China blamed for Czech cyberattack, drawing condemnation from West
Czech officials said the campaign began in 2022 and targeted the foreign ministry, though they did not provide details of what damage was caused or if any specific data was taken. Beijing denied the allegations.
Western capitals have for years blamed Chinese government-backed groups for such attacks, including two huge hacks in 2023 and 2024 against US telecoms networks and government communications.
Beijing, for its part, has accused Washington of conducting its own such campaign, while Britain said today it would expand offensive cyber operations against China.
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Miami Herald
an hour ago
- Miami Herald
Iran and China Challenge US as Alliance Grows
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is in China to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit alongside key partners including Russia, marking a significant moment in Tehran's growing alliance with Beijing following its recent conflict with Israel. The visit highlights a strategic alignment as China continues purchasing Iranian oil and transferring missile-related materials and air-defense systems to Tehran, while Russia's presence signals Moscow's shared interest in challenging U.S. influence in the region. Newsweek has reached out to State Department for comment. Iran's growing partnership with China after its recent conflict with Israel-and U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear targets- underscores Beijing's expanding influence in the Middle East. China's support provides Iran with crucial economic and military backing that stands to weaken U.S.-led sanctions and containment efforts. For Washington, this challenges American influence in a region vital to global energy and security. China's deepening involvement advances its strategic goals while complicating U.S. efforts to maintain dominance in the Middle East. Araghchi's visit to China provides Tehran with a high-profile platform to reframe its regional narrative and showcase its growing alignment with Beijing. Iran is expected to use this opportunity to advocate for broader security coordination among alliances and deepen its cooperation with Chinese leadership. Araghchi is set to hold talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and other leaders attending the SCO summit, including Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Following the ceasefire between Iran and Israel on June 24, multiple reports-including those from Middle East Eye and Israel Hayom-indicate that Iran has received Chinese-made surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems, paid for in oil. While China's embassy has formally denied any arms sales to nations "engaged in warfare, China has also made clear that it "sells the J-10 aircraft only to friendly countries," as Iran seeks to acquire these fighter jets amid delays in Russian arms deliveries, signaling Tehran's efforts to broaden its military partnerships. Founded in 2001, the SCO includes China, Russia, Iran, India, Pakistan and several Central Asian countries, serving as a platform for Beijing to deepen regional ties. For Iran, SCO membership offers greater diplomatic and economic engagement beyond Western institutions, helping Tehran bypass its current isolation. Last month, China hosted SCO defense ministers, underscoring its commitment to strengthening the bloc. Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson: "During this trip, in addition to participating in the meeting of foreign ministers and explaining our country's positions and views, the Foreign Minister will meet and discuss with the Chinese Foreign Minister and a number of other foreign ministers participating in the meeting," Bradley Bowman, senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies: "For Beijing, strategic ambiguity is a feature, not a flaw ... quietly enabling Iran's missile ambitions." Tehran is set to expand its strategic partnership with Beijing, solidifying economic ties and deepening military-technical cooperation. This growing alliance challenges U.S. influence across the Middle East, even as Washington steps up sanctions enforcement. Meanwhile, the U.S. is intensifying collaboration with Gulf and Israeli partners to adapt to the region's shifting power dynamics. Related Articles Satellite Images Show Damage From Iran Strike on US Air BaseIran Sets New Terms for Nuclear Talks With Official Issues New Warning About Iran's Nuclear Threat'Isolationist Voices' Might Have Lost Footing With Trump After Iran: Pence 2025 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Flattery, Firmness, and Flourishes
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's April visit to the White House was, by all accounts, a success. She soothed President Donald Trump with dulcet talk of 'Western nationalism,' eased through a potentially awkward moment regarding Ukraine, and invited Trump to visit Rome—extracting a promise that he would come in the 'near future.' Yet despite the apparently seamless choreography, she and her team offered some after-action advice to fellow world leaders hoping for similarly controversy-free exchanges with Trump: Prepare for the unexpected. Specifically, she had been caught off guard when, before a supposedly private lunch in the Cabinet Room, journalists had been escorted in for seven minutes of questions; she found herself awkwardly positioned with her back to the cameras—much of the footage of Meloni captures the silky blond strands atop her head—and she was forced to either ignore the media in order to address Trump directly or twist herself to the left, away from the president, to try to speak with the reporters. Exactly a week later, when Jonas Gahr Støre, the prime minister of Norway, arrived at the White House, he was prepared. His team had watched videos of prior visits with world leaders, and strategized over various scenarios. Having seen Trump seem to bristle when Meloni was asked a question in her native Italian, they encouraged their own press corps to pose their queries exclusively in English. (The Norwegian journalists also seemed to have done their homework; young female reporters positioned themselves near the front, smiling to catch Trump's attention, and got in an early flurry of questions.) 