Robot vs. human: Saskatoon brewer goes head to head with ChatGPT-designed beer

Kelly Geraldine Malone, The Canadian Press

It may have been the greatest battle between robots and humans to ever take place inside a Saskatchewan brewery. 

The grain mash was masterful and the fermentation feisty as a brewer went head to head in a taste-off with ChatGPT to find out who, or what, can make the best beer. 

The idea for the faceoff against the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot came out of a meeting between staff at 9 Mile Legacy Brewing, a Saskatoon nanobrewery known for making craft beer and pushing boundaries. 

Garrett Pederson, 9 Mile’s co-founder and head brewer, said they were playing around with the explosively popular chatbot earlier this year and thought it would be fun to test the technology’s usefulness when it comes to one of the oldest drinks humans have produced.

“We will challenge it to make a recipe and I'll essentially make a recipe and we will see where that goes,” Pederson said. 

Luke Clark, an assistant brewer, became Team Robot and was tasked with asking ChatGPT to come up with a recipe. 

ChatGPT, developed by U.S.-based company OpenAI, uses written information already available on the internet to provide detailed responses to queries by users. It has received widespread attention for coming up with song lyrics, poems and scripts. 

Clark said he started by asking the chatbot to “make an award-winning gose recipe using local ingredients.” A gose is typically a sour and salty beer with origins in Germany.

The chatbot started spitting out recipes, Clark said, and they all predictably included Saskatoon berries.

What wasn’t so predictable was the alcohol content. Some would have resulted in a beer with 30 per cent alcohol content, others with two per cent.

While the ingredient quantities weren’t quite right, Clark said he was surprised to see all the things that would be needed were there.

"I had … to keep refining it until I got something I could actually use and tweaked it a little bit,” Clark said. 

Meanwhile, for Team Human, Pederson came up with his own recipe for a rhubarb ginger sour. He used the tried and true methods of researching old brew records and recipes, talking with other brewers and looking online. 

"It's always long, with a lot of time and research put into it,” he said.

Once the brewing itself was complete, it was time for the true test to see how humanity would fare against the machine. 

“You knew we’d never take the coming robopocalypse lying down” the brewery posted on social media announcing a blind taste test of the two beers to celebrate its eighth anniversary. 

People gathered in the taproom last Friday. There was no way for them to know which beer was from a human-developed recipe and which one came from a robot. They sipped, they tasted and then they voted.

"They ended up being quite different but both really, really good, actually," Pederson said. 

And while Team Human put in a good fight it was ultimately Team Robot that took the win with 60 per cent of the votes

Pederson said with a laugh that he suspects it was actually the malevolent artificial intelligence Skynet from the” Terminator” movie series that intervened. 

"We are going to do a Round 2,” he said. “Just keep playing until I win."

Despite the outcome, the brewers don’t see the artificial intelligence taking over any time soon. 

While it was interesting to see the chatbot gather information quickly from around the internet to understand the basics of the brew, it still required quite a lot of human intervention to make it something they could sell. 

"I was just surprised it was drinkable beer at the end of the day,” Clark said. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 5, 2023.

SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC CANADA

Public long-term care insurance would be 'financial lifeline' for older Canadians: Report

Holly McKenzie-Sutter, BNN Bloomberg

A new report from a Toronto Metropolitan University think tank has proposed that public insurance for long-term care services could be a “financial lifeline” for Canada’s aging population.

Researchers at the National Institute on Ageing looked at six jurisdictions with established public long-term care insurance programs, and considered how the model could be applied in a Canadian context.

Their paper, published Thursday, said a potential insurance program would likely require some contributions from Canadians through wages or taxation, similar to how the Canada Pension Plan and national health insurance program are funded. In return, people would receive a guaranteed level of financial coverage and long-term care, including home care and long-term care home services.

The report noted that nationalized long-term care insurance wouldn’t lower the overall costs of long-term care, but it would ensure older Canadians have access to basic coverage for their future care needs.

“Establishing a national LTC insurance program could present a unique opportunity to re-imagine Canada’s social contract and better align its provision of LTC services to the needs and preferences of older Canadians,” Dr. Samir Sinha, director of health policy research for the institute, said in a news release.

COSTS OF LONG-TERM CARE

He noted that the level of public funding currently available has not met Canadian’s long-term care needs, and the paper highlighted the financial burden long-term care can place on households.

In-home services can cost up to $3,500 per month, and 24-hour support can reach $25,000 per month, the report said. The report added that those prices tags can be “crippling” for older adults, who now live about 22 years past the age of 65.

The report also explained that private insurance for long-term care is currently available in Canada but at high premiums, making it difficult to attract customers.

Washington State, the first U.S. jurisdiction to establish a public long-term care program, did so in part because its population was aging, but few residents were able to afford services, the report said. That program is set to start collecting premiums this year and make benefits available in 2026.

AGING POPULATION

Germany and Japan, two of the countries studied in the report, implemented long-term care insurance programs when they had similar demographic pictures to Canada’s, where about 19 per cent of the population is now aged 65 or older.

Those countries brought in their programs to help alleviate the financial burden of paying for long-term care, while other countries like the Netherlands and South Korea began their programs earlier in their demographic transitions.

