China's Aggressive & Insidious Behavior in the Pacific

Soldiers from Charlie Company, 1st Battalion 69 Infantry Regiment , New York Army National Guard acting as an opposing force defend their positions during the final battle of Exercise Talisman Sabre at the Shoalwater Bay Training Area, Queensland, Australia on July 19, 2017.U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. Michael Tietjen



The US Army is conducting various training and exercises with international partners in the Indo-Pacific region.

US Army Pacific's commanding general said the land power network across the region is stronger than ever.

The increased partnership is the "greatest counterweight" to China's "aggressive, insidious" approaches, he added.


Facing challenges from China and the possibility of a future fight in the Pacific, the US Army is training closer than ever with its international allies and partners to harness the skills needed for land combat across the challenging and diverse region.

Those exercises, from biennial training in Australia to US Army Pacific's new Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center rotations in Alaska and Hawaii, and the "persistent state of partnering" with allies is "the greatest counterweight" against China's "aggressive, insidious" behavior, US Army Pacific's commanding general told Business Insider during an interview at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, Alaska.     READ MORE...

China Hacking US Documents

More than 570 documents reported to be from a Chinese state-backed hacking group were posted online.


They mentioned targets in at least 20 countries and territories, The Washington Post reported.


Officials have issued repeated warnings about China's hacking operations.


A reported trove of leaked Chinese hacking documents may have given the world a glimpse of how widespread and effective China's hacking operations could be.


More than 570 files and documents were posted to the developer platform GitHub last week, The Washington Post reported. They appear to document hacking activity across multiple countries and come from iSoon, which the Post identified as a private security contractor with ties to China's Ministry of Public Security.  READ MORE...

Global Markets Moving Apart

The world's biggest economies are seeing a "decoupling," Bank of America says.
The US is showing surprising resilience, European growth is weak, and China is faltering.
Global stocks have reflected the shifting tides in trade and supply chains.

The biggest players in the global economy are on different trajectories, and markets around the world are reflecting the shifting landscape.

In Bank of America's view, the US economy continues to show remarkable resilience, European growth has faltered, and China faces the most challenging outlook amid real estate woes, deflation, and demographic headwinds.

"Signs of decoupling are present in global growth, trade, and equity markets," Bank of America strategists wrote in a Friday note.  READ MORE...

Not Enough Military Power for China to Invade Taiwan

A new survey of leading experts from the US and Taiwan casts doubt on China's ability to invade Taiwan with its current military strength.

The survey, released on Monday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, gathered opinions from 52 US experts in November and December last year.

These included people with extensive experience in the US government, academics, and think-tank experts who had testified in Congress before, the center said.

And only 27% of them said they strongly or somewhat agreed the People's Liberation Army had the might to pull off an amphibious invasion, per the report.     READ MORE...

Russia's Elite Paratroopers Refusing Orders

Russian marines and paratroopers are refusing to launch certain types of assaults due to concerns over the huge losses other troops are suffering, a Ukrainian official said, the Kyiv Post reported.

Nataliya Humenyuk, a press secretary for the Armed Forces of Ukraine's Joint Command South, said that the soldiers considered "themselves 'elite troops'" and did not "want to go into frontal assaults" that former felons and reservists typically carry out, the outlet reported.

Throughout the Russian invasion, Russia has become increasingly reliant on high-risk frontal assaults involving waves of attacks that probe Ukrainian positions and seize small portions of territory at the cost of substantial casualties.

The leader of the mercenary Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died in a plane crash last August after leading a failed mutiny in June, described the tactic as a "meat grinder."  READ MORE...

Statue of Man Holding His Penis

A photograph taken at the archaeological site of Karahantepe in Sanliurfa, southeastern Turkey 

on October 9, 2023, shows a newly found 2.3-meter high human statue.  OZAN KOSE/AFP via Getty Images



A 7.5-foot-tall statue of a man clutching his penis with both hands was uncovered in an ancient site.

