Q&A: Does nature have a role in national security?

Penn State

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UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The security of every nation faces an increasingly severe and frequent threat: disruptions to nature. According to Bradley J. Cardinale, professor in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management in the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences, disrupted ecosystems can lead to increased risk for food security, water availability, health and well-being, as well as crime.  

Cardinale, along with collaborators J. Emmett Duffy, marine biologist and chief scientist for the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, and Rod Schoonover, ecological security expert who was a former director for the U.S. National Intelligence Council and adjunct professor in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, published an assessment of 27 case studies on how disrupted ecosystems can heighten risks of societal unrest and political instability, ultimately threatening national security, in the journal Nature-Based Solutions.  

In the Q&A below, Cardinale discussed nature’s role in national security, as well as how governments can best protect against ecological disruptions. 

Q: What is nature’s role in national security?  

Cardinale: We have long known that ecosystems and the creatures that live in them provide goods and services to people. These have been referred to as “ecosystem services” or “nature’s benefits to people.” Examples include provisions like food, wood and water; mitigating impacts of climate and disease; cultural benefits, such as recreation; and support for other life-support processes, like nutrient cycling.  

In this paper, we extend these concepts to the scale of entire countries by looking at how nature influences the ability of a nation to protect its citizens, institutions and interests from domestic and foreign threats. We draw explicit links between biological forms of global change that disturb ecosystems — what we call ecological disruptions — and increased risk in five areas of national security: food security, water scarcity, health security, protection from natural disasters and environmental crime. For each aspect, we show how ecological disruptions increase social and political stress that, in turn, undermine national security.  

Q: What are ecological disruptions, and how are they caused? How do they impact national security?  

Cardinale: Ecological disruptions are intense, rapid changes to the natural or semi-natural environment that significantly alter the structure, function and biodiversity of ecosystems. Ecological disruptions are often caused by humans, such as when our activities degrade or destroy ecosystems or threaten the species that live in them. 

In this paper, we consider five types of ecological disruption, including habitat loss, overharvesting, pest and disease outbreaks, invasive species, and biodiversity loss. We discuss how these ecological disruptions generate social and political stress, as well as provide 27 well-documented case studies showing how disruptions lead to mass migrations of people, border breaches, violent protests, regional conflict, even warfare. 

Our case studies include some well-known examples like the Cod Wars that occurred after overharvesting of cod led commercial trawlers to ignore international boundaries to fish for declining stocks. The result was a military conflict between Iceland and Britain. Examples of other case studies we review include deforestation exacerbating drought and water scarcity leading to violent protests in South America, invasive species causing crop failures and famine leading to mass migration and border breaches in Africa, mismanagement of wildlife causing pandemics of infectious disease that have led to civil disorder and violent protests globally, and illegal logging and wildlife poaching that has funded drug cartels, terrorist organizations and crime syndicates in several regions around the world.   

Q: How can people protect against ecological disruptions?  

Cardinale: It would be easy to suggest that individuals can protect against ecological disruptions by conserving and restoring nature. But this recommendation would be woefully inadequate due to a mismatch in scale. The ecological disruptions we are talking about — and the implications these disruptions have for security — are national and international in scale. As such, addressing the problem requires intervention by whole governments. 

We argue in this paper that governments should build and protect natural infrastructure in the same way they build and protect physical infrastructure. Governments already understand the important role of physical infrastructure like energy grids, transportation and communications networks, and water and food systems for national security. Indeed, we go to great lengths to protect physical infrastructure from bad actors and enemies during a conflict. In contrast, most governments are just beginning to appreciate the important role of natural infrastructure — the ecosystems and biological communities that are required to meet basic human needs and prevent ecological disruptions. 

Unfortunately, just as many nations are coming to appreciate the role of nature in maintaining natural security, others are actively dismantling the agencies, scientific expertise and investments necessary to understand changes in, and therefore safeguard, critical natural infrastructure. Weakening these institutions has the potential to undermine a nation’s ability to meet the basic needs of its citizens, fueling grievances that erode trust in government and heighten instability within and among nations.  

Q: What’s next for your work in this area?  

Cardinale: There are two directions we are going at present. First, we are trying to gather more examples of how nature impacts national security. If we can get a more case studies, including a more diverse representation of national security impacts, then we can transition into the next phase of quantitative data analysis where we determine which aspects of nature most impact security and compare the role of nature to other drivers of national security. 

Second, we are building a community of practitioners who will work together at the intersection of nature and national security. There are many biologists and ecologists who already think about how ecosystems provide goods and services to humanity. But these folks rarely extend the benefits of nature to entire nations. At the same time, there are individuals who work in positions that oversee national security and appreciate that global change can alter our security forecasts. However, they don’t often talk with biologists who understand which ecosystems and species are key service providers. Getting these two groups to talk and work together will go a long way towards advancing our understanding of how nature influences national security.   

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Journal

Nature-Based Solutions

DOI

10.1016/j.nbsj.2026.100330 

Article Title

Nature’s role in national security

Article Publication Date

1-Jun-2026

Host of positive ‘tipping points’ can regenerate nature

University of Exeter

A host of positive “tipping points” can spark rapid nature recovery, a leading expert says.

