imports and introduced other restrictions with limited effect in resurrecting their domestic automotive industries. The UK will soon face a similar choice between erecting tariffs and increasing taxpayer support to keep its domestic automotive sector afloat, or letting it wither further on the vine.

...

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/5018646

Archived link

From Thailand to Brazil, a surge of imports from Chinese electric vehicle (EV) producer BYD has the familiar pattern of being followed by the destruction of domestic automotive jobs. The UK is unlikely to be the exception. This week’s news that Britain has become the number one market for BYD should ring alarm bells. Our domestic automotive producers, that have already announced thousands of job losses this year, are unlikely to emerge unharme.

...

Chinese EV producers have a track record of flooding previously open automotive markets in Thailand, Turkey, and Brazil, with supply quickly outstripping demand. The domestic automotive industry then pays the price of increased Chinese market share with job losses and factory closures.

...

[In Brazil], in the same month that BYD’s car carrier arrived in the country, Brazilian prosecutors announced plans to sue BYD and two of its contractors for ‘slave like conditions’ at a factory site. BYD has previously said it has ‘zero tolerance for violations of human rights and labour laws.’

...

Seeking to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted, Turkey and Brazil have imposed tariffs on foreign EV imports and introduced other restrictions with limited effect in resurrecting their domestic automotive industries. The UK will soon face a similar choice between erecting tariffs and increasing taxpayer support to keep its domestic automotive sector afloat, or letting it wither further on the vine.

...

Archived link

From Thailand to Brazil, a surge of imports from Chinese electric vehicle (EV) producer BYD has the familiar pattern of being followed by the destruction of domestic automotive jobs. The UK is unlikely to be the exception. This week’s news that Britain has become the number one market for BYD should ring alarm bells. Our domestic automotive producers, that have already announced thousands of job losses this year, are unlikely to emerge unharme.

...

Chinese EV producers have a track record of flooding previously open automotive markets in Thailand, Turkey, and Brazil, with supply quickly outstripping demand. The domestic automotive industry then pays the price of increased Chinese market share with job losses and factory closures.

...

[In Brazil], in the same month that BYD’s car carrier arrived in the country, Brazilian prosecutors announced plans to sue BYD and two of its contractors for ‘slave like conditions’ at a factory site. BYD has previously said it has ‘zero tolerance for violations of human rights and labour laws.’

...

Seeking to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted, Turkey and Brazil have imposed tariffs on foreign EV imports and introduced other restrictions with limited effect in resurrecting their domestic automotive industries. The UK will soon face a similar choice between erecting tariffs and increasing taxpayer support to keep its domestic automotive sector afloat, or letting it wither further on the vine.

...

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/5004178

The European Commission has unveiled two strategies to maintain Europe’s competitiveness. Apply AI targets faster adoption across industries and the public sector, while AI in Science focuses on boosting Europe’s research leadership.

To boost AI adoption and support these measures, the Commission is mobilising around €1 billion. In the future, new initiatives in areas like finance, tourism, and e-commerce could complement these sectors.

Alongside Apply AI, the AI in Science Strategy positions the EU as a hub for AI-driven scientific innovation. At its centre is RAISE - the Resource for AI Science in Europe, a virtual European institute to pool and coordinate AI resources for developing AI and applying it in science.

Strategic actions include:

• Excellence and talent: measures to attract global scientific talent and highly-skilled professionals to 'Choose Europe'. This includes €58 million under the RAISE pilot for Networks of Excellence and Doctoral Networks to train, retain and attract the best AI and scientific talent.
• Compute: €600 million from Horizon Europe to enhance and expand access to computational power for science. This investment will secure dedicated access to AI Gigafactories for EU researchers and startups.
• Research funding: aims for doubling Horizon Europe's annual investments in AI to over €3 billion, including doubling funding for AI in science.
• Data: support for scientists to identify strategic data gaps and gather, curate and integrate the datasets needed for AI in science.

...

The European Commission has unveiled two strategies to maintain Europe’s competitiveness. Apply AI targets faster adoption across industries and the public sector, while AI in Science focuses on boosting Europe’s research leadership.

To boost AI adoption and support these measures, the Commission is mobilising around €1 billion. In the future, new initiatives in areas like finance, tourism, and e-commerce could complement these sectors.

