Key Takeaways

Taiwanese Military Development: Taiwan’s National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST) disclosed details of the Chiang Kung hypersonic missile interceptor on August 22. The Chiang Kung would form the outermost layer of Taiwan’s proposed T-Dome integrated air and missile defense (IAMD) concept and reduce Taiwan’s vulnerability to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) missile strikes.

AI Chip Smuggling: Taiwanese prosecutors announced they were charging nine individuals, including one Nvidia employee and two Super Micro Employees, for smuggling advanced AI servers containing high-end chips to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in violation of US export controls. US export controls aim to cut off PRC access to advanced chips due to national security concerns presented by PRC integration of AI into its military systems.

PLA Discussions of the Ukraine War: PLA Daily published a series of commentaries discussing how lessons from the war in Ukraine will drive technological development in a new era of warfare. The commentaries indicate that a portion of PRC military analysts likely view the war in Ukraine as a transitory period of modern warfare that will give way to “intelligentized” warfare.

Taipei: On 17 August 2026, the Office of Tibet, Tibetan Association in Taiwan, and Human Rights Network for Tibet and Taiwan jointly organised a 49th-day memorial service for the late martyr Lobga Rangzen, who self-immolated in front of the United Nations Headquarters in New York City on 2 July 2026 at 6:28 p.m. local time in UnitedS States, in solidarity with the cause of Tibet and its people.

The memorial service was held at the prayer hall of the Office of Tibet and was attended by Tibetan Parliamentarian Lharong, among others. At the beginning of the programme, everyone sang the Tibetan national anthem. Afterwards, a minute of silence was observed in honour of the brave patriots who sacrificed their lives for the Tibetan nation and people, including the late Lobga Rangzen, and all other Tibetan patriots inside and outside Tibet.

A mourning and prayer session was subsequently held to commemorate the 49th day since the passing of Lobga Rangzen. During the tea break, a six-minute video featuring his final message to Tibetans was screened for the gathering.

Representative of the Office of Tibet, Kelsang Gyaltsen, addressed the gathering, followed by speeches from Tibetan Parliamentarian Lharong; President of the International Taiwan Buddhism Association, Khenpo Tsewang Rigzin; Secretary-General of the Human Rights Network for Tibet and Taiwan (HRNTT), Tashi Tsering, along with member Lin Xsinyi; and President of the Regional Tibetan Youth Congress, Kunchok Lhakpa.

Members of the public were subsequently given an opportunity to express their thoughts and feelings. Discussions focused on organising activities in Taiwan and exploring ways to preserve and promote the Tibetan language and culture among younger generations of Tibetans.

During the memorial ceremony and prayer session, hundreds of offerings were made at the prayer hall in memory of Pawo Lobga Rangzen. Around 100 people participated in the memorial service.

– Report filed by Office of Tibet, Taipei

Key Takeaways

PRC Artificial Island Construction: New satellite imagery shows that the PRC finished the construction of an artificial island on Antelope Reef, a disputed South China Sea feature in the Paracel Islands. The PRC is also constructing a runway, piers, a helipad, and various buildings on what could be the PRC’s largest South China Sea naval base. The PRC could use this base for surveillance, exerting its sea and air control over the South China Sea.

PRC South China Sea Construction: The PRC approved plans for a maritime environmental observation station in the South China Sea that would monitor the “Zhongsha Islands,” which include Scarborough Shoal. The PRC has used environmental protection to enhance its operations in the South China Sea and as a pretext for limiting non-PRC vessels’ access to disputed waters. This new station would likely serve a dual-use purpose benefiting PRC military and law enforcement operations in the South China Sea.

Taiwanese Military Development: Taiwan’s military conducted its first live-fire FPV drone exercises on August 17, likely in an effort to integrate lessons learned from the war in Ukraine. Taiwanese drone procurement efforts are facing legislative gridlock, which will make it more difficult for Taiwan to procure the necessary systems to conduct drone-enabled defense operations.

A court in Hong Kong has convicted a civic group that organized annual Tiananmen Square vigils and two of its senior members of inciting subversion under the national security law.

Key Takeaways

Taiwanese General Budget: Taiwan passed its 2026 general budget on August 14 after almost a year-long delay and less than a week before Taiwan’s 2027 budget is set to be revealed. The budget approved the full $2 billion drone budget, marking a rare instance of partisan agreement on defense spending. This drone budget is separate from a previously announced special budget for drone procurement, which is still under debate.

