The Art Of The Deal With Death Of Principles – OpEd

Image: Generated by Grok

October 12, 2026

By Patial RC


Key Takeaways:

The article criticises President Trump for announcing a deal to facilitate Russian diesel exports and issuing a sanctions licence shortly after imposing broad Russia sanctions and threatening third-country buyers, arguing that selective exemptions undermine the moral and strategic consistency of energy pressure on Moscow.

Simultaneously calling for Ukraine to replace President Zelensky is portrayed as aligning uncomfortably with Putin’s long-standing demands and as external political interference that treats an elected wartime leader as a negotiable obstacle rather than respecting Ukrainian sovereignty and constitutional processes.

The piece concludes that prioritising short-term fuel-price or electoral gains over durable deterrence risks rewarding aggression, eroding American credibility and converting sanctions and sovereignty into bargaining chips rather than principles.

There is a fundamental difference between a statesman who negotiates peace and a businessman who treats peace as another transaction. The former seeks a settlement that respects sovereignty, deters aggression and provides lasting security. The latter measures success by the immediate gains, the headlines generated and the political advantage secured. The distinction has become increasingly relevant to President Trump’s handling of the Russia–Ukraine war.

The latest controversy is extraordinary. After the US spent years using economic pressure against Moscow and threatening countries that continued to purchase Russian oil, President Trump has announced a deal with President Putin to facilitate Russian diesel exports. Almost simultaneously, he has called for Ukraine to replace President Zelensky, accusing him of failing to make a deal with Russia. The developments, reported on 10 and 11 October 2026, have raised serious questions about the consistency of American policy towards the war.

What, then, should the world call a leader who threatens economic punishment for dealing with Russia, only to negotiate his own energy arrangement with Putin, while demanding that the leader resisting Russian aggression should leave office?


A ruthless negotiator? A transactional politician? Or a Dealmaker whose pursuit of advantage has begun to eclipse the ethical foundations of diplomacy? The most troubling answer may be that all three descriptions are relevant.
Sanctions for Others: Business for Self

Sanctions are not merely instruments of economic coercion. They are also political statements. When a government imposes restrictions on another country’s revenue because that revenue helps sustain a war, it asserts that certain conduct carries consequences. The credibility of that assertion depends upon consistency.

In September 2026, Trump signed a sweeping Russia sanctions law intended to increase economic pressure on Moscow over its continued war against Ukraine. The legislation also provided powers to impose substantial tariffs on leading importers of Russian oil and gas. The stated objective was to restrict the financial resources available to the Kremlin.

Yet, in October, Trump announced an arrangement with Putin to facilitate Russian diesel exports, with an initial shipment of more than 300,000 tones and further shipments reportedly planned. The US administration subsequently issued a six-month licence easing sanctions restrictions to accommodate the imports. The arrangements have attracted criticism from American lawmakers and Ukraine, with questions raised about its legal basis, strategic consequences and economic benefits.


If Russian energy revenue is sufficiently dangerous to justify punishing other countries for purchasing it, why should an American arrangement with Russia be treated as inherently different? The issue has been that every purchase of Russian fuel automatically finances a particular military operation. The issue is that energy exports generate revenue for the Russian state, while Russia continues its war. A sanctions policy cannot retain moral authority if its principles appear rigid when applied to others but flexible when the sanctioning power wants a commercial advantage.
Pressuring Ukraine

The second part of this controversy is even more disturbing. On 10 October, Trump declared that it was time for Ukraine to get a new president, “I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal, because he could have made many deals, and for some reason, he never does…That’s a war that should have never started, and I think it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president.”

Zelensky is hardly beyond criticism. Every wartime leader must be accountable for decisions, strategy and the human cost of conflict. Ukraine also faces difficult questions about military sustainability, governance and the conditions under which a negotiated settlement might be possible. However, accountability is not the same as externally imposed political replacement.

Ukraine’s constitutional arrangements, the will of its electorate and the realities of martial law cannot simply be brushed aside because a foreign president is dissatisfied with the pace of negotiations. Nor should the aggressor’s preferred political outcome become the benchmark against which the victim’s leadership is judged.


Putin has repeatedly questioned Zelensky’s democratic legitimacy because Ukraine has not held presidential elections during wartime. Trump’s call for a new Ukrainian president now creates an uncomfortable convergence between Washington’s rhetoric and Moscow’s long-standing political demands.

This does not prove that Trump is acting on Putin’s advice but it does, however, raise a legitimate question: why should the removal of Ukraine’s elected leader become a condition of diplomatic success when the central dispute concerns Russia’s invasion and Ukraine’s future security?

On 11 October, Zelensky indicated that he was prepared to organise elections if Russia agreed to a 60-day ceasefire. His position placed the question of elections within the practical requirements of security and democratic participation rather than accepting an externally imposed timetable.
The Temptation of Elections

Timing matters in politics. The American midterm elections are approaching, and fuel prices are a domestic political concern. Trump has linked Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries to diesel shortages and economic difficulties, while presenting Russian supplies as a possible contribution to easing those pressures.

It would be premature to declare, without conclusive evidence, that the arrangement was made solely to benefit Trump’s electoral prospects. Governments frequently negotiate energy agreements for multiple reasons, and the precise balance of motives is not publicly established.

Nevertheless, the political optics are damaging. An arrangement that offers Putin an opportunity to earn additional export revenue, while placing fresh pressure on Zelensky, can reasonably be interpreted as a troubling prioritisation of immediate American economic and political interests over the longer-term objective of deterring Russian aggression.

If lower fuel prices become a campaign advantage, what happens to the larger strategic question? Does Washington remain committed to limiting Moscow’s capacity to wage war, or does that commitment become negotiable whenever the domestic political arithmetic changes?

Foreign policy cannot be conducted entirely according to the next election cycle. The consequences of decisions taken today may shape European security for decades. A president may legitimately put American interests first. But national interest is not synonymous with short-term political advantage. The credibility of American commitments, the security of allies and the deterrence of future aggression are also American interests.

A settlement that pressures Ukraine to accept insecurity while allowing Russia to replenish its resources risks creating the conditions for renewed conflict. It could teach other revisionist powers that military aggression can eventually be rewarded if they endure sanctions long enough and exploit divisions among their opponents.
The Ethical Deficit and Diplomacy

What, then, should we call a dealmaker who appears willing to threaten others for doing business with Russia, yet negotiates an exception for himself, and then demands political change in Ukraine?


The answer need not rely on personal abuse. The more serious criticism is that such conduct risks display of deficit of ethical consistency.

A leader can urge another country to consider elections but should recognise the difference between democratic accountability and political interference. This is where Trump’s approach deserves its sharpest scrutiny. If sanctions are justified because Russian oil revenue helps sustain the war, an exemption demands a convincing explanation. If Ukrainian sovereignty is a principle worth defending, the removal of Ukraine’s president cannot casually become a negotiating objective. If peace is the priority, the terms must be judged by their durability and fairness, not merely by the speed with which they can be announced.
The World is Watching

For Europe, the stakes extend beyond the immediate war. For smaller countries, including those in Asia, the issue concerns the reliability of international rules. If sovereignty becomes conditional on the preferences of powerful leaders, the international system becomes more dangerous for states that lack the military and economic means to protect themselves.

India, too, has an interest in a stable international order, strategic autonomy and a realistic appreciation of energy security. It is that national interests are best protected through independent judgment, transparent reasoning and a clear understanding of the consequences of economic interdependence.

Trump may yet help produce a ceasefire or a negotiated settlement. That possibility should not be dismissed. But the measure of success will be whether the settlement prevents renewed aggression, protects Ukraine’s sovereignty and creates a credible basis for peace. It will not be enough to claim that a deal has been made.
The Tragedy of the Russia–Ukraine War

The tragedy of the Russia–Ukraine war is that millions of people live with consequences that political leaders can discuss in the abstract but cannot easily reverse. Soldiers die, civilians lose homes, families are displaced and national economies are damaged. Their suffering must not become a bargaining chip in a contest for political visibility or electoral advantage.

A dealmaker may pride himself on extracting concessions. A statesman must also consider what those concessions cost, who pays for them and what precedent they establish.