Alongside Apply AI, the AI in Science Strategy positions the EU as a hub for AI-driven scientific innovation. At its centre is RAISE - the Resource for AI Science in Europe, a virtual European institute to pool and coordinate AI resources for developing AI and applying it in science.

Strategic actions include:

• Excellence and talent: measures to attract global scientific talent and highly-skilled professionals to 'Choose Europe'. This includes €58 million under the RAISE pilot for Networks of Excellence and Doctoral Networks to train, retain and attract the best AI and scientific talent.
• Compute: €600 million from Horizon Europe to enhance and expand access to computational power for science. This investment will secure dedicated access to AI Gigafactories for EU researchers and startups.
• Research funding: aims for doubling Horizon Europe's annual investments in AI to over €3 billion, including doubling funding for AI in science.
• Data: support for scientists to identify strategic data gaps and gather, curate and integrate the datasets needed for AI in science.

...

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/5003997

Archived link

Cybersecurity and disinformation experts in Poland choose their words carefully when they speak of a state of war. The war waged by Russia and Belarus against the European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization began in 2014 with the invasion of Crimea and the Donbas. The conflict, with its own history and distinct phases, escalated during the night of September 10 to 11, when around 20 Russian drones violated Polish airspace. NATO, for the first time since its founding in 1949, was forced to open fire on enemy flying objects in European airspace.

That night, the Polish internet exploded. Many experts described it as a tsunami of disinformation. "Over the course of that night, we analyzed around 200,000 mentions [statuses, messages, comments] spreading the Russian narrative, or 200 to 300 mentions per minute," said Michal Fedorowicz, president of the Res Futura collective, which specializes in the analysis of social media and its impact on public opinion. "In terms of scale, it's the equivalent of what happens during an election night for a presidential vote."

But all these mentions carried very carefully crafted messages. According to these posts, the attack was a Ukrainian provocation, meant to drag Poles into a war that was not theirs and NATO into a third world war. In the same narrative, the Polish military and NATO were described as ineffective and powerless despite their considerable resources. And above all, the Polish and transatlantic authorities were accused of covering up the truth about these events.

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"Within just a few hours, the enemy managed to saturate the algorithms of our social media and modify their parameters to its advantage," Fedorowicz explained.

The result: When Polish citizens woke up and checked their smartphones, they were very likely to find a digital environment awash with falsehoods. The impact was measurable. Of all the comments analyzed by Res Futura, 38% blamed Ukrainians for the incident, 34% blamed Russians and a significant share blamed NATO.

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"Not all the messages promoted by Russian propaganda are strictly false, but they can be exaggerated for harmful purposes," noted Filip Glowacz, an expert on the external threat analysis team at NASK. "For example, the claim that the Belarusian authorities warned the Poles about the imminent arrival of drones. That's true, even if the military agrees that the Belarusians did not act in good faith. The subliminal message is clear: The Belarusians are kind, the Polish military is lying to you, the Poles are wrong to close their borders." These attacks continued, with varying degrees of intensity, throughout the month of September.

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"Discrediting Ukrainian immigrants, Ukrainian refugees and the Ukrainian government has been the number one message of Russian propaganda for three years, in Poland as well as the rest of Europe," Fedorowicz continued. "The goal is to erode public support, and therefore political support, for the war effort." This strategy has only met with partial success. While anti-Ukrainian sentiment has soared in some countries, including Poland – surfacing even in the rhetoric of the moderate political class – it has not translated into actual political decisions. Across Europe, the front supporting aid to Ukraine remains united, and no one is questioning the need to increase defense spending.

...

The night of September 10 to 11, which exposed certain weaknesses in the Alliance's anti-drone defense, also marks a turning point toward a new phase of this information war, with a new dominant message for the European public. "Now, citizens must question the effectiveness and usefulness of NATO," Fedorowicz noted. "The strategic goal is to sow doubt about the reliability of the Alliance, so that citizens start to question the need to increase military budgets."

Faced with hundreds of thousands of fake accounts flooding social media with these messages, regulators, for their part, feel powerless. "We collaborate with companies like Facebook, X [formerly Twitter] or TikTok," said Filip Glowacz. "But despite our requests, it is very difficult to get them to remove anything. Doing so would impact their business model. We have no coercive instruments to fight the armies of bots from the East. That's what makes this war so asymmetrical."