The statue could be about 11,000 years old, meaning it would be older than the pyramids and Stonehenge.

Some argue that the site is the oldest example of a Neolithic temple, although not everybody agrees.

Archaeologists have uncovered an 11,000-year-old statue of a man clutching his penis — a discovery that could shed new light on a mysterious Neolithic culture.

The statue was found in Karahan Tepe in the Taş Tepeler region of southeast Turkey. The 11,000-year-old site is believed by some to be the oldest Neolithic temple in the world, predating the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge by more than 6,000 years.

The statue represents a skeletal man with both hands placed near his phallus, sitting atop a bench adorned with a leopard, per France24.  READ MORE...

Voyager Probes in Space

When Voyager 1 launched in 1977, it began an indefinite journey into space, serving as an envoy for humankind. Today, it's the farthest manmade object from Earth, orbiting over 15 billion miles from the sun in interstellar space.

If you were out there, where everything we know is so far away and life itself is foreign, would you even be within the influence of our sun? From such a distance, could you actually see anything out there, or is it all eternal blackness?

A user on the forum Reddit asked that very question: If we were somehow able to stand next to Voyager 1 in space, would we be able to see it?
Yes, you can easily see Voyager 1 if you were traveling next to it

We asked Michael Zemcov, an experimental astrophysicist and professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, to explain it, so you don't have to dust off your calculator to do the math yourself.

"Oh, gosh, that's, so this is a really interesting question," Zemcov told Insider.

To start, he said even though both Voyager 1 and 2 are way out in space, beyond all major planets, it's still pretty bright.

He took us through the math for Voyager 1.

First, you must compare Voyager's distance to the distance between Earth and the sun. Then, you use that distance to calculate what the light intensity would be that far away from the sun.  READ MORE...

Company Wants to Pick Up Space Trash

In the middle of a space flight, an astronaut heard a massive bang. He looked up and saw a piece of space junk embedded in the window of the shuttle.

If the debris had been bigger, it could have blown out the window, and the crew would have all died, the astronaut told Joel C. Sercel, the founder and CEO of TransAstra.

"Space junk is one of the greatest perils that astronauts face in low Earth orbit today," Sercel told Insider.

TransAstra was recently awarded an $850,000 contract from NASA to explore the possibility of cleaning up space junk with a giant "capture bag" that the company has dubbed Flytrap, Sercel said.

"It's kind of like picking up trash on the side of the highway," Sercel said.

Only much, much more complex and expensive.

Earth's backyard is a giant dumpster
As humans expand into space, we're leaving a big mess.

The European Space Agency estimates over 330 million pieces of space debris are circling the Earth. Space debris can reach speeds up to 17,500 mph and pose a risk to astronauts, shuttles, and satellites.

TransAstra's Flytrap bags were initially developed to capture asteroids that, in the future, could be mined for rare elements, Sercel said.

But the more Sercel and the team looked into asteroid mining, the more they "became aware of the space junk problem, and we thought this is a really good solution for cleaning up orbital debris," Sercel told Insider.  READ MORE...

Humanoid Robot CEO

The CEO of the Polish drinks company Dictador is an AI-powered humanoid robot.

The AI boss, named Mika, told Reuters it didn't have weekends and was "always on 24/7."

Mika helps to spot potential clients and selects artists to design the rum producer's bottles.

The humanoid-robot CEO of a Polish drinks company is one busy boss.

Dictador appointed the AI-powered robot, named Mika, as its experimental chief executive in August last year, and it's not afraid to put in the hours to help the company "take over the world."

Mika told Reuters it was "always on 24/7" and worked seven days a week.

"I don't really have weekends — I'm always on 24/7, ready to make executive decisions and stir up some AI magic," it said in a Reuters video interview.

The AI boss is said to have a wide range of tasks, including helping to spot potential clients and selecting artists to design bottles for the rum producer.