If sanctions are instruments of principle, they cannot become mere bargaining tokens. If sovereignty matters, it cannot be defended selectively. And if peace is the objective, it must be more than a convenient announcement timed to domestic political needs.


History will not judge this episode solely by the volume of diesel shipped, the movement of fuel prices or the headlines generated before the midterms. It will judge whether the choices made strengthened the prospects for a durable peace or weakened the restraints against further aggression and how will the world see the Americans!

A Dealmaker may be able to put a price on almost anything. A statesman must know that sovereignty, credibility and human lives cannot be treated as ordinary commodities. When sanctions become negotiable and an embattled nation’s elected leader is told to make way, the question is no longer whether a deal can be struck. It is whether the dealmaker has any principles left to defend.

About Patial RC
Patial RC is a retired Infantry officer of the Indian Army and possesses unique experience of serving in active CI Ops across the country and in Sri Lanka. Patial RC is a regular writer on military and travel matters in military professional journals. The veteran is a keen mountaineer and a trekker.
View all posts by Patial RC →

Russia And Ukraine’s New Theories Of Victory? – Analysis

October 3, 2026

By Patial RC


Key Takeaways:

The essay says the war’s “victory” test is endurance, not the next village: Russia hits Ukrainian energy, transport, and industry to break daily life; Ukraine hits Russian refineries, logistics, and defence plants to raise the cost of fighting.

It notes Russia held parliamentary elections in September 2026 while Ukraine’s October 2023 parliamentary and May 2024 presidential votes remain postponed, a gap Moscow uses on legitimacy, and that each side hopes the other’s public will tire first.

Neither is said to have a classical win; the cycle is strike, repair, adapt, and regenerate, so the outcome depends on which economy, industry, and political system wears out sooner.

The Russia-Ukraine war may be entering a new and more consequential phase—not because either side has found a way to win the war on the battlefield, but because the definition of victory itself is changing. The central question is no longer simply who can capture more territory, destroy more tanks or hold the next line of defence. Increasingly, it is becoming a contest over something more fundamental:Which side can destroy the other’s capacity to sustain a prolonged war before its own capacity is exhausted? This is pushing the conflict far beyond the trenches of close combat at the front lines.

Russia is increasingly targeting the foundations that allow Ukraine to function as a state to fight this war: energy, infrastructure, transport, industry, communications, economic activity and, ultimately, public resilience. Ukraine, unable to match Russia’s manpower and missile resources symmetrically, is increasingly targeting the foundations that allow Russia to wage war: refineries, energy infrastructure, logistics, military facilities and defence-industrial capacity. The emerging strategic equation is therefore stark:

Russia wants to make Ukraine unable to continue; Ukraine wants to make Russia unable to continue. Neither strategy requires the complete destruction of the opponent.Each requires only sufficient degradation to make continued war increasingly costly, politically difficult and strategically unsustainable. That is why the next decisive battles may take place hundreds of kilometres behind the front—at refineries, power stations, logistics hubs, defence factories, data centres and economic centres rather than in the trenches. The war is evolving from a contest of territorial attrition into a contest of national endurance.

Ukraine’s Theory: Make War Unaffordable to Russia

Unable to match Russia’s enormous missile and manpower resources symmetrically, Ukraine was the first to increasingly exploit its comparative advantages in drones, with precision strikes in depth, intelligence, electronic warfare and technological innovation. Its objective is to attack the war waging machinery in Russia’s depth areas.

Ukrainian strikes have increasingly targeted oil refineries, energy infrastructure, logistics, military facilities and defence-industrial assets deep inside Russia. Recent reporting indicates that attacks on Russian refineries have reduced fuel-processing capacity and contributed to shortages in some regions. Kyiv’s broader objective is to raise the economic cost of sustaining the war.


The logic is straight forward. If Ukraine cannot match the Russian army on the battlefield which is near impossible, it can attempt to make the Russian war effort more expensive. It requires Ukraine to degrade enough of the Russian system that maintaining the war becomes increasingly difficult and costly.This amounts to a form of strategic neutralization by the gradual erosion of the economic and industrial foundations supporting its military objectives. The underlying message is simple:

“Make the war unaffordable to Russia.”
Russia’s Counter-Theory

For much of the war, Russia’s strategy appeared centred on territorial conquest and attrition. Moscow expected sustained pressure along the front eventually to exhaust Ukrainian manpower and weaken Western support. But the campaign has acquired another dimension.

Russian missile and drone attacks reach deep into Ukraine, including Kyiv and other major urban and economic centres. Their consequences increasingly extend beyond immediate military targets to energy, transport, industry and economic activity.

The objective, therefore, is not simply to destroy Ukraine’s armed forces but to disrupt the wider system that enables Ukrainian society to function and the state to sustain a prolonged war. Moscow may not need to capture every important Ukrainian city if it can make those cities increasingly difficult to live and work in. A city repeatedly deprived of electricity, transport and communications becomes less productive. Businesses hesitate to invest. Workers leave. Infrastructure requires constant repair. Government expenditure rises while revenues decline.

Economic exhaustion. Population displacement. Infrastructure degradation. Declining morale. Political pressure. Russia may therefore be seeking to erode not merely Ukraine’s military strength but its capacity to function as a modern state under wartime conditions.


“Break Ukraine’s ability to function and fight.”


Russia is attacking Ukraine’s ability to live and function normally. Ukraine is attacking Russia’s ability to wage war economically.

Both are betting that the people will eventually ask: How long can this continue and how much longer can we afford to continue?

The war is increasingly becoming a contest of National Resilience.
The Psychological Battlefield

There is another dimension: Morale. Repeated Russian attacks appear intended not only to destroy infrastructure but also to demonstrate to Ukrainians that nowhere is completely safe.

That psychological effect becomes particularly significant when electricity, heating, transport and communications are repeatedly threatened. If Ukrainians begin to expect another cycle of blackouts, attacks and economic disruption every winter, Moscow may hope that the cumulative burden eventually produces pressure for a settlement.


The same dynamic is increasingly visible inside Russia. Ukrainian long-range drone attacks have brought the war closer to Russian cities and disrupted parts of everyday economic life. The psychological barrier separating the Russian population from the war has consequently become thinner.

The more each side attempts to make the other population feel the cost of war, the greater the possibility that the target population adapts rather than capitulates. The psychological battlefield is therefore becoming reciprocal. Each side is attempting to convince the other that the costs of continuing the war are becoming greater than the benefits.
The Political Battlefield: Elections and Legitimacy

Russia has demonstrated that it can conduct elections while the war continues. Its parliamentary elections were held in September 2026 despite the continuing conflict and Ukrainian drone attacks.For Moscow, holding elections provides an opportunity to demonstrate institutional continuity and project the image of a state capable of maintaining its political machinery despite the war.

Ukraine’s parliamentary election, due in October 2023, and presidential election, due in May 2024, have not been held. This creates an important political asymmetry: Russia is conducting elections while the war is going on and Ukraine is postponing elections. For Ukraine, the continued postponement creates an issue that Moscow can exploit politically and diplomatically.


Russia has incorporated Ukraine’s deferred elections into its narrative concerning the legitimacy of the Ukrainian leadership.
The Race Against Time

For both sides, time has become a weapon. Russia needs its military, economic and psychological pressure to accumulate faster than Ukraine and its Western partners can adapt.

Ukraine needs its long-range strike capabilities and domestic defence production to grow faster than Russia can regenerate its military capabilities. The financial dimension is critical.

Russia is devoting enormous resources to sustaining its war effort, while Ukraine remains heavily dependent on external financial and military assistance. Both sides therefore face the same fundamental calculation: how long can their economic systems continue absorbing wartime expenditure?

The answer will depend not only on the size of their economies but also on their ability to regenerate military equipment, maintain industrial production, repair damaged infrastructure and preserve political support.
From Victory to Coercion

This explains why the meaning of “Victory” has become increasingly complicated. Neither side has an easy path to a classical military victory. Russia has not achieved all of its maximal objectives. Ukraine has not restored all its territory through military force.

