Geopolitics & Strategy — Posts

67 posts on "Geopolitics & Strategy" by Shlomo Strauss — bilingual writing on technology, science, and business.

• The Foxconn worker who built a $70 billion manufacturing giant — Founded by a former factory worker, Luxshare now assembles the Apple Vision Pro and is raising billions to expand into AI server infrastructure.
• Taiwan Shipwreck Outage Highlights Need for LEO Satellites — After a shipwreck severed an undersea cable in Taiwan, microwave tech provided temporary relief, highlighting the strategic need for LEO satellites.
• An Island Experiment in AI Governance and Digital Twins — British startup Sensay is launching a social experiment on a tropical island, using AI digital twins of historical figures to govern a new state.
• The Geopolitical Battle Over LED Manufacturing — The transition to gallium nitride in LED manufacturing has sparked a geopolitical struggle due to its critical military and communication applications.
• How a Rare Helium Isotope Cools Quantum Computers — Helium-3, a rare isotope sourced from nuclear warheads and the Moon, is essential for cooling quantum computers to near absolute zero.
• France’s Shift to Linux Signals a Growing Challenge for Microsoft — France's transition to Linux highlights a growing global trend of governments and enterprises seeking alternatives to Microsoft's ecosystem.
• How the Global Helium Crisis Threatens Advanced Technology — An Iranian attack on Qatari facilities and the depletion of US reserves have triggered a severe helium shortage, threatening chipmaking and MRI systems.
• The Challenges and Strategic Value of a Far Side Moon Base — Despite communication and terrain challenges, the Moon's far side offers vital resources like ice and helium-3, sparking a new geopolitical race.
• Amazon Challenges Starlink in the Race for In-Flight Wi-Fi — Amazon's new satellite internet solution for airplanes promises double the speed of Starlink and a significantly faster installation time.
• CanisterWorm: the worm that wipes Iranian systems and can't be shut — A new self-replicating worm spreads via a compromised supply-chain scanner, selectively wipes Iranian systems, and runs a command server on a…
• The engineering behind the B-2 bomber's stealth and endurance — From its radar-absorbing iron-powder coating to a laser that detects contrail formation, this post breaks down the stealth and aerodynamic engineering of…
• MIRV missiles: the Cold War technology now launching commercial — A clear breakdown of how MIRV warheads actually work, why Iran's cluster munitions fall far short, and what links them to SpaceX's multi-satellite…
• China approved a commercial brain implant for paralysis — the West is — While technologies like Neuralink await lengthy FDA approval, China has commercially cleared an invasive brain implant that restores movement to paralyzed
• Anthropic vs. the Pentagon: a $200M contract and a question of who — After Anthropic refused to lift Claude's safety restrictions for the Pentagon, losing a $200M contract, the clash raises hard questions about corporate…
• The Kurds: caught between natural wealth and broken promises — A historical overview of the Kurdish struggle for statehood, examining how vast oil and gas reserves have shaped — and repeatedly undermined — their…
• Natural gas feeds the world — here is how it travels to do so — From fertilizer production to cryogenic tankers sailing at -161°C, this piece explains why natural gas underpins global food supply and modern industry.
• Hormuz Island: red ochre, ancient salt, and a strait that shapes — The vivid red shores of Iran's Hormuz Island owe their color to iron oxide used locally as spice and pigment — and the island's strategic past echoes in…
• A train to Jerusalem and what divides us less than we think — A personal essay on a train ride to Jerusalem that weaves together strangers, scorched landscapes, and a question about what holds Israeli society…
• Why old HDD drives are suddenly back in high demand — EU AI data-retention rules, rising SSD costs, and new laser and microwave writing technologies are driving an unexpected HDD revival with capacities up to
• Iron Beam: the engineering behind Israel's high-power laser defense — From ytterbium fiber bundles to real-time atmospheric correction, a clear-eyed look at how Iron Beam combines dozens of lasers into a single 100-kilowatt…
• Why Chinese waste-to-energy plants are hungry for Western trash — China built over 1,000 waste-to-energy plants, but moisture-heavy local garbage drops furnace temperatures into the dioxin-forming range — making dry…
• How stolen Motorola technology helps China track Tibetan refugees in — Stolen Motorola source code, surveillance cameras, and economic incentives have turned Nepal into a Chinese-operated tracking ground for Tibetan exiles.