The report said Canada would need to consider its objectives for a long-term care insurance program, as many older adults want to age in their homes, and wait lists for long-term care homes already stretch into the tens of thousands.

POTENTIAL CARE IMPROVEMENTS

Thousands of Canadian seniors died in long-term care homes during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the crisis highlighted the need for improved living and care standards in the facilities.

The report said public long-term care insurance might serve to improve the quality of care people receive, as well as see improvements in governance and resource allocation, because the program would have to set definitions for the services and standards people are entitled to.

It could also “greatly reduce fragmentation and lead to more equitable service coverage and financial protection,” the report said.

FUNDING

The case studies researchers looked at funded their programs through social insurance contributions or taxation, as well as some premiums collected at the point of service. There were also some contributions from employers, insurance programs and various levels of government.

Taiwan was the only jurisdiction that funded its program primarily through revenue from taxation on items like tobacco, and along with South Korea, that country exempts lower-income and high-risk people from paying premiums on services.

SUGGESTED IMPLEMENTATION

The researchers laid out several suggestions for how Canada could implement a long-term care insurance program, first by establishing an individual’s contributions and the benefits they would receive later on.

Canada’s existing network of long-term care providers could be leveraged to set up the program, they said, and “care managers” working at local levels could ensure people’s specific needs are being met.

The paper recommended social contributions as a primary funding mechanism, and suggested that the program could be used as an opportunity to reallocate funding towards home and community care options, as well as establish standards for care.

Will Canada need to raise its retirement

age? Here's what economists say

Daniel Johnson , BNN Bloomberg

Amid widespread protests in France over its government's plan to increase the age of retirement, one economist said it is unlikely that Canada will need to increase its retirement age.

While aging demographics present a challenge to businesses in Canada, the potential impact has been softened by immigration and people electing to work at increasingly advanced ages, James Orlando, the director of TD Economics, said in an interview with BNNBloomberg.ca last Thursday. 

“The fact that we have so many people coming in, we've done such a good job of attracting immigration, [that] has enabled us to be able to afford the supports to the older population of Canada,” Orlando said.

Additionally, there has been a substantial increase in people aged 60-70 years old choosing to work longer, due partly to changing incentives, he said.

“The fact that we've done things like eliminating the mandatory retirement age in certain provinces, the fact that we have a system in place where we've incentivized people to delay receiving things like Canadian Pension Plan benefits or even delaying Old Age Security benefits, that incentivizes people to not draw on [those benefits] but also work longer,” Orlando said. 

If these changes were not made, the federal government would have to allocate more money to support people that likely would have retired earlier, he said. 

As people live longer, Bill VanGorder, the chief operating officer and chief policy officer of Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP), said in a phone interview with BNNBloomberg.ca on Friday that people are not automatically choosing to retire when they reach the age of 65.

“And they shouldn't be forced to [retire at 65] in fact, we need them to keep working, because there's a lack of employees right across the country,” VanGorder said.

Canada’s 2023 federal budget included a 10 per cent increase in Old Age Security (OAS) payments. 

VanGorder said that the 10 per cent increase was expected and that the budget had “very little in it for seniors” and was “very disappointing.”

The increase will be accessible to people over the age of 75, which is something VanGorder said he finds concerning.

“Once again, they're making a two-tiered system for old age people. People between [age] 65 and 75 are not eligible for it,” he said.

“Our feedback that we're getting from our members and other older Canadians across the country is that the pressures of the increased cost of living these days are actually hitting the younger people, age 65 to 75, more than the older group [age of 75 and older].”

VanGorder said the people in the younger age group are generally more active, while the older group often live more sedentary lives.

In the 2012 federal budget, then prime minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government planned to increase the minimum age to receive OAS support from 65 to 67 starting in 2023. 

In the 2016 budget, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals reversed that decision.  

Civil unrest began in France after President Emmanuel Macron moved to raise the minimum retirement age to 64 from 62 to bring the nation’s retirement age in line with other European countries. The two-year increase to the minimum retirement age is a necessary move, according to Macron, in order to address the country’s aging population and debt. 

FUNDING RETIREMENT 

Lisa Raitt, co-chair of Coalition for a Better Future, vice-chair of global investment banking at CIBC Capital Markets and former natural resources minister, said in an interview on March 29, that OAS payments and government-guaranteed income will cost about $60 billion this year. 

By 2027, Raitt said OAS costs will rise by around 50 per cent to $90 billion. She said there is not a “special trust” that currently exists to meet rising OAS costs and that funding will come from taxation. 

As Canadians age, Raitt said long-term care will become a significant issue that requires more attention. Germany and parts of the U.S. fund long-term care through a “payroll type tax,” she said, which is not something she advocates for. 

“It's just recognizing, we're going to have to have a separate fund to pay for that, and it can't always compete with people who want to have more money for the provision of services within a hospital,” Raitt said.

Orlando said the federal government will likely be able to continue to fund existing programs long-term, including retirement, as long as doing so doesn’t impact the federal government's fiscal anchor, the debt-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio. 

“For as long as debt to GDP is not increasing on an unsustainable path, then the ability for the government to be able to keep funding the programs they have in place is there,” he said. 