'You have to—to use Trump's words—play the cards you have,' one European diplomat told us anonymously, like nearly every other diplomat or foreign official we spoke with, to avoid angering Trump or revealing their nation's strategies for managing the mercurial U.S. president. [Anne Applebaum: The U.S. is switching sides] In Trump's second term, foreign leaders now meticulously prepare for their phone calls and meetings with him, often war-gaming possible surprises and entanglements, and trading information and best practices with allies. Eight diplomats and officials from six countries, as well as other foreign-policy experts, all described to us an unofficial formula for ensuring fruitful interactions with Trump: an alchemic mix of flattery, firmness, and personal flourishes. Foreign leaders, especially those from fellow democracies, face an inherent tension in wanting to woo Trump while also advocating for their country's own interests and maintaining their standing back home. 'There is a sense that you want to be on the right side of history. You do want to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and reread your statements in the Oval Office a couple of years later and say, 'I feel good about what I said,'' a second European diplomat told us. This, of course, can prove complicated. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky learned this lesson rather publicly in a now-infamous Oval Office blowup on the last day of February, which got him booted from the White House so quickly that Trump's aides ate the lunch intended for him and his fellow Ukrainians. ('No deal and no meal,' Axios blared at the time.) And in May, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was meeting with Trump in the Oval when the U.S. president unexpectedly dimmed the lights and began playing a video that he said buttressed his unsupported claim that South Africa's white population is facing a 'genocide.' 'The leaders of friendly countries are turning keys in the lock desperately trying to find a way to prevent their meetings with President Trump from being disasters,' Kori Schake, the director of defense and foreign-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing writer at The Atlantic, told us. 'The challenge for foreign leaders is that President Trump seems to only have two categories—supplicants and enemies.' But that hasn't stopped visiting officials and diplomats from trying. 'They ask knowledgeable Americans, 'Might this work? This is what we're thinking of trying. Do you think this is good enough?'' Schake told us. Even some of the preparations—walking through the day's expected events in advance of the actual visit—underscore the inherent unpredictability of this administration. 'Our entire walk-through with the White House was like, 'This is what it's going to be like, but we follow the lead of the president,'' the second European diplomat told us, laughing. Trump has long been eager to receive a Nobel Peace Prize—for any conflict, in any region. So it was not entirely surprising when the government of Pakistan nominated Trump for the prize last month for helping resolve tensions between Pakistan and India. Pakistan, after all, was simply following the dependable diplomatic crutch of flattery with Trump, hoping to improve its standing with the U.S. president by offering him the possibility of something he desperately covets. (His subsequent bombing of Iran's nuclear sites created understandable consternation among Pakistanis, but during an Oval Office meeting last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took up the cause, announcing that he had, too, nominated Trump for the Nobel Prize—this time for his work in the Middle East.) The same week that Pakistan put Trump up for the peace prize, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte engaged in some behind-the-scenes blandishments with Trump ahead of a NATO summit in the Netherlands—which became public when Trump posted on Truth Social the entirety of a text message Rutte had sent him. The missive praised Trump for his 'decisive action in Iran,' which Rutte called 'truly extraordinary,' before moving on to laud Trump for pressuring his NATO allies to spend more on defending their countries. 'You are flying into another big success in The Hague this evening,' Rutte wrote. 'Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win.' During the actual summit, Rutte went on to call Trump 'Daddy' as Trump likened Israel and Iran to fighting schoolchildren. 'Daddy has to sometimes use strong language,' the NATO chief said. Trump and his team were, predictably, delighted. They began selling 'Daddy' merch—an orange T-shirt with DADDY emblazoned just below Trump's notorious mug-shot scowl—and released a video mash-up of Trump at the summit set to Usher's 'Hey Daddy (Daddy's Home).' The light mockery that suffused their glee was not lost on Rutte's peers. Flattery, after all, must be coupled with firmness, several diplomats explained. Not to mention at least a smidgen of dignity. 