China Halts New Battery Storage Plant Approvals

Mind-Numbing Irony: US Asks Ukraine's Help To Shoot Down Iran's Shahed Drones In Gulf In the ultimate irony of ironies, Financial Times is reporting US officials are discussing the purchase of Ukrainian-made drone interceptors to counter Iranian drones, which some analysts say have proven harder to stop than expected. Patriot missile interceptors used by US allies cost more than $4 million each, while the Ukrainian systems are significantly cheaper and designed to defeat the same Shahed-type drones used by Russia. Image source: Come Back Alive Foundation Supplies are dwindling and costs are soaring, after approaching...

Central Asia Resists US Pressure To Choose Sides In AI Race Authored by Eurasianet via OilPrice, Kazakhstan is continuing to expand AI cooperation with China even after joining the US-led Pax Silica initiative. Uzbekistan says it wants access to both cutting-edge American technology and lower-cost Chinese AI models rather than choosing between them. Their positions illustrate the difficulty Washington faces in persuading Central Asian governments to take sides in the intensifying US-China technology rivalry. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are tossing figurative darts at a US trial balloon connected to the intensifying race between the United...

US Now Expects Iran War Oil Supply Disruptions To Last Through End Of 2027 At first, the Hormuz lockdown was supposed to last a few weeks, tops. Not any more: the US now expects oil supply disruptions stemming from the US-Iran war to reach about 600,000 barrels per day through the end of next year as the conflict continues to crimp shipments via the critical Strait of Hormuz. Oil transported through the waterway averaged 4.9 million barrels per day in the second quarter of this year, according to estimates from the...