Action to protect and restore nature must accelerate radically to meet global goals for 2030 and beyond.

Writing in the journal Nature Sustainability, Professor Tim Lenton says positive tipping points are key to achieving this.

He highlights potential tipping points – moments when a small change triggers a rapid, often irreversible transformation – in nature, human societies and areas where the two combine.

“The destruction and degradation of the natural world pose an existential threat,” said Professor Lenton, of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter.  

“We are already crossing or approaching several dangerous ecological tipping points, including the dieback of warm-water coral reefs and the Amazon rainforest.

“But just as human activity can drive negative tipping, we can bring about positive tipping points to spark large-scale nature recovery.”

While addressing climate change is vital for protecting nature, specific social and ecological tipping points can regenerate ecosystems, spread nature-positive activities, and reduce drivers of nature loss.

Many governments are signed up to international goals to regenerate nature – such as protecting 30% by 2030 – but progress is going far too slowly. Crucially, triggering positive tipping points can help achieve the necessary acceleration in progress.

Positive tipping points offer opportunities for businesses who are trying to work out how they can have a positive impact on nature, and for finance companies who are trying to identify investable opportunities in nature regeneration.

Professor Lenton identifies four key types of positive tipping point for nature:

• Ecosystem recovery: Numerous degraded ecosystems have been positively tipped into a regenerated state. For example, reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone National Park in 1995-6 likely led to a positive tipping point of riverbank vegetation recovery, which in turn boosted the numbers of scavengers, songbirds, bison and beavers. In Pacific kelp forests, the removal of sea otters caused sea urchin populations to escalate and kelp to collapse. Sea otter recovery (or their reintroduction, for example in Alaska) tipped kelp forest recovery.
• Social-ecological systems: Effective management of shared resources can lead to positive tipping points. For example, in pelagic (open sea) fisheries, positive tipping can be triggered by enforcing a Maximum Sustainable Yield – the highest yield that can be taken without significantly affecting reproduction. This typically requires short-term reduction in fishing, with strong enforcement. This has produced positive tipping points for recovery of plaice and hake stocks in the North Sea. In coastal fisheries, Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) can help positively tip fish stock recovery, by providing safe spawning areas and “spillover” of fish into the surrounding waters.
• Nature-positive initiatives: The social spread of nature-positive initiatives can also become “self-propelling” – an important feature of a tipping point. For example, the small-group tree planting initiative (TIST) originated in Tanzania and spread rapidly in Kenya and Uganda – and to India – aided by a structure designed to maximise autonomy and social learning, and by providing multiple benefits to adopters, including carbon payments. In another example, success on Apo Island inspired the spread of marine reserves in the Philippines via the “reinforcing feedback” of social learning.
• Consumption behaviour: Positive tipping points in patterns of consumption could reduce key drivers of nature loss. The most important driver of nature loss is agricultural expansion, primarily due to increased meat consumption. However, in several rich nations that overconsume meat, there have been significant recent reductions in meat consumption. Social norms and the quality, diversity and availability of meat-free options are key to enabling a positive tipping point. Professor Lenton also highlights strong “balancing feedbacks” that are opposing dietary change. For example, in the EU, four times as much farming subsidy goes into animal products as plant ones.

Professor Lenton said a key research opportunity is to test which current systems may be approaching a positive tipping point – potentially inspiring action to trigger it.

He identifies three levers that could enable multiple positive tipping points: facilitating online collective learning among groups taking nature-positive action, properly valuing nature in economics, and tipping worldviews to “ecocentrism”.

On the latter, Professor Lenton said: “Changing the ethical and legal status of nature is a powerful practical step to underpin nature-positive action. Such a tipping point in paradigm could be the deepest leverage point for nature-positive system change.”

The article is entitled: “Positive tipping points for nature.”

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Journal

Nature Sustainability

DOI

10.1038/s41893-026-01803-0 

Article Title

Positive tipping points for nature.

Article Publication Date

27-Apr-2026

War squeezes global mining as diesel and acid supplies tighten

Bloomberg News | April 24, 2026 | 

Process of copper refinement in large electrolysis bathtub. Stock image.

From the Australian outback to Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the global mining industry is beginning to feel the effects of disruption caused by the war in Iran.

War-driven snarl-ups are starting to ripple through supply chains, squeezing access to key mining inputs while driving up costs to produce some of the world’s most sought-after metals. The biggest impacts are from diesel, the main fuel powering heavy equipment at mine sites, as well as sulfur, used in processing about a sixth of the world’s copper.

“The supply chain is breaking down,” Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. founder and co-chairman Robert Friedland told a conference in Switzerland Tuesday, warning that war’s impact on mining has barely started.

So far, there hasn’t been a significant impact on global metals output because big mining companies have been able to secure supplies and absorb higher costs. But smaller producers from Africa to Australia are starting to feel the pain as the conflict drags on. The longer the war continues, the greater the risks to an industry already strained by mining outages and project delays at a time of accelerating demand for critical minerals.

