Curated by Juan Ortiz Freuler – Sign up to get this newsletter in your inbox.
🚧 [NEWS: NAM Ministerial review ongoing in Uganda Oct 16]
“..President of the Republic of Uganda and Chair of the Non-Aligned Movement, opened with a philosophical reflection on the evolution of human society, emphasizing the central role of science and technology in shaping the destiny of nations. “We have two categories of problems in the world,” he said. “The first is the oppression of man by nature, floods, droughts, and disease. The second, and perhaps more serious, is the oppression of man by man. Through knowledge and cooperation, we can overcome both.””
“”We have to build a new political, economic, and financial architecture that is based on agreements and co-responsibilities. Those who benefit from the current world order are defending it,” Omar said, adding that NAM is well-placed to push for a fairer global order.”
https://english.news.cn/africa/20251016/1d98998d11f44bddabc322cf46dac47f/c.html
Final communique likely to be uploaded here in the coming days: https://www.nam.go.ug/
🇨🇳 🧭[News: China tells its companies to stop buying Nvidia AI chips]
“The fresh ban is stronger than the earlier guidance from regulators that focused on the H20, the previous version of Nvidia’s China-tailored AI chip, the report said.Nvidia’s RTX6000D, its newest artificial-intelligence chip tailored for the Chinese market, has seen only lukewarm demand, with some major tech firms opting not to place orders, Reuters first reported earlier this week.Several companies had indicated they would order tens of thousands of the RTX Pro 6000D and had started testing and verification work with Nvidia’s server suppliers before telling them to stop the work after receiving the CAC order, FT reported”
🇨🇳 [NEWS: Dutch take control over local branch of Chinese semiconductor company?]
“On Sunday evening, the Dutch government issued a statement confirming that it had “invoked the Goods Availability Act due to serious governance shortcomings at semiconductor manufacturer Nexperia” https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3328726/chinas-wingtech-says-dutch-court-freezes-control-nexperia-amid-national-security-dispute
[ See also: Typology of strategies for state control over infrastructure]
🇨🇳 ⛏️ 🇺🇸[News: China places controls on rare earth exports]
“China already tightly controlled its exports of rare earths but on Thursday added five new elements, bringing the total subject to restrictions to 12.It also limited the export of dozens of pieces of equipment and material used to mine and refine rare earths, processes where it is the world leader.The restrictions force exporters to apply for licences. An earlier round of controls in April caused shortages of rare earth magnets which led car plants around the world to pause operations.In a nod to fears of a repeat, China said it would facilitate licence approvals, but intended to reject applications related to defence and would closely scrutinise those related to advanced semiconductors and certain kinds of artificial intelligence”
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/how-chinas-new-rare-earth-export-controls-work-2025-10-10
🇺🇸🪝🇦🇷[NEWS: OpenAI and Sur Energy plan a $25B, 500-MW AI data center in Argentina]
“The Argentine government announced the “Stargate Argentina” initiative, which will involve an investment of up to $25 billion and feature a 500-megawatt facility dedicated to advanced AI computing. President Javier Milei hosted representatives from OpenAI and executives from Sur Energy at the Casa Rosada, where the plan was officially unveiled.”
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/news-openai-data-center-argentina
“In addition to developing the infrastructure needed to power AI, we are discussing opportunities with the Argentinian government to drive AI adoption across Argentina, as part of our OpenAI for Countries initiative, starting within the government itself.”
https://openai.com/global-affairs/argentinas-ai-opportunity
🤖💸 [Opinion: Sovereign AI as the latest Nvidia pitch to increase sales and diversify away from big tech]
“Huang’s goal is to expand the $4.4tn chipmaker’s market to include the only potential customers with deeper pockets than Big Tech companies: nation states.[…]After decades in the shadow of Silicon Valley’s software and consumer internet groups, a combination of scarcity, geopolitics and breakneck growth have thrust the chipmaker into the spotlight. Over the three years since ChatGPT’s debut, Nvidia’s share price has increased by some 1,000 per cent — and Huang is not wasting the superstar status this has brought him”
https://on.ft.com/42ja4Kv [Via N.C]
🇻🇳🎍 [Opinion: Vietnam & a Non-Aligned stack]
“Nguyen sees a different map of sovereignty emerging today. “The sharper fault line now runs not between nations but infrastructures — between the guarded logic of proprietary systems and the unruly emergence of open-weight models; between centralized command and distributed improvisation; between the doctrine of safety and the discipline of scrutiny.””
🇮🇳🔌[Opinion: India and multi-alignment]
“It argues Indian foreign policy has evolved steadily through three major strategic approaches: from (a) the principle of non-alignment as the guiding star of Delhi’s external action after its independence (1947–1991); passing through (b) strategic autonomy after the end of the Cold War (1991–2014); to (c) finally embracing multi-alignment in a shifting multipolar world (2014–present). As such, India has moved from simply navigating great power relations to actively shaping them from a more confident and equal standing.”