Archived link

Cybersecurity and disinformation experts in Poland choose their words carefully when they speak of a state of war. The war waged by Russia and Belarus against the European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization began in 2014 with the invasion of Crimea and the Donbas. The conflict, with its own history and distinct phases, escalated during the night of September 10 to 11, when around 20 Russian drones violated Polish airspace. NATO, for the first time since its founding in 1949, was forced to open fire on enemy flying objects in European airspace.

That night, the Polish internet exploded. Many experts described it as a tsunami of disinformation. "Over the course of that night, we analyzed around 200,000 mentions [statuses, messages, comments] spreading the Russian narrative, or 200 to 300 mentions per minute," said Michal Fedorowicz, president of the Res Futura collective, which specializes in the analysis of social media and its impact on public opinion. "In terms of scale, it's the equivalent of what happens during an election night for a presidential vote."

But all these mentions carried very carefully crafted messages. According to these posts, the attack was a Ukrainian provocation, meant to drag Poles into a war that was not theirs and NATO into a third world war. In the same narrative, the Polish military and NATO were described as ineffective and powerless despite their considerable resources. And above all, the Polish and transatlantic authorities were accused of covering up the truth about these events.

...

"Within just a few hours, the enemy managed to saturate the algorithms of our social media and modify their parameters to its advantage," Fedorowicz explained.

The result: When Polish citizens woke up and checked their smartphones, they were very likely to find a digital environment awash with falsehoods. The impact was measurable. Of all the comments analyzed by Res Futura, 38% blamed Ukrainians for the incident, 34% blamed Russians and a significant share blamed NATO.

...

"Not all the messages promoted by Russian propaganda are strictly false, but they can be exaggerated for harmful purposes," noted Filip Glowacz, an expert on the external threat analysis team at NASK. "For example, the claim that the Belarusian authorities warned the Poles about the imminent arrival of drones. That's true, even if the military agrees that the Belarusians did not act in good faith. The subliminal message is clear: The Belarusians are kind, the Polish military is lying to you, the Poles are wrong to close their borders." These attacks continued, with varying degrees of intensity, throughout the month of September.

...

"Discrediting Ukrainian immigrants, Ukrainian refugees and the Ukrainian government has been the number one message of Russian propaganda for three years, in Poland as well as the rest of Europe," Fedorowicz continued. "The goal is to erode public support, and therefore political support, for the war effort." This strategy has only met with partial success. While anti-Ukrainian sentiment has soared in some countries, including Poland – surfacing even in the rhetoric of the moderate political class – it has not translated into actual political decisions. Across Europe, the front supporting aid to Ukraine remains united, and no one is questioning the need to increase defense spending.

...

The night of September 10 to 11, which exposed certain weaknesses in the Alliance's anti-drone defense, also marks a turning point toward a new phase of this information war, with a new dominant message for the European public. "Now, citizens must question the effectiveness and usefulness of NATO," Fedorowicz noted. "The strategic goal is to sow doubt about the reliability of the Alliance, so that citizens start to question the need to increase military budgets."

Faced with hundreds of thousands of fake accounts flooding social media with these messages, regulators, for their part, feel powerless. "We collaborate with companies like Facebook, X [formerly Twitter] or TikTok," said Filip Glowacz. "But despite our requests, it is very difficult to get them to remove anything. Doing so would impact their business model. We have no coercive instruments to fight the armies of bots from the East. That's what makes this war so asymmetrical."

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/5003261

Here is an Invidious link for a video (34min) and the original YT link.

Beijing is seeking to court Canadians with trade deals. But it is simultaneously punishing Canada for adopting anti-Chinese trade laws, which – as the Chinese are quick to point out – were implemented by Canada in response to American pressure to crack down on unfair Chinese trade practices.

Now, we’re seeing growing numbers of Canadians twisting the logic of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” They’re taking this to mean that the enemy of Canada is the United States, and by that logic, the People’s Republic of China must be Canada's friend.

To offer his perspective on how Canadians should view these developments, Dr. Stephen Nagy joins Inside Policy Talks. Nagy is a professor at Tokyo’s International Christian University, and a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. He’s studied and written extensively about China and its influence operations in the West.

On the podcast, he tells Jamie Tronnes, executive director of the Center for North American Prosperity and Security (CNAPS), that the Chinese government has "invested very heavily" in a strategy of "elite capture" focused on political and business leaders, "giving them preferred access to the Chinese market."

