Victor Loh 盧光榮

Are birds real? The Flying Spaghetti Monster is. Digital Editor @Business. ex-@CNBC, @MoniifyBusiness, @TODAYonline and @asiaonecom. Trusty shellback

[Victor Loh 盧光榮 @YoLohVictor]

"The concerns came after Thai authorities last month said 39 Chinese T-59D battle tanks had been delivered to Cambodia"

Thailand lodges concerns with China over Beijing's recent delivery of tanks to Cambodia https://t.co/3f7IRqzqTM

[Victor Loh 盧光榮 @YoLohVictor]

"Conference rooms at headquarters sport names including Radiohead, Led Zeppelin, Queen and Nirvana. Kimi’s subscription plans are named after the tempo guidelines of classical music: Adagio, Andante and Moderato. The startup was originally called the Dark Side of the Moon..."

[Victor Loh 盧光榮 @YoLohVictor]

"Moonshot’s founder isn’t just an academic. The 33-year-old is a huge music fan who has infused his company with the names of his favorite bands."

Tech stocks tumbled after Moonshot AI released a new model. Here's what to know https://t.co/cmMnj3R59y

[Victor Loh 盧光榮 @YoLohVictor]

https://t.co/P892CVgqsE

[Victor Loh 盧光榮 @YoLohVictor]

What kinds of places make social life possible, and what happens when they disappear? From New York to Singapore, the places we eat shape where—and whether—we spend time together. https://t.co/8C6nJ6HS2S

[Victor Loh 盧光榮 @YoLohVictor]

Indian billionaire Gautam Adani said he’s not aware of his pledge to invest in the US playing any role in the US moving to drop criminal charges against him. https://t.co/l7c6i5bvbl

[Victor Loh 盧光榮 @YoLohVictor]

Vietnam’s largest listed jeweler is facing a crisis of confidence after police detained the former head of its gem certification subsidiary over his alleged links to a transnational diamond-smuggling ring https://t.co/QkFySNWpGq

[Victor Loh 盧光榮 @YoLohVictor]

"... in modern Asia, the first shot may be easy to fire but impossible to control.*
https://t.co/8oAkbmEimG

[Lulu Cheng Meservey @lulumeservey]

People don’t root for institutions, they root for people

Even more than that, they root for person - singular

If you look at the excitement around Norway in the World Cup, it’s really excitement around Haaland: the Viking, the freak of nature, the happy giant, the son, the meme

Haaland is acting as a gateway drug for Norway as a country and soccer as an sport

When it comes to hearts and minds, numbers work in reverse. The destiny of 1 player stirs more emotion than a team of 26 or a nation of 5 million

[Bloomberg @business]

Could AI become the next geopolitical battleground? Bloomberg's Menaka Doshi asks Fractal Analytics Co-founder Srikanth Velamakanni why countries are rethinking AI sovereignty and why smart interdependence may matter more than self-sufficiency.

Bloomberg launches Emerging, a monthly podcast series hosted by @menakadoshi and @haslindatv on the rising economies shaping the global future. In episode one, Menaka looks at India’s AI challenge: how the world’s most populous country can compete in a race dominated by the US and China: https://t.co/1OluGH3slp

[Victor Loh 盧光榮 @YoLohVictor]

Ballads have largely disappeared from Western pop. In China, they still dominate the charts, reflecting a music culture built around singing rather than beats. https://t.co/qwSQZGHeg4

[Victor Loh 盧光榮 @YoLohVictor]

Indonesia's tycoons are moving hundreds of millions of dollars offshore as President Prabowo steps up his crackdown on wealth inequality. https://t.co/AVMFJMhRUd

[Victor Loh 盧光榮 @YoLohVictor]

A sleepy Indonesian island has become a hub for Russian oil in Asia, funneling $1.6 billion of fuels into markets across the region https://t.co/LacURKGlvm

[Dan Scavino @Scavino47]

Just prior to this evenings dinner at Versailles in France, hosted by President @EmmanuelMacron—President @realDonaldTrump signed the Iran Memorandum of Understanding, once Secretary Rubio received it…

“A pretty key moment in history we are sharing together…” @SecRubio

[Victor Loh 盧光榮 @YoLohVictor]

That aside, there is an industry churning out reports for the sake of churning out reports. I call them the "reporting mill" and their methodologies are questionable.