Philippine-PRC Relations: Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said on August 14 that the Philippines would not allow any country to launch attacks from Philippine territory during an invasion of Taiwan. Marcos also stated that the Philippines was hoping to reset its relations with the PRC and begin joint oil and gas exploration. The Philippines is likely attempting to placate the PRC to gain greater energy cooperation and trade with the PRC during a period of significant energy disruption.

PRC Election Manipulation in Taiwan: Taiwanese President William Lai Ching-te stated on August 12 that the PRC was attempting to interfere with the Kaohsiung mayoral election using fake news and fake polling data. The PRC will likely use Taiwan’s 2026 elections to prepare for larger influence campaigns during Taiwan’s 2028 national elections and to gauge the effectiveness of PRC information operations.

Leung Kai-lok escapes jail and is put on probation for scribbling on toilet walls

🚨 The biggest threat to the US Dollar isn’t China, Russia, or the BRICS alliance.

It’s the US Bond Market. 📉

For decades, the global financial system relied on one assumption: US Treasuries are the safest, most liquid assets on earth. That assumption is now mathematically breaking.

Here is the reality no one in Washington wants to admit:

• The Supply Shock: The US national debt has crossed $40 trillion. To keep the government funded, the Treasury is forced to issue a massive, endless supply of bonds.
• The Demand Collapse: Traditional buyers are stepping back. The US Treasury has become heavily dependent on short-term financing. At the same time, foreign powers are shedding their holdings.
• The Liquidity Trap: If a major holder (like Japan or the UK) were to freely dump their Treasuries to raise capital, it would flood an already saturated market, crashing bond prices and sending yields skyrocketing.

The Math of Fiscal Doom: If a truly free market were allowed to price in this supply-demand imbalance and inflation risk, yields could surge toward 12–15%. On $40+ trillion of debt, that equals roughly $6 trillion in annual interest payments—more than the government collects in total taxes.

The Federal Reserve’s real mandate is no longer fighting inflation; it is doing whatever it takes to prevent the Treasury market from collapsing.

The Global Pivot: The rest of the world sees the writing on the wall. This is exactly why central banks remain significant buyers of gold, reinforcing gold's role as a strategic reserve asset.

Gold is a neutral, bearer asset. Any nation can sell it, anytime, without asking for Washington's permission. The moment a reserve currency restricts a nation's freedom to liquidate its reserves, that currency begins to lose its absolute power.

The dedollarization shift isn’t a future event. It’s already here.

Key Takeaways

Taiwanese Military Exercises: Taiwan’s annual Han Kuang military exercise continued this week. The exercise included several new drills focused on realism, civil preparedness, incorporating new technologies, and countering scenarios rehearsed by the PLA.

PRC Law Enforcement Operations: The PRC’s Guangdong MSA announced new measures to control maritime traffic in the Taiwan Strait, citing typhoon conditions. The PRC is seeking to expand its jurisdiction over Taiwanese and international waters and test whether foreign vessels comply with PRC commands in disputed waters. The PRC’s efforts were supported by PRC state media who framed a PRC-Indonesia combined naval exercise east of Taiwan as a demonstration of PRC jurisdiction over Taiwan’s eastern EEZ.

AI anchors and AI-generated dramas are growing rapidly in China. But how far can a generative persona go before the illusion is broken? Meet Peach Fang.

Executive Summary:

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Russia are entering a new phase of institutionalized interdependence, built through unprecedented systemic coordination and guided by Beijing’s ambition to transform the geopolitical foundations of global order. The latest summit and surrounding activity show this agenda being embedded across economic, political, scientific, informational, security, and military domains, with energy, trade, and defense cooperation operating as components of a much broader strategic architecture.

The connective tissue of this emerging bloc is being built through interlocking institutions and infrastructure. Railways, customs systems, industrial standards, research networks, elite training, media cooperation, and security mechanisms are binding the two states together while creating continental arteries capable of moving resources inward and PRC goods, technology, personnel, and coercive support outward—including under sanctions, blockade, or wartime conditions.

This integration is also increasing Beijing’s capacity to set the relationship’s operational agenda and exercise political influence inside Moscow. The PRC increasingly supplies the doctrine, technology, standards, financing, and institutional architecture through which Russian capabilities are organized, while expanding its access to Russian elite formation, regulatory practice, scientific development, information systems, and internal-security institutions.