💸🪐[Opinion: Venture capitalism in a time of geopolitical rifts]
“Investors aligned with adversarial states are an emerging risk, especially for early-stage companies struggling to access capital from traditional sources. Murray warned that financial vulnerability is “often the moment when adversarial capital comes in.” Governments and allied investors are increasingly focused on protecting startups from such threats — which underscores the importance of working with trusted partners and funds that understand the security implications of frontier technologies.”
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/why-innovators-cant-afford-to-ignore-geopolitics
A perspective from JP Morgan: “China and the U.S. dominate, but on divergent paths. Beijing pursues state-led self- reliance and lower cost open-source exports, while Washington bets on private-sector innovation, infrastructure buildout, and defense integration. This is a key geopolitical fault line, as countries may face a choice which direction to go” https://www.jpmorganchase.com/content/dam/jpmorganchase/documents/center-for-geopolitics/decoding-the-new-global-operating-system.pdf
⚓[NEWS; US Navy and concerns with dependency on MSFT]
“In order to ensure continued enterprise mission integrations operations, NAVSEA requires use of Azure Data Transfer, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Structured Query Language (SQL) platform-as-a-service (PaaS), Azure Key Vault, Azure Monitor, and ExpressRoute networking provided within the Microsoft environment. Without the use of these services, the NAVSEA Cloud Program mission systems would be unable to provide critical mission capabilities. It is infeasible to modify Microsoft’s unique applications to work within another cloud service provider’s (CSP) environment. In order for another CSP to host the NAVSEA environment, the Government would need to reengineer the solution from the ground up.” https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/223a05513aaf46ac8fd13c8208c43c48/view (via Nick Srnicek)
🎙️🪘[INTERVIEW: China-US Thucydides Trap? Interview with Graham Allison]
“Q. Can America and China escape your famous positing of the ‘Thucydides Trap’, which leads to militarised war?
A. Thucydides, the Athenian general, said when a rapidly rising power seriously threatens to displace a major ruling power, as Athens did in classical Greece, challenging Sparta, or Germany did before World War II, challenging Britain, the outcome is usually catastrophic war. Certainly, today, the US is a colossal ruling power and China, a meteoric a meteoric rising one. China is seriously threatening the US position — this is the Thucydides dynamic. My old professor and mentor, Henry Kissinger, and I would often have a call and each time, Henry would end by saying, ‘Graham, I’m hearing the echoes of World War I louder and louder.’ Can the US and China escape battle? Most likely not — it’s quite possible this will end in a catastrophic war. However, it’s not inevitable, as my book ‘Destined For War’ shows — in the 16 cases of Thucydidian in the 16 cases of Thucydidian rivalries over the last 500 years, 12 ended in war but four did not.”
🫧 💥 [NEWS: The AI boom’s reliance on circular deals is raising fears of a bubble]
[Interactive content: Click on image below]
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/openai-nvidia-amd-deals-risks-rcna234806
🤖🆚 📎[NEWS: OpenAI gets closer to NVidia as a hedge against MSFT?
OpenAI will work with NVIDIA as a preferred strategic compute and networking partner for its AI factory growth plans. OpenAI and NVIDIA will work together to co-optimize their roadmaps for OpenAI’s model and infrastructure software and NVIDIA’s hardware and software.
This partnership complements the deep work OpenAI and NVIDIA are already doing with a broad network of collaborators, including Microsoft, Oracle, SoftBank and Stargate partners, focused on building the world’s most advanced AI infrastructure.
📡 🕶️ [NEWS: SIM farm uncovered around UN: Case of international espionage?]
“Devices seized near U.N. meeting could have shut down cellphone networks”https://www.npr.org/2025/09/23/nx-s1-5551015/secret-service-devices-un
“How ‘SIM farms’ like the one found near the UN could collapse telecom networks”
📜 [UPDATES: From within the Network]:
The report “Bandung at 70: Multilateralism in a New Era of Multi-Alignment” with a number of opinion pieces has just been published. It includes an essay by NATM member Ingrid Schneider: “Building a Non-Aligned Technologies Movement”
https://koerber-stiftung.de/site/assets/files/49303/koerber-stiftung_70-years-since-bandung.pdf
Call for Papers🚨
📒 Journal: Recerca. Revista de Pensament i Anàlisi [Q1]
Topic: Algorithmic Democracy: Citizen Participation and Public Opinion in Hyper-Digitalised Contexts
Editors: Daniel Innerarity (UPV/EHU and EUI), Patrici Calvo (UJI), and Carlos Saura García (UJI)
Languages: English, Spanish, Catalan
https://www.e-revistes.uji.es/index.php/recerca/31a
Deadline: 15 November 2025 (It will surely be extended)
📚Reading group:
Guilherme Cavalcante Silva and Juan Ortiz Freuler are coordinating a reading group to explore the value of dependency theory for analyzing north-south tech dynamics. If you’re interested, send an email to juanof@protonmail.com , gcsilva@yorku.ca . Next meeting Oct 30.
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