Three weeks ago, before Biden made explicit in a speech that he seeks to overthrow Putin, Niall Ferguson, a Stanford and Harvard historian and Bloomberg columnist, wrote that “the US intends to keep the war”.
It warned that “Biden is making a colossal mistake in thinking he can topple Putin and signal China to stay away from Taiwan.”
Now Reuters (pictured below) and the New York Times report that “the Pentagon has called leaders of the top eight US arms manufacturers” for a meeting Wednesday with its “arms buyer” department.
“Military authorities want military companies to start working for a long conflict,” says the newspaper. Of the eight, Raytheon is highlighted, where Biden picked up the current head of the Pentagon, General Lloyd Austin.
The NYT called on the side, on the home page, for a text demanding from Germany “the commitment to arm itself”, including American F-35A fighter jets. Prime Minister Olaf Scholz “is wavering”, criticizes the newspaper.
Ferguson returned with a warning to “the world” in the following column:
“The longer the war continues, the greater the threat of stagflation. It will be more severe in countries that depend on Ukraine and Russia not only for energy and grain, but fertilisers, whose prices have doubled. Anyone who thinks this will have no social and politics is ignorant of history.”
DESTROY IT AND REBUILD IT
Chinese outlets such as Guancha have been publishing analyzes of Ukraine’s lessons for taking Taiwan. For example, avoiding direct confrontation with Raytheon’s Javelins:
“Taiwan’s liberation is a matter of once and for all, and we are not afraid to destroy and rebuild it. Water, electricity and telephone networks must be cut; radio and television interrupted; roads, bridges, tunnels , ports and stations cannot escape. Undersea cables to the US and Japan will be physically cut.”
Hu Xijinfrom the Global Times, via social media:
“If Taiwan seeks US-incited secession and triggers a war, the People’s Liberation Army will launch thousands of missiles on the first day (Russians have used less than a thousand so far) and crush the Taiwanese army within hours.”
Chinese influencers like Carl Zha write that “China will resolve the semiconductor issue in five years, before the Taiwan issue”, which “will be irrelevant after that”.
ABOUT SHANGHAI
With news from financial publication Caixin (above), the American aggregator of Chinese media Sinocism points out that the infection data in Shanghai is stabilizing, with the projection of “being under control by May 3”.
If confirmed, “the expectation is to see much more triumphant propaganda about the battle against the micron.”