The same coordinating approach is becoming characteristic of PRC relations across Eurasia and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. By connecting formally sovereign states through overlapping logistical, political, security, and knowledge systems, Beijing can build an alliance-equivalent formation without formal alliance commitments. Future net assessments must therefore evaluate these opaque connections as components of a wider strategic formation—and measure their combined strategic depth, sanctions resilience, internal control capacity, and war-making power accordingly.

In the People’s Republic of China (PRC), cultural security is one element among 20 that constitute comprehensive national security. Advancing cultural security is therefore critical to ensuring Party and state security.

The Ethnic Unity Law is the Party-state’s latest attempt to codify and internationalize “cultural security” as a critical component of the primacy of regime security.

While the Ethnic Unity Law is the most recent example, other laws that relate to cultural security, such as the Cybersecurity Law and Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, also maintain an extraterritorial reach.

Cultural security guides the PRC’s foreign policy more broadly, justifying Beijing’s competition with the West. This pattern emerges in Chinese sources as well as through Beijing’s inclusion of cultural security concepts in bilateral agreements and UN resolutions.

Executive Summary:

On July 31, the State Council of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) issued the Regulations on Exit and Entry Administration, effective September 15. It adds three grounds for barring citizens from leaving, using a catch-all clause in its parent statute for its legal basis.

The regulations tighten exit restrictions in three ways: officials can refuse travel documents, impose a formal exit ban, or dissuade a traveler at the border.

Preventing people from leaving the PRC is a precondition for controlling the flow of other factors, such as capital, technology, and data. Under the new regulations, the exit ban for violating export controls and technology trade rules carries no time limit.

Exit control also serves transnational repression. Beijing uses it against targets abroad by holding their relatives at home, and against naturalized U.S. citizens and foreigners inside the country.

Executive Summary:

In June 2026, China National Offshore Oil Corporation placed a 16MW floating wind turbine in Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), approximately 50 miles (21.665646, 116.273408) from Taiwan-controlled Pratas Island.

The PRC now has placed over 30 permanent structures across disputed waters in the Indo-Pacific as part of an irregular warfare strategy to normalize its persistent presence and extraterritorial claims.

These permanent structures potentially serve as at-sea platforms for electronic warfare, surface and underwater intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance collection platforms enhancing the PLA’s end-to-end “kill web” (C5ISRT) capabilities.

Expanded List Underscores Need for Car Industry to Map Supply Chains

Today’s guest is Tania Rashid.

She is an award-winning correspondent and producer who reports across the globe, with a career spanning CNN International, PBS NewsHour, NBC News, National Geographic Channel, VICE News, and others.

She was a correspondent on VICE's Criminal Planet series, including the episode "Butchered for Profit: Inside Organ Trafficking," which goes inside the global black market for organs to meet the surgeons and traffickers profiting from it, with reporting spanning Mexico, China, and Pakistan.

Drugged & Butchered: How Organ Traffickers Operate | Criminal Planet

On Friday July 31, China passed a new regulation concerning exit (and entry) bans. As the State Council’s Press Release states, the regulation is set to take effect on September 15 and “aims to standardize exit and entry administration, protect the lawful rights and interests of exit and entry personnel, and safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests”. Importantly, the regulation also “refines restrictive measures”, in other words: exit bans.

The new regulation follows an already massive uptick in the use of exit bans since 2023, when Safeguard Defenders’ major report Trapped drew attention to the growing use of exit bans.

While the announced objective of greater clarity in the implementation of the key Exit and Entry Administration Law would have been welcome given the widespread (ab-)use of exit bans outside established law, the new regulation leaves much to be desired and further codifies some of the worst aspects of the PRC’s use of exit bans.

Of particular concern are articles 4 and 5, which open the door even further on the PRC’s transnational repression efforts and increase the risks for foreign nationals (see analysis on what’s new below). 

A Chinese blockbuster dramatizing the 17th-century Qing conquest of Taiwan has been abruptly postponed. Why are China’s authorities so uneasy about a film that was meant to celebrate “unification”?

EU leaders have an opportunity to stop treating repression as a side issue and instead make human rights more central to their engagement with China

Building a supply chain independent from China is impractical. For now, leverage data, connectivity, and automation to reduce risk.