The Middle East accounts for about half the world’s seaborne sulfur and at least 10% of shipped diesel, according to data compiled by Goldman Sachs Group and Bank of America. Sulfur — and by extension, sulfuric acid — are vital inputs for a type of processing known as SX-EW, which accounts for 17% of copper supply, according to Goldman.

If war-related upheavals intensify, it could start eroding the 23 million tons of copper mined per year in a more meaningful way and drive up already elevated metal prices even more. Futures on the London Metal Exchange are more than 40% higher than a year ago, and in January touched a record high above $14,500 a ton.

Congo — the world’s No. 2 copper producer and biggest supplier of cobalt, a battery metal — is particularly exposed because most of its sulfur comes from the Middle East and its output is unusually reliant on SX-EW plants. SX-EW uses acid to leach copper and cobalt out of certain types of ore, without needing smelters that actually generate acid as a byproduct.

Securing new sulfur supply could take almost two months while inventories at some facilities cover only a month, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. Some smaller cobalt and copper operators are slowing output amid difficulties getting affordable sulfur and spiking diesel costs, said the person.

Local sulfur prices have surged to about $1,200 a ton, about double from before the Iran war, according to pricing agency Argus. Some local buyers said smaller parcels even reached $1,400 a ton as copper plants are eager to stock up.

If supply chain delays extend through June, Goldman analysts estimate the Central African nation could curtail about 125,000 tons of output this year.

In Zambia, a combination of disrupted supply from local smelters and the Middle East war means “sulfuric acid is a worry,” said Jonathan Morley-Kirk, finance director at Jubilee Metals Group Plc. The copper company has explored pooling purchases with other operators, he said on a recent earnings call.

Mining executives may offer a clearer read on disruption threats in the coming weeks as companies report quarterly results.

Adding to the Middle East’s sulfur disruptions, China has signaled plans to halt exports from May of acid produced as a byproduct of copper and zinc smelting. Beijing’s curbs could remove about 1.5 million tons of acid through December, or roughly a tenth of the seaborne market, according to Goldman.

That poses a particular challenge for Chile, which sourced about 30% of its acid from China last year. If restrictions hold through year-end, as much as 200,000 tons of acid-dependent metal output would be put at risk in the top copper-producing nation — or about 1% of global supply, Goldman analysts wrote in an April 21 note.

To be sure, Chilean copper giant Codelco produces most of the acid it consumes and locked in prices before the war, though it is closely monitoring suppliers’ ability to deliver, chief commercial officer Braim Chiple said. US copper producer Freeport-McMoRan Inc. is similarly hedged, though chief executive officer Kathleen Quirk said in an interview that acid supply is “on the list of things to worry about.”

While sulfur markets are tightening, traders say buyers are still able to secure alternative cargoes.

“The sulfur is there for those who can pay the price,” Graeme Train, Trafigura’s global head of metals and minerals analysis, said Monday at the FT Commodities Global Summit.

Some nickel producers in Indonesia have sourced sulfur from Central Asia and Canada, albeit at sharply higher prices, said a person familiar with the situation.

China’s Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Co. said it doesn’t rule out cutting output if sulfur supply remains tight. The company, which uses sulfur at some of its Indonesian nickel plants, was “caught off guard” after prices surged, chairman Chen Xuehua said on a Monday earnings call.

In Australia, Lynas Rare Earths Ltd. is confident it can get enough sulfuric acid for its domestic processing plants and Malaysian refinery, but the big effect is prices, CEO Amanda Lacaze said on a Monday investor briefing. “We expect that sulfuric acid alongside some other transport cost increases, etc., will make it a little more challenging for us in terms of costs” this quarter.

Diesel disruptions are also pushing up mining costs, particularly for open-pit operations in copper, coal, iron ore and hard-rock lithium. Major producers such as Codelco and Antofagasta Plc estimate the impact at about a 5% increase in production costs — manageable given strong margins.

The bigger risk in some regions is physical availability. Congo again stands out, as copper-cobalt mines rely on imported diesel hauled across long, complex supply routes.

“This fragmented and logistics-intensive supply chain makes diesel availability particularly constrained and costly in mining regions,” BofA analysts wrote in an April 17 note. “Fuel availability in the DRC is not merely a cost variable, but a critical operational constraint.”

Global fuel upheavals tightened diesel availability in Ethiopia, according to Akobo Minerals AB, prompting the Oslo-listed firm to temporarily scale back operations at its Segele project.

In Australia, diesel shortages have already affected some smaller miners, while major producers remain largely insulated: Rio Tinto Group said in its latest production report that operational impacts have been limited, though rising fuel prices are lifting costs.

Fuel constraints forced iron ore producer Fenix Resources Ltd. to curtail activity, reducing non-essential mining and haulage at its Western Australia operations, the company said last month. There are reports of difficulties in booking Indonesian coal shipments after June because of concerns over securing diesel supplies.

Some of the world’s largest mining companies, with operations from Southeast Asia to Latin America, are starting to warn investors of rising costs tied to the Middle East conflict.

Teck Resources Ltd. warned of higher fuel costs for its flagship Chilean copper mines Thursday in its earnings report. While the Vancouver-based company said it didn’t see a significant risk to fuel supply disruption, “there could be an amplified impact on costs at our Chilean operation due to the requirement for diesel imports.”