'Who isn't a bit embarrassed on his behalf?' one diplomat said of Rutte. A fine line, several diplomats told us, separates routine diplomatic supplication from humiliating obsequiousness; Trump at times seems to respect people who stand up to him. A NATO ambassador told us that Rutte's acclamatory message to Trump wasn't widely workshopped in Brussels ahead of time and that the secretary general is trusted to manage his own relationship with the American president. 'The allies wanted an agile operator, and we've gotten that,' the ambassador said, noting that Trump frequently calls Rutte to consult him. The ambassador added that the more conciliatory approach world leaders are taking with Trump partly reflects standard diplomacy—and partly reflects the Republican standard-bearer's staying power. 'If you went through the first term saying, 'This is an aberration; we just have to get through it,' defiance was a reasonable bet to make,' the ambassador told us. 'Now we've seen him be reelected. At least half of Americans are aligned with his politics. It's not just that he's back. Clearly there's been a shift in America more deeply.' Marc Short, who served as Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff during Trump's first term, told us the flattery approach 'usually works.' He pointed to the strong relationship between Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron dating back to the early days of the Trump administration, when Macron—understanding the American president's love of pomp and circumstance and, frankly, just a damn good parade—invited him to Paris for Bastille Day. The two disagreed on a host of actual policy matters—the 2015 Iran deal and green energy among them—but 'that was one of the closest relationships of European leaders he had,' Short told us, in part because 'Macron was pretty good at those public communications of flattery.' 'It does seem that it's a little more exaggerated in the second go-round,' he told us. 'Maybe it's just the learning curve, but it seems like it's copied more now.' Still, not everyone is sold on the approach. After the White House paused some weapons transfers to Ukraine, Rutte faced fresh criticism for his fawning comments about Trump. Carlo Masala, an authority on the German military and a professor at the Bundeswehr University in Munich, tagged the NATO secretary general on X and asked, in a mélange of English and German, 'Where ist your Daddy now?' Golf trophies. Monarchy merch. Love letters. As foreign leaders and their allies have engaged in gossipy group shares about how to prepare for a meeting with Trump—or, at the very least, for the love of God and all that is just in the world, prevent it from going totally off the rails—nearly every country has come up with its own similar, yet distinctly homegrown, approach. Finnish President Alexander Stubb, who attended Furman University in South Carolina on a golf scholarship, played a round with Trump early in his return to power, much to the envy of fellow world leaders. (Lindsey Graham, South Carolina's senior senator and a reliable Trump sidekick, helped orchestrate the game, though it probably didn't hurt the transatlantic relationship that Stubb, playing on Trump's team at his Florida golf club's spring member-guest tournament, helped the U.S. president win the championship.) 'That's not an option for all the world leaders,' one European official told us, channeling the wistful desire for a links-blessed leader we heard from other diplomats. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who visited the White House in February, found success by bringing a personal letter from King Charles, inviting Trump for a second state visit—and adopting Trump's grandiose language in calling the possibility of a second such ceremony 'truly historic' and twice labeling it 'unprecedented.' (Trump is expected to visit this fall.) Here, the Brits engaged in a one-two titillation of Trump's diplomatic erogenous zones: his love of monarchies, particularly the British royals, and his passion for epistolary communication. In his first term, Trump waxed lyrical about his 'love letters' with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, and more recently, he relished recounting to Congress a letter Zelensky had sent him following their Oval Office spat. By the time Netanyahu announced his Nobel Peace Prize nomination last week, he was sufficiently savvy to present Trump with the letter he said he had sent to the Nobel Prize committee. 'The president respects good manners, and seems to value letters. He appreciates a slight formality,' a British diplomat told us. 'He clearly assigns a lot of value to, 'I have signed this, I have written this, I have touched this.'' (Indeed, Trump favors Sharpie-scrawled missives himself.) But Starmer's gambit also seemed to work because the offer he bore from King Charles was authentic. There still exists a 'special relationship' between the two countries, the working royals are diplomats by another name, and the British are experts at state visits and the accompanying ceremony. 'We will roll out the red carpet,' the British diplomat told us. 'Americans should expect a full royal display of the formal respect we afford our closest ally.' Or perhaps, as another European suggested to us, Washington's transatlantic partners have merely learned to act a bit like the Gulf states, which welcomed Trump with immense fanfare during his visit to the Middle East in May. The United Arab Emirates awarded Trump the Order of Zayed, the country's highest civil decoration. In Doha, Trump's motorcade included two red Tesla Cybertrucks—a nod to Trump's on-again, off-again billionaire best buddy, Elon Musk. The oil-rich nations also agreed to form business partnerships with Washington or to pump money into American companies. 