ITK Daily | October 21

Happy Friday.

To be ITK, know this:

Bloomberg: UK premier may be decided Monday as Tories set contest rules

Boris Johnson considering running again to be PM, say allies: Guardian reports the threshold to reach the ballot is the support of 100 Tory MPs, however, and there are doubts he has sufficient backing.

#BBB

Bring

Back

Boris

Wild.

Former UK Treasury Chief Rishi Sunak leads prime minister race: WSJ reports other competitors to include cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt, and possibly former leader Boris Johnson.

Penny Mordaunt has announced she is running (again) to be the leader of the Conservative Party and your Prime Minister.

US is gripped by failure of British populism: The tragedy of Liz of the 44 Days has been watched with fascination and alarm by politicians, strategists, and financiers. Gerard Baker

+ "Perhaps not since the rise of the Beatles have events in Britain commanded so much attention in America."

+ "For elite opinion — the people who move trillions on Wall Street, scrutinize opinion poll cross-tabs in Washington, or opine about geopolitical strategy in conference rooms and lecture theatres — the fierce little political tragedy of Liz of the 44 Days has been scrutinized with uncommon attention, in an urgent search for wider lessons and a deeper meaning."

+ "Yet those Americans concerned about the deteriorating health of the liberal world order take events in the UK seriously. The drama of the past few weeks has been, as one of them said to me, like watching a good friend attempt to conduct open-heart surgery on himself."

Italy: @APDiploWriter: ROME (AP) — Presidential palace says Giorgia Meloni forms government, giving Italy first far-right-led coalition since WWII

Germany: @StuartKLau: Scoop: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who’s planning a trip to China next month, today warned fellow EU leaders about the “next big world financial crisis” possibly erupting in China, sources say. He added China could be entering the middle-income trap.

China’s military is catching up to the US. Is it ready for battle? The People’s Liberation Army is emerging as a true competitor but Beijing worries about the ability of its troops. WSJ

+ China hasn’t fought a war since a brief border clash with Vietnam in 1979.

+ Unlike American forces, who have fought for most of the past two decades in Iraq and Afghanistan, China’s service members have virtually no combat experience—which some Chinese leaders have referred to as a “peace disease.”

+ China’s political priorities mean that around 40% of new recruits’ training has involved studying about the Communist Party rather than learning how to be a service member.

+ Xi’s ambition, according to China’s most recent defense white paper, is to complete a modernization of the military by 2035 and turn it into a “world-class force” by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

+ A common phrase of self-criticism, the “two inabilities,” refers to a perceived inability of the PLA to fight a modern war and the inability of PLA officers to command.

+ Unlike the US, the PLA lacks a well-established system for bringing in and retaining talented noncommissioned officers, the backbone of most militaries. NCOs are usually high-school graduates who rise through the enlisted service to help execute orders and manage the lower ranks.

+ “Our staffs have been doing extended combined operations for decades. Theirs haven’t.”

US in talks with Taiwan to coproduce American weapons: sources: Nikkei reports new cooperation would expedite delivery to island as China steps up military pressure.

The future of the Pacific is all about Japan.

Stealthiest US submarine makes rare appearance in Arabian Sea: Nikkei reports is it a message aimed at China's congress, Russia's war or Iran drones?

Hello.

A new cold war is heating up the Arctic: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has accelerated a great power race for ascendancy in the north, with potentially dire consequences for the planet. Bloomberg

+ Not since the Cold War has there been such focus on the frigid expanse that caps the Earth. More than half the Arctic coastline belongs to Russia, which is increasingly isolated from its northern neighbors. That’s turned the region into a growing security concern for the US, which has a foothold through Alaska.

+ As a result, this year’s Arctic Circle Assembly at times took on the air of a geopolitical summit rather than a gathering of climate and development experts.

+ While climate remains a pillar of US policy, Derek Chollet, Counselor at the US State Department, told me — security takes precedence.

+ The North Pole’s lost about 40% of its ice since the 1980s and is now warming roughly four times as fast as the rest of the world. That’s opening it up to marine traffic and economic development which, in turn, is expected to amplify the effects of global warming.

+ About 90 billion barrels of oil and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of gas lie inside the Arctic Circle, according to the United States Geological Survey, along with metals and minerals needed for electrification.

+ “Geopolitics in the Arctic is changing. Therefore we must not only think of climate and the environment when we talk about the region, but also diplomacy and deterrence.” -- Alar Karis, president of Estonia, which has applied for observer status on the since shuttered Arctic Council

Will India become a green superpower? One of the world’s most polluting countries is investing heavily in clean tech. Economist

+ (India) three-quarters of its electricity from coal, and has 39 new coal-fired power plants under construction. It digs up and burns more of the stuff than any other country except China.

