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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaks to media members after the opening ceremony for the China International Supply Chain Expo in Beijing, China July 16, 2025.
China targets Nvidia over security fears
Beijing has summoned Nvidia execs over allegations that the US company’s H20 AI chips pose a security risk, claiming they can track locations and be remotely disabled. This comes just weeks after Congress approved sales of the highly-coveted chips to China despite lingering concerns about helping Washington’s biggest tech rival. Beijing, for its part, wants Nvidia chips to help grow its AI sector, but also worries that Nvidia could crowd out domestic chipmakers like Huawei.
Trump sends his Middle East Man to address Gaza crisis
Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff is en route to Israel to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The trip comes amid rising international outcry over Israel’s restrictions on the entry of aid to the besieged strip – Trump himself even disputed Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that there is “no starvation” there. However, Trump also slammed Canada’s new pledge to recognize Palestine this fall, saying that the move – which follows similar pledges from France and the UK – would wreck US-Canada trade talks.
Hezbollah rejects calls to disarm
The Lebanese militant group flatly rejected recent calls to lay down its weapons, saying that to do so would only serve Israel’s interests. The US is pressuring Lebanon to disarm the Iran-backed group as part of wider peace negotiations with Israel, which has continued to pound the group’s strongholds despite a ceasefire. Hezbollah, heavily weakened after the most recent war with Israel, has privately weighed scaling back their arsenal. Read about what it would take for Hezbollah to disarm here.
What we’re ignoring: Myanmar’s power move
Myanmar’s military has lifted the country’s state of emergency and handed power to a nominally civilian-led interim government ahead of December elections. But Min Aung Hlaing, who led the 2021 coup that entrenched the junta, remains in control as acting president and army chief. The elections, which come as the junta battles several armed insurgencies, are seen as a farce meant to legitimize the army chief's rule. Opposition parties are either barred from running or boycotting the vote.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Kiribati's President and Foreign Minister Taneti Maamau meet after the Third China-Pacific Island Countries Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Xiamen, China, on May 28, 2025.
Last week, something highly unusual was spotted off the coast of Japan. In an unprecedented show of naval power, two Chinese aircraft carriers were seen cruising together near the country’s easternmost islands of Minamitori and Okinotori—far out into the Pacific Ocean.
The carrier groups conducted drills alongside one another for the first time in Pacific waters, accompanied by jets, helicopters, and supporting warships.
The operations underscore Beijing’s growing bid for influence in the Pacific, and experts say they are part of a broader strategy that extends far beyond China’s immediate neighbors.
Less than two weeks ago, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi hosted senior diplomats from 11 Pacific Island nations in the southern city of Xiamen, where he pledged $2 million to support infrastructure building and climate adaptation efforts in the region.
The Pacific Islands are a valuable prize on the geopolitical chessboard – around a dozen nations comprising thousands of islands and atolls stretching more than 7,000 miles east of Australia.
“All of the Pacific Island region weighs into China's kind of broader strategy,” says Kathryn Paik, former director of Southeast Asia and the Pacific on the US National Security Council, who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
China has stepped up its engagement in the region in recent months—a trend underscored by its navy ships making an unprecedented voyage around Australia and carrying out live-fire exercises off the coast of Sydney earlier this year.
What’s motivating China’s drive into the Pacific? Closer ties with Pacific Island nations could boost China’s influence in international bodies like the UN, and they could also give Beijing preferential access to vast territorial waters containing mineral wealth and fish stocks.
But beyond those diplomatic and economic gains, there is a bigger goal as well, says Rory Medcalf, Head of the National Security College at Australia National University. Dominating the Pacific with naval power could increase China’s ability to “knock the United States out of a future war in the region.”
Once a key battleground in World War Two, the Pacific Islands now lie at the center of Beijing’s broader Indo-Pacific security strategy. From the Solomon Islands to Kiribati, China has made repeated attempts to leverage its development projects to gain access to strategic ports and airfields—with the PLA’s newest destroyer docking in Vanuatu’s Port Vila late last year.
“Any Chinese presence there would significantly complicate the US and Australian calculus when it comes to any contingency in either the South China Sea or Taiwan,” says Paik. “If they were to actually be able to build out a port in Solomon Island, similar to what they did in Cambodia, that would be just like a game changer for the US, Australia and others.”
What do the Pacific Islands want? Pacific Island countries face a multitude of development challenges stemming from geographic isolation and the impacts of climate change, to a growing flight of skilled workers. With a quarter of Pacific Islanders struggling below the poverty line—regional leaders will be turning to any and all partners capable of providing meaningful support.
“They want development assistance. They want economic growth. They want to protect their natural resources,” says Medcalf. “A lot of the development assistance China has provided has been effectively building grand infrastructure to satisfy the political needs of the government.”
