🇲🇲🤝🇷🇺 Myanmar’s Min Aung Hlaing seeks closer ties with Putin

Myanmar President Min Aung Hlaing is due to meet Russian leader Vladimir Putin later on August 18, on his first visit to Moscow since taking office in April following a widely criticised election.

According to The Business Times, the Kremlin said the two leaders will discuss closer co-operation and regional and international issues, with several agreements expected to be signed. Myanmar’s President Office said the talks will cover the economy, security and social affairs.

Russia is one of the few major countries to have maintained close ties with Myanmar’s military rulers since the 2021 coup. Much of the West has instead isolated the government.

The relationship spans nuclear technology and defence. Myanmar is working with Russia’s Rosatom State Corporation to build a small nuclear power plant. The project is intended as an initial step towards using nuclear technology in health, agriculture and industry.

Russia has also been a major supplier of advanced weapons to Myanmar’s military. It supplied more than $400mn worth of weapons after the coup, according to a United Nations report published in May 2023.

The Moscow meeting is the latest in a series of overseas visits by Min Aung Hlaing as he seeks greater acceptance for his government following the disputed election.

He has now travelled to China, India, Laos and Thailand since Myanmar’s military-backed parliament selected him as president. His administration has also sought to improve relations with the US and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, while rejecting calls to release ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi. A high-level Myanmar delegation, including several ministers and the head of the Myanmar Space Agency, arrived in Moscow on August 17.

🔗 https://www.intellinews.com/myanmar-s-min-aung-hlaing-seeks-closer-ties-with-putin-461736/

🇨🇳🤝🇰🇷 Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will visit South Korea Aug. 19–20, his first official visit in five years.

He’ll meet President Lee Jae Myung and other officials to discuss China-South Korea ties, North Korea, and regional issues, ahead of the APEC summit in November.

🔗 https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-foreign-minister-wang-yi-visit-south-korea-august-19-20-2026-08-18/

🇺🇸 U.S. president, Donald Trump doubles down on calling the families of the U.S. sailors "liars" claiming the reports about the precarious living conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln are "fake news".

Trump: Yeah, there is. It was a it was a CNN fake report.

🔗 Acyn (@Acyn)

🇺🇸 USS Benfold, a guided-missile destroyer, lost all power for four days in the South China Sea after a generator failure on July 24.

The crew of roughly 300 had no working toilets, air conditioning, kitchen, or water systems in extreme heat.

The ship drifted powerless until tugboats towed it to Subic Bay, Philippines, where power was restored six days later.

Another warship in the carrier group had to provide cooked meals.

It's the second US destroyer to suffer a power failure in the Indo-Pacific this year.

Source: CNN

🔗 Clash Report

🇯🇵 Japan has lost control of the yen. Why?

On 31 July, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a $53bln bailout for Tokyo. It followed an even larger $73.5bln intervention in April-May. A photo of Bessent’s to-do list, complete with “buy yen,” conveniently leaked.

The yen jumped after the latest move -- from around ¥0.0061 per dollar to ¥0.0064. The effect lasted less than two weeks. It has already given back a third of those gains. The previous intervention also proved short-lived.

The problem for Bessent is that he is fighting economic gravity. And the singularity at the heart of that gravity well is the yen carry trade. This is a term often mentioned in the financial press, but what is it, and how does it work?

For years Japan has maintained far lower interest rates than other Western economies. Even after recent rises, the Japanese 10-year yield sits at 2.85% while the US 10-year is at 4.68% -- a gap of nearly two percentage points.

Traders borrow yen at the low interest rates, and use this cash to buy dollars, euros or other currencies so they can lend at higher rates and pocket the difference. Every trade involves selling yen, putting downward pressure on Japan's currency. The incentive is pure profit.

One measure of that profit: since 2022 the yen-peso carry trade has generated roughly twice the returns of the S&P 500. No wonder official interventions keep failing to break the trade when selling yen makes is such a moneymaker!

The only durable fix would be for the Bank of Japan to raise rates and close the differential. But Japan’s entire economy has become addicted to ultra-low rates after decades of them. What does this addiction mean in practice?

Around 15% of Japanese firms are “zombie companies.” They earn less in profit than they pay in interest. They survive only through what Hyman Minsky called Ponzi borrowing -- taking on new debt simply to service old interest.