“So you're not having a day of reckoning where you have to make significant changes to your policy system for so long as you're able to make these ratios improve over time.” 

Wildfires in Alberta force evacuations, cut oil, gas output

Robert Tuttle and Esteban Duarte, Bloomberg News

Wildfires burning across the Canadian province of Alberta have prompted the evacuation of almost 30,000 residents and the shutdown of oil and natural gas wells and pipeline systems. At least 145,000 barrels per day of oil production has been halted.

A total of 109 blazes were burning as of late Sunday, 30 of which were classified as out of control, and a provincial state of emergency has been declared. Evacuation orders have been issued for communities, including some less than 100 kilometres west of the provincial capital, Edmonton. 

The fires are affecting energy production in the region, which accounts for most of Canada’s hydrocarbon exports. Crescent Point Energy Corp. has shut in 45,000 barrels a day of production in the Kaybob Duvernay region, though the company said it has seen no damage to its assets. Vermilion Energy Inc. temporarily shut 30,000 barrels a day of production, but added in a statement that initial assessments indicate minimal damage to key infrastructure. 

Around 20,000 barrels a day of Pipestone Energy Corp.’s production has been shut in, the company said in a statement. Meanwhile, Tourmaline Oil has closed down nine South and West Deep Basin gas processing facilities as nearby fires expanded and new wildfires rapidly emerged.

One community under evacuation order as of Sunday was Fox Creek, a major center for light oil and gas drillers. Energy facilities were also being evacuated in Grande Prairie along with local residents, provincial officials said

Unlike the massive wildfires of 2016, which were concentrated in the northeast of Alberta and forced the shutdown of more than 1 million barrels a day of oil sands production, the worst-hit areas this year are in the province’s west. There, explorers drill into rock formations including the Clearwater, Montney and Duvernay. The area includes gas processing plants and is crisscrossed by pipelines.

Paramount Resources Ltd. has shut about 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day of production as of May 5 as a precaution and because of disruptions to third-party infrastructure, the company said Sunday. Its operations in the Grande Prairie and Kaybob regions are being affected. 

Pipeline operator TC Energy Corp. halted two compressor stations on its Nova Gas system nearest to active wildfires, the company said in an email Sunday. Other sections of the system and other networks continue to operate safely. The company is keeping workers away from facilities near active blazes unless necessary.

Tidewater Midstream & Infrastructure Ltd. shut its Brazeau River Complex, a gas processing facility, west of Edmonton and evacuated all personnel, the company said in an email. Cenovus Energy Inc. has shut down some production and halted plants in some areas, a company spokesperson said. 

The government-owned Trans Mountain Pipeline, the sole link carrying Canadian crude to the Pacific coast, is still in operation but the company has deployed mitigation measures, including a perimeter sprinkler system at its Edson pump station, and is ready to deploy additional protection measures if needed, the company said. 

Tamarack Valley Energy Ltd. had to shut in less than 300 barrels a day of production after the gas processing plants operated by Tidewater and another run by Keyera Corp. went out of operation due to the blazes, Chief Executive Officer Brian Schmidt said by phone. Pembina Pipeline Corp. also said it evacuated some workers west of Edmonton.

Meta may end Facebook, Instagram news content in Canada over act

Lynn Doan, Bloomberg News

Meta Platforms Inc. said it would end news content on Facebook and Instagram in Canada if lawmakers pass legislation to force social-networking platforms to pay media publishers to feature their work. 

“We’ve taken the difficult decision that if this flawed legislation is passed, we will have to end the availability of news content on Facebook and Instagram in Canada,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said in a statement on Monday. 

Clegg described Canada’s proposed Online News Act as “fundamentally flawed,” saying Canada would become the “first democracy to put a price on free links to web pages, which flies in the face of global norms.” 

The former U.K. deputy prime minister had been scheduled to speak about the bill at a committee of Canada’s House of Commons on Monday. But he canceled after the title of the session was changed to, “Tech Giants’ Current and Ongoing Use of Intimidation and Subversion Tactics to Evade Regulation in Canada and Across the World.”

Canada’s act, known as Bill C-18, was proposed to establish a “fair revenue sharing” system between digital platforms and news outlets and provide for collective bargaining by media in negotiating fees with companies like Meta. In introducing the legislation last year, Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said he was seeking to address a “market imbalance” as an increasing number of Canadians turn to digital platforms for news. 

Canada is certainly not the first country that Meta has warned on the prospect of pulling its content. The company had said last year that it would remove Facebook and Instagram from Europe altogether over European Union data regulations.  AND AUSTRALIA

Mr. Putin, criminalizing journalism to make us silent doesn’t works

It is obvious that Putin doesn’t fear NATO, what he fears is free journalism.

Read in Russian | Читать по-русски


Thomas Nilsen is editor of the Barents Observer. 

Photo: Atle Staalesen

By Thomas Nilsen

 Barents Observer
April 23, 2023

Opinion Editorial:

 It was up north President Vladimir Putin got his first real lesson on ‘the danger’ of free media. Killing 118 crew members, the August 2000 sinking of the Kursk submarine in the Barents Sea paralyzed the newly minted leader. His desultory response to the failed rescue operation was broadcasted worldwide. First more than a week after the catastrophe, a scared Putin aborted his vacation on the Black Sea and traveled north to meet the bereaved family members who were packed in the town hall of Vidyayevo, the closed military town less than 80 kilometers from Russia’s border with Norway. The relatives were angry but got few answers on why their authorities refused rescue help from the neighboring country in the west.

