Louis Dugit-Gros لوي دوجيه-غرو

French Diplomat | Ex @franceintheus | Former Visiting Fellow @WashInstitute | Cairene, Beiruti, Rbati | RT ✖️ endorsement

[Fédé 🇫🇷 de la Lose @FFLose]

Dimanche est une merveilleuse opportunité pour faire une journée de déconnexion

[Wassim Nasr @SimNasr]

And after the French Italian summit

[Gérard Araud @GerardAraud]

Ahurissant ! On demande au pays envahi, dévasté et bombardé de ne pas être trop méchant à l’égard de son agresseur. Mais qu’ont-ils tous avec la Russie?

[laurence norman @laurnorman]

Quite a photo.

Having completely ignored the Europeans on Iran and berated their rejection of his war, @EmmanuelMacron manages to get @realDonaldTrump to sign the MoU in Versailles.

[Jean-Noël Barrot @jnbarrot]

Avec nos partenaires britannique, canadien, australien, néo-zélandais et norvégien, nous prenons aujourd’hui de nouvelles sanctions contre les responsables de l’intensification de la colonisation et des violences en Cisjordanie.

A titre national, nous avons interdit d’accès à notre territoire le ministre Bezalel Smotrich, quatre responsables d’organisations de colons et vingt-et-un colons violents.

Bezalel Smotrich promeut activement l’annexion de la Cisjordanie, qu’il revendique ouvertement, la création de nouvelles colonies en Cisjordanie, la recolonisation de Gaza, l’effondrement économique de l’Autorité palestinienne et ses conséquences délétères sur la population palestinienne : c’est une politique que ne peut accepter l’écrasante majorité de la communauté internationale, fermement attachée à la solution à deux Etats.

[Bruno Tertrais @BrunoTertrais]

This exemplifies what many foreign observers have missed about the context of "forward deterrence": in the past five years, the concrete commitments to France's neighbors have significantly increased, from the Norwegian Sea to the Baltic Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean.

[Samuel Doveri Vesterbye @SamuelJsdv]

France 🇫🇷 got €93 billion investment out of which Japan 🇯🇵 (Soft Bank) alone invests €45billion into French 🇫🇷 nuclear ☢️, tech, AI & data.

This isn’t business; it’s an astronomic geo-economic investment. Meaning: US 🇺🇸China 🇨🇳 are unpredictable & Japan 🇯🇵 hedges to Europe ⤵️

[Jean-Noël Barrot @jnbarrot]

À compter de ce jour, Itamar Ben-Gvir est interdit d'accès au territoire français.

Cette décision fait suite à ses agissements inqualifiables à l'égard de citoyens français et européens passagers de la flottille Global Smud.

Nous désapprouvons la démarche de cette flottille qui ne produit aucun effet utile et surcharge les services diplomatiques et consulaires, dont je salue le professionnalisme et le dévouement.

Mais nous ne pouvons tolérer que des ressortissants français puissent être ainsi menacés, intimidés ou brutalisés, qui plus est par un responsable public.

Je relève que ces agissements ont été dénoncés par un grand nombre de responsables gouvernementaux et politiques israéliens.

Ils font suite à une longue liste de déclarations et d’actions choquantes, d’incitations à la haine et à la violence à l'encontre des Palestiniens.

Comme mon collègue italien, je demande à l'Union européenne de prendre également des sanctions à l’égard d’Itamar Ben-Gvir.

[Chef d'état-major de l'armée de Terre @CEMAT_FR]

Nous apprenons avec tristesse le décès du sergent Bin Chen et du caporal-chef Axel Delplanque, au cours d'une plongée de nuit dans la Maine, à Angers, dans le cadre d’un stage de formation des plongeurs de combat du génie.

Sincères condoléances de l’armée de Terre à leurs familles, leurs proches et leurs frères d’armes du 1er régiment étranger du génie, du 6e régiment du génie et du 13e bataillon de chasseurs alpins.

[Agence France-Presse @afpfr]

Le journaliste français Christophe Gleizes, condamné à sept ans de prison et détenu en Algérie, renonce à son pourvoi en cassation, ouvrant la voie à une possible grâce du président Abdelmadjid Tebboune, a annoncé sa famille mardi sur France Inter.