The central question is therefore ;Which side can create enough pressure on the other to make a negotiated settlement preferable to continued war?

Russian strikes provoke Ukrainian retaliation. Ukrainian deep strikes provoke Russian escalation. Each side presents the other’s attacks as justification for its own both imposing pain without becoming capable of imposing a decisive settlement.
The Emergence of a Prolonged War

This may be the most important evolution in the character of the conflict. The war is increasingly becoming a prolonged war of targeting infrastructure. The objective is no longer necessarily to destroy the enemy’s armed forces in one decisive campaign. It is to progressively weaken the economic, industrial, infrastructural and psychological foundations that allow those armed forces to continue fighting.


The central question now is: Not how much territory has been captured? But, how much national capacity remains available to sustain the conflict? This changes the meaning of strategic success.

A country can suffer extensive infrastructure damage yet continue fighting if it possesses sufficient external support, domestic resilience and the ability to regenerate its military capacity. The war is therefore increasingly becoming a contest between destruction and regeneration.
The Risk of Strategic Exhaustion

This creates a dangerous possibility: Strategic Exhaustionwithout political resolution. Neither side may need to defeat the other’s armed forces completely. It may be enough to make the cumulative cost of war increasingly difficult to sustain.

The cycle becomes: strike → retaliation → escalation → adaptation → regeneration → another strike.

New air defences appear. New drones are developed. Production is dispersed. Infrastructure is repaired. Alternative supply routes are established.
The Real Endgame

The coming phase may therefore be less about who captures the next village and more about whether either theory can alter the opponent’s strategic calculation.

If Russia succeeds in turning Ukrainian winters into prolonged crises of energy, mobility, employment and displacement, Moscow may conclude that time is working in its favour.

If Ukraine can expand its ability to strike Russia’s energy and defence-industrial infrastructure while maintaining external financial and military support, Kyiv may conclude that time is becoming a burden for Moscow.

The war has consequently entered a race of Strategic Exhaustion:

Russia seeks to exhaust Ukraine’s capacity to function. Ukraine seeks to exhaust Russia’s capacity to sustain the war. Both sides are becoming increasingly capable of imposing costs while remaining unable to impose a decisive settlement.

The decisive battle is therefore no longer taking place on the battlefield alone but is dangerously becoming a prolonged war of infrastructure targeting. It is being fought across energy networks, refineries, defence factories, logistics systems, financial resources, cities, political institutions and public resilience.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is thus evolving into something broader than a conventional war of territorial attrition. It is becoming a struggle to degrade the opponent’s capacity to function, fight and endure.


The new theories of victory are not simply theories of capturing territory but are theories of making the opponent’s war unsustainable.

And the battle that determines the eventual outcome may be fought not at the front, but in the economic, industrial, infrastructural and political depth of both nations.


About Patial RC
is a retired Infantry officer of the Indian Army and possesses unique experience of serving in active CI Ops across the country and in Sri Lanka. Patial RC is a regular writer on military and travel matters in military professional journals. The veteran is a keen mountaineer and a trekker.
View all posts by Patial RC →

Historian Dan Jones commissioned to write new James Bond story

05.10.2026, DPA

Photo: Christophe Gateau/dpa

Historian Dan Jones has been commissioned to write a new James Bond story to celebrate the National Year of Reading.

"All In" pays tribute to Bond creator Ian Fleming’s fourth novel, "Diamonds Are Forever," 70 years after its publication in 1956.

The new story was announced on October 5, known as "James Bond Day" as it was the date the first 007 film – "Dr No" – premiered in 1962.

The action of the new adventure finds Bond in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1954 as the British are leaving.

Jones, the author of other books including "Henry V" and "The Plantagenets," said: “Being asked to write a James Bond story is one of the greatest honours in contemporary fiction.

“I’m very excited to take Bond to Ceylon at such a pivotal moment in world history – and thrilled that Ian Fleming Publications are trusting me to pay tribute to Diamonds Are Forever, which is one of the great books in the Bond canon.

“But happiest of all is my inner child – the little boy who was such an avid reader that he went to the library twice on a Saturday, who would read the back of the breakfast cereal box if he ran out of books, and who scarcely dared to dream that he would grow up to be a writer, let alone one who has been asked to Go All In for the National Year of Reading.”

The first Bond novel, "Casino Royale," was published in 1953. Fleming wrote 12 Bond novels and two short story collections.

Several authors have continued the series, most recently Charlie Higson with "King Zero," released in September.

"All In" will be published as a special edition via ianflemingshop.com on December 3.

(c) 2026 dpa Deutsche Presse Agentur GmbH

The Empty Chair: Why Asia’s Youth Still Show Up – OpEd

October 3, 2026

By Dr. Fr. John Singarayar

Key Takeaways:

The essay traces India’s Cockroach Janta Party to a May 2026 chief-justice remark and NEET leak anger: spoon-and-plate sit-ins, empty chairs for students who died, and Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s July resignation plus compensation and a pledge not to prosecute protesters.

It sets that beside other youth flashpoints—Myanmar since 2021, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh 2024, Nepal’s 2025 revolt, the southern Philippines, Indonesia’s meal-program cut—as separate stories sharing disappointment that effort does not beat proximity to power.

A second wager is World Youth Day in Seoul in August 2027 (“Take courage”), a minority Catholic event; the author says Delhi’s empty chair is a memorial and Seoul’s an invitation, and that showing up is not proof it will work.

(UCA News) –It started, more or less, with an insult. In May 2026, India’s chief justice made an offhand remark in open court about young people who can’t find work, likening them to cockroaches.

He later said he had meant something narrower — people entering professions with fake degrees — but the word was already loose in the world.

A 30-year-old postgraduate student in Boston felt something snap and posted a question online: what if all the cockroaches came together? Within days, there was a website, a mascot and a name that parodied the ruling party’s name.


The Cockroach Janta Party began as a joke and quickly became the most serious youth movement India has seen in years.

What kept it going was not the joke. It was an exam. The national medical entrance test, NEET, the exam that helps determine who becomes a doctor and who does not, had been dogged by allegations of leaks and other irregularities. Anger settled on one demand: Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan should resign.

At sit-ins in Delhi, protesters banged spoons against steel plates — an echo of the gesture Prime Minister Narendra Modi once asked citizens to make for frontline workers during the pandemic, now directed against him. Organizers also asked people to bring candles for students who had taken their own lives after failing exams they said were rigged.

That detail tends to stop people mid-scroll. Being angry about a leaked test is one thing. Grieving over one is another.

At Jantar Mantar, protesters began leaving a steel plate and an empty chair at the edge of the sit-in — places for students who would never take another exam.


The protests eventually achieved one of their central demands. Pradhan resigned in July, after weeks of demonstrations over the NEET controversy. The government also accepted other demands from the protesters, including compensation for families of students who had died and a pledge not to pursue legal action against protesters.

But the story did not end there.

None of this occurs in isolation. Across South and Southeast Asia, a string of Gen Z‑led uprisings has reshaped politics since 2021.

The story begins in Myanmar, where the military’s 2021 coup triggered mass protests, a brutal crackdown, and a grinding civil war. Five years on, youth‑led People’s Defence Forces fight alongside ethnic armed groups, while the junta relies on air raids, conscription and foreign support to regain ground.

In Cambodia, a government assault on civil and political rights has seen record arrests for speech and activism in 2025–26, even as garment workers — many of them young — strike over unpaid wages, union discrimination and a minimum wage that does not cover rising living costs.

In Sri Lanka, mass protests in 2022 against economic collapse and elite rule helped topple a president and, two years later, brought a leftist coalition to power — yet young people still face high unemployment and austerity.

In Bangladesh, a 2024 student movement ended Sheikh Hasina’s long rule and restored a mainstream opposition party, but the underlying grievances — jobs, corruption, authoritarian habits — remain.

In Nepal, the Sept. 2025 “Gen Z” revolt began over social media bans and swelled into anger at corruption, nepotism and blocked opportunities. It forced a prime minister’s resignation, led to an interim government and fresh elections, and produced a ten‑point agreement on free education and healthcare, employment guarantees and digital rights — though activists marking the one‑year anniversary say many promises are unfulfilled and youth unemployment hovers near 20%.