Richard Haass to step down as Council on Foreign Relations chief: NYT reports an ultimate establishment figure, Haass sought over two decades to update his organization’s elite image.

6,250: Number of rocket launches since the start of the space age in 1957.

微软 in advanced talks to increase investment in OpenAI: WSJ reports the investment interest indicates the big bets tech giants are willing to make in artificial intelligence technology.

EV supply chains have a human rights problem. Can tech fix it? Carmakers struggling with environmental and safety issues are turning to sophisticated tracking programs. WP

+ The difficulty electric carmakers face building supply chains free of human rights and environmental violations came into focus earlier this year, when US investigators completed their probe of a massive mining tragedy in Brazil.

+ Now, with new federal rules that tie lucrative tax breaks to supply chain accountability, the world’s major auto manufacturers are racing to get a better grip on the origin of their materials and who is being harmed by the way they are extracted and processed.

+ Car companies have another motive. Some of the EV tax incentives in the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act apply only to cars made from materials sourced in the US or a handful of other nations. The financial risk of not tracking the origin of components just got much bigger.

+ Consumers, regulators, and investors are increasingly demanding the car companies back their sustainability pledges with supply chain transparency. The result is a fast-changing landscape in which automakers are looking to pioneering technologies to fill the void.

Ron DeSantis is Donald Trump with brains and without the drama: If Florida’s governor is re-elected, he’s likely to challenge the ex-president’s hold on their party. FT

+ DeSantis, 44, boasts Yale and Harvard degrees and what some describe as a photographic memory.

+ Of course, a White House bid would mean crossing the man who plucked a little-known congressman from obscurity with a single tweet of support that carried him all the way into the Florida governor’s mansion: Donald Trump.

+ In personal terms, the matchup would be a contest of diametric opposites. One man is a chaotic Jupiter ruled by gut and intuition, the other a disciplined lawyer who sifts through reams of data and statistics before making a cold calculation.

+ DeSantis is not the performer Trump is. When he tries to sound tough, his voice sometimes veers toward a whine. He sets up his jokes well enough but does not quite stick the landings.

+ He is known to wear earbuds to deflect social interactions. Besides his wife, his most trusted adviser, he has few friends, let alone confidantes, they say.

+ "His style used to be: I’m a federalist. I’m a constitutionalist. I’m a Harvard lawyer. Now it’s: I’m an asshole to the libs." -- Alex Patton, a Florida pollster

Buckle up, boys and girls... Election 2024 starts in 18 days.

Balthazar update:

So America's long national nightmare is not over...

The McNally and Corden feud is back on.

Corden: "I haven’t done anything wrong, on any level"

McNally: "... was he joking? Or was he denying being abusive to my servers?"

Is any restauranteur looking to get into an Instagram spat?

I need to raise my profile.

DM is open.

How Atlanta became America’s ‘Rap Capital’ 1A

+ 2023 will mark fifty years since the birth of hip-hop.

+ What started at house parties in New York City has turned into one of the most popular music genres in the world.

+ Although hip-hop’s roots are undoubtedly in New York, Atlanta has quickly become the epicenter for rap music in America.

Is hip-hop’s dominance slipping? ‘My concern is the magic is gone’: While hip-hop/R&B remains the industry's best-performing genre, its growth is slowing and execs are concerned excitement is stagnating. Billboard

Glastonbury 2023: Emily Eavis addresses concerns over ￡340 ticket price: Co-organiser Emily Eavis blamed the increase on the ‘enormous rises in the costs of running this vast show’ and the continuing fallout from the pandemic. Guardian

+ A 19% year-on-year rise in the ticket price

+ The Glastonbury price jump may appear starker because no event was held in 2021, when some of its competitors returned, and most of the ticket sales for the canceled 2020 event were carried over for its return this year, meaning the rise in costs has been less incremental.

The phone call that shifted Mikaela Shiffrin’s thinking about her lost Olympics: The four-time alpine ski-season champion returns to World Cup competition Saturday. WSJ

+ “And this guy was saying: You subconsciously didn’t finish essentially on purpose, because you didn’t want to get to the finish knowing that he (her father) would not be there.”

+ The 27-year-old Shiffrin starts her 12th World Cup season Saturday in Soelden, Austria. With 74 career World Cup victories, she is within striking distance of retired countrywoman Lindsey Vonn’s all-time women’s record of 82 alpine wins.

+ “People always ask me, “What happened in Beijing?” she wrote. “I could put on a brave face and tell you some generic thing. But the real truth is… I don’t know.”

The next soccer god: @SkySportsPL: "Erling Haaland could be the first ￡1bn player!" -- Haaland's agent, Rafaela Pimenta

Enjoy the ride + plan accordingly.

-Marc

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