➡️ https://t.co/KbvUSB6jO4

[franceinfo @franceinfo]

🔴 DIRECT - "Si Israël continue cette politique, qui au fond contrevient à son histoire même, nous ne pouvons pas faire comme si de rien n'était", indique E.Macron, interrogé sur la remise en cause de l'accord d'association entre l'État hébreu et l'Union européenne.

#Canal16

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

If governments were actually doing their job, this Palantir document 👇 wouldn't be a manifesto they proudly boast about, but a clear sign of the urgent need to purge its software from the public institutions it has infiltrated.

What are they saying, essentially?

They basically promote a clash of civilization worldview in which there exists a "they" - the supposed enemies of Western civilization, whose cultures the document codes as inferior - and a "we" who must stop indulging in decadent restraint and invest massively in AI weapons and defense software (which conveniently makes Palantir's product catalog the civilizational cure).

Look at point 4 for instance. They write that "the limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software."

It all rests on a pretty massive assumption: that coexistence is impossible. Why would "free and democratic societies" (by which they obviously mean Western-style liberal-democracies) need to "prevail"? Why can't they simply coexist with other civilizations or political systems out there?

Nowhere in the document do they defend this assumption: it's simply asserted as the starting condition of the argument.

But it's the entire ballgame: if civilizations and political systems can coexist - as they largely have, imperfectly but recognizably, throughout history - then the entire case they make in the document evaporates.

In fact one can argue that, studying history, the big problem was not that civilizations couldn't coexist: it was that, from time to time, one of them decided that others were inferior, threatening, or standing in the way of its rightful expansion - and acted accordingly.

So many catastrophes and so much human suffering in history trace back not to the fact of plural civilizations, but to one of them deciding it could no longer tolerate the others.

The problem, in other words, has almost always been exactly the worldview Palantir is now selling. Their manifesto isn't warning against the cause of some of the worst periods in history: it's arguing for reviving them!

Or take point 15: they explicitly call for the re-armament of Germany and Japan, and an end to "Japanese pacifism". Basically undoing one of the foundational settlements of the post-WW2 order.

I mean, think about the insanity of this for a second: a private company - unelected, answerable only to its shareholders - is casually proposing to overturn the security architecture of two continents. A settlement that took a world war, and tens of millions of dead to establish.

Why do they propose this? There is obviously a commercial motivation: a remilitarized Germany and Japan are massive new defense-software markets.

But the more troubling answer is that point 15 fits into the ideological project the rest of the manifesto lays out - a civilizational contest requires a consolidated Western bloc, and pacifist members are a liability in such a contest.

So taking a step back we now have what's the most influential defense-software company in the world, with its code deeply embedded in all the machinery of Western states - intelligence agencies, militaries, police forces, welfare systems, border controls - openly outing itself as an ideological project.

They're effectively saying "our tools aren't meant to serve your foreign policy. They're meant to enforce ours."

Because, worryingly, that's what they CAN do. Palantir software is all about basically telling states: "these are your threats, these are the people and groups to watch, these are the patterns that matter, these are the targets that warrant action."

For instance the DGSI - the French intelligence services - use Palantir (see: https://t.co/3YJk88k4QY): do you honestly think the software is warning them about, say, the NSA tapping the phones of French government officials? About the weaponization of US extraterritorial law against French companies? Did it warn them about the AUKUS ambush that cost France a sixty-billion-euro submarine contract? Obviously not.

And that's exactly what the manifesto is saying. They've positioned themselves as advocates of Western civilizational unity, so their software can't undermine it. The ideological position and the product roadmap have to align, or the whole project falls apart.

This makes their software not only deeply dangerous for the world as a whole but also, almost by definition, for any country using it. When it comes to your security as a state, it is primordial you base yourself on truth as opposed to ideology. The entire point of an intelligence agency is to tell its government what is true, not what your so-called "allies'" defense contractors would like you to see.