• How a Chinese entrepreneur seized millions of IP addresses meant for — A single entrepreneur obtained roughly 10 million IPv4 addresses allocated to Africa and now leases them globally, leaving the continent short of a…
• Superbugs, antibiotic resistance, and the AI hunting new cures — Overuse of antibiotics, especially in China, is accelerating the rise of untreatable superbugs — and AI models trained on billions of molecules may be…
• Germanium: the element inside your phone, missiles, and quantum — A look at germanium's unique optical and electronic properties, its role in 5G, thermal imaging, and missiles, and the chalcogenide glass competing to…
• Gallium: the metal that melts in your hand and corrodes aircraft — A concise look at gallium's unusual properties, its role in power electronics and military radar, the complexity of refining it, and why China's dominance
• PROMPTSTEAL: the malware that uses AI to build itself after — Google researchers exposed a Russian-linked malware that carries no malicious code upfront, instead querying an AI model post-installation to generate…
• How a little-known Dutch chipmaker triggered a global auto industry — After U.S. sanctions and a Chinese countermove disrupted Nexperia's supply chain, automakers worldwide are facing shortages of components essential to…
• How an SS7 security flaw became a tool for tracking and killing — A shell-company operation exploited a decades-old flaw in the SS7 telecom protocol to sell real-time phone location tracking to corrupt regimes, with…
• Pig butchering on a massive scale: the $15 billion Bitcoin seizure — The U.S. Justice Department seized $15 billion in Bitcoin tied to a Cambodian forced-labor fraud network running large-scale pig butchering scams.
• How a Chinese ghost city became a testing ground for autonomous — Ordos, a near-empty Chinese city born from a real-estate bubble and coal collapse, now serves as a rare urban testing ground for autonomous trucks and…
• How one stolen iPhone unraveled an international theft ring in London — A stolen iPhone that kept broadcasting its location led London police to a shipment of stolen devices at Heathrow, exposing a ring that supplied iPhones…
• Russia's research ship Yantar and the threat to undersea — Russia's Yantar vessel systematically maps undersea cables and gas pipelines across European waters, raising fears of a future infrastructure attack that…
• Behind U.S. moves on Intel: intelligence, not economics — A new opinion column argues that U.S. government actions regarding Intel are likely driven by intelligence-gathering motives rather than purely economic…
• How the CIA hid a spy network inside a Star Wars fan site — In the early 2000s the CIA ran a covert network of fan sites to communicate with field agents, until a captured spy in Iran exposed the operation's…
• Ammonium nitrate: why the same compound fertilizes crops and levels — A concise chemical explanation of why ammonium nitrate is both a highly effective fertilizer and the powerful explosive behind disasters like the 2020…
• The U.S. government has a donation page for the national debt, and it — Since 1996, the U.S. Treasury has accepted voluntary donations toward the national debt; nearly 30 years of giving yielded $67.3 million — roughly 20…
• From mining waste to battery materials: olivine's unlikely second — A New Zealand startup has developed a process to extract magnesium, silicate, and battery-grade NMC from olivine powder — an industrial waste product — in
• Solid fuel and staging: the physics behind Iran's Sajjil ballistic — A clear explanation of solid-fuel propulsion, multi-stage rocket design, and the extreme engineering challenges that the Sajjil missile's unusual contrail
• Friends on Telegram: an Israeli and Iranians raised to be enemies — A personal account of genuine friendship formed online between an Israeli and young Iranians, and the hope of one day hosting them in a freer Middle East.
• Behind the on-air smile: what TV anchors carry that viewers never see — A tribute to the Channel 10 economy team who keep broadcasting hope and normalcy while privately facing the same fear and uncertainty as their viewers.