Channel One (ORT) - at the time owned by Boris Berezovsky - voiced unprecedented criticism against Putin for his failed leadership at a time of national tragedy. Slamming the President’s mishandled response also came from NTV, Echo Moskva, and Segondnya, all part of media tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky’s holding company.

Instead of denouncing the Northern Fleet’s cover-ups, lies, and contradictory information about the Kursk drama, Mr. Putin chose to blame the messengers, the media. He said TV had reporters unscrupulously trying to destroy the state, discrediting the country.

It didn’t help. Putin’s popularity hit record low in the months that followed the submarine disaster. Lessons learned: To control public opinions, the Kremlin needs to control the media. Especially if you plan to build a vertical power structure in a Federation where Boris Yeltsin for a decade had distributed powers to the regions.

In late 2000, Putin sent the Prosecutor General’s Office after Berezovsky who fled the country and later died in London. Channel One came under state control. So did the NTV, the popular TV channel that previously had hinted that FSB was behind a failed apartment-building bombing in Ryazan shortly after Vladimir Putin moved from his office in Lubyanka to become Prime Minister under Boris Yeltsin in August 1999. NTV was taken over by Gazprom-Media and the end came to its sharp analysis of current events.

One of NTV’s most prominent journalists that left NTV in protest of the takeover in early 2001 was Vladimir Kara-Murza Sr. His son is Vladimir Kara-Murza, the civil society promoter - and journalist - who last week was sentenced to 25 years by a Moscow court for telling the truth about war crimes conducted by the Russian Army in Ukraine.

His so-called treason sentence for refusing to be silenced is adding to the Kremlin’s brutal crackdown against freedom of expression we have seen since Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

Vladimir Putin and his war crime compatriots know perfectly well that domestic support for the military attack on Ukraine would not be possible if free journalism existed. Independent media would easily debug Putin’s increasingly paranoid worldview that now is sending tens and tens of thousands of young Russian men to their deaths as cannon fodder.

It’s not complicated. The war on Ukraine was not caused by any alleged Nazis in Kyiv, Russian history justifications, or North Atlantic Treaty Organization expansion like the narrative peddled by Moscow brings on. The order to invade was given by one crazy man living in isolation and his fellow regime supporters that need the war to stay in power.

A few days after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the regime speeded up adoption of repressive legislation hitting on media. Criminalizing independent journalism by introducing laws on ´discrediting´ the army and ´fake-news´ have caused charges for dozens of Russian media people. Among them are journalists Valery Badmayev, Ilya Krasilshchik, and Maria Ponomarenko, editor Mikhail Afanasyev, publisher Sergey Mikhaylov, and TV producer Marina Ovsyannikova. To name a few.

It is obvious that Putin doesn’t fear NATO, what he fears is free journalism.

Arkhangelsk student Olesya Krivtsova understands this. The young woman is on Russia’s most wanted list after she in March cut her electronic tracking bracelet and left the country for Vilnius. She was then under house arrest awaiting a trial that could give her up to 15 years in jail for sharing an anti-war post on social media. Olesya now says she wants to pursue a career in journalism.

She is most welcome to the Barents Observer. Located a 15-minute drive from Norway’s border with Russia in the north, we are currently expanding our newsroom for exile Russian journalists.

We are cooperating with UiT The Arctic University of Tromsø with an aim to contribute both to freedom of expression and to preserve Norwegian-Russian know-how in the high north with the help of Russians that have left the country for now. Academic independence for researchers in exile is equally important.

This is one contribution to the future history of a Russia derailing the current path to totalitarianism.

The Barents Observer - publishing in both Russian and English - was founded as a private initiative more than 20 years ago to bring increased understanding across borders between the Nordic north and regions in northwest Russia.

All of us that have worked as journalists inside Russia - reporting about lovely people and the challenges they have faced in post-Soviet times - have also been cleareyed about the risk the country’s dark shadows have posed to freedom of writing.

When Dmitry Medvedev came as Prime Minister to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Barents Cooperation here in Kirkenes in 2013, his security staff requested the Norwegian organizers to remove a handful of journalists from the list to be accreditated. Those were our colleagues from regional media in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, journalists invited by the Barents Observer. Moscow wanted full control of what was reported from the north, a region branded as High North - Low Tensions.

Norway opened the door for the north Russian journalists, and when the Kremlin’s press pool packed up their cameras, Medvedev did his best to answer questions by Murmansk reporters about why prices on cod were lower on this side of the border than at home. A few hours later could all reporters take photos of a smiling Medvedev walking side-by-side with Jens Stoltenberg across the Norwegian-Russian border. This was a short year before the illegal annexation of Crimea and Stoltenberg was Prime Minister.

Medvedev and Stoltenberg walked the Storskog-Borisoglebsk border checkpoints in June 2013. Photo: Thomas Nilsen

In 2014, the FSB asked Norwegian authorities to bring our reporting to silence. Although a few regional politicians in northern Norway made a failed attempt to remove our editorial freedom, the Barents Observer only strengthened its belief in the importance of continuing what we are best at: Accurate, unbiased, fact-based reporting.