Freeport, which operates the massive Grasberg copper mine in Indonesia, lifted its 2026 cost estimates in part because prices for diesel and sulfuric acid have been highly volatile with significant regional dislocation.

The chairman of Chile’s state-owned Codelco, Maximo Pacheco, said the war’s impacts have become an unexpected headwind for the industry.

“Nobody expected this to happen,” he said in an interview. “Producing copper today is more and more difficult.”

Copper king Chile faces acid supply crunch as China exports dry up

Reuters | April 22, 2026 |

Lomas Bayas copper mine in Chile. (Image courtesy of Glencore.)

China’s exports of sulphuric acid to Chile dwindled to zero in March, Chinese customs data show, leaving the world’s top copper producing nation facing a squeeze on supplies of the chemical used to make around half of its refined metal.

The war in the Middle East has caused a sulphur supply crunch, and China is reportedly planning to ban sulphuric acid exports from May to ensure its domestic market – notably the fertilizer industry – does not face a shortage.

But shipments to Chile, which was China’s biggest overseas acid market in 2025 and took almost one-third of its exports, have already dried up, with no acid departing for the South American country last month for the first time since July 2023.

In comparison, China exported 31,870 metric tons of acid to Chile in February 2026 and 151,268 tons in March 2025.

Sulphuric acid is a byproduct of smelting copper ore. But it is also used to produce refined copper via another process known as leaching.

Since Chile does not produce enough acid of its own, it depends on imports, 37% of which come from China, according to HSBC. It thus partly relies on Chinese smelters that purchase its ore to send back the acid for leaching so it can make more metal.

But relations between mining companies and China’s smelters have been strained recently as tight ore supplies have meant treatment charges – the fees paid to process ore – have been heavily in the miners’ favour.

Copper output at risk

“If sulphur supply tightens, acid availability becomes more constrained and expensive,” Alexis Urbani, a sulphuric acid trader with Incotrade Chile, told Reuters.

“That can directly impact cathode production, especially for operations relying on secondary sulphides or lower-grade ores, where acid consumption is higher.”

Morgan Stanley said in a note this month that Chile’s 1.1 million tons of annual leached copper production could be at risk from a Chinese acid export ban. That is over half Chile’s refined copper output of about 2 million tons and one-fifth of its total copper contained production of 5.5 million tons.

“Any impact on output may take time to emerge, however, as leaching is a relatively slow process,” the bank said, estimating that imports from China account for 20% of acid supply for Chilean copper leaching.

China’s overall sulphuric acid exports held steady month-on-month at 143,381 tons in March, with shipments to the Philippines, India and Indonesia all rising sharply.

Chile is particularly vulnerable to supply fluctuations, Bold Baatar – chief commercial officer at Rio Tinto, co-owner of the country’s giant Escondida mine – told a conference on Wednesday.

“The most exposed country is Chile in terms of need for sulphuric acid imports, because that’s where the highest amount of leached copper is,” he said.

(By Tom Daly, Divya Rajagopal, Amy Lv and Polina Devitt; Editing by Joe Bavier)

The UN Reform – OpEd

 April 26, 2026 

By Dr Jose Mario Bautista Maximiano

The United Nations was founded to subordinate raw power to law and to protect vulnerable peoples through collective institutions. When the Security Council’s veto repeatedly blocks action in crises, the UN’s protective promise frays and smaller states are left exposed. 

Institutional paralysis has real human costs: the 1994 failure to stop mass slaughter in Rwanda, the contested legal and political aftermath of the 2003 Iraq intervention, the 2016 arbitral ruling in favor of the Philippines over maritime claims, and the Security Council impasses around the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and repeated Gaza crisis resolutions all show how legal clarity and moral urgency can be nullified by geopolitics. These episodes demonstrate that reform must both preserve multilateral engagement and create enforceable checks when collective inaction would permit mass harm or unlawful territorial seizure.

First, a proposal of a charter amendment with Humanity Clause. This proposal replaces absolute veto immunity with a General Majority Threshold (GMT) override, which means a two thirds General Assembly affirmative vote can overturn a permanent member’s negative vote when the Humanity Clause is satisfied. 

The Humanity Clause requires a certification by the Secretary General that the proposed measure responds to imminent or ongoing gross violations of human dignity or the common good, grounded in independent legal or investigative findings. Scope is limited to mass atrocity prevention, humanitarian access, and enforcement of binding legal rulings; routine political disputes remain within the Council’s ordinary procedures. Overrides are subject to a 12 month sunset review to prevent misuse.

The GMT override preserves incentives for great power participation while giving the wider membership a constitutional remedy when a veto shields grave harm. Requiring Secretary General certification tied to independent findings (for example, an ICC indictment, a UN commission report, or an arbitral award) anchors the override in law and evidence rather than transient political majorities. The two thirds threshold balances urgency with broad legitimacy and reduces the risk that the mechanism becomes a tool of factional politics.

