Southeast Asia Watch

Blurb:

The open-source AI agent framework OpenClaw has recently gone viral worldwide, drawing significant attention from the tech industry. By enabling AI to move beyond generating content to actually executing tasks, the framework is widely seen as a key step toward the AI agent era. A growing number of Chinese technology companies are actively exploring similar approaches and rolling out related products.

Moonshot AI was among the first to launch Kimi Claw, a native integration with OpenClaw. The product emphasizes zero-code deployment and one-click setup, while also offering free computing power subsidies for OpenClaw calls, lowering the barrier for users. The move has attracted a large influx of users and helped accelerate the company’s overseas expansion, with the number of paying international users surging and overseas revenue surpassing domestic revenue for the first time.

Blurb:

President Donald Trump’s actions in Venezuela and Iran are the first time that any president has made any progress against China’s decades old effort to peacefully subvert the U.S.

It is no secret that China has two goals: to seize control of Taiwan and to become the lone global superpower by 2049, the centennial of the communist control over the country. China is our primary geopolitical rival, if not our mortal enemy.

Over the past few decades, China has successfully subverted the U.S. through globalization. The U.S. now depends on China for antibiotics, energy, technology hardware and vital rare earth minerals and their processing. China could shut off exports of these and other goods, and our economy, society and security would be crippled.

Yes, China would hurt itself by doing these things, but China is an iron-fisted totalitarian state where any social unrest would be much more easily (read brutally) addressed than in the U.S.

Blurb:

China’s ongoing military corruption purges have created serious deficiencies in the command structure of its armed forces and are likely to have affected the readiness of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), according to a leading defence research centre.The purges, led by the Chinese president Xi Jinping, which have spanned the supreme central military commission, theatre commands, weapons procurement, development programmes, and defence academia, are expected to be incomplete, said London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) this week, according to Reuters.

Blurb:

The Justice Department announced Wednesday that a former U.S. Air Force major and longtime fighter pilot has been arrested on charges that he trained Chinese military pilots without authorization.

Gerald Eddie Brown Jr., 65, was taken into custody in Jeffersonville, Indiana, and is expected to appear in federal court on Thursday. Prosecutors allege that beginning around August 2023, Brown worked to arrange combat aircraft training for members of China’s People’s Liberation Army Air Force and traveled to China in December 2023 to carry it out.

Federal officials were blunt.

“The United States Air Force trained Major Brown to be an elite fighter pilot and entrusted him with the defense of our Nation. He now stands charged with training Chinese military pilots.”

Blurb:

CHINA has been accused of a massive nuclear expansion as well as carrying out secret tests by the US.

The latest accusations come as the United States bids to force Beijing to join a future arms control treaty.

The US has accused China of not disclosing their nuclear weapons capabilities and of carrying out secret weapons testing, as displayed in a Chinese propaganda videoCredit: China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation
China has denied the claims by Christopher Yeaw – Trump’s assistant secretary of state for arms control and non-proliferationCredit: AFP
US intelligence agencies have claimed Chinese explosive test s were carried out in 2020, despite satellite imagery not showing evidence of any activity.

Blurb:

Drones are increasingly violating American airspace. We know that tens of thousands of drone sightings on our southern border are connected with the Mexican drug and human trafficking cartels. But dozens of other drone sightings at sensitive military installations suggest hostile nation-state actors, most likely China.

As drone operations in Russia’s war on Ukraine show, the threat is no longer hypothetical — it is active and escalating. Unfortunately, a dangerous combination of bureaucratic inertia and misplaced priorities has left our borders and military installations vulnerable.