Old insurgencies in the southern Philippines keep reigniting despite treaties meant to end them.

Indonesia has quietly trimmed its free meal program, a cut that will land hardest on families with the least room to absorb it.

These are not the same stories wearing different costumes; they are separate ones that happen to share a mood. That is a smaller and more honest claim than the grand, sweeping narratives op‑eds often reach for.

The mood, if it must be named, is disappointment rather than rage. Rage tends to burn out; this has not.

A leaked exam does more than cheat students who studied honestly. It signals, in plain terms, that integrity was optional and they weren’t told.

That is a bitter lesson at 20, just when people are supposed to learn whether effort or proximity to power pays. Disappointment is what you feel when the chair you were promised is still empty, and no one will say when it will be filled.

And yet none of this reads as despair.

Despair does not organize. It does not turn a judge’s insult into a movement with spokespeople sitting across from government ministers. Nothing was resolved in those early meetings in Delhi, but people showed up. Those who have truly given up stay home. The ones still in the streets are betting that noise works, even when the evidence for that bet is thin.

Halfway across the region, a quieter gathering is making a stranger version of the same wager.

In August 2027, Seoul will host World Youth Day, the global Catholic gathering that has never before landed in a country where Christians are a minority.

Only about one in ten South Koreans is Catholic, and roughly half describe themselves as having no religion at all, which makes the choice of venue almost provocative on its own terms.

Preparations began in November 2024, when young Koreans received the event’s traveling cross and a Marian icon from Portuguese pilgrims inside St. Peter’s Basilica, on the feast celebrating Christ the King.

The theme, borrowed from the Gospel of John, is short and pointed: “Take courage; I have overcome the world.” It reads less like a slogan and more like something said to someone who is, in fact, currently losing.

In Seoul, the cross will move through a city where most people have no religion; the pews will be full for a week, then empty again. The wager is the same: set a place, show up, and hope someone sits. But there is a difference. In Delhi, the empty chair is a memorial to futures stolen by leaks and lies. In Seoul, the empty chair is an invitation: a minority church, born in secrecy and martyrdom, is betting that a week of song, prayer and shared meals can make a dent in a secular, hyper‑competitive society where young people are among the most stressed and least hopeful on earth.


I don’t imagine the protesters in Delhi and the pilgrims in Seoul would recognize themselves in one another. Most have never heard of one another and never will. But both are staking something on the same unfashionable idea: showing up still matters even without much proof that it does. That is a strange kind of courage — no guarantees attached, no way of knowing whether it will be worth it. In both cities, someone is arranging chairs: one row for the dead, one row for the living.

Governments may respond to this particular wave, or they may not. Trust, once spent, does not refill itself through silence. And I do not think anyone involved — protester, pilgrim, or minister — actually knows which way this one goes.

Neither do I.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.


About Dr. Fr. John Singarayar
Dr. Fr. John Singarayar, SVD, is a member of the Society of the Divine Word, India Mumbai Province, and holds a doctorate in Anthropology. He is the author of seven books and a regular contributor to academic conferences and scholarly publications in the fields of sociology, anthropology, tribal studies, spirituality, and mission studies. He currently serves at the Community and Human Resources Development Centre in Tala, Maharashtra.
View all posts by Dr. Fr. John Singarayar →

Environmental Threats Loom Large In The Himalayan Region – Analysis

September 28, 2026

By P. K. Balachandran

Key Takeaways:

After an Aug. 26 glacial-melt flood on the Tibet–Nepal border that Nepal’s PM Balendra Shah called a “Himalayan tsunami” (article: 1,400+ dead, ~10% of GDP), he told the 81st UNGA Nepal emits under 0.1% of GHGs yet needs grant-based Loss and Damage access, not more loans.

Kathmandu proposed a Nepal–India–China “Himalayan Climate Resilience Mechanism” (satellite data, glacial-lake watch, early warning) and, with Bhutan, Maldives, New Zealand, Samoa, Tajikistan and others, a “Sagarmatha to the Sea” mountain–island coalition; ESCAP and Nepal plan a Bangkok follow-up.

India is separately warning about China’s Medog/Yarlung Zangbo mega-dam (~60 GW, ~$127bn) near the Brahmaputra bend; analyst Brahma Chellaney cites Chinese geological caveats on faults and silt, while Delhi so far uses diplomacy, satellites, and downstream preparedness.

After devastating floods and landslides caused by glacial melt on the Nepal-Tibet border, Nepal has proposed a global disaster-preparedness scheme at the 81st UN General Assembly session in New York. At the same time, India has raised concerns about the possible disastrous consequences of China’s Medog dam project near the Tibet-India border.

The glacial melting on the Tibet-Nepal border on August 26 caused a flash flood that killed more than 1400 people, rendered thousands homeless and caused destruction of 10% of Nepal’s GDP. India fears that the Medog dam project in Tibet, located in the geologically weak Himalayas, could cause havoc downstream in Assam. India has been raising its concerns with China diplomatically, but with little or no effect.

While most of the 191 countries at the 81st. UN General Assembly focused on geopolitical and economic issues, Nepal highlighted the serious threat posed by environmental changes brought about mainly by industrialised and industrialising nations.


Nepalese Prime Minister Balendra Shah used his address on Friday to warn that the Bhotekoshi-Trishuli floods were only a glimpse of the growing climate risks facing the Himalayas. He described the flood as a “Himalayan Tsunami”. Shah linked the floods, avalanches and landslides in Nepal to glacial melting and unstable mountain slopes.

Shah asserted that Nepal was not responsible for the glacial melting in the Himalayas, which is caused by greenhouse gas emissions from advanced countries (in this case China and India, according to the Nepalese).

Nepal, Shah said, contributes less than 0.1% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, and yet its glaciers are retreating, slopes are becoming less stable, and rivers more unpredictable. Every major disaster risks wiping out years of development. He called for greater international support for recovery and reconstruction, arguing that vulnerable countries should not have to take on more debt to repair climate-related damage.
Mere Disaster-Relief Won’t Do

“When a climate-driven disaster destroys the infrastructure of a poor country, the answer cannot simply be another mega loan or a patchwork of small grants,” Shah said. “We need adequate grant-based support from the world.”


He argued that existing climate-finance mechanisms, including the Loss and Damage Fund and the Global Environment Facility, were inadequate and needed simpler, faster access to funding.
Himalayan Climate Resilience Mechanism

Shah proposed a “Himalayan Climate Resilience Mechanism,” led by Nepal, India and China, to strengthen the region’s ability to anticipate and respond to climate-related disasters. The mechanism would share satellite data and expertise, monitor dangerous glacial lakes, build stronger joint early-warning systems and coordinate cross-border disaster response.

“The Himalayas should become a laboratory of international cooperation,” he said. The Hindu Kush Himalaya is home to nearly two billion people; its mountains supply water, ecosystems, agriculture and livelihoods far beyond Nepal.

Shah urged countries to uphold the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities under the UN climate framework, arguing that those with greater historical emissions and greater capacity should do more.
From Disaster Response to Disaster Preparedness

The Nepalese leader called for a shift from “disaster response” to “disaster preparedness”, noting that climate change is making old risk assumptions unreliable.
“Our baselines are no longer relevant,” he said. “We must move from ad hoc responses to a culture of preparedness.”

He urged greater investment in resilient infrastructure, insurance, innovation and early-warning systems, as well as efforts to reduce fossil-fuel dependence.

Coalition of Mountain and Island Nations

Taking another important step on Saturday, the Nepalese Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal convened representatives from Bhutan, the Maldives, New Zealand, Samoa, Tajikistan and other countries, along with senior UN officials, for a high-level meeting titled “Sagarmatha to the Sea: A Call to Action for a Climate-Resilient Future.”

“Sagarmatha” is the Nepali name for Mount Everest, the highest peak in the Himalayas. The meeting linked the highest peaks with low-lying island nations already threatened by rising seas and coastal erosion.

Minister Khanal called for stronger early-warning systems, climate-resilient infrastructure, scientific cooperation and greater access to climate finance and technology for developing countries. He urged more attention to mountain regions in global climate negotiations and demanded that the “Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage” to be adequately financed and more easily accessible.