Independent journalism is the best tool to counter propaganda and lies. Our desire to defend this principle gets stronger with every repressive step taken by Moscow. Journalism is not a crime.

When Roskomnadzor - the Russian censorship agency - in 2019 blocked the Barents Observer we got many more readers. Logically, the attention brought by being blocked is considered a quality stamp among Russians reading the internet for truthful information. Tools to circumnavigate the Kremlin’s censorship wall are many and you can today find Barents Observer on Telegram, YouTube, podcasts, mirror domains, or simply as millions of others inside Russia: go online with VPN.

All we are doing is backed by the Russian Consitution. Article 29 is as clear as it can be:

The freedom of mass communication shall be guaranteed. Censorship shall be banned.

The Constitution, or any other rule-of-law principles for that matter, doesn’t worry Mr. Putin. He considers himself to be the law.

In a vertical power structure, lawmakers (the State Duma), law enforcement agencies, and the Justice Ministry all jump when the ruler in the bunker makes clear that journalists doing their job are enemies of the State.

With the wrongful detention and made-up espionage charges against Wall Street Journal journalist and American citizen Evan Gershkovich, Putin has hit a new low in his war on journalism. Under the definition of espionage, anyone using publicly available information can be prosecuted. Last year, journalist Ivan Safronov was sentenced to 22 years in jail. Gershkovich, however, is the first foreign journalist to become a victim under the law.

Who’s next, you wonder?

Well, several of the few remaining accredited foreign correspondents in Moscow decided not to find out and have already left the country.

Creating an atmosphere of fear is on top of FSB’s toolbox. Last week, the State Duma approved in its second reading amendments to the law on Treason in the Criminal Code. From now, any citizen can get life sentence for giving information to foreigners. Who now dares to give an interview to a journalist from Norway, or any other country?

The law amendments came the same day as the Prosecutor General’s Office labeled Norway-based environmental group Bellona as an ‘undesirable organization.’ The NGO has since the start of cross-border cooperation up north in the early 1990ties actively worked internationally to help Russia secure its Arctic nuclear waste dumps. From now, anyone providing information - or cooperating - with Bellona risks criminal charges with up to six years in jail.

In a similar wave of attempts to stop the free flow of information, the regime intensifies its crackdown on Russian exile journalists. The Barents Observer’s reporter Georgii Chentemirov was recently included in the Justice Ministry’s list of so-called ‘foreign agents’.

The ‘foreign agents’ laws have since 2012 been used by Russian authorities to smear opposition groups, media, and individuals who have expressed opinions challenging the narrative of the Kremlin. This Friday, Natalia Severts-Yermolina was included in the list. Working out of Petrozavodsk, she has for years had a goal to improve cooperation between Russian journalists up north with colleagues in the Nordic countries.

That work is more challenging than ever.

Meanwhile, the Barents Observer can only promise one thing. We continue cross-border independent reporting. Being silenced is not an alternative.

A Secret War Is Brewing In The South China Sea

By Haley Zaremba - May 04, 2023

• The South China Sea, due to its natural resources and strategic importance, has long been a source of regional tensions.
• 
  
• After a period of relative calm in the region, tensions are rising at two potential flashpoints, the first between China and Malaysia and the second between China and the Philippines.
• 
  
• The real reason behind these recent disputes isn’t fishing rights, access to oil, or even shipping routes, it's actually part of a secret war over the subsea cables that carry 99% of global internet traffic.

After a period of relative calm and quiet, there is once again a geopolitical storm brewing out in the South China Sea. This time, there are dual face-offs: one minor spat between China and Malaysia, and another seriously major spat between China and the Philippines. 

The South China Sea is one of the most heavily trafficked maritime routes in the entire world. However, the conditions that make it so valuable – namely, its location on the coasts of a considerable number of Asian countries – have also led to major regional tensions over ownership, rights, and tenure. Vast, overlapping swaths of this prized patch of the Pacific are currently being claimed by Brunei, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam. 

China, which has staked the largest claims to the South China Sea and has historically (and continuously) been the most aggressive in its position with an ever-expanding military presence on the waters, has stirred up no shortage of political discontent in the region. Beijing claims sovereignty over more than 90 percent of the South China Sea – using a delineation branded as the “nine-dash line” – which cuts into the exclusive economic zones of Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia. As a result, geopolitical squabbles over rights to the Sea are the rule rather than the exception. 

Earlier this year, when Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim made his first official visit to China, officials pointedly questioned Malaysia about its exploration activities in what it has designated as China’s exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea. In an unsurprising twist, Ibrahim claimed that those waters actually belong to Malaysia and “therefore Petronas will continue its exploration activities there”. According to reporting by Al Jazeera, “The exchange highlights Beijing’s increasing efforts to pressure Kuala Lumpur not to exploit energy resources under its control, even as Anwar looks to deepen Sino-Malaysian ties, analysts say.”

