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China makes a move in the war for critical materials

Beijing announces export controls on metals used in semiconductor production

Although the United States and China are now talking more, in practice little has actually changed in the strategic picture of relations between the two powers.

In anticipation of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s visit to the country, Beijing announced a series of export controls on critical materials required for the production of semiconductors, which is interpreted as retaliation against the US’ growing export controls targeting the development of its own industry.

The materials in question, gallium and germanium, are largely exported by China, which produces the majority of their global supply. Apart from semiconductors, the two metals are also used in products like solar panels. The US has no domestic production of gallium and germanium and has to rely on imports. This means that Beijing has struck a critical strategic weakness amidst Washington’s own attempts to forcibly re-write and re-shore the global semiconductor supply chain.

The emerging Cold War between the US and China is fought over supply chains, that is control over key materials and the ability to produce public goods. Since the Donald Trump administration came into office in 2017, the US has begun to “roll back” globalization by placing preference on a foreign policy of great-power competition, believing that open markets and global supply chains have empowered states that are hostile to American interests. Therefore, supply chains should be politicized in order to justify sufficient American control over them, and therefore retain Washington’s global dominance.

To that end, US officials often talk about “resilient supply chains” in their public rhetoric, but what this actually means is an effort to push China out of those chains by diversifying, re-shoring and friend-shoring the production of critical goods to end Beijing’s manufacturing monopoly over them, while also stopping China from advancing up critical technology chains. To this end, the US has blacklisted a number of Chinese technology companies, banning them from receiving critical technologies, and has also sought to curb the export of semiconductor-making equipment to the country by co-opting allies.

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While doing this, Washington has pressured global semiconductor firms to build capacity in the US under promise of subsidies, seeking to “re-write” the global technology supply chain around itself while keeping China down. For the most part, Beijing has been very cautious about responding to such hostility, if at all. However, in recent months China has slowly begun to edge up the pressure against the US in the field of semiconductors, and despite Washington’s own ambitions to dominate the industry, one obvious flaw in their strategy is that the US itself does not have direct access to all the raw materials required to make semiconductors. China has now finally exploited this Achilles’ heel and announced export controls over the sale of these critical materials, targeting the US specifically. It is unlikely, on the other hand, to be aimed at Asian countries who rely on these Chinese materials to produce for their own industries, such as South Korea.

What is the logic of this? Not only to stifle the US’ semiconductor production ambitions by making the costs more expensive and production less efficient (consider that the second-largest producer of Gallium is the Russian Federation) but also to force Asian semiconductor industries to continue to invest in Chinese production by limiting their choices. In this case, China maintains leverage to keep the supply chain concentrated around itself and prevent America from realizing its vision of a completely de-Sinicized semiconductor industry, and building a new chain “around China.” This can also be used to stop the US from attempting to build up alternative supply chains in critical goods materials in rival states such as India.

This only goes to underline the realism of how short-sighted America’s attempts to try and crush China’s semiconductor rise are. When a nation possesses critical commodities or materials, it is near impossible to isolate it from global markets when the demand for those goods is critical. This is why the West was never able to similarly cut Russia out of global energy and commodity markets. Sure, the US might be forced to get the gallium it needs from more expensive sources, or even go through third countries, but it is only going to be more expensive and counterproductive. This only further highlights the harm which US “anti-globalization” policies, in the name of opposing so called competitors, is truly doing to itself and the global economy.

White House find confirmed as cocaine

Media outlets have suggested that it might be “difficult” for the US Secret Service to find the culprit

A US laboratory test on Wednesday confirmed the initial findings that the powder found at the White House over the weekend was in fact cocaine. The Secret Service and the FBI are investigating how the drug got into the West Wing, but some officials are saying it may never be known.

Uniformed Secret Service officers found a “small, zippered bag” in an electronics storage locker on Sunday. The white powder inside prompted the evacuation of the White House, until the field test showed it to be cocaine. A subsequent lab test confirmed the result, an “official with knowledge of the investigation” told NBC News.

Politico also quoted an official familiar with the probe, who said it will be “very difficult” to find the bag’s owner, given that it “may not have been caught” by any surveillance cameras, and that the locker was in an area frequented by White House staff as well as visitors.

“It’s a bit of a thoroughfare. People walk by there all the time,” the anonymous official said. Politico described the area as “highly trafficked.”


READ MORE: Secret Service investigating ‘white powder’ found at White House

President Joe Biden and his family were at Camp David over the weekend, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. Biden has been briefed about the incident, which is being investigated by the Secret Service and the FBI.

Cocaine is a Schedule II narcotic in the US, illegal to possess without a doctor’s prescription. It has also been the drug of choice of Biden’s son Hunter, who admitted to his addiction in a recent memoir, after video evidence of it was found on the laptop he abandoned at a Delaware repair shop. 

Russian academic kidnapped by Iraqi militia – Israel

The researcher reportedly traveled to Kurdistan with a Russian passport

Israel announced on Wednesday that Princeton University doctoral candidate Elizaveta Tsurkova has been taken hostage in Iraq by the Shi’ite militia Kataib Hezbollah. Tsurkova used her Russian passport to travel for “academic research,” PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said.

Tsurkova has been “missing for several months” but is still alive, Netanyahu’s office said, adding that Israel holds Iraq responsible for her fate and safety. 

A diplomatic source speaking to Jerusalem Post “categorically denied” that the woman was a Mossad agent or that her trip to Iraq was on “any official Israeli business.” The source said Israel was doing “all it can” through several diplomatic channels to ensure her release.

West Jerusalem would have preferred to stay silent on the hostage situation, but chose to release the information ahead of a news report on the issue, the source added.

The report in question appears to be from The Cradle. The outlet said Tsurkova was “kidnapped from a house in the Karrada neighborhood of Baghdad on 26 March” and that her abductors wore “official Iraqi security service uniforms.”

According to Iraqi security sources, Tsurkova arrived in the Kurdistan region before moving to Baghdad, using a Russian passport because Israeli citizens are banned from the country. She may have used the same documents for traveling to Syria and Lebanon as well, the Israeli diplomatic source told the Jerusalem Post.

The Russian embassy in Baghdad told the Cradle they had “no evidence about the individual mentioned in your request neither about her nationality nor her story in Iraq.”

Tsurkova speaks Arabic, English, Hebrew, and Russian. The last post on her Twitter profile was on March 21. She had served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and led a Palestinian rights NGO, before reinventing herself as an expert on the conflict in Syria. She has championed regime change in Damascus and promoted the “moderate rebels” such as the Al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front, later known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).