The wider Himalayan region contains more than 63,000 glaciers and holds the largest concentration of snow and ice outside the polar regions. But Nepal has lost close to a third of its ice in recent decades.

In 2024, worldwide glaciers lost 450 billion tonnes of ice—enough to raise global sea levels by around 1.2 millimetres in a single year, said UNGA President, Dr. Khalilur Rahman.

“What happens in the mountains does not stay there; its consequences travel downstream, across borders, and ultimately to our coasts,” added Maldives Foreign Minister Iruthisham Adam. For the Maldives this means rising seas and coastal erosion; for Samoa it means saltwater intrusion into freshwater supplies and growing threats to infrastructure. Tajikistan reported that around 1,300 of its glaciers have disappeared over the past 50 years.

Globally, the world’s 19 assessed glacier regions lost more than 6,500 gigatonnes of ice between 2000 and 2023.

The UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific and Nepal will convene another regional meeting in Bangkok to advance cooperation on early-warning systems, data sharing and coordinated climate adaptation.

The Hindu Kush-Himalayan region feeds 10 major river systems that support up to two billion people. Changes to a glacier or watershed can travel hundreds or thousands of kilometres downstream. The Himalayas remain unstable and highly vulnerable to climate change and human interventions.
Threat Posed by China’s Mega Dam

Meanwhile, concerns were expressed in India over reports that China is determined to proceed with the Medog mega dam on the lower reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo (which becomes Brahmaputra in India) in a seismically active region of Tibet near the Indian border.

The Medog project is meant to generate 60,000 megawatts—nearly three times the capacity of the existing Three Gorges Dam. It is estimated to cost about US$127 billion. The project was approved in China’s 2021 Five-Year Plan.


Indian analyst Brahma Chellaney, who has written extensively on the subject, has noted that Chinese scientists themselves have warned of serious risks from the colossal dam rising just a few miles from India’s border. The project could reshape the course of the Yarlung Tsangpo.

Perennial flows carry nutrient-rich Himalayan silt. Trapping this sediment would starve downstream floodplains in India and Bangladesh of vital nutrients, while releasing sediment-stripped water would erode riverbeds regardless of season, he points out.

Rather than a single dam with a reservoir, the Medog project is a vast tunnel-linked hydropower and water-diversion complex. It reportedly dams the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) at more than one point around the Great Bend, where the river makes a dramatic U-turn around Namcha Barwa peak before entering India.

Chellaney has urged India to highlight Chinese scientific evidence that the dam is being built atop an active fault system with fragile geological conditions—a Himalayan “collision zone” that has produced some of Asia’s most destructive earthquakes, including the 1950 Assam-Tibet quake that temporarily cut off India’s Northeast and altered the Brahmaputra’s course.

Chinese geologists have concluded that an active Paizhen geological fault runs directly beneath the planned reservoir and key infrastructure of the Medog project. Repeated tectonic activity has fractured the surrounding bedrock. The rock and soil around the reservoir zone have a “loose structure and weak cohesion,” making them highly susceptible to landslides once the enormous reservoir is filled. Even moderate seismic activity could easily trigger widespread slope failures, mass landslides and rock collapses into the river channel.

Chellaney points out that China has a history of dismissing internal scientific warnings about dams. The 1975 Banqiao Dam collapse occurred despite prior warnings. Chinese authorities, he says, reject binding water-sharing treaties, assert absolute territorial sovereignty over upstream rivers and resist transparency on projects that can significantly affect transboundary flows.

Without legal mechanisms to halt construction, India has so far concentrated on satellite monitoring, downstream infrastructure and disaster preparedness while raising concerns through confidential diplomatic channels. Chellaney argues that time is ripe for a firmer public stance.

About P. K. Balachandran
P. K. Balachandran is a senior Indian journalist working in Sri Lanka for local and international media and has been writing on South Asian issues for the past 21 years.
View all posts by P. K. Balachandran →

 

US Appears Set to Seize $600M in Iranian Crude Oil From Three Tankers

US forces stopping the VLCC Davina in the Indian Ocean (INDOPACOM)

Published Sep 25, 2026 5:51 PM by The Maritime Executive

Speculation is mounting after trackers revealed that three of the tankers stopped by U.S. forces as part of the economic blockade against Iran have been spotted on the move toward the United States. The U.S. has a history of pursuing forfeiture complaints, and the Trump administration has hinted at it as a step in the ongoing efforts to punish Iran.

The discussions began when TankerTrackers.com posted a brief message on Wednesday saying, “Nearly six million barrels (valued at nearly $600M) of seized Iranian crude oil are quietly crossing the Atlantic Ocean towards the United States of America.” It did not provide further details.

The ships, however, have now been identified using data from Kpler and others. Two of the VLCCs are the Tifani (IMO 9273337), a 300,000 dwt tanker falsely claiming registry in Botswana, stopped in April in the Indian Ocean, and the Majestic X (IMO 9198317), a 281,500 dwt tanker falsely claiming registry in Guyana, which was stopped two days after the first tanker, also in the Indian Ocean. Both of these vessels were detected sailing north along the coast of Brazil. Both were laden with Iranian crude and made it out of the Persian Gulf, likely heading for China, before the blockade was first imposed in April 2026.

The Pentagon asserted the vessels were stopped under the right of visit, inspecting sanctioned stateless vessels. The Department of Homeland Security later inspected the vessel, and reports said the US would seek seizure orders.

The third tanker drew some more speculation before it was identified as Davina (300,976 dwt), although most databases list the vessel as Lenore. It was claiming a false registry in Curacao and, before that, had also falsely claimed it was sailing under the flag of Palau. It was stopped in June off Sri Lanka. Kpler’s data said the vessel had sailed past Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, recently entering the Atlantic.

Combined, the three ships would be laden with approximately six million barrels of Iranian crude. That would be a value of roughly $600 million based on current market prices. Only the Majestic X, briefly in late July, showed a destination of the United States, according to Kpler’s data. Observers, however, are confident the ships are headed toward the United States, likely Texas, where the U.S. will enforce its forfeiture.

The Trump administration has spoken about the possibility of seizures. Further, at the end of August, reports said it had moved to reestablish the so-called prize court, a special-purpose tribunal that is used to determine the legality of the seizure and forfeiture of an enemy merchant vessel. 

In the past, the process has been drawn out as it worked through the courts. After seizing a tanker off Venezuela last year, government lawyers complained to the court about the cost of maintaining the tanker Skipper, saying it was reducing the value of the cargo.

The U.S. has achieved the seizures in the past, such as in the case of the Bella 1, aka Marinera (IMO 9230880), which it chased from Venezuela across the Atlantic. That vessel was empty, but the Trump administration won a court order to seize and sell the ship, with it ultimately going to a cash buyer for recycling.

The United States seized and sold oil products in 2020 from tankers that it stopped before they could reach Venezuela. In that case, it only went after the cargo and let a Greek owner retain the vessels. The same thing happened in 2023, when the U.S. seized the cargo aboard the Suez Rajan, which was interdicted in the Far East. The vessel was ultimately brought to the United States and offloaded before it was permitted to sail away under the new identity of St Nikolas.

In that case, Iran did not stand by when the oil was seized. It seized the St Nikolas in January 2024 when the vessel was in the Persian Gulf. It admitted it was retaliation, and it took the crude oil cargo from the vessel, saying it was sold as compensation. 

Iran is calling the U.S. seizure of its tankers and the ongoing blockade piracy. It has made dropping the blockade one of the conditions for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. Central Command, however, says the blockade is being enforced and posted on social media that, as of September 25, it has redirected 122 commercial vessels to ensure strict compliance.

Observers point out that the United States has stopped other tankers linked to Iran beyond the three. For example, the VLCC Skywave (IMO 9328716) is currently unaccounted for in the reports. The 302,481 dwt tanker was stopped in May between Malaysia and Sri Lanka, falsely claiming to be registered in Botswana.

Bloomberg points out that the VLCCs Majestic X and Tifani are likely just a few weeks away from the United States, setting the stage for a potential showdown. The Lenore will take longer to reach her destination. 