• The case for building business relationships across borders — Working with international teams and clients offers cost advantages, larger markets, and a firsthand cultural perspective that local business alone cannot
• Why Nike lost tens of millions trying to automate shoe manufacturing — Nike's multimillion-dollar bet on robotic shoe production collapsed because flexible materials and constant new designs made automation practically…
• The Jiangsu shipyard and the cost of erasing the individual — A viral clip of thousands of workers flooding out of a Chinese shipyard becomes a meditation on what dictatorships erase — and what democracies must…
• A controlled nuclear blast to reverse decades of carbon emissions — A proposed geoengineering plan would use an 81-gigaton nuclear detonation to pulverize basalt rock, absorbing 30 years' worth of global carbon emissions…
• Sound weapons in Serbia: the wave physics behind a crowd's sudden — An explanation of how phased speaker arrays use constructive interference to produce dangerously intense sound, illustrated by reported use against…
• China's space solar panel plan: bold energy vision or engineering — China has announced plans for a kilometer-wide solar array in geostationary orbit that would beam energy to Earth via microwaves, though the engineering…
• Remote lung surgery in China: surgeon operated from 5,000 km away — A Chinese surgeon removed a lung tumor from 5,000 km away using robotic arms, demonstrating real-time remote control — while raising valid questions about
• Greenland, Trump, and the Danish lawyer who won the world's largest — Behind Trump's bid to buy Greenland lies a fascinating legal history, including a personal family connection to the 1933 Hague ruling that secured Danish…
• 20,000 people in one building: what a Chinese megablock reveals about — Using a Chinese residential megacomplex and a bacterial growth thought experiment, the post illustrates how exponential population growth can overtake us…
• A 4-year cruise for Americans who cannot stomach another Trump term — A cruise line is selling a 4-year, 140-country round-the-world voyage timed to end when Trump's term does, starting at $256,000 per person.
• Peter Thiel: the tech billionaire behind PayPal, Palantir, and much — A profile of Peter Thiel's career spanning PayPal, Palantir, the first outside investment in Facebook, and a fellowship that helped launch Ethereum and…
• Washington Post lost 200,000 subscribers by refusing to take a stand — When the Washington Post declined to endorse a presidential candidate, it lost 200,000 subscribers — a case study in why professional fence-sitting…
• Antarctica's thaw is turning a frozen continent into a geopolitical — As global warming melts Antarctic ice and exposes vast natural resources, international disputes over the continent's ownership are intensifying.
• Google's quantum computer completed 47 years of computation in six — A look at Google's 2023 quantum computer, the extreme cooling it requires to operate, and the global race for quantum supremacy.
• Gold rush 2025: why investors are filling giant vaults — Geopolitical instability and deglobalization are driving record demand for gold and silver, pushing a newly opened 16,700-square-meter Singapore vault…
• Serbia's lithium protests expose the environmental cost of the EV — As automakers celebrate Rio Tinto's renewed lithium mining license in Serbia, mass protests highlight the ecological destruction that fuels the green…
• Modern slavery: how Asian crime cartels recruit workers for online — A Wall Street Journal investigation into the story of Billy from Ethiopia exposes a vast forced-labor industry running online scams across lawless corners
• Iranian friends, Python, and what really drives online hatred of — A personal account of friendship with young Iranians argues that online hostility toward Israel often stems from ignorance rather than malice, and that…
• A digital iron curtain: the internet is splitting into rival blocs — The TikTok ban and China's removal of WhatsApp are symptoms of a broader fragmentation of the global internet into isolated blocs, with dangerous…
• Iran, Venezuela, and your business share one dangerous flaw — Whether it's rocket arsenals, oil revenues, or a single professional skill, over-reliance on one income source creates dangerous vulnerability — a lesson…
• Why Apple is paying Shutterstock $50 million for AI training data — Apple's deal with Shutterstock is the latest sign that data ownership has become a defining economic advantage in the AI era, reshaping the value of…
• Why shouting at a client never works — and what does — From difficult clients to public protests, the author argues that shouting entrenches positions rather than changing them, and that calm reasoning…
• Why economic pressure on Israel and China tends to backfire — Attempts to weaken Israel and China through war or trade restrictions have repeatedly pushed both to build stronger, more self-reliant industries — a…
• The 1970s alliance behind South Africa's ICJ case against Israel — South Africa's lawsuit against Israel at the Hague stems from lingering resentment over Israel's military cooperation with the former Apartheid regime.
• Ramadan through the eyes of an Israeli father — An Israeli manager reflects on the painful contradiction between his respect for a Muslim colleague and the fear Ramadan stirs in him as a parent living…
• Securing WordPress websites against increased cyber attacks — This guide outlines ten actionable steps, including two-factor authentication and geolocation blocking, to protect websites from rising cyber threats.