Emma Janson

MSc Contemporary Chinese Studies, Oxford - Advising on Foreign Policy in the Swedish parliament

[Kyle Orton @KyleWOrton]

A complete catastrophe: #Trump has aligned US allies' interests with #China.

[Barak Ravid @BarakRavid]

BREAKING: Netanyahu says Israel attacked last night a target near the presidential palace in Damascus. "This is a clear message to the Syrian regime. We will not allow a deployment of forces south of Damascus and any threat to the Druze community", he said

[Brian Hart @BrianTHart]

How severe are China's food security challenges?

Our new @CSIS @ChinaPowerCSIS report explores China's 3 key vulnerabilities and 3 strengths in its pursuit of food security.

[Emma Janson @Emma_Janson]

Seeing who gets 0% tariffs is almost as sad as the whole tariff meltdown itself

[Elliot - @InterdimensionalTV @n_reruns]

Runway of Tariffs

Made in a single day using:
Images – GPT-4o Image Gen
Video – @LumaLabsAI

Global trade has never looked this good.

[Emma Janson @Emma_Janson]

@jcmittelstaedt I enjoy the part where EU protection of forests is unfair, but Latin American lack of protection of forests is also unfair…

[JP Lindsley | Journalist @JPLindsley]

Hi. Tonight for the first time in months, if not a year, there are Russian missiles flying throughout Ukraine launched from the Black Sea. For the past year, this was nearly impossible, thanks to Ukraine's protective sea drones.

But then the White House bought into the Kremlin's sneaky Black Sea ceasefire, and whoa what do we have here but a major Russian missile attack from the Black Sea?

do you see how it works?

[Pavel Slunkin @PavelSlunkin]

Former U.S. Ambassador to China @RNicholasBurns on how to win the global competition: ‘Be nice to your allies.’ 1/2 ⤵️

[Visegrád 24 @visegrad24]

North Korea's IT Army is expandeding operations beyond the U.S. and are now increasingly targeting organizations across Europe.

Also referred to as "IT warriors," they hide their true identities and pose as workers based in other countries by connecting via laptop farms to fraudulently secure positions as remote freelance IT employees at companies worldwide to generate revenue for the North Korean regime.

They are increasingly targeting positions at companies in Germany, Portugal, and the UK, claiming that they are IT workers from Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Ukraine, the United States, and Vietnam. The identities used were a combination of real and fabricated personas,"

"IT workers in Europe were recruited through various online platforms, including Upwork, Telegram, and Freelancer. Payment for their services was facilitated through cryptocurrency, the TransferWise service, and Payoneer.

The European projects they are employed for range from AI and blockchain technology to web, bot, and content management system (CMS) development.

Some target work in the defense industrial base and government sectors using fabricated references and personas to make it easier to trick job recruiters into hiring them.

"We are increasingly seeing North Korean IT workers infiltrating larger organizations to steal sensitive data and follow through on their extortion threats against these enterprises," Michael Barnhart, a Mandiant Principal Analyst at Google Cloud, told BleepingComputer in January.

The North Korean regime keeps up to 90% of wages collected this way, generating hundreds of millions every year to fund its weapons programs.

After being discovered and fired, some of these undercover North Korean IT workers have also used insider knowledge to extort former employers, threatening to leak sensitive information stolen from company systems.

In January, the U.S. Justice Department indicted two North Korean nationals and three facilitators for their involvement in a multi-year fraudulent remote IT work scheme involving at least sixty-four U.S. companies between April 2018 and August 2024.

The map below shows countries that have been targeted by fake North Korean IT workers.

[Ed Conway @EdConwaySky]

🚨
Here's a thread about ALUMINIUM.
Why this commonplace metal is actually pretty extraordinary.
How the process of making it is a modern miracle...
... which also teaches you some profound lessons about the trade war being waged by Donald Trump. And why it might be doomed.
🧵

[Velina Tchakarova @vtchakarova]

Finally, someone is openly admitting the reality and intends to fight the EU bureaucracy on this: without energy security, there won’t be any energy transition. If Europe wants to survive in the short term, it needs to either produce its own oil and gas, or alternatively nuclear.

[Velina Tchakarova @vtchakarova]

Guess who wants to become food superpower and shape a whole bloc centered around food commodities next to energy commodities?

[Jim Sciutto @jimsciutto]

Q: “It sounds like you're saying that if the US does not return to fair trade as you describe it, that Europe will look elsewhere.”

EU Trade Chief @MarosSefcovic: “I think we already are, to be honest, because I think that was always our motto, our agenda that we are the biggest trader on this planet.”

[Ed Conway @EdConwaySky]

🚨How Europe INCREASED its reliance on Russian fertiliser🌾
Despite its rhetoric, the EU is buying MORE Russian fertilisers now than pre-2022.
It's one of many blind spots in the sanctions regime: EU may not pay Russia for oil but it paid Russia €5bn for fertiliser since 2022(!)

[Velina Tchakarova @vtchakarova]

Three years into Russia’s war against Ukraine, the battlefield remains uncertain—but geopolitics is shifting fast. A reality check on where we stand: very long post 💡

1️⃣ This war isn’t just about Ukraine.

Russia isn’t fighting just to expand its borders—it’s dismantling the European security order and securing its pole position in the U.S.-China great power rivalry amid Cold War 2 between America and the #DragonBear.

Yet Europe still refuses to fight back strategically.

2️⃣ Russia’s war on Europe isn’t just military—it’s non-conventional too.