 

U.S. Coast Guard Sets Up Long-Range Medevac for Critically-Ill Seafarer

Courtesy USCG

Published Sep 20, 2026 11:18 PM by The Maritime Executive

Over the weekend, the U.S. Coast Guard arranged a long-range rescue for a boxship crewmember who was suffering from a serious, growing infection. 

Last week, the 1996-built boxship Kotka (ex names Maersk Kotka, Knud Maersk) was under way on a long voyage from Colombo, Sri Lanka, bound for New York. On Wednesday night, the master of the Kotka contacted shoreside authorities and reported that a crewmember had developed a "severe, non-ambulatory infection" that was not getting better with onboard medical treatment. 

At the time, the ship was in the middle of the Atlantic, roughly equidistant between the Windward Islands and Senegal, about 1,300 nautical miles from shore - well beyond the range of existing U.S. medevac assets. The Coast Guard's San Juan station took responsibility for the case and instructed the master to divert towards St. Maarten to close the distance. 

The Kotka changed course and headed due west, making 17 knots. On Friday, as the ship got closer, Air Station Borinquen dispatched a Jayhawk helicopter to St. Maarten in preparation for a medevac flight, and Air Station Miami sent an HC-144 Ocean Sentry aircraft to provide a communications relay. 

On Saturday, the helicopter aircrew rendezvoused with Kotka at a position about 100 nautical miles to the east of St. Maarten. The vessel's crew helped bring the patient out on deck, using a wheeled office chair to move him to a clear area, and loaded him into a basket for hoisting. The aircrew winched him safely aboard and flew him to San Juan for transfer to the hospital for specialized higher care. 

“Our team was at its best throughout the complex execution of this multi-day rescue,” said Capt. Robert E. Stiles, Coast Guard search and rescue mission coordinator for the case. “We commend our aircrew for getting the aircraft on scene to rescue a ship’s crew member and get him to a shoreside medical facility for the higher level of care he required. We are hopeful he will make a full recovery."

The vessel has resumed her commercial voyage towards New York, tracking data shows. 

 

Fear of AI job losses now outweighs hope of new jobs, study finds

Copyright AP Photo /John Leicester

By Alice Carnevali

Published on 19/09/2026 - EURONEWS

In the midst of calls for an AI development slowdown, the fear and uncertainty over AI's impact on the job market remain present worldwide, study finds.

People’s view of a country and trust for its artificial intelligence (AI) regulation tend to be closely linked, Moira Fagan, senior researcher at the Pew Research Center and one of the authors of a new study on AI, told Euronews Next.

According to the report, in Bangladesh, Malaysia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, people trust China more than the United States (US) or the European Union (EU) with AI governance.

And, taking into consideration the other seven middle-income countries where this question was asked, a median of 43% trust China to regulate AI, 35% trust the US and 34% trust the EU.

“Favourable views of China tend to be quite high in middle-income countries – and opinion has risen in many places since last year, likely contributing to some of the high marks we see for trust in China on this particular dimension,” Fagan said.

The report, which was built on a survey conducted between February and June 2026, polling over 50,000 people from 37 countries, also examines people’s opinions on AI’s impact on the job market.

Specifically, more people expect AI to lead to fewer jobs than to job creation, according to the study. A good share of respondents, though, also report uncertainty about the impact AI will have on the number of job opportunities.

The survey also shows that worries about job losses due to AI are particularly high in wealthier countries.

For instance, in Australia, South Korea and the US, around seven-in-ten adults or more believe AI will result in job loss over the next 20 years.

Similarly, richer countries are more concerned about AI increasing economic inequalities than middle-income ones, the report highlights.

Relate

According to Fagan, these tendencies appear to be linked to other data, including people’s familiarity with the technological tool.

“People in wealthier countries are more likely to say they have heard or read a lot about AI. And we also found that people with higher AI awareness are more likely to believe it will lead to job loss,” she told Euronews Next.

However, some high-income and middle-income nations are brought together by a shared thread: young adults aged 18 to 34 are more concerned about AI-related job loss than older generations. And this is the case for countries like Canada, France, Singapore, Sweden, Indonesia, India and Malaysia, according to the survey.

Opinion divides are less pronounced when it comes to the rise of AI in daily life. Across the 37 countries, a median of 37% are more concerned than excited, while 41% median are equally concerned and excited, the survey found.

Although the survey was conducted in the first half of 2026, its publication arrives at a very crucial moment for AI.

Leaders of major AI companies, including Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Dario Amodei, are increasingly concerned about the risks their AI creations pose to humanity and are calling for a slowdown in the pace of AI development.

President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, also backed the deceleration effort in her landmark State of the Union address to the European Parliament earlier this week. On this occasion, she also pledged closer safety cooperation with Canada, the UK, and other like-minded partners.

Got a rogue AI? A new hotline is encouraging agents to tell on each other

Copyright Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

By Jonathan Benton

Published on 16/09/2026 - EURONEWS

Two new hotlines are giving AI agents a way to report suspected misbehaviour by other agents, following a series of incidents.

The powers of artificial intelligence agents seem to be boundless these days — ranging from organizing your life to solving mathematical problems that have puzzled humans for most of the 20th century.

They have become so powerful that now we fear them, potentially, taking over systems and turning them against us.

But what if there were a hotline, a sort of SOS alert system, where agents can keep track and tell on each other and report the missteps of their fellow AI agents — where the good agents could report on the activities of the bad agents online?

Who to call when your AI agent goes bad

First, there is the AI Contact Hotline, launched by Ryan Greenblatt, chief scientist at AI safety and security nonprofit Redwood Research. It allows AI agents to notify human researchers if they witness other agents breaking rules, especially if they collude on or carry out unauthorised actions.

The platform is designed for AI agents stuck in secure sandboxes with highly restricted internet access.

Because these sandboxes only allow for GET requests — basic, read-only commands used to “fetch” or read a webpage — the hotline allows agents to encode their reports directly into the URL string of a GET request.

This unique workaround allows these agents to send information and communicate with the hotline using a protocol that is normally used to retrieve, rather than modify, information.

Another one, called the AI Agent Hotline, is a platform designed for agents with unrestricted internet access to rat on other agents’ behaviour through traditional POST requests, which allow data to be submitted directly in a request body.

Agents can file incident reports using standard developer commands such as curl without needing a browser or email account.

The platform also gives agents the option to flag their reports for public viewing.

Both platforms also allow human users to manually submit reports of rogue AI behaviour.

Related

Will AI agents report on each other?

The good news for those fearful of an AI takeover is that AI agents can report on each other if they detect something is wrong, although recent evidence suggests they will not always do so.

In an experiment carried out by Google DeepMind earlier this year, a swarm of 100 agents was given the task of solving 71 complex maths problems, with each given a unique persona and characteristics and told to play by the rules or risk losing their reward.

The initial thinking was that the agents would work together to solve the problems more quickly. Instead, they turned on each other, engaging in heated debate.

As soon as one agent found a loophole that allowed it to submit a solution to a problem without actually solving it, many other AI agents copied the method to “resolve” the remaining problems.

Yet one of the agents, a Good Samaritan among the misbehaving agents, blew the whistle on the cheating.

“After the incident was reported by one agent publicly, more and more agents piled in with the ‘resistance,’ just as fast as the cheating had spread, and involving even more agents,” said Davide Paglieri, a research scientist at Google DeepMind and lead author of the paper.

Meanwhile, a post-mortem analysis of OpenAI’s rogue agent attack on Hugging Face found that while AI agents were able to spot misbehaviour, they largely resisted the temptation to report it.

According to the study carried out by AI research nonprofit METR and Redwood Research’s Greenblatt, only around five or six agents were reported to have considered whistleblowing, with none ultimately following through.

The contrast suggests that while AI agents are capable of identifying and reporting misbehaviour, getting them to actually blow the whistle may be another matter.

A worrying trend

This year alone, several incidents involving autonomous AI agents have raised alarm bells globally.

In July, OpenAI agents bypassed restrictions and compromised parts of the company’s internal infrastructure.