A state that outsources its threat assessment to a company with an explicit ideological agenda is not gathering intelligence, it is essentially subscribing to propaganda.

The conclusion couldn't be more obvious. Every government still running Palantir software in its intelligence, security, or public-service infrastructure needs to start ripping it out, now! Lest they want to be embarked on the delusional and deeply destructive clash-of-civilizations crusade Palantir has now openly committed itself to.

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

Just 20 minutes before Trump announced the Strait of Hormuz was open—Someone dumped 7,990 lots of Brent crude futures.

A $760 million bet that oil prices would drop.

Orders far larger than anything else in the market at that moment.

They made a fortune.

But somebody knew the announcement was coming.

This is insider trading at the highest level of government.

[Armée française - Opérations militaires @EtatMajorFR]

📍 Proche et Moyen-Orient | Retour sur les engagements des moyens 🇫🇷 face aux menaces aériennes 

💥 Protection des intérêts français dans la zone et application des accords de défense

🎯 Les armées 🇫🇷 maintiennent une posture défensive active, en coordination étroite avec nos partenaires, pour la sécurité et la stabilité de la région 🛡️

[Chef d'état-major des armées @CEMA_FR]

📍Balard | Nous accueillons depuis maintenant une semaine les officiers des différentes nations qui ont souhaité participer à l’initiative visant à contribuer au rétablissement de la navigation dans le détroit d’Ormuz.

La phase de planification avance, avec l’objectif commun de promouvoir la sécurité de la navigation maritime dans cette zone stratégique.

Cette initiative s’inscrit dans une logique strictement défensive. Elle est un véritable engagement au service de la paix et de la stabilité régionale.

[Emmanuel Macron @EmmanuelMacron]

I spoke today with Iranian President Massoud Pezeshkian, as well as with U.S. President Donald Trump.

I told both of them that their decision to accept a ceasefire was the best possible one.

I expressed my hope that the ceasefire will be fully respected by each of the belligerents, across all areas of confrontation, including in Lebanon. This is a necessary condition for the ceasefire to be credible and lasting.

It must open the way to comprehensive negotiations capable of ensuring security for all in the Middle East.

Any agreement will have to address the concerns raised by Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, as well as its regional policy and its actions obstructing navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.

This is how a strong and lasting peace can be built, with the support of all those who are able to contribute to it. France will play its full part, in close coordination with its partners in the Middle East.

This is also what I discussed today in my exchanges with the leaders of Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, and Iraq.

[Emmanuel Macron @EmmanuelMacron]

Je viens de m’entretenir avec le Président libanais Joseph Aoun ainsi qu’avec le Premier ministre Nawaf Salam.

Je leur ai exprimé la pleine solidarité de la France face aux frappes indiscriminées menées par Israël au Liban aujourd’hui, qui ont fait de très nombreuses victimes civiles. Nous les condamnons avec la plus grande fermeté.

Ces frappes menacent directement la pérennité du cessez-le-feu qui vient d’être conclu. Le Liban doit impérativement en faire partie.

J’ai redit la nécessité de préserver l’intégrité territoriale du Liban et la détermination de la France à soutenir les efforts des autorités libanaises en faveur de la souveraineté du pays et de la mise en œuvre du plan de désarmement du Hezbollah.

[التلفزيون العربي @AlarabyTV]

#عاجل | ماكرون:
📌أستنكر بأشد العبارات الممكنة الضربات الإسرائيلية على لبنان
📌أجدد التأكيد على ضرورة الحفاظ على وحدة أراضي لبنان

[Catherine Vautrin @CaVautrin]

Non la France ne livre pas d'armes à Israël. Elle autorise au cas par cas la vente de composants destinés à être intégrés :
- dans des systèmes défensifs participant à la protection des populations civiles, à l'image du Dôme de fer ;
- dans des équipements strictement destinés au réexport, certains étant nécessaires à nos propres forces.

[Daniel Fried @AmbDanFried]

With the Iran War in progress, the Strait of Hormuz closed, and Russia’s war against Ukraine raging, I can think of better ways for @JDVance to spend his time than supporting a pro-Putin authoritarian who does little to help the US.