🔹 Weaponized energy, food & fertilizers
🔹 Migration flows as a destabilization tool
🔹 Cyberattacks & sabotage ops inside EU/NATO
🔹 Nuclear blackmail

Meanwhile, Moscow is not isolated—it’s adapting.

3️⃣ Europe’s grand promises vs. reality:

❌ Germany’s “Zeitenwende” was all talk—no real defense shift so far (new Chancellor Merz might bring out the long-awaited shift)
❌ Europe imposed the greatest sanctions packages (16)—then bypass them via Russia's proxies.
❌ €150B in aid—yet Europe failed to create a wartime economy to mass-produce weapons and consistently support Ukraine.

Russia? It just secured more reliable suppliers via North Korea, Iran & China.

4️⃣ The #DragonBear Alliance is real.

For 15 years, the West downplayed Russia-China ties as a "marriage of convenience", "junior partner" and "impossible".
🚨 Wrong. China keeps Russia’s economy alive by:
🔹 Buying Russian oil & gas at scale
🔹 Supplying microchips & industrial tech
🔹 Offering financial escape routes from sanctions
🔹 Strengthening BRICS+, SCO and other organisations with Russia's participation

Russia is NOT China’s junior partner—it’s Beijing’s Eurasian and Arcic power lever as well as commodities safeline amid Cold War 2 with the U.S.

5️⃣ The Global South is NOT on the West’s side.

Many Western leaders assumed the world would isolate Russia. That never happened.

Instead, Russia deepened ties across Asia, Africa & Latin America.
🔹 India & UAE buy Russian oil
🔹 Brazil, South Africa & Turkey refuse sanctions
🔹 Africa sees Russia as an anti-colonial counterweight to the West

This war is redefining global power alignments.
6️⃣ The West is losing the long game amid Bifurcation of the Global System due to long-term structural and systemic crisis on the old continent.

🔹 Ukraine still lacks weapons systems and ammunistion promised by the West
🔹 European defense industries are too slow and fractured
🔹 Russia is outproducing NATO in artillery shells & drones

Putin is betting the West will lose interest before Russia runs out of men & munitions.

7️⃣ What happens next? Three scenarios:

💥 Scenario 1: Ukraine wins
🔹 Requires a U.S. shift back to full military, diplomatic and financial aid; the EU switches to partial war economy
🔹 China stops tech transfers and dual-use to Russia
🔹 Global South cuts strategic exports to Moscow
🔮 Likelihood: Low (U.S. disengagement under Trump 2.0 + EU hesitation)

⏳ Scenario 2: The War Drags On (War of Attrition until now)
🔹 Russia sustains war with Chinese & Iranian aid
🔹 Western aid to Ukraine slows but doesn’t stop
🔹 Global South expands sanctions evasion & energy trade
🔮 Likelihood: High (We’re already here)

🤝 Scenario 3: The Frozen War (Increasingly Likely)
🔹 U.S. & Russia negotiate a ceasefire, restore strategic dialogue
🔹 Ukraine is forced into territorial concessions
🔹 China brokers the deal to stabilize global markets
🔹 Global South pushes for diplomatic resolution due to food and energy inflation
🔮 Likelihood: Rising fast (Trump’s 2025 policy shift)

8️⃣ Final Reality Check:
The EU and its members are becoming the geopolitical backyard of global affairs if they don't get their act together.
🔹 A new Iron Curtain is emerging along NATO’s Eastern flank amid Cold War 2 between America and the DragonBear
🔹 U.S. focus is shifting to China & the Indo-Pacific where the greatest geopolitical tensions will occur in 2025.
🔹 The EU members are divided—some want to fight, others want peace at any cost. The Bifurcation of the Global System is now affecting the old continent - as above, so below.

Russia is playing the long game. Is the West?

[Noga Tarnopolsky נגה טרנופולסקי نوغا ترنوبولسكي @NTarnopolsky]

💥Another betrayal: Donald Trump has ordered the closure of the U S military base in Alexandroupoli, Greece, at the request of Vladimir Putin & Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a strategic loss for Greece and for the European Union, reports @eurotopics_en.

[Mikhail Khodorkovsky @khodorkovsky_en]

22 years ago – how time flies – I wrote a report on Russian corruption. I told Putin about corruption in his circle, gave examples.

I asked him directly: does Putin want 25% of his compatriots to consider the Russian President a bribe-taker?

🧵What happened after showed I thought better of him than he deserved. 1/9

[Aaron Y. Zelin @azelin]

EU has another round in Damascus with Ahmad al-Shar’a. This time headed by Hadja Lahbib (@hadjalahbib), Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness, and Crisis Management

[Emma Janson @Emma_Janson]

Amusing to watch American TikTok users emigrating to Chinas Xiaohongshu. Doing exactly what the US is trying to prevent, using a Chinese app, whilst simultaneously making the Chinese nervous about all these westerners with their ideas entering China’s domestic online landscape

[Marko Jukic @mmjukic]

If the EU and European elite agreed to be collectively about 20-25% less geriatric, insane, and malicious, and go back to the EU and Europe being about antimatter laboratories and Leonardo Da Vinci, the people would be begging, crying, and pleading for more European integration.

[MFA of Ukraine 🇺🇦 @MFA_Ukraine]

During Russia's morning missile attack on Kyiv on December 20, the St. Nicholas Roman Catholic Cathedral – one of the lovemarks of Kyiv in the city center – was damaged.