“Anand Shimpi is one of the most influential tech industry figures you’ve never heard of,” writes Reuters. Shimpi has vaulted from armchair tech pundit to one of the industry’s most sought-after opinion leaders, courted by IBM executives and respected by the public as a reliable tech reviewer. His website AnandTech.com gets 12 million unique visitors every […]

If a sense of rising power is stimulating a new strategic discussion in India, a pervading sense of decline is fueling the same kind of discussion in Japan.One one side of Japan’s discussion is a right-wing nationalist movement aimed at returning Japan to relevance, generally by putting up a hard front against an ascendant China. Reuters reports on a […]

India is beginning to think like a great power—or at least some Indians are trying to stimulate that kind of thinking. Here’s Sashi Tharoor, Indian MP: If this century has, in the famous phrase, made the world safe for democracy, the next challenge is to make a world safe for diversity. It is in India’s […]

Vali Nasr, a former WRM colleague at the CFR, has a very gloomy outlook on Syria. Check out the video of his remarks here.Nasr says: The rebels are not democrats—they’re too fractured. This is an uprising that is becoming increasingly bloody. It’s now essentially a sectarian war between a minority Alawite regime and its Christian and Kurdish […]

As if one lingering unratifiable treaty weren’t enough, the U.S. may be negotiating yet another. The BBC reports that a UN global arms treaty to limit the illegal sale and spread of weapons is running into opposition both in Washington and abroad: The US and Russia — among the world’s largest exporters of weapons — as well as […]

With all due respect to what Senator Chuck Schumer is about to tell Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, it is in fact a good thing for the U.S. that China’s state oil company (CNOOC) wants to bid for the Canadian oil company Nexen.It’s in America’s interest for China to buy into the North American oil boom. The more […]

Raul Castro’s remarks that he is ready to sit down with the United States to “mend fences” and “discuss anything” are getting a lot of attention from the mainstream media in the U.S. Sadly this only shows how clueless the MSM is about Cuban diplomacy and its goals.Here’s the deal. The last thing the Castro brothers […]

Is the U.S. Navy vulnerable to Iran in the Gulf?This Washington Post story says that Iran has substantially increased its ability to inflict damage on American ships in the Persian Gulf in the last two years. Tehran recently tested a new anti-ship missile, which in concert with its ever-expanding swarm of mini-submarines and fast-attack boats […]

A prize to anyone who can figure out what we should do about Mali.In the north, dangerous terrorists are forming a breakaway state that may become a source for jihadi terrorism, drug smuggling, and general disorder throughout the region. In the south, armed thugs are beating up journalists and wrecking what’s left of the country. […]

After months of silence from top Communist Party officials, Chinese state-run media announced that Bo Xilai’s wife, Gu Kailai, has been indicted for the murder last November of British businessman and family fixer, Neil Heywood.Notes the Wall Street Journal: The announcement suggests the Communist Party leadership has reached a consensus on how to handle the […]