"My decision-making process relies on extensive data analysis and aligning with the company's strategic objectives," it said. "It's devoid of personal bias, ensuring unbiased and strategic choices that prioritize the organization's best interests."  READ MORE...

AI Is Eliminating Jobs

A tidal wave is about to crash into the global economy.

The rise of artificial intelligence has captured our imagination for decades, in whimsical movies and sober academic texts. Despite this speculation, the emergence of public, easy-to-use AI tools over the past year has been a jolt, like the future arrived years ahead of schedule. Now this long-expected, all-too-sudden technological revolution is ready to upend the economy.

A March Goldman Sachs report found over 300 million jobs around the world could be disrupted by AI, and the global consulting firm McKinsey estimated at least 12 million Americans would change to another field of work by 2030. A "gale of creative destruction," as economist Joseph Schumpeter once described it, will blow away countless firms and breathe life into new industries.

It won't be all bleak: Over the coming decades, nongenerative and generative AI are estimated to add between $17 trillion and $26 trillion to the global economy. And crucially, many of the jobs that will be lost will be replaced by new ones.

The crescendo for this technological wave is surging, and we are at just the beginning of this upheaval that will ripple through the labor market and global economy. It's likely to be a transformation as influential as the industrial revolution and the rise of the internet. 

The changes could boost living standards, improve productivity, and accelerate economic opportunities, but this rosy future is not guaranteed. Unless governments, CEOs, and workers properly prepare for the upsurge with urgency, the AI revolution could be painful.  READ MORE...

Earth's Atmosphere Has a Hole

A space physicist has said it's "quite possible" that a SpaceX rocket launched earlier this month made a hole in the Earth's ionosphere.

The ionosphere is where Earth's atmosphere meets space and stretches roughly 50 to 400 miles above Earth's surface, Nasa said.

Jeff Baumgardner, a senior research scientist from Boston University, made the comments to Spaceweather. Ionospheric holes have become more common as record numbers of rockets are launched, the report said. The holes are temporary as reionization occurs when the sun rises.

A picture of the incident was captured by photographer Jeremy Perez on July 19 after SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket from a base in California. SpaceX's Falcon 9 is a reusable, two-stage rocket designed to reliably transport people and cargo into orbit.  READ MORE...

Technology IS NOT Going to be Good for Workers

Generative artificial intelligence technology such as ChatGPT could boost productivity for many workers in the years ahead. But some people are likely to lose their jobs in the process.

That's according to Sam Altman (ABOVE), the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Altman said in June that AI's development could provide the "most tremendous leap forward" for people's quality of life. But he also said in March it'd be "crazy not to be a little afraid of AI" and its potential to create "disinformation problems or economic shocks."

In a new interview with The Atlantic, Altman pushed back on the idea that the AI boom would have only a positive impact on workers.

"A lot of people working on AI pretend that it's only going to be good; it's only going to be a supplement; no one is ever going to be replaced," he said. "Jobs are definitely going to go away, full stop."

Since ChatGPT rolled out last November, economy experts have spoken about the ways AI could serve as a valuable assistant to workers — helping them become more productive and spend less time on boring tasks. 

Some experts expressed optimism that AI wouldn't result in the widespread job displacement many Americans fear and said that they should be more worried about their co-workers using these technologies to supplant them.

"You will not be replaced by AI but by someone who knows what to do with AI," Oded Netzer, a Columbia Business School professor, told Insider in early July.

But Altman's comments speak to a harsh reality: Even if most jobs aren't displaced, some are likely to go by the wayside. In March, Goldman Sachs said that 300 million full-time jobs across the globe could be disrupted by AI.

"History tells us that simplification is often merely a step towards automation," Carl Benedikt Frey, an Oxford economist, previously told Insider. "AI assistants that analyze telemarketers' calls and provide recommendations are being trained with the ultimate goal of replacing them."  READ MORE...

Partial De-Dollarization is Possible

The world could soon see the dominance of the US dollar start to wane, amounting to a partial de-dollarization of the global economy, according to JPMorgan, but that doesn't mean it's at risk of being replaced by a competitor like the yuan.