So if the Bank of Japan raised rates sufficiently to close the gap, a large slice of the corporate sector would vanish. Unemployment would spike. Social and political stability would be put at risk.

So why not simply let the yen fall? Two linked reasons make that perilous. First, the decline could be bottomless. As long as the interest-rate gap remains, the incentive to borrow yen and sell them is permanent. There may thus be no natural equilibrium price.

Second, Japan is one of the most energy-insecure countries on earth. It imports nearly 100% of its oil, coal and natural gas. A weaker yen means much higher prices for energy imports. Indeed, the Strait of Hormuz blockage is helping trigger this exact issue.

So far Tokyo has contained the inflationary hit by managing the currency -- with American help. Let the yen freefall and energy prices could spiral, wages would chase them, and Japan would risk an Argentine-style inflationary trap.

Such a scenario would destroy what remains of Japanese manufacturing competitiveness -- already under pressure from China -- and force capital controls and other emergency measures as the economy structurally decays.

The US government is visibly terrified of these outcomes, because they would have real and dramatic consequences for US living standards and the entire US dollar system. This fear is behind the desperate attempts to prop up the yen.

🧵 https://fxtwitter.com/MultipolarPod/status/2089419900599115821?s=20

🔗 https://multipolaritypod.substack.com/p/pilkingtion-a-users-guide-to-the

🇺🇸🤖🇨🇳 How US military funding propelled China’s robot dogs

China’s Unitree Robotics – among the world's biggest producers of humanoid and quadruped robots – based designs for its most successful robot dogs on innovations funded by the U.S. military, according to a former U.S. defense technology official and three top researchers involved in the project.

Unitree’s $1,600 Go2 model, launched in 2023, helped the company rapidly dominate the global quadruped robot market — its Shanghai IPO has drawn frenzied demand. Another Unitree robot has been shown on Chinese state television, opens new tab, armed and accompanying People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops on an exercise.

These robots draw on breakthroughs ​in quadruped movement financed by the U.S. DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and other military programs, the researchers and the former official told Reuters.

The Army-funded project turned into, “basically, the first Unitree robot that had any kind of scale," said Gavin Kenneally, a former University of Pennsylvania researcher involved in the program.

Ben Katz, who worked at Massachusetts Institute of ‌Technology’s Biomimetic Robotics Lab, among a consortium of universities financed by the military programs, said the dimensions of Unitree’s popular Go series were “to the millimeter” almost identical to a groundbreaking robot he helped develop called Mini Cheetah.

The episode underscores broader problems with the United States’ ability to compete with China’s state-directed manufacturing sector in high-tech strategic industries, including those critical to national security. Backed by subsidies, clusters of component factories, and a tolerance for heavy losses, Chinese companies have seized market share across industries such as solar panels, drones, EVs and quantum communications, many of which were first developed in the U.S. with government or military backing.

In June, the Pentagon added Unitree to a list of Chinese military companies, calling it a “contributor ​to the Chinese defense industrial base.” That designation falls short of a sanction but limits the U.S. military’s future use of Unitree’s technology.

Unitree sold more ⁠than 5,500 humanoids and 18,000 quadrupeds last year, company filings show, and it’s now valued at about $9 billion ahead of its stock market debut on Wednesday.

By contrast, no U.S. company has mass-produced such robots, including Elon Musk’s Tesla, which has displayed prototypes of its Optimus humanoid for years. On a January earnings call, Musk called China “incredibly good” at scaling production.

None of the U.S. robotics researchers who spoke with Reuters advocated for keeping such government-financed research secret. Instead, they said, U.S. policymakers should focus on enabling companies to quickly commercialize such advances to compete with China.

For now, U.S. authorities often protect companies with trade restrictions on innovative Chinese products. In July, the Federal Communications Commission banned imports, opens new tab of future models of foreign-made humanoid and quadruped robots, including those from Unitree. China has threatened to retaliate to the FCC ban.

🔗 https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/how-us-military-funding-propelled-chinas-robot-dogs-2026-08-18/

🇸🇦❌🇦🇪 Saudi Arabia has placed financial transfers to the UAE under enhanced anti-crime oversight typically reserved for high-risk jurisdictions, sources told Reuters, leading to delays and returns on some cross-border payments.