Now, just a couple of months later, China has once again made headlines for its bullying and intimidation in the South China Sea, but this time Beijing’s adversary is the Philippines. On the surface, the argument between’s Xi Jinping’s China and Ferdinand Marcos’ Philippines is over fishing rights. It all started in late April when the Philippines publicly accused China's coastguard of employing "dangerous manoeuvres" and "aggressive tactics" to intimidate the Filipino coast guard Philippines-held waters. The reported incident, took place in fishing waters in the Second Thomas Shoal, “a flashpoint for previous altercations located 105 nautical miles (195 km) off its coast,” according to Reuters.

However, according to new reporting this week, the fights between the Philippines, Malaysia, and China aren’t really about fishing or even oil exploration at all – instead, it’s just one battle in a “secret war to control the internet.” Indeed, many of the activities carried out recently in the South China Sea seem far too militarized and grand in scale for a simple fishing disagreement. In April of this year, the U.S. and the Philippines held the largest-ever military drills in the South China Sea, which were followed up by plans for more major military drills from China and Singapore.

According to reporting from The Hill, “ the biggest economic asset up for grabs in the region is Big Data — and the future of the entire internet depends on who wins the battle to dominate this strategic waterway.” The crux of the war is underwater cables. More than 99% of all international internet traffic is carried through such subsea cables, which are overwhelmingly controlled by a handful of Big Tech companies in the U.S., “namely Google-owner Alphabet, Facebook-owner Meta, Amazon and Microsoft.” As the internet economy ramps up in Asia – it’s expected to reach $1 trillion in value by just 2030 – other economic powers now want their slice of that pie. Whoever controls the cables that cross through the South China Sea will stake a major claim to that $1 Trillion. 

In other words, don’t expect anything approximating a truce in the South China Sea any time soon. 

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

Navy’s Intelligence Directorate gets four more ice-classed spy ships for seafloor operations

Russia boosts its subsea mapping and sabotage capability amid growing concerns in northern Europe over safety for seafloor infrastructure.


Construction of the two first intelligence ships of Project 03182R, the "Leonid Bekrenev" and "Boris Bobkov" started at the Zelenodolsk shipyard near Kazan last summer. Two similar vessels will have keel laying in July.

 Photo: tatarstan.ru

By Thomas Nilsen

BARENTS OBSERVER
April 25, 2023

Construction of the two first vessels of the class started last summer and will be followed by two more this summer, according to state news agency TASS.

The Northern Fleet will receive the first of the new intelligence vessels of Project 03182R. The “Leonid Bekrenev” is named after the Commander of the Russian Navy’s Intelligence Directorate in the last three years of the Stalin period (1950-1953). The Baltic Fleet is mentioned to get one of the ships. Where the two last will be based is unclear.

Officially, the ships are research vessels, but sailing for the Intelligence Directorate of the Main Staff of the Russian Navy, the intended purpose is military reconnaissance and oceanographic seafloor mapping.

Few technical details are known, but a Russian navy blog-site says each ship is not less than 4,000 tons with a length of about 100 meters. The vessel will have Russian Ice class 3 for navigation in Arctic waters and the winter ice-covered Baltic Sea.

The new class of oceanographic vessels adds to Russia’s growing fleet of intelligence ships capable of carrying underwater equipment for surveillance and mapping of other nations’ seafloor infrastructure.

In recent months, both the Nordic countries, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands said they are closely monitoring Russian vessels sailing near offshore wind-farms, fiberoptic cables, and pipelines bringing natural gas to Europe.

Okolnaya port facilities north of Severomorsk in the Kola Bay have piers where Northern Fleet intelligence ships frequently are moored. 

Photo: Thomas Nilsen

Additional to the Navy’s Intelligence Directorate, the Russian Armed Forces has a dedicated Directorate for Deep Sea Research, better known as GUGI. Its headquarters is in St. Petersburg, while spy submarines and larger surface vessels carrying deep-water mini-submarines are based at Olenya Guba on the Kola Peninsula and in Severodvinsk by the White Sea.

Russia’s Coast Guard cooperation with China is a big step, Arctic security expert says

“Letting China in would be a big step in practical cooperation. It has a security element to it,” says Senior Researcher Andreas Østhagen with the Fridtjof Nansen Institute.


Chinese Coast Guard officials observed the April 25 anti-terror exercise conducted by FSB Coast Guard in the Kola Bay north of Murmansk. 

Photo: Murmanski Vestnik

By Thomas Nilsen
BARENTS OBSERVER  
April 28, 2023

China has been very visible in Murmansk this week. On Monday, a groundbreaking memorandum on extensive cooperation in Artic waters was signed with FSB Coast Guard. The Chinese Coast Guard was then invited to observe the long-planned “Arctic Patrol 2023” maritime security exercise. On Thursday, Governor Andrei Chibis met Chinese diplomats and discussed a roadmap for increased business, shipbuilding and Northern Sea Route developments.

Amid the Ukraine war and halt in cooperation with the other seven Arctic nations, Russia turns east for new partners. Opening the door for China is a significant geopolitical change.

“Cooperation on Coast Guard tasks is both a concrete action and often seen as more harmless than military cooperation,” explains Andreas Østhagen, an expert on Arctic security with the Firdtjof Nansen Institute.