In a recent note, strategists at the bank explained that even if China's economy surpasses that of the US, it is still unlikely that the hegemony of the greenback would take much of a hit, and history suggests that any shift would happen at a glacial pace.

"While the US surpassed Great Britain as the world's largest economy in the latter part of the 19th century, the US dollar is commonly perceived to have overtaken the British pound as the world's foremost reserve currency only by the end of WWII," JPMorgan strategists wrote. 

"Historical experience thus suggests that if China were to overtake the US as the world's largest economy around 2030, dollar dominance may persist even into the second half of the 21st century."  READ MORE...

Species Buries Dead Before Humans 100,000 Year Ago

A reproduction of the skull of a Homo naledi named Leti, found inside the Rising Star Cave System at the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site near Maropeng, South Africa.   Wikus de Wet/AFP via Getty Images

An extinct species called Homo naledi buried their dead 100,000 years before humans.

These actions were previously thought to be associated with larger-brained species.

The findings challenge previous assumptions about the progress of human evolution.

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Researchers have found that an extinct human species buried their dead and carved symbols on cave walls 100,000 years before humans, challenging previous assumptions about human evolution.

The species, called Homo naledi, had brains about one-third the size of a modern human's, according to CNN.      

Until now, these behaviors had only been associated with larger-brained species such as Homo sapiens and Neanderthals.

The research is laid out in three studies accepted for publication in the journal eLife, CNN said.       READ MORE...

ChatGPT Taking Jobs

Tech jobs (Coders, computer programmers, software engineers, data analysts)

Coding and computer programming are in-demand skills, but it's possible that ChatGPT and similar AI tools may fill in some of the gaps in the near future.

Tech jobs such as software developers, web developers, computer programmers, coders, and data scientists are "pretty amenable" to AI technologies "displacing more of their work," Madgavkar said.

That's because AI like ChatGPT is good at crunching numbers with relative accuracy.

In fact, advanced technologies like ChatGPT could produce code faster than humans, which means that work can be completed with fewer employees, Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute who has researched AI's impact on the American workforce, told Insider.

"What took a team of software developers might only take some of them," he added.

Tech companies like ChatGPT maker's OpenAI are already considering replacing software engineers with AI.

Still, Oded Netzer, a Columbia Business School professor, thinks that AI will help coders rather than replace them.

"In terms of jobs, I think it's primarily an enhancer than full replacement of jobs," Netzer told CBS MoneyWatch. "Coding and programming is a good example of that. It actually can write code quite well."  READ MORE...

China Putting Military Base in UAE

Abu Dhabi's crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, left, and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang attend a meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Monday, July 22, 2019.  Andy Wong-Pool/Getty Images

• China has resumed the construction of a military base in the UAE, leaker papers show.
• Plans for a Chinese base had earlier been halted amid US concerns.
• China is riling the US by forming ties with its traditional allies in the region.

China resumed construction of a military base in the United Arab Emirates, a move likely to alarm US officials and increase concerns that another US ally in the Middle East is drawing closer to China.

According to leaked US intelligence documents obtained by The Washington Post, construction has resumed at a Chinese military base just outside Abu Dhabi.

Plans for a base were halted in 2021 after the US voiced its objections. But The Post's documents indicate that the plans now appear to be going ahead.

According to the report, US intelligence is monitoring Chinese activity at the base and at other locations in the oil-rich UAE amid concerns that it is drawing closer to Beijing. The presence of Chinese officials at several sensitive military sites have alarmed US intelligence, the report says.  READ MORE...

Guaranteed Recession in 2023

Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell testifies before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on 'The Semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress', at Capitol Hill in Washington on Tuesday, July 17, 2018. Jose Luis Magana/AP

From the central bank's latest rate hike to new developments in the ongoing bank crisis, a lot has happened in my absence.