"This is to lock them into a kind of dependent relationship," says Nagy. "And I think that this has made Canada have tremendous challenges in terms of confronting a country that really wants to change the global order in a way that is contrary to Canadian interests."

Among Dr. Nagy's analyses is, As US-Canada ties unravel, Beijing pulls the threads:

While current Canada-US tensions create immediate policy challenges, the documented pattern of Chinese influence operations reveals a systematic effort to exploit these frictions for long-term strategic advantage.

Here is an Invidious link for a video (34min) and the original YT link.

Beijing is seeking to court Canadians with trade deals. But it is simultaneously punishing Canada for adopting anti-Chinese trade laws, which – as the Chinese are quick to point out – were implemented by Canada in response to American pressure to crack down on unfair Chinese trade practices.

Now, we’re seeing growing numbers of Canadians twisting the logic of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” They’re taking this to mean that the enemy of Canada is the United States, and by that logic, the People’s Republic of China must be Canada's friend.

To offer his perspective on how Canadians should view these developments, Dr. Stephen Nagy joins Inside Policy Talks. Nagy is a professor at Tokyo’s International Christian University, and a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. He’s studied and written extensively about China and its influence operations in the West.

On the podcast, he tells Jamie Tronnes, executive director of the Center for North American Prosperity and Security (CNAPS), that the Chinese government has "invested very heavily" in a strategy of "elite capture" focused on political and business leaders, "giving them preferred access to the Chinese market."

"This is to lock them into a kind of dependent relationship," says Nagy. "And I think that this has made Canada have tremendous challenges in terms of confronting a country that really wants to change the global order in a way that is contrary to Canadian interests."

Among Dr. Nagy's analyses is, As US-Canada ties unravel, Beijing pulls the threads:

While current Canada-US tensions create immediate policy challenges, the documented pattern of Chinese influence operations reveals a systematic effort to exploit these frictions for long-term strategic advantage.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/4986623

Archived link

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Last week, Germany's armament secretary and the head of the country's navy were in Ottawa to meet Canadian navy and defence officials and discuss their plans to introduce maritime drones — both surface and subsurface.

"It turns out that this is another area of potential co-operation with great potential," Jens Plötner, the armament secretary, told CBC News.

Remotely piloted underwater vehicles are seen as crucial in protecting the subsurface infrastructure, but how to do it and who is responsible is a matter of active debate.

The Yantar, a Russian research ship that Western intelligence believes is mapping the spiderweb of undersea cables and infrastructure, keeps popping up — sometimes unexpectedly — in several locations.

The ship's habit of loitering near undersea cables — particularly in November and December 2024 — caught the attention of Finnish and Swedish authorities.

...

Peter Sandwell, Sweden's state secretary of defence, was also in Ottawa late last week meeting with Canadian defence officials.

He said his country, which is NATO's newest member, has been tracking potential threats in the Baltic Sea.

...

A handful of Canadian companies are at the cutting edge of marine drone technology. For example Seamor Marine Ltd. produces drones used for aquaculture, underwater inspection of infrastructure and general underwater exploration.

Plötner said Germany is not building its own drones but "wants to get there."

...

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/4986623

Archived link

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Last week, Germany's armament secretary and the head of the country's navy were in Ottawa to meet Canadian navy and defence officials and discuss their plans to introduce maritime drones — both surface and subsurface.

"It turns out that this is another area of potential co-operation with great potential," Jens Plötner, the armament secretary, told CBC News.

Remotely piloted underwater vehicles are seen as crucial in protecting the subsurface infrastructure, but how to do it and who is responsible is a matter of active debate.

The Yantar, a Russian research ship that Western intelligence believes is mapping the spiderweb of undersea cables and infrastructure, keeps popping up — sometimes unexpectedly — in several locations.

The ship's habit of loitering near undersea cables — particularly in November and December 2024 — caught the attention of Finnish and Swedish authorities.

...

Peter Sandwell, Sweden's state secretary of defence, was also in Ottawa late last week meeting with Canadian defence officials.

He said his country, which is NATO's newest member, has been tracking potential threats in the Baltic Sea.

...

A handful of Canadian companies are at the cutting edge of marine drone technology. For example Seamor Marine Ltd. produces drones used for aquaculture, underwater inspection of infrastructure and general underwater exploration.

Plötner said Germany is not building its own drones but "wants to get there."

...