Chinese platforms like TikTok may dominate the headlines, but the global internet battle isn't just happening in the App Store—it's happening underwater.
This past weekend, Sweden detained a ship it suspected of destroying an underseas cable shortly after it left Russia. Roughly two months prior, a Chinese ship severed seabed internet connections by dragging its anchor across a hundred miles of the Baltic Sea. Another Chinese-owned ship nearly snapped a cable connecting Taiwan to the World Wide Web before the island nation ran it down earlier this month.
Those examples, writes the Hudson Institute's Mike Watson, show the lengths the Chinese Communist Party—with Russia's help—will go to achieve its goal of weakening the United States by dominating the internet.
Beijing despises NATO and accuses it and the United States of adopting a "Cold War mentality." When Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin announced their "no limits" partnership shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine, they agreed to "oppose further enlargement of NATO" as well as "the formation of closed bloc structures and opposing camps in the Asia-Pacific region." After NATO observed that China is enabling Russia’s war effort, a Foreign Ministry spokesman told the alliance to "avoid messing up Asia the way it messed up Europe." Chinese and Russian ships are now destroying internet and energy infrastructure for Finland and Sweden, both of which joined NATO after Russia’s belligerence made their former neutrality untenable.
At first glance, this is a strange maneuver. Most countries do not go out of their way to make enemies, as China is doing in Europe. NATO’s security commitments stop far from China’s borders too. Beijing nonetheless sees NATO as a threat because it views all American alliances that way. A diplomatically isolated United States seems weaker to Beijing, so it is trying to break up America’s alliances all around the globe. In this case, America’s adversaries are trying to show that Sweden’s and Finland’s decision to join NATO was foolish.
So far, the damage from China's cable-cutting campaign has been minimal. Traffic has been redirected with relatively little fuss. But each cable becomes more important as fewer and fewer remain. And China’s threats will grow more persuasive the longer its aggression goes unpunished.
Read the full piece here.
Israel has agreed to a complete withdrawal from Lebanon and at least a partial withdrawal from Gaza—on the condition that the Lebanese Army curtails Hezbollah in the South and Hamas loses power in the war-torn strip. "But neither Lebanon nor Hamas appear likely to meet those conditions," our Andrew Tobin reports from Jerusalem, so Israel is taking matters into its own hands.
The Jewish state "has been secretly building military outposts in southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip as part of a plan to create buffer zones along both borders," current and former Israeli officials and reserve soldiers tell Tobin. The push "is based on an assumption that U.S.-brokered ceasefire deals in Lebanon and Gaza are unlikely to endure," and Israeli officials "believe the two zones—along with a third one that the military openly maintains in southern Syria—are necessary to protect its border communities, which have been devastated by terrorism over the past 16 months of war."
Israel’s thinking, according to former senior Israeli military official Amir Avivi, "is that we will not withdraw from these buffer zones unless someone else comes in who can credibly deal with the threat."
"Hezbollah needs to be dismantled in Lebanon, Hamas needs to be out of Gaza, and Syria needs to be liberal and democratic," he said. "As long as these things don't happen, Israel is going to stay in the perimeter."
The Israeli goal, Avivi added, is to eventually leave Lebanon. Gaza is a different story: The Jewish state plans to stay in the buffer zone "indefinitely after the ceasefire ends."
Later today, DNC members will vote for a new party leader in the wake of November’s electoral meltdown. Kamala Harris floundered against Donald Trump in part due to voter discontent with the left's focus on woke identity politics. But the party doesn't appear poised to ditch them.
At a forum held Thursday evening, MSNBC's Jonathan Capehart asked candidates whether they "believe that racism and misogyny played a role in VP Harris's defeat." All eight contenders, including frontrunners Ben Wikler and Ken Martin, raised their hands. Donald Trump significantly improved his margin with black voters in 2024, but who wants to let facts get in the way of ideology. "That's good, you all pass," Capehart responded. Three cheers for groupthink!
Capehart, our Chuck Ross writes, peppered the candidates with a series of similar litmus tests, "including whether they would commit to appointing more transgender officials at the DNC or creating a subcommittee for Muslims." As he did so, climate protesters interrupted the forum at least five times. Things got so chaotic that MSNBC host Symone Sanders dressed the demonstrators down, saying, "We are going to ask the questions from this stage. We'll ask that you please take a seat."
Just hours later, on Friday, the Associated Press released an interview with outgoing DNC chair Jaime Harrison, who said the party needed to "stick by" Joe Biden rather than "call in the backup." Smart.
Away from the Beacon:
- Trump is in negotiations with CBS News to settle a lawsuit he filed against the network over the way it edited its 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. "Many executives at CBS's parent company, Paramount, believe that settling the lawsuit would increase the odds that the Trump administration does not block or delay their planned multibillion-dollar merger with another company," according to the New York Times.
- Washington state's Office of Equity is hosting a "listening session for 2SLGBTQIA+ state employees" who are "being affected by ANY of the recent federal executive orders." The session will help "inform the Governor and the Legislature on issues impacting 2SLGBTQIA+ Washingtonians."
- Chuck Todd is leaving NBC News, and he says his "Chuck Toddcast" pod is "coming with me," like anyone cares. Todd told colleagues to "stay tuned for an announcement about its new home soon." We’re on the edge of our seats.
Our full lineup is below. Enjoy your weekend, we're back on Monday.