Second proposal: Red Line trigger for automatic sanctions. Another proposed Charter amendment seeks to establish a Red Line: a final legal determination by an independent international tribunal or a UN mandated commission that an act constitutes genocide, unlawful annexation, or an illegal invasion automatically activates a pre agreed sanctions package coordinated by the UN Secretariat and implemented by Member States within 30 days. The Charter will annex a menu of tiered measures—travel bans, asset freezes, targeted trade restrictions—plus humanitarian exemptions and a rapid compliance review process.

Operational clarity triggers must include final ICC convictions, binding arbitral awards, or conclusive UN commission findings. Sanctions are standardized and published in advance to remove ad hoc bargaining; implementation is monitored by a neutral compliance unit. The automaticity of the Red Line removes the need for repeated Security Council votes in the face of clear legal rulings, preventing vetoes from nullifying consequences for the gravest breaches of international law.

Finally, a proposal to preventing immediate exit by a superpower. A credible reform must deter unilateral withdrawal. Amend the Charter to require a two year notice period for withdrawal and to submit outstanding disputes and obligations to binding arbitration before exit takes effect. During the notice period, certain membership privileges—such as participation in specialized agency governance and access to treaty benefits—remain conditional on continued compliance. 

Politically, embed reform within broad coalitions of states, regional organizations, and civil society so that exit carries immediate diplomatic and economic costs; history shows that even powerful states rarely abandon multilateral platforms entirely because the practical benefits of membership (diplomatic reach, treaty regimes, agency services) are difficult to replicate unilaterally. 

Needless to say, build redundancy into global governance: strengthen regional enforcement mechanisms and treaty networks so that a single state’s withdrawal cannot wholly paralyze collective responses.

Implementation and safeguards. Adoption should proceed through a phased protocol: pilot the GMT override and Red Line in a set of pre agreed scenarios, evaluate outcomes after two years, and then incorporate lessons into a permanent Charter amendment. Safeguards must prevent politicization: require independent evidentiary thresholds for triggers, limit the override’s scope to the gravest threats to human dignity, and maintain judicial review of procedural compliance. Transparency—public publication of certifications, triggers, and sanctions lists—will be essential to legitimacy.

A caveat on implementation is necessary. These amendments will not be a quick fix; they require phased adoption, sustained coalition building among mid sized and Global South states, and careful legal harmonization to avoid unintended consequences. Expect initial resistance from entrenched interests and the need for pilot applications—limited to clear, high evidence scenarios—before full Charter incorporation. 

Operationally, the Humanity Clause and Red Line depend on robust, impartial fact finding (ICC indictments, UN commissions, arbitral awards) and on the Secretary General’s institutional capacity; where those mechanisms are weak, the system must invest in investigative resources and judicial support rather than shortcutting standards. Automatic sanctions must be narrowly tailored, pre annexed, and include humanitarian carve outs and an expedited judicial review to prevent misuse or wrongful economic harm. 

Finally, political safeguards—sunset reviews, transparency requirements, and regional enforcement backstops—are essential to prevent politicization and to ensure that the new rules strengthen, rather than fracture, multilateral cooperation.

Ex-Philippine president Duterte to stand trial at ICC over deadly ‘war on drugs’

The International Criminal Court on Thursday confirmed crimes against humanity charges against former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, paving the way for a landmark trial. Duterte is accused of murder and attempted murder linked to his anti-drugs campaign, in a major test for the court amid mounting political pressure.


Issued on: 23/04/2026 
By: FRANCE 24

A poster of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte held by a relative of victims of his anti-drug war crackdown on April 22, 2026. © Aaron Favila, AP

Former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte will face trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) after judges on Thursday confirmed charges of crimes against humanity over his so-called "war on drugs".

Pre-trial judges "unanimously confirmed all the charges ... against Rodrigo Roa Duterte and committed him to trial," the ICC said in a statement.

Duterte will be the first Asian former head of state to face trial at the ICC, which prosecutes individuals for the world's worst crimes such as war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The court faces the most difficult time in its 24-year history, with the United States sanctioning key judges and officials after the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israel's leader over the Gaza war.

It is unclear whether the 81-year-old Duterte will attend his trial.

His defence team says he is too weak mentally to follow proceedings and he did not appear at a week of hearings to assess the validity of the charges.

Philippines: Ten years after Duterte's war on drugs, families fight for justice

The only time he has been seen since his arrest was an initial appearance via video, where he seemed confused and tired, his speech barely audible.

The pre-trial judges concluded there were "substantial grounds to believe that Duterte is responsible for the crimes against humanity of murder and attempted murder", the ICC statement said.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

 

Samsung employees protest and threaten strike, demanding share of profits amid AI boom

Copyright AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon

By Pascale Davies & AP

Published on 23/04/2026 - EURONEWS

Record profits but angry workers: thousands of Samsung workers threatening strike over bonus dispute.

Thousands of Samsung Electronics workers protested on Thursday at its chip complex in South Korea, demanding higher bonuses and threatening to strike as the company sees record profits due to artificial intelligence driving up memory chip demand.

Holding signs and waving banners, the workers gathered at a factory compound in Pyeongtaek, amid a heavy police presence, shouting “make compensation transparent and remove maximum limits on bonuses!”

Union representatives put attendance at around 40,000 members, though police did not state an official count.