“The Coast Guard’s work is about protecting sovereign rights at sea, like fishing resources and access to oil and gas. Letting China in when it comes to fisheries inspections would be a big step in practical cooperation that has a security element to it,” Østhagen says to the Barents Observer.

Andreas Østhagen is expert on Arctic security. Photo: Thomas Nilsen

Government officials in Beijing have for years said China is a “near-Arctic state,” but so far, its presence up North has been limited to participating in conferences, annual research voyages, some few investments in Russia’s natural resource developments, and a few Asia-Europe shipments along the Northern Sea Route.

“China’s Polar Silk Road project seems to be more wait-and-see,” write researchers Frédéric Lasserre and Hervé Baudu in a report published this month about the consequences of the war in Ukraine in the Arctic.

The report, however, underlines that China is readily credited with great Arctic ambitions, but for now, mainly focused on securing hydrocarbon supplies from Siberia.

As previously reported by the Barents Observer, China has its own project on building a nuclear-powered icebreaker. Barges for two additional floating nuclear power plants for the north coast of Siberia are currently under construction at a yard in China.
Significant policy shift

The Russia-China memorandum signed in Murmansk opens for joint efforts to combat terrorism, illegal migration, fighting smuggling of drugs and weapons, as well as stopping illegal fishing. The deal was signed by top leaders with FSB Border Guards and the Chinese Coast Guard.

“This testifies that Russia actively wants to invite China into the kind of tasks we have thought Russia would safeguard,” Andreas Østhagen says.

He finds the new memorandum a significant shift in policy.

“We have thought that Russia is generally skeptical about letting China get too close in the Arctic, but the Ukraine war might have changed those calculations,” Østhagen says.

The Arctic security expert notes that the future of China-Russian Arctic cooperation is difficult to predict, but he makes one comparison:

“This reminds me a bit of when my mother-in-law wants to stay with us for a couple of weeks “until she finds something else.”

The top FSB Border Guards officials and the leaders of the Chinese Coast Guard at the meeting in Murmansk. Photo: Murmanski Vestnik


Fighting Arctic terrorism

For Russia, the exercise showcasing FSB Border Guards’ maritime capabilities for the Chinese visitors wasn’t aimed at fishery inspections in the Barents Sea. This was hard-core security, as previously drilled by strongman Ramzan Kadyrov’s special Rosgvardia forces in the Arctic, including at the nuclear icebreaker base in Murmansk.

The scenario was FSB fighting terrorists that had attacked Rosatomflot’s nuclear transport ship Rosita in Kola Bay.

“All the inputs worked out during the practical maritime exercise confirmed the readiness of interdepartmental structures to solve problems in the waters of the Northern Sea Route,” said acting director of Atomflot Leonid Irlitsa.

It is Rosatomflot that is in charge of Russia’s Northern Sea Route Directorate. The state-owned company is currently boosting the number of nuclear icebreakers and support infrastructure, key to President Putin’s great Arctic ambitions.

FSB exercising anti-terrorism as part of “Arctic Patrol 2023” in the Kola Bay. Here, from the bridge of “Rosita” - Rosatomflot’s transport vessel for spent nuclear fuel containers. Photo: Murmanski Vestnik

For neighboring Norway, FSB Coast Guards’ new cooperation with China could pose a challenge.

“Although I think we are far away from seeing Chinese Coast Guard or naval vessels performing tasks in the Barents Sea, for Norway that would entail a new security challenge and make cooperation with the Russian Coast Guard (FSB) even more difficult,” says Andreas Østhagen.

Norwegian-Russian Coast Guard cooperation in the Barents Sea is one of very few areas of contact that has not been officially called off by Oslo after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.

Shipbuilding and business boost

After his meeting on Thursday with China’s Consul General in St. Petersburg, Ms. Wang Wenli, Governor Andrei Chibis said there was an interest in developing shipbuilding in the Murmansk region.

“We agreed with Ms. Wang Wenli to work out additional areas of cooperation in a month and move on to the implementation of the plans,” Chibis wrote in a post on Vkontakte.

The Governor said China is a promising market. “Over the past four years alone, the foreign turnover between Murmansk region and China has grown 2,4 times,” Chibis said.

The two also discussed how enterprises in the region could get substitute import from China of products today sanctioned by the European Union, the United States and other countries protesting Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine.

Murmansk is Russia’s largest city above the Arctic Circle. 

Photo: Thomas Nilsen

Russia labels Bellona “Undesirable Organization”

The Prosecutor General’s Office in Moscow said the Norwegian non-governmental ecological organization Bellona conducts activities aimed at undermining Russia’s economy and poses a threat to the constitutional order and security.

Founder of Bellona, Frederic Hauge, has for decades worked to find solutions to the industrial pollution from the industry in the Russian north. Here with an electric car in front of the smelter in Nikel on the Kola Peninsula. Photo: Thomas Nilsen

By  Thomas Nilsen
By  Denis Zagore

BARENTS OBSERVER
April 18, 2023

Originally founded in Norway in 1986, the Bellona Foundation worked actively to improve nuclear safety, reduce industrial pollution and establish alternative energy production in northern Russia for more than three decades. The group’s offices in Murmansk and St. Petersburg developed close cooperation with official and private stakeholders in Russia and internationally aimed at finding solutions to ecological challenges, including the nuclear waste dumps along the coast to the Barents Sea and at industrial sites like Norilsk and Nikel.