China has ramped up its development assistance in recent decades, positioning itself as one of the largest aid providers in the region. Between 2008 and 2022, China committed $10.6 billion to various projects in the region, ranging from building transport infrastructure and government buildings, to supporting healthcare and education initiatives.
But China is still the challenger in a historically Western-aligned region. Australia remains by far the Pacific’s leading development partner, committing $20.6 billion over the same period. And other Western-aligned countries are active as well.
“It’s a permanent contest, with other players—not only the United States, but Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and, to some extent, the Europeans as well,” says Medcalf.
Together these countries have provided alternatives to Chinese assistance, with the QUAD countries—Australia, India, Japan, and the United States—announcing a range of multilateral initiatives to boost engagement in the region in 2023.
Beyond this, Pacific Island leaders and their constituents are skeptical about China’s growing security involvement and influence in local government. In 2021, the Solomon Islands’ decision to switch diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China triggered nationwide anti-government protests, with rioters torching businesses in Honiara’s Chinatown.
“One of the biggest challenges for China is that the region certainly does prefer and is more just aligned culturally and historically with traditional western partners,” Paik says. “There's a lot of unsettlement about where the money's going, why the decisions are made, of certain types of infrastructure, of the governing of the government.”
Still the advantage the US and its allies currently hold over China relies on them “staying on the ball” in the region—an approach that analysts say the Trump administration has deprioritized. The US’ cuts to USAID programs, tariffs, and withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement and World Health Organization have opened the door for China to expand its influence in the region.
Last Wednesday, alarm bells rang in Canberra and London after the Pentagon announced that it was reassessing the AUKUS security pact, a multibillion dollar deal to counter Chinese influence by equipping Australia with a nuclear powered submarine fleet.
But while the geopolitical tides continue to pull the Pacific Island nations in different directions, their people are often focused on more immediate problems.
“We've actually got every chance of holding the line [against China], and most importantly, we've got to do it in a way that's respectful of the priorities of Pacific Island countries, because their priority is their own development,” says Medcalf.
U.S. President Donald Trump arrives to attend the G7 Leaders' Summit at the Rocky Mountain resort town of Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada, June 15, 2025.
The G7 is no longer setting the table; it’s struggling to hold the cutlery. Once a pillar of the post-war world order, the group today is split between the US and the rest, casting about for common ground. Before this week’s summit even kicked off in Kananaskis, Canada, host Prime Minister Mark Carney warned there would be no final joint communique. So what’s up for discussion - and what could be achieved?
The official agenda: Trade, defense, and AI
Trade trumps climate change. With US President Donald Trump back on the scene, tariffs are huge, while climate action takes a backseat. Leaders will try to defend existing net-zero goals, update plans to tackle wildfires, and boost clean tech cooperation. But the meetings’ first focus is on trade, and striking deals. Countries will seek to defend themselves against Trump’s protectionist policies by both expanding trade with each other and getting Trump to lift tariffs on their countries.
Defense and Industry. While the Iran-Israel war now overshadows existing conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, support for Kyiv is still on the menu. The tone is shifting, however, to talk of pan-European defense against Russian aggression. Carney, French president Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz are expected to push for a “defense-industrial pact,” a long-term commitment to arms production and supply chains to “Re-Arm Europe”.
Artificial Intelligence and Misinformation Leaders are looking at baseline safeguards around algorithmic transparency and deepfake detection, given the worldwide rise in election interference, cybercrime and cyberwarfare. While global AI regulation is unlikely, the G7 may commit to coordinating digital watchdogs and fighting cross-border disinformation campaigns.
The backstory: America alone
All these items are dominated by a larger issue: the widening gap between the US and its allies. Trump’s view of the world order diverges starkly from that of the other members of the group. His thin skin and volatility could also compromise the outcome of the talks, especially if he storms out like he did at the infamous 2018 Charlevoix summit. Carney’s main tasks include preventing Trump from feeling disrespected, and navigating the divide between G6 goals and US ambitions such as Trump’s takedown of China.
What can this meeting achieve, then?
Expect no joint statement, but lots of bilateral action, with both Trump and other world leaders. On Sunday, for example, Carney and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a strengthened partnership on a range of issues including trade and defense. Carney has also invited a slew of non-G7 leaders, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, arguing that they are key to solving major questions such as energy security and AI. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will also be present, as will the leaders of Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, South Korea and South Africa. In the end, the biggest achievement may simply be keeping the group alive to meet another day.Listen: What does global energy transition look like in a time of major geopolitical change, including rebalancing of trade? In this special episode of "Energized: The Future of Energy,” host JJ Ramberg and Enbridge CEO Greg Ebel talk to Arjun Murti, partner at Veriten and founder of the energy transition newsletter Super-Spiked. They discuss the impact of President Trump’s new energy policies, the role of North America in the global energy transition, and the possible impact of tariffs and trade tension on the energy sector. "Energized" is a podcast series from GZERO Media's Blue Circle Studios in partnership with Enbridge.
