Since launching its sweeping offensive in November 2023, the Arakan Army (AA) has positioned itself to seize its home state, Rakhine, from the Myanmar military. On the eastern fringe of the Bay of Bengal, Rakhine has made international headlines as the site of the 2017 Rohingya genocide and the host to major Indian and Chinese infrastructure projects. The impact of Rakhine’s fall for those issues has been well-explored elsewhere. Less examined is how AA allies in southwest Myanmar have mobilized to support their patron, the AA, and how the group could shape the wider conflict. Although the AA is an avowedly ethnonationalist rebel group primarily interested in self-determination for Rakhine, it has expressed solidarity with the broader anti-junta movement and built up an extensive network of allies within it.
The axis that has emerged as a result has enabled the AA to expand its influence close to India in Chin State, threaten the military’s industrial base in Magway and Bago regions, and endanger the junta’s grip on the rice bowl of Ayeyarwady Region. As of early 2025, the AA is now the premier benefactor of insurgent activity in the southwest, with at least 17 groups and likely far more that have fought alongside and in parallel to the AA in Rakhine, Chin, Bago, Magway, and Ayeyarwady. This has greatly threatened the junta, complicated the AA’s relationship with the National Unity Government (NUG), and further entrenched its place in Chin state. Through these alliances, the AA has the power to greatly impact the trajectory of Myanmar’s civil war.
America’s defense industrial base is in the throes of major change. For the first time in 40 years, major power war is a real possibility. Conflicts in Ukraine and Israel are providing a harrowing glimpse of what that war might look like. Technology is evolving at a dizzying pace. Instead of peacetime efficiency, governments are prioritizing wartime surge capacity. The “China shock” and COVID-19 have destabilized global supply chains.
Amid these daunting realities, a new generation of defense technology companies has emerged. Anduril Industries — which was founded in 2017 and which I joined in 2020 — is one of them. Of course, defense technology companies aim to make money. But these companies also aim to disrupt and transform American defense by changing culture, attracting new and better talent, harnessing commercial technologies, championing software, bolstering competition, reforming acquisition practices, and more. Only time will tell if they are successful. But perhaps not as much time as one might think. As more defense technology companies scale to compete with traditional defense primes, the contours of a new defense industrial base are emerging.
Changes to this scope, speed, and scale naturally lead to questions, anxieties, and fears. To wit, these pages recently carried a warning about an impending “new era of defense giants.” According to this view, defense technology companies are engaging in corporate acquisitions that mirror the defense industry consolidation carried out by the traditional defense primes after the end of the Cold War. This new consolidation is hurting small businesses and making America’s defense industrial base less diverse, resilient, and innovative.
The Trump administration has charged the surveillance firm Palantir with agglomerating the US population’s personal data across government agencies, raising alarm about a centralized spying tool targeting hundreds of millions without oversight. Wall Street responded to the news by sending Palantir’s stock price to unprecedented heights.
During an end-of-year investor call this February, Palantir co-founder and militant Zionist Alex Karp bragged that his company was making a financial killing by enabling mass murder.
“Palantir is here to disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world and, when it’s necessary, to scare enemies,” he stated, adding: “And on occasion, kill them.”
CIA seed front company Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp brags about how good business is to shareholders while admitting .. “When it’s necessary to scare enemies and on occasion kill them .. And we hope you’re in favor of that”
To appreciate the complexities of policing online hate speech that underlie an April summary decision by Meta’s Oversight Board, let’s start with a musical detour through a 2017 US Supreme Court opinion called Matal v. Tam. The Court faced the First Amendment question in Matal of whether the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) could lawfully deny a band’s request to register its name––The Slants––as a trademark. The PTO claimed denial was okay because “slants” disparages Asians.
The wrinkle was that the band’s members are Asian and their frontman, Simon Tam, wanted “to ‘reclaim’ and ‘take ownership’ of stereotypes about people of Asian ethnicity.” As Tam explained:
We grew up and the notion of having slanted eyes was always considered a negative thing. Kids would pull their eyes back in a slant-eyed gesture to make fun of us . . . I wanted to change it to something that was powerful, something that was considered beautiful or a point of pride instead.
Via Shutterstock.
This relates to “reappropriation by self-labeling” or “reclamation.” It involves marginalized groups seeking “to redefine the negative connotations” of a label and reclaiming “social power, as they become in charge of the word’s meaning.”
The Supreme Court sided with Tam, reasoning that the PTO’s denial of registration for The Slants because it disparages Asians “offends a bedrock First Amendment principle: Speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend.” Rejecting the stance that speech isn’t constitutionally protected simply because it’s hateful, the Court asserted that:
Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express “the thought that we hate.”
Two Chinese researchers were allegedly involved in what could have developed into an attack on America’s food supply.
Yunqing Jian, 33, and Zunyong Liu, 34, were charged with conspiracy, smuggling goods into the United States, false statements, and visa fraud, according to a Department of Justice news release.
The release said they are accused of “smuggling into America a fungus called Fusarium graminearum, which scientific literature classifies as a potential agroterrorism weapon.”
According to the release, China’s communist government funded Jian’s research in China. The complaint said that when law enforcement scanned her electronic devices, they found documentation of her membership in and loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. Liu, who has claimed he was Jian’s boyfriend, also conducted research on the same pathogen.
Liu has admitted to authorities that he smuggled Fusarium graminearum into America to conduct research with Jian.