'Trump is at home in the Gulf because he recognizes their style of family rule,' the diplomat told us. 'The Europeans gave up that method of governance about a century ago, but we know how to put on a show when we need to.' The Europeans have adopted similar tactics, not just spending lavishly with American defense contractors but also indulging Trump's interest in lineage, royalty, and, at times, even his romantic conquests. The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, presented Trump with the birth certificate of his grandfather, who was born in 1869 in the German town of Kallstadt. A European diplomat from a different country made sure to mention their attractive friend, whom Trump had once dated. And Støre, the Norwegian prime minister, brought a photo of the country's current king as a young boy playing with Franklin D. Roosevelt's Scottish terrier, Fala—a nod, again, to Trump's penchant for monarchies. The Norwegians also brought a little gift for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—his ancestral tree, tracing him back six generations to Norway. [Read: This is the way a world order ends] All of the machinations are, of course, a far cry from the simpler diplomatic cajoling of the aughts, when then–British Prime Minister Gordon Brown gifted then-President Barack Obama a penholder made from wood pulled from an anti-slavery ship, and in return, Obama gifted him 25 DVDs of classic movies—all available on Netflix or at a local video store and, according to news reports at the time, unplayable on British technology. For now, diplomats and world leaders must be content with trading tips, sharing advice, and hoping not to become the centerpiece of a cautionary tableau in the Oval Office. The most common piece of wisdom we heard from the foreign officials with whom we spoke was: Prepare, prepare, prepare, especially for the unexpected. One diplomat told us they had learned that the 'real press conference' was in many cases not the official one featuring the two leaders, but the Oval Office meeting beforehand, with members of the media present. And another diplomat's advice inadvertently underscored the earlier 'play the cards you have' counsel of his peer: 'Our trade is balanced,' this person told us, wryly. 'That's an insider tip—keep an even trade balance.' Article originally published at The Atlantic
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Chinese illegal immigrant crossings that surged during Biden admin a 'national security concern,' expert warns
One border security expert said the massive number of Chinese illegal immigrants who crossed the United States border during the Biden administration poses a "national security concern." U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported 122 illegal immigrants to China June 3, many of whom were convicted of murder, drug trafficking, rape and human smuggling. Officials said the individuals were taken to China on a "special high risk charter flight." The Department of Justice on Tuesday charged seven Chinese nationals after they allegedly operated a multimillion- dollar marijuana trafficking ring. According to the Justice Department, the suspects smuggled illegal immigrants through the U.S.-Mexico border to work in marijuana grow houses. Ice Arrests 100+ Iranian Nationals Across Us Amid Sleeper Cell Concerns "This case pulls back the curtain on a sprawling criminal enterprise that exploited our immigration system and our communities for personal gain," said U.S. Attorney Leah Foley. "These defendants allegedly turned quiet homes across the Northeast into hubs for a criminal enterprise, building a multimillion-dollar black market operation off the backs of an illegal workforce and using our neighborhoods as cover. That ends today." Read On The Fox News App In fiscal year 2024 alone, according to the House Committee on Homeland Security, over 24,376 Chinese nationals were encountered and 24,214 were apprehended. In March 2024 alone, border encounters of Chinese nationals increased over 8,000% when compared to March 2021. The report was released in April 2024. Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation's Border Security and Immigration Center and former Department of Homeland Security acting deputy chief of staff, told Fox News Digital in an interview that the sharp increase in Chinese nationals crossing the southern border is "absolutely" a national security concern. Doj Charges Seven Chinese Nationals In Multimillion-dollar Marijuana Trafficking Ring "The numbers rose rapidly during the Biden administration. I mean, pre-Biden, Customs and Border Protection would see about 1,000 Chinese nationals a month nationwide, whether that was at the ports of entry or between ports of entry. And, during Biden's four years, that rose rapidly to 2,000, up to 7,000 a month. It even hit over 8,000 one month in December of 2023. And most of these were between the ports of entry," Ries said. Ries fears the Chinese Communist Party was using the southern border as a "tactic" against the U.S. during former President Biden's administration. "Given the many tactics that the Chinese Communist Party uses against the U.S. — whether that is sending fentanyl precursor ingredients to Mexico to be smuggled into the U.S., killing hundreds of thousands of Americans, COVID-19 from Wuhan, spy balloons, buying farmland near military bases — we have to assume that the CCP took advantage of the open border during Biden's years and sent many Chinese nationals with mal-intent," Ries article source: Chinese illegal immigrant crossings that surged during Biden admin a 'national security concern,' expert warns
