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Chip battle
Sources: Beijing wants to pause Nvidia chip purchases

The Chinese government has asked individual technology companies to temporarily stop their planned purchases of Nvidia's AI chip H200. This is what sources tell The Information.

The background is said to be that Beijing is awaiting a decision regarding the terms of the chip import. The tech site writes that Chinese officials do not want local technology companies to rush to hoard chips before the discussions are concluded.

Nvidia's stock hiccupped but ended Wednesday up 1 percent.

Voices on Greenland
Analysis: Annexing Greenland would be a strategic disaster for the US

Annexing Greenland would trigger a national security crisis in the US and likely be the biggest foreign policy misstep since the Vietnam War, writes Casey Michel in Foreign Policy.

Canada, now surrounded on three sides by an expansionist US that has already threatened them, would militarize its border and launch a nuclear weapons program. European allies – several of whom have territories scattered across the Western Hemisphere – would lose all faith in the US, he continues.

“Empire expansion tends to lead to imperial encroachment – ​​and, ultimately, to imperial collapse.”

Outwardly, Europe is trying to signal unity with Trump for the sake of Ukraine – but behind the scenes, they are forced to deal with his new imperialist actions, writes Steven Erlanger in the New York Times.

They see a president who has been excited and driven to the edge by the military intervention in Venezuela, which he compared to watching a television show, he continues.

“He appears as an unpredictable force capable of creating enormous disruptions – in NATO, in Ukraine, in Iran, in Gaza – as his gaze flicks from one imaginary prize to another.

Greenland’s future
Cold War agreement gives the US free rein in Greenland

Trump is demanding Greenland for the sake of US national security and claims that Denmark has not done enough for the island’s security. At the same time, a 1951 agreement gives the US the right to operate in Greenland in principle completely freely, writes the New York Times.

The US currently has a military base in Greenland, but the agreement gives them the right to build and man military bases on the entire island and the right to freely control sea and air traffic around them.

– The US has such free rein in Greenland that they can basically do whatever they want. I find it hard to see how the US can’t get what they want if they just ask nicely, says Mikkel Runge Olesen at the Danish Institute for International Studies.

US attack on Venezuela  New government
Sources: US fears a rebellion from notorious Maduro friend

The United States fears that Venezuela's Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello could pose a threat to interim President Delcy Rodríguez. Cabello has therefore been warned that he risks facing the same fate as Nicolás Maduro if he does not do as the United States wants, several sources told Reuters.

According to Reuters, Cabello has a conflicted history with Rodríguez. Because he controls the country's security forces and intelligence services, he is considered to pose a threat to cooperation between the United States and the country's interim president.

- Maduro brought him in to crush the opposition after the stolen 2019 election, says Geoff Ramsey at the Atlantic Council think tank.

US Venezuela Attack  Oil Market
UK: Legal – Ship is Stateless

The US seizure of the Russian-flagged oil tanker Marinera was legal. This is what UK Defence Secretary John Healey says, according to Sky News.

British personnel did not board the ship, but provided support for the operation at the US request, he adds.

– This is a sanctioned, stateless ship with a long history of shady activity and close ties to Iran and Russia.

Healey praises the US forces’ “enormous courage and professionalism in difficult sea conditions”.