[Bethany 貝書穎 @BethanyAllenEbr]

I increasingly find that my primary role in the "China influence" space these days is to debunk a lot of very, very poor quality "China influence" research reports that have been coming out.

I don't think it would be an overreach to call this slate of reports "China influence slop." But such a term is too kind, because it fails to indicate that these reports are primarily motivated by the desire to delegitimize grassroots American organizating by attempting to associate them with "hostile foreign forces" — a tactic widely used by the CCP to delegitimize grassroots Chinese civil society whenever it finds such movements inconvenient.

Let me start with a couple recent ones:
— The reports from Bitcoin Policy Institute and Power the Future which have led House reps to call for an investigation into anti-data center organizing
— And this latest one about how China is supposedly bankrolling climate activism at the University of California system and thereby acting to "shape California’s climate and energy policies."

I can demonstrate, very easily, that these reports are
1) exceedingly poor quality as China influence reports go

and

2) primarily and overwhelmingly motivated not by a desire to uncover China's influence (and thus to preserve the integrity of US civil society), but rather to delegitimize what are very obviously organic US movements (and thus to compromise the integrity of US civil society)

Reports like these represent an anti-democratic abuse of the concept of China influence research, which denies agency to real Americans.

These reports, given both their methods and their political goal, are also a form of disinformation and propaganda, very similar to how China paints Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters as stooges of America.

And finally, these reports make a mockery of actual, high-quality China influence research.

This must stop now — and journalists reporting on this style of report should do so with the highest degree of journalistic professionalism and scrutiny.

[Deirdre Bosa @dee_bosa]

"This is the first time ever that I can remember that technology costs the same as people, and you're making that comparison: choose tech or people”-@jainarvind

[Nga Pham @ngahpham]

Reuters secured an exclusive interview with President To Lam on the sidelines of Shangri-La Dialogue 2026 in Singapore

https://t.co/rPFPGn2MBD

[Christian Keil @pronounced_kyle]

This is wild... Russia seems to be threatening a *commercial* satellite that provides imaging services to Ukraine:

▸ starting about two weeks ago, Russia started maneuvering five (!) of their classified satellites to the same orbital inclination as the ICEYE satellite

▸ these burns were big, on the order of 100 m/s, clearly using chemical propulsion given the speed of the burns — very expensive and deliberate maneuvers

▸ as of last Friday, all five Russian satellites are now co-planar, at ~97.8° inclination, with three of ICEYE's satellites, and aligned in other orbital elements (e.g. RAAN) that make it clear they're specifically targeting this set

▸ I am a little skeptical that Russia is specifically targeting -X36 — there are two other satellites at the same inclination/RAAN (-X37 and -X38) — but the Russian sats are now all within striking distance of -X36, which is why people are concerned about it specifically; the closest cross-track distance is an estimated 500 meters (!!), all while the satellites are orbit 550 kilometers above Earth

▸ Russia has unleashed a cyberattack on a commercial satellite before (Viasat), and it is official Russian policy that commercially-owned infrastructure that aids in military efforts "may be legitimate target[s] for a retaliatory strike.”

▸ there's speculation that this could be a precursor to an RPO mission (meaning: physically grabbing the satellite or some other kind of non-kinetic attack like blinding/jamming)

Worth tracking closely. And unfortunately more evidence that space is militarizing, fast.

[Financial Times @FT]

Farmers in northern Vietnam are dismantling a decades-old cemetery to make way for a $1.5bn golf course and luxury residential development by the Trump Organization and its local partners, a project seen as crucial for ties between Hanoi and Washington. https://t.co/7wqiWdxjET

[CNBC International @CNBCi]

> $1,000,000,000,000.

That's the market value of South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix after its shares jumped more than 11% on Wednesday. The rally comes as investors continued to pile into artificial intelligence-linked semiconductor stocks.

https://t.co/wP6LiEY20p