The announcement by Russia’s top prosecutor is strong-worded.

Bellona’s work is “aimed at undermining the Russian economy, discrediting the domestic and foreign policy pursued by the authorities, destabilizing the socio-political situation in the country and poses a threat to the foundations of the constitutional order and security of the Russian Federation.”

The General Prosecutor says the organization, in particular, finances non-profit organizations that act as “foreign agents”, and “attempts are being made to influence Russian legislation in order to change it.”

Bellona’s manager, Frederic Hauge, rejects the accusations. In a phone interview with the Barents Observer, he says his organization will continue the work, despite the dramatic decision by Moscow.

“We will continue to reveal Russian authorities’ neglect of environmental hazards for Russian citizens. We will continue to document Rosatom’s role in the war on Ukraine and continue to make life difficult for them as we have always done,” Hauge says.

Norway’s Foreign Minister, Anniken Huitfeldt, says in a comment she “deeply regret that Russian authorities have declared Bellona an undesirable organization.”

“Bellona has played an important tole as a civil society actor in Russia for several decades,” Hutifeldt says.

She adds that Norway views “with deep concerns” the systematic suppression of civil society through the laws on foreign agents and unwanted organizations.

“The situation for human rights in Russia is now very disturbing.”

Like many other environmental groups, Bellona has for years been pursued by authorities. The Murmansk office was declared a “foreign agent” in 2015. Two years later, in 2017, the main office in St. Petersburg got the same branding from Russia’s Justice Ministry.

The General Prosecutor’s Office writes in the April 18 decision that it has studied Bellona’s work in Russia and has now informed the Ministry of Justice about the decision to include the environmental foundation in the list of international NGOs whose activities are recognized as undesirable in the country.

The Chief Procurator also argues that Bellona “has been actively involved in anti-Russian information campaign and discrediting Russia’s Armed Forces.” This has been the case since the beginning of “the special military operation by Russia to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine,” the text reads.

The law on undesirable organizations has been expanded several times and can be used to hinder any foreign or international organization that allegedly undermines Russia’s constitutional order, military, or security.

When blacklisted, any “undesirable organization” must cease all activities in Russia or face criminal sanctions.

A 2021 amendment to the law makes it easier to open criminal cases for people affiliated with an undesirable organization. Offences carries a punishment of up to six years in prison.

The Bellona Foundation left Russia in 2022, but several of the organization’s former staff from Murmansk and St. Petersburg were relocated to a new office in Vilnius, Lithuania where monitoring the environmental developments in Russia has continued.

Frederic Hauge underlines that the Vilnius office will continue operations. “This makes it harder, and we will likely need some time to figure out how the future work can be done most effectively,” Hauge adds.

The Justice Ministry’s list of undesirable organizations now includes more than 80 NGOs, businesses and media.

The environmental group Bellona has worked in Russia for more than three decades. Here from a visit to Murmansk with the organization’s expedition vessel in 1992. 

Photo: Thomas Nilsen

More jail for anti-war teacher and historian from north Russian Komi Republic

Nikita Tushkanov from the north Russian Komi Republic is called a ´terrorist and extremist´ by Russian authorities. 

This week, a military court prolonged his arrest with another month.


Nikita Tushkanov refuses to bow to repression. Photo: 7x7-journal

Read in Russian | Читать по-русски

By Atle Staalesen  

BARENTS OBSERVER
May 03, 2023

Tushkanov was detained on the 8th of December 2022 following a police raid in his apartment, and he has since been behind bars on charges of ‘justification of terrorism’ and discreditation of the Armed Forces.’

On the 2nd of May, a military court in the Komi Republic prolonged his imprisonment with another month.

The young teacher and historian has long been prosecuted by the Russian Security Services.

In early 2021, Tushkanov was fired from his job in a local school for a single-person rally in support of free speech.

Then, few weeks after Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine, he was fined 90,000 rubles (€1,500) in three cases that involved “discrediting the Armed Force,” “demonstration of Nazi symbols,” and “disorderly and insulting behaviour.”

In a comment given to SOTA, Tushkanov says that he is only expressing opposition to the war.

“I have expressed my disagreement with the war actions. I have expressed myself in a peaceful manner, and not the way they do it on TV. I did not ask anyone to slay and shoot nationalists,” he said in a court hearing.

Tushkanov comes from the small Komi town of Mikun, and is a native speaker of the Komi language. He descends from GULAG prisoners that were forced to move to the far northern region to build railways.

In an earlier interview published at telegra.ph, he describes how teachers in local schools are confronted with the propaganda of patriotism and Putinism. “History classes in school is politics turned towards the past; they write about the reunification of Ukraine with the Russian state, […] that Russia is such a good country and that we do not give up on our soldiers, that the Crimea is our’s and that Ukraine always has been part of Russia,” he explains.

According to Tushkanov, “we are moving toward the year 1937.”

But he does not want to move. “I love Komi, the culture, the history of the republic, my native Komi language. This is definitely my place, and I do not want to move only because someone represses me for my political views. I want to help my small native people develop,” he underlined.