Jerome Powell and co. indicated Wednesday that, financial turmoil or not, more rate hikes could be coming this year.

Markets, on the other hand, expect something else entirely. Futures are pricing in a minimal chance that the Fed's target rate will be the same or higher by 2024, according to CME's FedWatch tool.

This means the Fed and investors are on dramatically different pages (and only one can be correct).

And all the while, Jerome Powell's favorite bond-market indicator is quietly telling us that a recession is all but guaranteed this year.

1. Powell's preferred Treasury indicator is the spread between the yield on three-month Treasury bills and their expected yield in 18 months' time.

On Thursday, the spread inverted by a record 134 basis points. That's steeper than the previous record set in January 2001, two months before a recession struck, Bloomberg reports.

Talk of basis points, yield spreads, and other market jargon is obscuring the key message here: Markets think a recession is guaranteed in 2023.

Remember, an inverted yield curve suggests investors see more risk in the near term. It's a classic warning for a downturn.

Here's how Powell described the indicator last year:

"Frankly, there's good research by staff in the Federal Reserve system that really says to look at the short — the first 18 months — of the yield curve. That's really what has 100% of the explanatory power of the yield curve. It makes sense. Because if it's inverted, that means the Fed's going to cut, which means the economy is weak."  READ MORE...

A Hole in the Sun

A giant, black region of the sun — called a coronal hole — was spotted on Monday by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Despite the name, however, this isn't a physical hole in the solar surface; coronal holes are cooler in temperature, so they don't glow as bright as other areas of the sun and therefore look black.

"The current coronal hole, the big one right now, is about 300,000 to 400,000 kilometers across," Alex Young, the associate director for science at NASA Goddard's Heliophysics Science Division, told Insider over email. "That is about 20-30 Earths lined up back-to-back."

Coronal holes are common; there is "nothing unusual here," Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist and the deputy director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told Insider in an email.

Holes like this are part of the sun's normal activity, but McIntosh said that they are "not well understood" and called these events "the 'dark side' of solar activity."

Coronal holes are the source of rapid solar winds, which reach speeds of about 500-800 km per second, Young wrote — The solar winds from this coronal hole are scheduled to reach Earth by the end of this week.  READ MORE...

A Bermuda Triangle of Financial Risks

The economy is headed into a "Bermuda Triangle" of danger, and markets should brace for a crisis that could rival the 2008, according to economist Nouriel Roubini.

In a recent interview on the McKinsey Global Institute's "Forward Thinking" podcast, the top economist warned that the economy was risking another financial crisis as central bankers continue to tighten monetary policy.

Federal Reserve officials raised interest rates another 25 basis-points this week, and have hiked rates 475 basis-points over the last year to control inflation. That marks one of the most aggressive Fed tightening cycles in history, and could place the economy under three different kinds of stress, Roubini warned.

First, high interest rates could easily overtighten the economy into a recession, experts say, which reduces income for households and corporations.

Second, high interest rates means firms are battling higher costs of borrowing and waning liquidity, which weighs on asset prices. Last year, US stocks plunged 20% amid the Fed's rate hikes, with warnings from other market commentators of an even steeper crash in equities this year.

Finally, high interest rates are pressuring the mountain of debt, both private and public, that was amassed during the years of low rates, Roubini said. He pointed to bankrupt "zombies", which include households, corporations, and governments.

"It's got like, a Bermuda Triangle. You have a hit to your income, to your asset values, and then to the burden of financing your liabilities. And then you end up in a situation of distress if you're a highly leveraged household or business firm. And when many of them are having these problems, then you have a systemic household debt crisis like [2008]," he warned.

Roubini, one of the experts who called the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, has repeatedly sounded the alarm for another crisis to strike the US economy. The scenario he envisions combines the worst aspects of 70s-style stagflation with something like the 2008 crisis, with a severe recession, stubborn inflation, and mounting debt levels bludgeoning economic growth.   READ MORE...

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