The protest unfolded the same day that Samsung's main competitor, SK Hynix, reported its best-ever quarterly results — record revenue and operating profit for the first three months of the year, which the company credited to soaring global investment in data centres and AI infrastructure that drove up the demand for its memory chips.

Members of the Samsung Electronics labor union shout slogans during a rally demanding higher bonuses at its computer chip complex in Pyeongtaek, South Korea AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon

Samsung, which together with SK Hynix produces about two-thirds of global memory chips, forecast earlier this month that its first-quarter operating profit would reach a record 57.2 trillion won (€33 billion).

Samsung’s union, which represents about 74,000 workers, says the company has failed to offer adequate compensation despite its strong performance. It has rejected the management’s proposal for bonuses of restricted stock and called for removing caps on bonuses.

If talks with management break down, the union has threatened an 18-day strike beginning May 21, estimating it would cost the company over 1 trillion won (€578 million) per day.

“We won’t stop this fight until our fair demands are met,” Choi Seung-ho, a union leader, said through a loudspeaker from atop a crane-mounted structure.

South Korea’s semiconductor makers have benefited from the AI boom but the war in the Middle East has clouded the future outlook, disrupting supplies of key materials such as helium that are crucial to chipmaking and pushing up energy costs.

But in a conference call on Thursday, Woo Hyun Kim, SK Hynix’s chief financial officer, said the company is closely monitoring the conflict but does not expect a meaningful impact on production.

Pentagon Vs. Anthropic: The Battle Over AI In Autonomous Weapons And What It Means For Congress – Analysis

 

April 22, 2026 
By Kelley M. Sayler
Congressional Research Service (CRS).


On February 27, 2026, President Donald J. Trump directed federal agencies to “IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of [American AI company] Anthropic’s technology.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (who is now using “Secretary of War” as a “secondary title” under Executive Order (E.O.) 14347 dated September 5, 2025) subsequently directed the Department of Defense (DOD, now using “Department of War” as a secondary designation under E.O. 14347) to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk to national security; bar defense contractors, suppliers, and partners from working with Anthropic; and describe an up-to-six-month period of transition away from Anthropic products.

This designation follows a reportedly months-long dispute between DOD and Anthropic over DOD use of Anthropic products, including Claude, the company’s generative AI model. On March 9, Anthropic filed a civil complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and a petition for reviewin the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit challenging these directives. While the district court issued a preliminary injunction in favor of Anthropic on March 26, the court of appeals denied Anthropic’s motion for a stay on April 8, thus undoing the lower court’s injunction.

Some lawmakers have called for a resolution to the disagreement and for Congress to act to set rules for the department’s use of AI and/or autonomous weapon systems.

 
Background

In July 2025, DOD announced that it had awarded contracts to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI for up to $200 million each “to accelerate Department of Defense (DoD) adoption of advanced AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges.” Although DOD has not publicly outlined the full range of use cases for these companies’ AI models, Anthropic has stated that Claude “is reportedly the Department’s most widely deployed and used frontier AI model.” Anthropic has further statedits models are used “across the Department of War and other national security agencies for mission-critical applications, such as intelligence analysis, modeling and simulation, operational planning, cyber operations, and more.” Although Anthropic’s usage policy prohibits use of its models to incite violence or to develop or design weapons, reports indicate that Claude was used in the January 2026 operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

According to reporting, Anthropic inquired about DOD’s use of Claude, generating concerns within the department that Anthropic might not approve of certain use cases and, therefore, might attempt to limit DOD use of its models. As a result, the Pentagon reportedly requested that Anthropic—and other AI companies—allow use of AI models for “all lawful purposes.” While Anthropic was reportedly “willing to adapt its usage policies for the Pentagon,” the company was, given its assessment of “what today’s technology can safely and reliably do,” unwilling to allow two use cases: mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapon systems. In explaining his decision to deny the Pentagon’s request for “full, unrestricted access to Anthropic’s models,” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei stated that autonomous weapon systems “may prove critical for our national defense. But today, frontier AI systems are simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons.”

DOD is not publicly known to be using Claude—or any other frontier AI model—within autonomous weapon systems. DOD Directive (DODD) 3000.09, “Autonomy in Weapon Systems,” outlines the approval process for developing and deploying autonomous weapon systems and identifies requirements for their use.

What Are Autonomous Weapon Systems?

DODD 3000.09 defines autonomous weapon systems as “weapon system[s] that, once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by [a human] operator.” This concept of autonomy is also known as human out of the loop or full autonomy. The directive contrasts such systems with human-supervised, or human on the loop, autonomous weapon systems, in which operators have the ability to monitor and halt a weapon’s target engagement. Another category is semiautonomous, or human in the loop, weapon systems that “only engage individual targets or specific target groups that have been selected by [a human] operator.”

DODD 3000.09 requires all systems, including autonomous weapon systems, be designed to “allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force.” Such judgment does not require manual human “control” of the weapon system but rather broader human involvement in decisions about how, when, where, and why the weapon will be employed (i.e., a human must assess the operational environment and decide to deploy the weapon, which can then operate autonomously). This involvement includes a human determination that the weapon will be used “with appropriate care and in accordance with the law of war, applicable treaties, weapon system safety rules, and applicable rules of engagement.” The requirement for “human judgment over the use of force” does not mean that such systems are operating with a human in the loop.