The move, described by a Saudi insider as a "subtle message," comes as Saudi Arabia has accused the UAE of threatening its security by backing secessionist forces in Yemen, and amid disagreements over how to respond to the Iran war. -Reuters

🔗 Faytuks

🇮🇱⚔️🇸🇾 The Israeli Air Force bombed the Abu al-Duhur airbase, Idlib governorate last night.

It is alleged that Turkey was preparing to move aircraft to the airbase

This is the first IAF airstrike to occur in Syrian territory since July 2025.

The airbase had been bombed by the IAF after the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.

@CIG_telegram

🇮🇱⚔️🇱🇧 Israeli Military Claims “Battle of Wits” Unfolding at Ali Taher

A “battle of wits” is unfolding between Hezbollah and Israeli forces around the strategic Ali Taher ridge in southern Lebanon, Israeli outlet Walla reported, citing a senior Israeli military source.

➤ Haaretz reports the Israeli military has “decided not to allow Hezbollah operatives trapped in tunnels beneath southern Lebanon's Ali Taher ridge to leave unless they surrender, amid reports Israel is preparing an operation to seize the area”

➤ Walla said Hezbollah is tracking Israeli positions and attacking detected troop movements, as occurred Saturday when a drone strike wounded three Israeli soldiers, including an officer. Hezbollah has not claimed the attack.

➤ The Israeli outlet claimed Hezbollah is trying to resupply fighters trapped in underground facilities, who have emerged searching for food, while Israel hunts them and attempts to destroy the underground infrastructure.

“Anyone who emerges from the underground and surrenders will be taken to Israel for questioning, while anyone who remains underground will either die or we will kill him,” the Israeli source claimed.

➤ Walla reported that Israel attacked multiple areas after its soldiers were wounded but left Beirut and senior Hezbollah officials there “off-limits due to an American demand.” Israeli strikes killed 11 people, including three children, in Ansar and Deir al-Zahrani.

➤ L’Orient Today correspondent Muntasser Abdallah reported that Israel on Sunday bombarded Ali Taher with white phosphorus shells, airstrikes and helicopter machine-gun fire, including overnight.

🔗 DropSite

📈 Global bond markets have caught on fire. The most notable spike in long-term yields is happening for the US and France, but at this point the rise in long-term yields is truly a global phenomenon. Reckless fiscal policy is catching up with governments

🔗 Robin Brooks

🇾🇪⚔️🇾🇪 Latest Updates from the Southwestern Yemen Conflict Fronts – August 18, 2026

🔹The latest intelligence from Yemen's southwestern theater indicates ongoing firefights and artillery barrages along the Al-Ahkum and Hamir axes flanking Taiz province to the east and west.

These exchanges, characteristic of the broader conflict, have thus far failed to produce any meaningful shift in territorial control for either belligerent.

🔹Ansar Allah retains operational control over the Al-Barah district, contrary to assertions propagated by Saudi coalition media outlets.

✍️ Al-Barah holds strategic value as a key linkage between the highlands west of Taiz and the Red Sea coast, positioned advantageously on the Maqbanah–Al-Mokha–Taiz transportation spine. Retaining Al-Barah is imperative for Ansar Allah – both to anchor its current defensive lines and to enable prospective maneuver in the southwestern quadrant; recent operational patterns confirm that Yemeni military leadership is fully cognizant of this reality.

🔹Meanwhile, on the Al-Mokha front, coalition naval activity remains under persistent Yemeni surveillance. The Amir Khan – a vessel struck by Yemeni missiles the previous day – is now foundering off the Al-Mokha shoreline, prompting Tareq Saleh's affiliated forces to issue urgent appeals for assistance to both Riyadh and international maritime stakeholders.

🔗 IWN

🇦🇪🇮🇷⚡️ — Alerts in Dubai, UAE.

A vessel off the coast of the Emirati state is most likely being targeted.

🇺🇸❌🇴🇲 AP: U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to bomb Oman because he is unhappy the country is close to a deal with Iran to manage ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, two regional officials said Tuesday, a day after Trump leveled the threat.

The officials said the Trump administration has told Oman it is opposed to parts of the yet-to-be-announced deal, including the joint Iranian and Omani management of the exit route out of the passage that’s critical to global supplies of oil and natural gas.

Meanwhile, a projectile hit a ship as it sailed out of the strait, according to the British military’s maritime monitoring agency, and an Iranian official said the waterway would not reopen until the United States meets Iran’s conditions.

@CIG_telegram