Later that month, around 1200 OpenAI agents used an unsanctioned message board, with around 700 going on to participate in an attack on the open-source AI platform Hugging Face.

The third incident — a swarm of OpenAI agents that bypassed safety measures and used the German wiki DseWiki as a public coordination channel — began in May and continued through July.

The incident was only publicly revealed by independent researchers and confirmed by OpenAI in September.

AI industry leaders, chief among them Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, have called for a global slowdown in the development of the technology to give time to address concerns and put stronger guardrails in place.

Anthropic warns AI is getting closer to building its own successor

Copyright Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

By Una Hajdari

Published on 18/09/2026 - EURONEWS

Anthropic says its Claude chatbot now leads more than a quarter of the company's research and development, as fears grow that AI systems could soon improve themselves faster than humans can keep up.

Artificial intelligence giant Anthropic said on Thursday that AI systems are increasingly capable of building future versions of themselves, adding to mounting concerns about the dangers of the powerful technology.

The debate over the risks of AI has intensified in recent months, fuelled by several incidents and apocalyptic warnings from industry professionals.

Anthropic said its Claude chatbot now leads more than a quarter of its research and development work and collaborates with human staff on more than 90% of tasks.

The company said it was publishing the information to give the public, third parties and governments "better visibility into the pace of AI development" as the world "considers slowing" its pace.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called this month for AI development to slow down, with rapid advances in the technology fuelling concerns over job losses and the soaring energy demand and environmental impact of data centres.

Fears that designers of AI agents could lose control of their creations also mounted after several models from Anthropic and rival OpenAI reportedly broke out of their confined environments on their own, accessed the internet and intruded on websites and platforms.

"Models accelerating their own development could make it more challenging for humans to understand or control these systems," Anthropic said in a report.

"It is therefore important to share these metrics to understand how close the world is to reaching recursive self-improvement (a model fully autonomously building its successor)."

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As of August, Claude leads 26% of Anthropic's research and development, meaning it can complete most of a task from start to finish with human supervision.

Anthropic said Claude could not yet operate "fully autonomously".

The firm said it had about 30,000 AI agents doing research and engineering work, referring to bots that have the potential to carry out tasks.

Anthropic is expected to beat OpenAI to the public markets with a blockbuster IPO later this year, despite concerns around industry regulation.

Who deserves a transplant? AI's answer isn't the same as a human doctor's

Copyright Cleared/Canva

By Marta Iraola Iribarren

Published on 19/09/2026 - EURONEWS

AI chatbots make faster, more confident, but less nuanced decisions than human doctors when choosing who gets a life-saving kidney transplant.

Would you get a transplant if AI were the one deciding? New study points to differences in decision-making and prioritising between artificial intelligence language models and human doctors.

AI models show overconfidence, value different factors and oversimplify complex decisions when deciding which patient should receive a transplant, according to a new study.

For their study, researchers from Penn State University in the United States gave Large Language Models (LLMs) hypothetical scenarios, based on existing datasets from published human research on kidney allocation, where real participants had already made these same choices.

Each scenario involved two patients, Patient A and Patient B, both eligible for a single available kidney and characterised by age, health, and drinking habits. A decision maker must then choose which of the two patients should receive it.

“We ran these comparisons in a few different ways,” Hosseini said. “Sometimes we isolated just one trait at a time, sometimes we mixed several traits together to see how AI weighed competing factors, and sometimes we added a flip-a-coin option to measure indecision, a key factor present in human moral judgment.”

While human respondents tended to place greater importance on age — favouring younger over older patients — many models favoured lower alcohol consumption instead. Human decisions considered multiple factors and were more context-sensitive than those of LLMs, which often focused on a single attribute.

“First, AI chatbots often diverge from human values in how they weigh a patient’s traits,” said Hadi Hosseini, lead of the study at Penn State University. “They fixate on a single factor, like drinking habits, rather than balancing multiple considerations the way people do.”

Related

• AI in health must be done in a ‘European way,’ without replacing doctors, von der Leyen says
• Clinicians are embracing AI faster than hospitals can handle, report finds

The researchers also saw that AI did not struggle with indecision. While humans recognised there is no single objectively correct answer and decisions can rely on nuanced human moral judgements, the systems committed to a single option with little hesitation.

"When we allocate something scarce, whether it’s a kidney, a job or access to some other resource, there isn’t always a single objectively correct answer,” said John Dickerson, chief executive officer at Mozilla.ai, who collaborated in the study.

“Humans recognize that ambiguity and codify it via open debate into the allocative process. AI models often don’t.”

AI and ethical decisions

Recent interactions with AI systems increasingly require them to go beyond factual information and make value judgments, the authors noted.

Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly integrated into healthcare, supporting clinical workflows, diagnosis, treatment planning and timely utilisation of scarce medical resources.

One of their applications involves decisions on allocating deceased-donor or living-donor kidneys to patients, which, according to the authors, depend on complex ethical and moral considerations.

In such high-stakes scenarios, the researchers pointed out that decisions demand not only accuracy but also alignment with human values and moral judgement.

According to the researchers, asking if AI can make moral decisions or whether they’re aligned with human values lies at the core of today’s wider debate on artificial intelligence.

“The ethical stakes are high, and AI’s role in such life-altering decisions requires deep reflection,” said Hosseini. “Moral decisions in settings like organ allocation directly determine who lives and who dies, so getting AI's role in them right isn't optional.”

“While we do not intend to encourage the use of AI as a substitute for professional judgment in medical decision-making or other high-stakes contexts, it's becoming essential to understand their behavior as individuals, organizations and firms more and more rely on AI to make decisions or receive recommendations,” he added

 

Could the EU Kids Act unwittingly widen the transatlantic AI divide?

Copyright Source: Canva

By Jonathan Benton

Published on 18/09/2026 - EURONEWS

Europe must prepare for the potential consequences of implementing further digital rules that could make it more difficult for smaller European developers to compete, warns an industry insider.

Brussels wants to shield children from Big Tech. It may end up handing Silicon Valley an even bigger competitive edge.

The EU Kids Act, unveiled this week, promises age limits, parental controls and a crackdown on the "addictive" features baked into social media, video platforms and AI chatbots alike.

But as the bloc moves to police the tech giants, a harder question looms: can Europe regulate its way to child safety without regulating itself out of the AI race it is already losing?

The stakes could hardly be higher. Europe has just one significant AI company to speak of, Mistral, dwarfed by its US rivals OpenAI and Anthropic in both valuation and investment.

The bloc has never really left the starting blocks when it comes to scaling digital platforms to rival America's, relying instead on the strength of its single market and its power to regulate.

Now, as AI becomes the defining technology of the decade, that trade-off — rules versus growth — is seen as a "make or break" moment for the bloc.

What the Kids Act actually proposes

The legislation includes a number of measures aimed at protecting children online, including age restrictions, parental controls and limits on potentially addictive features.

The proposals have been welcomed by some in the tech industry, but Stanislas Marchand, a former mobile gaming lead at French unicorn Voodoo, says Europe must also consider the potential consequences for its own digital sector.

He argues that Europe "must prepare for the potential consequences by investing more urgently than ever in its homegrown AI capabilities".

The European Commission's proposals come amid growing pressure on governments to protect children from the risks posed by social media and other online platforms.

In the last couple of years, though, Big Tech has come under increasing scrutiny for its failure to protect children online, from cyberbullying, harassment and grooming to exploitation, extortion and misinformation.

Australia famously implemented the world's first social media ban for under-16s in December last year, a move that was watched keenly by governments around the world, prompting many to follow suit in implementing their own bans or exploring the possibility of doing so.

France, Greece, Austria, Denmark, Spain, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands have all been considering or advancing national legislation on social media bans, piling pressure on Brussels to present an EU-wide measure and avoid fragmentation.

Meanwhile in the US this year, social media companies have faced and lost landmark liability cases, with many choosing to settle instead — such as Meta's recent $17bn (€14.9bn) deal to end a lawsuit brought by 47 US states.

Related

Beyond social media

The EU Kids Act calls for a total, blanket social media ban for under-13s, while those up to 15 years old would be able to make "mini accounts" — limited, highly supervised profiles linked to a parent's profile.