New… I can confirm that the FBI arrested a Chinese national within the United States who allegedly smuggled a dangerous biological pathogen into the country.
The individual, Yunqing Jian, is alleged to have smuggled a dangerous fungus called “Fusarium graminearum,” which is an…
— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) June 3, 2025
National security authorities and members of Congress are raising alarm over the alleged plot by two romantically involved Chinese researchers to smuggle samples of a dangerous crop-killing fungus into the US.
Yunquing Jian, 33, a Communist Party loyalist and lab researcher at the University of Michigan who received Chinese government funding for her work, plotted the illicit transport of the pathogen with her boyfriend, Zunyong Liu, 34, the FBI alleged.
Liu was was caught at Detroit Metropolitan Airport last July after allegedly attempting to sneak packages of Fusarium graminearum into the country, the feds said.
“This is an attack on the American food supply,” one senior Trump administration official told The Post.
Yunqing Jian (pictured) initially denied that she was aware of her boyfriend’s intent to smuggle the pathogen. University of Michigan
As U.S. tariffs tighten the screws on China’s export machine, Beijing is striking back with strategic precision. Export restrictions on rare earths are now Beijing’s latest move to break down European trade barriers and push back against escalating pressure from Washington.
In today’s global trade standoff, the gloves are off. The U.S. is wielding its market clout — 25% of global consumption originates from the American domestic market. Anyone in the export business must deal with the United States. China, meanwhile, holds an current monopoly on rare earths — and is making it clear it will not hesitate to weaponize that dominance. The stakes are rising, and national interests now override globalist courtesies.
Europe is learning the hard way: in geopolitics, there are no friends, only temporary alliances. China’s tightened export controls on rare earth elements risk plunging Germany’s industrial sector into a severe resource crisis. With nearly 85% of global rare earth refining under its control, Beijing is the chief supplier of key metals like dysprosium, terbium, and yttrium — critical for electric motors, medical tech, and defense systems.
Since April 2025, access to these raw materials has been restricted to licensed exporters only — a de facto embargo. The fallout is immediate: several German manufacturers have already been forced to scale back operations. Others face complete shutdowns. Industrial metal prices continue climbing, and the fragility of global supply chains is now exposed in brutal detail. Europe’s resource dependency is becoming a major liability — and a strategic weakness in the coming trade war negotiations.
A 37-year-old Muslim man from Michigan who planned to “even the score” and use guns for “God’s wrath” after threatening Jewish preschoolers pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Hassan Chokr, of Dearborn, Michigan, “aggressively targeted Jewish parents and their preschool children at a local synagogue in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. After unleashing a menacing antisemitic tirade against them, he lied and attempted to buy several firearms at a Dearborn gun store,” the Department of Justice stated.
“In December 2022, Chokr, 37, drove through the parking lot of a Jewish synagogue as parents walked their preschoolers into the building, yelling profanities and attacking their support for Israel,” the DOJ noted.
The DOJ’s statement continues:
“After being asked to leave, Chokr drove to a gun store in Dearborn. While there, he possessed a Landor Arms, 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun; a Del-ton, 5.56mm rifle; and a Glock, 9mm semi-automatic pistol. He held each firearm, and at times pointed it and pulled the trigger.”
A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration from deporting the family of Mohamad Soliman, the individual suspected of firebombing a gathering of Israel supporters in Boulder, Colorado, on Sunday.
Judge Gordon P. Gallagher’s ruling stated that the administration cannot remove Soliman’s wife and five children from the District of Colorado or the United States pending a ruling from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. “[T]he Court finds that deportation without process could work irreparable harm and an order must issue without notice due to the urgency this situation presents,” the judge wrote.
BREAKING: Colorado federal judge Gordon Gallagher, a Biden appointee, has issued an order blocking the Trump administration from deporting the wife and five children of Boulder terror suspect Mohamed Soliman. pic.twitter.com/Lo8R1Yp19E
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested the family earlier this week and was preparing to deport them before the judge’s ruling, The Hill reported.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is preparing to deport the family of Boulder, Colo., attacker Mohamed Soliman’s wife and five children.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem said Tuesday that the family had been detained in connection with the investigation, saying they would face questioning over whether they had any knowledge of the attack.
But according to a DHS statement Wednesday, ICE was said to be “processing them for removal.”
The statement sheds new light on a White House social media post Tuesday that said the family “could be deported by tonight.”
“Six One-Way Tickets for Mohamed’s Wife and Five Kids. Final Boarding Call Coming Soon,” the White House’s post said, along with an emoji of an airplane.
Over the past couple weeks, the U.S. government has unleashed a barrage of policies that would restrict the ability of Chinese students to study in the United States. These measures strike at a key pillar of U.S.-China relations, and they have generated intense anxiety among current and prospective Chinese exchange students. According to data from the Institute of International Education, between 2023 and 2024, there were 277,398 Chinese students studying in the U.S., generating over $14.2 billion for the American economy.
A cable signed last Tuesday by Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered American embassies around the world to stop scheduling new appointments for student visas and announced an expansion of social-media vetting of student applicants. The week prior, the Department of Homeland Security revoked Harvard’s ability to enroll international students, who currently make up 27 percent of Harvard’s total enrollment. Last Wednesday, the State Department announced it would “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,” and “enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong.” (On Thursday, a U.S. federal judge extended an order blocking the government measures related to Harvard.)