Related Legislation and Issues for Congress

The department updated DODD 3000.09 in January 2023 and later that year, Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 (NDAA; P.L. 118-31). Section 251 requires that the Secretary notify the defense committees of any changes to DODD 3000.09 within 30 days. The Secretary is directed to provide a description of the modification and an explanation of the reasons for the modification. Section 1066 of the FY2025 NDAA (P.L. 118-159) additionally requires the Secretary to submit to the committees, annually through December 31, 2029, a “comprehensive report on the approval and deployment of lethal autonomous weapon systems by the United States” through December 31, 2029. Congress has not legislated on the department’s use of AI models or their reliability; some Members have introduced related legislation (e.g., S. 1394 and H.R. 2894, 118th Congress; S. 4113, 119th Congress).


Should Congress decide that more oversight is needed, it may codify the requirements of DODD 3000.09 or consider additional notification requirements for DOD’s use of autonomous weapon systems or AI models. Congress may also restrict funds for the development and/or use of autonomous weapon systems, or for certain use cases of AI models by DOD, should Congress deem such uses pose an unacceptable level of risk at the current stage of technological development.

About the author: Kelley M. Sayler, Specialist in Advanced Technology and Global Security

Source: This article was published by the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) works exclusively for the United States Congress, providing policy and legal analysis to committees and Members of both the House and Senate, regardless of party affiliation. As a legislative branch agency within the Library of Congress, CRS has been a valued and respected resource on Capitol Hill for nearly a century.

AI Godfather Geoffrey Hinton Calls For Brakes On Runaway AI Development

April 23, 2026 
UN News
By Elma Okic

If AI is “a very fast car with no steering wheel” then regulation must provide one, insists Nobel laureate and Artificial Intelligence pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, the visionary scientist widely known as the “godfather” of the self-learning tech.

Speaking at the Digital World Conference (DWC): AI for Social Development – co-organized by the UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) – Professor Hinton stressed that rapid advances in AI must be guided more carefully to serve societies – rather than undermine them.

“If you ever went out with a car that had no brake, boy, you are in trouble if you go down a hill,” he told delegates. “But you’re in even more trouble if there’s no steering wheel.”

His remarks came during a busy week for AI policymaking, as governments and UN panels stepped up discussions on governance, inclusion and risk management, amid the growing integration of artificial intelligence across the global economy and society.

The haves and the have-nots

The pace of AI’s growth is staggering. According to UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD)’s Technology and Innovation Report 2025, the global AI market is projected to grow from $189 billion in 2023 to $4.8 trillion by 2033, an economy larger than Japan’s, built in a single decade.

Yet the capacity to build and shape it remains in the hands of just a few economies and firms, UNCTAD Acting Secretary‑General Pedro Manuel Moreno warned at the Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD), also meeting this week.

That concentration risks deepening global inequalities. Doreen Bogdan‑Martin, Secretary‑General of the UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU), pointed out that generative AI adoption in the industrialized ‘Global North’ is growing nearly twice as fast as in the developing ‘Global South’.

“Left unaddressed, this is a second great divergence – widening the gap between countries shaping artificial intelligence and those merely consuming it” – Ms. Bogdan‑Martin said, adding that gaps in infrastructure, investment and capacity cannot be closed by any single country or organization alone.

This week’s flurry of international activity on AI and digital technology in Geneva and beyond, reflects the international push to ensure that all countries can benefit and regulate Artificial Intelligence as it increasingly shapes our economies, societies and daily lives.

Distinct areas of discussion are becoming clear.

While the focus of the Commission on Science and Technology for Development is on global‑level digital policymaking, discussions at the AI For Social Development Conference underscored the need for transparent, accountable and rights‑based AI governance to address risks such as bias, opaque algorithms and having large volumes of data concentrated in the hands of just a privileged few massive corporations.

Participants at the World Conference – convened by UNRISD and international NGO, the World Digital Techology Academy – examined AI’s growing role in social protection, labour markets, education and the green energy transition, while stressing the importance of protecting vulnerable groups and ensuring the benefits of technological change are shared more fairly.

Data-driven approach

Any proposals for AI governance must be data-driven and this is the fundamental work of the UN’s Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, which convened its first in‑person meeting in Madrid on Wednesday.

Opening the Scientific Panel’s first in‑person meeting in Madrid, co-chair Maria Ressa explained the group’s mandate to provide an independent, scientific and authoritative assessment of how AI systems are shaping societies.

Ressa, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and campaigning Philippines journalist, warned that increasingly powerful AI tools are accelerating the undermining of democratic systems using “narrative warfare” in which falsehoods are manufactured and amplified at scale; the weakening of institutions such as the media and courts; and, ultimately, strategic corruption once accountability erodes.

Its findings will inform the discussions of another key UN AI initiative – the UN’s Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence Governance – which meets in July, also in Geneva.A worldwide discussion

The Scientific Panel’s findings which Ms. Ressa co-chairs with renowned Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio will inform the discussions of another key UN AI initiative – the UN’s Global Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence Governance – which meets in July, also in Geneva.

