Daily Discussion - November 25, 2024

Elon Musk's Billion-Dollar Bet on Smoothing U.S.-China Tensions

Elon Musk has showed off a Tesla to China’s premier inside Beijing’s walled leadership compound and dined with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

If there is anyone with the connections to work things out between the world’s two feuding superpowers, it just might be Musk—or so many in Beijing are hoping.

Chinese leaders enjoy some leverage over the Tesla chief executive, who has poured billions of dollars into investments in Shanghai. He has said Chinese leaders “really actually seem to care a lot about the well-being of the people.”That contrasts with the many Chin…  Llegeix mésa hawks in Trump’s orbit including Treasury secretary nominee Scott Bessent, who recently called Beijing a “despotic regime” that needs to be hit with high tariffs to protect American jobs. In China, Musk is a symbol of the American dream and of U.S. technological prowess. Even Musk’s 76-year-old mother, Maye Musk, boasts celebrity status.“Given his investment in China and also given his relations with Chinese leaders, people do hope that he can play a constructive role in the second Trump administration,” said Wu Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University.

Missiles for Moscow: North Korea's Secret Factory Fuels Russia's War Machine

North Korea is expanding a key weapons manufacturing complex that assembles a type of short-range missile used by Russia in Ukraine, researchers at a U.S.-based think tank have concluded, based on satellite images.

The facility, known as the February 11 plant, is part of the Ryongsong Machine Complex in Hamhung, North Korea's second-largest city, on the country's east coast.

Sam Lair, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), located at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, said the plant was the only one known to prod…  Llegeix mésuce the Hwasong-11 class of solid-fuel ballistic missiles.