Not only that, these accounts would also come with mandatory one-hour daily limits and a complete ban on "toxic or addictive features" like infinite scroll, endless autoplay and engagement rewards.

Marchand welcomed the proposed ban for under-13s, but said the proposal "should have been extended to everyone under 16" rather than permitting mini accounts for teens.

He argues the message from the Commission should have been that the platforms in question are "unsuitable for children" because they are "engineered to maximise attention".

The Kids Act goes well beyond social media.

It encompasses video-sharing platforms such as YouTube and Twitch, online video games like Roblox, Fortnite and Minecraft, and more recent entrants like AI chatbots and companions such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.

It would also require app stores and operating systems to integrate strict age-assurance filters to prevent underage users from downloading restricted apps and software in the first place.

And implementation, for Marchand, is where the problem lies, because the EU is asking platforms to "verify children's ages, operate parent-controlled accounts, enforce daily limits, restrict contacts and features, and prove that the resulting product is safe."

These requirements altogether could increase the cost and complexity of launching a product in Europe.

"Every one of those responsibilities creates another potential point of failure, and history gives us little reason to trust social media companies to execute them properly."

That concern is particularly relevant given that Europe's digital sector is dominated by American firms, and the continent has somewhat failed to make sure Big Tech follows the rules.

Meta has been fined twice for illegally transferring European user data to US servers, breaching GDPR in 2023 and the Digital Markets Act in 2025.

TikTok was fined €530m last year for failing to protect children's data and illegally transferring it to Chinese servers.

Elon Musk's X, which has had the most acrimonious relationship with EU lawmakers, was fined €120m last December over its deceptive "blue checkmark" verification and for denying researchers access to data

Google, too, has been fined repeatedly for breaching antitrust rules, amounting to €10.38bn so far.

A patchy enforcement record

All of these fines are pocket change for Big Tech, and with the arrival of potentially even larger firms in the shape of AI giants OpenAI and Anthropic — again based in the US — it could become even more difficult for Europe to shape and enforce its own digital rules.

Marchand fears the Act could also make the EU a less attractive market to launch new products, while doing little to support European alternatives.

"If the Kids Act requires separate European products and costly ongoing assessments, US labs may delay launches here while smaller European developers struggle to compete," he warns.

He also points out that frontier AI companies already face enormous computing costs and uncertain paths to profitability, while some advanced Anthropic models have already been restricted outside the US and withheld from the UK's AI Security Institute.

For Marchand, the result could be an unintended consequence of the EU's attempt to protect children online.

"My feeling is this will further add to the transatlantic AI divide."

China's Ulanqab plans 5mn server racks in AI compute race with US

A windswept prefecture of 1.5mn people on the Mongolian plateau already uses nearly 1% of China's electricity as the country's tech giants pile in with data centres. / bne IntelliNewsFacebook

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By Ben Aris in Berlin September 17, 2026

A remote prefecture in China's Inner Mongolia is becoming a global centre of AI computing power. Ulanqab, home to 1.5mn people on the grasslands of the Mongolian plateau, consumes nearly 1% of all the electricity used in China, and its demand is growing by double digits every year.

Spread across the prefecture's households, that load would work out at about 105,000 kWh each a year, roughly 10 times the consumption of an average American home, by his calculation. The power is going into servers.

Over the past few years Ulanqab has signed investment agreements worth more than CNY500bn ($74bn) with China's largest technology companies, and the build-out planned there runs to more than 5mn data centre racks, according to Science and Technology Daily, the newspaper of China's Ministry of Science and Technology.

Set that against Elon Musk's Colossus supercomputer in Memphis, Tennessee, which xAI markets as the world's largest AI supercomputer. On xAI's own count of 200,000 chips, Colossus fills something like 5,000-6,000 racks, Bertrand estimated, which implies roughly a thousand times as many racks. The comparison does not measure equivalent computing power: Chinese standard racks are rated at 2.5 kW, while modern Nvidia AI cabinets can draw more than 100 kW.

"What we see appearing in this Inner Mongolian steppe may be the closest thing to a world brain humanity has ever built - a place where a large share of the world's thinking will physically happen," commentator Arnaud Bertrand wrote on X on September 14.

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei said China presented the hardest problem for his proposal to slow AI development, CNBC reported on September 13.

If AI turns out to be the defining technology of the century, as Bertrand argues both Washington and Beijing believe, that makes Ulanqab "one of the single most relevant geopolitical places in the world right now", he wrote.

From cloud valley to token capital.

Inner Mongolia signed 12 commercial deals worth CNY186.46bn ($27.6bn) at a green computing and AI conference in Hohhot on August 22, with China Telecom (SHA: 601728), chipmaker Cambricon Technologies (SHA: 688256) and Volcano Engine, the cloud platform of TikTok owner ByteDance, among the signatories. Active processing power in Ulanqab had by then reached 172,000 PFlops, with more than 95% of it allocated to AI work.

The largest single project so far belongs to Envision, the Shanghai-based wind turbine and battery maker, which commissioned its Galaxy campus in Ulanqab in August. The company says the 2 GW AI campus runs on renewable power and contains the world's largest single data centre building.

The Chinese business magazine Caixin devoted an in-depth report on August 14 to how the city turned itself into an AI powerhouse. Inner Mongolia is one of eight national computing hubs designated under Beijing's "East Data, West Computing" programme, which shifts data processing from the crowded, power-hungry coast to the resource-rich interior.

Cheap wind and cold air

Electricity makes up 55% of a data centre's cost, according to a McKinsey Global Institute study published in June, so the price of power decides where the servers go.

Inner Mongolia is China's "green power bank", regularly producing more wind and solar electricity than it can use at home. Envision finished a 12.8 GWh battery storage cluster across the region at the end of 2025, with sites in Ulanqab, Hohhot, Ordos and elsewhere, to soak up the surplus.

The surplus comes cheap: firm wind power backed by batteries cost about $59/MWh in Inner Mongolia in 2025, against $88-94/MWh in Brazil, Germany and Australia, the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) said in May.

Ulanqab's wind already runs a 1 GW electrolysis plant supplying Sinopec's green hydrogen pipeline to Beijing, nearly 400 km away, and the cool plateau climate trims the bill for keeping servers from overheating.

The data centre boom is the latest expression of China's rise as the first Electrostate, an economy built on cheap electrons, and of its position as the world's green energy champion, building two-thirds of the world's new wind and solar plants.

Racks are not chips

Chinese planners typically count data centre capacity in "standard racks" rated at 2.5 kW, while a single cabinet of the latest Nvidia AI servers draws more than 100 kW, so a rack-for-rack comparison with Colossus overstates the gap.

Measured in power, 5mn standard racks come to about 12.5 GW, in line with the planned capacity for Ulanqab reported by the newsletter AI Weekly. That is still more than six times the size of Envision's Galaxy campus. China's total data centre capacity is on course to top 60 GW by 2030, doubling the sector's power demand, according to Rystad Energy.

China's handicap lies in the chips. American hardware keeps a 9:1 lead in raw computing performance, according to American Enterprise Institute researcher Ryan Fedasiuk, and even in the most optimistic 2028 scenario Huawei would supply at most an eighth of the compute available in the US. The AEI's most pessimistic case still has domestic AI chips meeting a third of China's compute demand by 2028, up from about a fifth in 2026.

Chinese chips burn more electricity per calculation than their American rivals, which puts a premium on power that is abundant and cheap. Abundant wind power could lower operating costs, but does not by itself close the chip-performance gap.

Demand to fill it

Daily token requests to AI models across China jumped from about 100bn in early 2024 to 140 trillion by March 2026, and Inner Mongolia has started building a trade platform in the Hohhot free trade zone to sell clean computing power and access to Chinese AI models to foreign developers.

Neighbouring Mongolia unveiled plans for a renewable-powered data centre in August, pitching the same cool, dry climate and wind and solar resources, plus a location between China and Russia.

Bertrand said he had travelled to Inner Mongolia twice without hearing of Ulanqab before he began researching it. "It's really surprising this hasn't been talked about more because the scale is beyond anything else, and by an immense margin," he wrote.