The Global Dialogue brings together all 193 United Nations Member States, the private sector, civil society, academia and the tech world to share best practices and build common approaches to AI governance.

“The policy conversation will be science and evidence-based, pooled perspectives, scientific perspectives from a multidisciplinary lens from across the world,” says the UN Special Envoy for Digital and Emerging Technologies, Amandeep Gill.

“This is how policy discussions should be, and the UN is very proud to facilitate this first ever such confluence of science and policy in a fast-paced emerging technology.”

AI Voices Are Easier To Understand Than Human Voices

April 22, 2026 
By Eurasia Review

Synthetic voices are increasingly a part of our lives, from digital assistants like Siri and Alexa to automated telemarketers and answering machines. With the expansion of generative AI, a new type of synthetic voice has been developed: voice clones, which can recreate a facsimile of a person’s voice from only a few seconds of recorded speech.

In JASA, published on behalf of the Acoustical Society of America by AIP Publishing, a pair of researchers from University College London and the University of Roehampton evaluated the intelligibility of humans and voice clones. They found that voice clones are easier than humans to understand in noisy environments.

Voice clones differ from traditional synthetic voices in the amount of sampling they require. Synthetic voices like Siri require a voice actor to spend hours in a recording booth. In contrast, a voice clone can be made from as little as 10 seconds of speech, significantly expanding the number of potential voices as well as the number of potential applications.

Researchers Patti Adank and Han Wang specialize in studying human perception of unclear speech and were fascinated by the idea of machine-replicated speech. A key question they were looking to answer was just how easy voice clones are for the average person to understand. They suspected that voice clones would simply be poor representations of actual human voices and that people would struggle to understand them. What they found could not be more different.

“I thought initially that voice clones would be less intelligible because they were unfamiliar,” said Adank. “I found they were up to 20% more intelligible, which was quite shocking. A small part of our paper is talking about that experiment, and then a large part is me and my collaborator frantically trying to find out what it is that makes those voice clones more intelligible.”

The duo initially presented volunteers with human voices and voice clones, asking them to rate their intelligibility. After finding that voice clones were consistently rated easier to understand, they repeated the experiment with elderly volunteers to determine if being hard-of-hearing alters the effect; with American volunteers — the original cohort was British — to judge if the accent plays a role; and with a filter designed to mimic cochlear implants. In every case, voice clones emerged victorious.

After examining over 100 acoustic measurements, Adank believes the only way to solve the mystery is to work with collaborators who specialize in text-to-speech systems to adapt an existing open-source cloning system.

“I am now going to try and recreate [the effect] by studying how synthesizers work and how they use digital signal processing to generate those voices, just to get a bit of a handle on this,” said Adank.

 

Meet ACE: The AI robot can beat human table tennis pros

By Alexandra Leistner

Published on 23/04/2026 - 

A new robot developed by Sony can now take on top table tennis players, highlighting how quickly artificial intelligence is advancing into complex human skills.

At the start of this week, a robot beat human runners in a half-marathon in Beijing. Now, another one can apparently outplay table tennis professionals. Is this how it begins - machines quietly overtaking us, one task at a time?

The answer is yes - and no. In a new study, a robot built by Japanese electronics giant Sony has beaten professional players. But the features that make this possible are anything but human-like. The robot, called “Ace,” has a single arm with eight joints and uses its nine camera eyes to track the ball’s logo and detect its spin.

How did it get so good?

One thing humans and robot arms have in common is the need for training. Simply programming a robot to play table tennis is not enough, Sony AI researcher Peter Dürr, co-author of the study published Wednesday in Nature, explains. “You have to learn how to play from experience.”

Ace was trained using an AI method known as reinforcement learning. According to Sony, the study shows how advances in artificial intelligence can not only help to make robots faster but also much more agile

Sony set up a full-size Olympic table tennis court at its Tokyo headquarters, where official rules were applied, Dürr said. Several athletes said they were impressed by how good Ace was.

The experiment was conducted on a standard-sized court, and official table tennis rules were applied.

The outcome shows that a machine can achieve human, expert-level play in a common competitive sport, interacting with skilled human athletes, “a longstanding milestone for AI and robotics research”, according to Sony.

The technology behind the speed and agility

The goal wasn’t just speed. Researchers could have built a machine that catches the ball and plays it back faster than a human can react to. But the idea was to build a robot that would actually play the game - and be on as level a playing field as possible, said Michael Spranger, president of Sony AI.

The speed, reach, and performance of the machine are compared to those of a skilled athlete who trains at least 20 hours a week. “The goal is to have some level of comparability, some level of fairness to the human, and win really at the level of AI and the level of decision-making and tactics and, to some extent, skill”, Spranger said.

After submitting their paper for review before it was published in Nature, Sony’s team kept improving the robot. They said Ace became faster, played longer rallies, and moved more aggressively closer to the table. In December, it faced four highly skilled players and beat all but one.

Another professional player, Kinjiro Nakamura, who competed in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, said he saw Ace make a shot that seemed impossible for a human. But now that the robot has done it, he added, it suggests a human might be able to do it too.