Catch up on other episodes of Energized: The Future of Energy below — or listen on Apple, Spotify, Goodpods, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Flags hung at the reconvening of the COP16 conference in Rome last month, with an inset image of Adrian Gahan, the ocean lead for Campaign for Nature.
Countries gathered in Rome in late February to finalize key decisions left unresolved after last year’s COP16 summit in Colombia. In Italy, negotiators agreed to the first global deal for finance conservation, which aims to achieve the landmark goal of protecting and restoring 30% of the world’s land and seas by 2030. Eurasia Group’s María José Valverde interviewed Adrian Gahan, the ocean lead for Campaign for Nature, a global campaign founded in 2018 to secure the 30x30 target, as we look ahead to the UN ocean conference and continue building on the nature agenda for 2025.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
María José Valverde: What are your expectations for the achievement of the 30x30 goal in the marine space, keeping all upcoming UN environmental processes (biodiversity, plastics, ocean, climate) in mind?
Adrian Gahan: This is an important year because we’re only five years away from the 2030 target. And the reality is that we're not making progress at the pace that we should. Something really important that can happen this year is the ratification of the High Seas Treaty. Whilst it’s been agreed, it needs to be ratified by at least 60 countries before it comes into legal effect, and at the moment, we’re at 17 countries. We should aim to get those remaining 43 countries in 2025, and we need to do it before Q4 for the treaty to come into legal effect this year. This would represent a significant step forward, and it'd be great if going into COP30 in Brazil we’re already counting down the ticker on the treaty taking legal effect.
Could you explain why this High Seas Treaty is so important?
Before this treaty was agreed in 2022, there was no legal instrument to manage biodiversity on the high seas, areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ) 200 nautical miles off of a country’s coast. Instead, you had a patchwork of preexisting organizations — the International Whaling Commission, which is species-specific, and the International Seabed Authority, which covers the seabed but doesn't regulate the water column above the seabed. But they couldn’t establish marine protected areas covering the whole water column or all flora and fauna within it because they didn't have the legal capacity to do that. The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Treaty, or BBNJ, will allow countries to agree on setting parts of the international waters aside for nature in the context of all of these pre-existing organizations. And that is an innovation.
The high seas treaty could impact interests in critical minerals, deep sea mining, and those benefitting from marine genetic materials. The recently launched Cali Fund could also be a financial instrument for BBNJ areas. What are your thoughts on its potential implications?
This is one of the reasons why it’s taking countries a long time to ratify this treaty. They need to figure out what are the benefit-sharing mechanisms, what are the legal and financial instruments involved, etc. A lot of it has to be discovered as we go along. My headline observation around digital sequence information and the Cali Fund is that if it’s going to be meaningful, it has to be a regulatory requirement. That also needs to apply to BBNJ areas, which obviously have more complexity to it by definition because it’s beyond the territorial boundaries of any of these countries. But to be effective, it needs to be legally binding.
What’s at stake if we don't reach an agreement on finance at COP16.2, and what are the best- and worst-case scenarios for the marine sector?
The money is very important as part of the biodiversity COP process, not just because of the funding, but also because it’s a currency of seriousness. If we are asking the Global South to protect some of the last great wild places in the world that are providing vital infrastructure to the whole planet, then we need to be prepared to pay for it. This is not about charity – nor should it be considered aid. Donor countries need to show seriousness on this, and finance is one of the ways to do that.
It’s also important to consider our political context. Given budget and geopolitical constraints in the Global North, we need to continuously make the case as to why this is important. It is not just because nature is beautiful and special. We’re protecting it because it provides us all with an essential service, and this is an extension of our national security budget. We need to keep making that case. We also need to keep making the case that the private sector, which is making a lot of money and continuing to drop significant externalities onto this infrastructure, needs to pay its way. That’s an example of where governments need to intervene more in the market: tax and regulate.
The plastics negotiations have a lot of interlinkages with the biodiversity talks because of the Global Biodiversity Framework’s (GBF) Target 7 on pollution. Do you see any implications from the UN plastics treaty negotiations on your work?
We focus more on spatial targets and protection because the biggest threat to the global ocean, other than climate change, is not plastics, it’s overfishing. This is really worth reminding people. Plastics and pollution are very serious, but overfishing is a bigger threat. The crisis of overfishing is an absence of something, which is a harder narrative to sell than showing people an ocean full of plastic. The risk of the plastics narrative is that people think using paper straws means the crisis is solved. But, the ocean is facing so many more threats than plastic straws. However, the issue can be an important way to introduce people to the crises of climate change, coral bleaching, ocean acidification, and invasive species.
My final point on that is that the single biggest polluter of plastic in the ocean is not PepsiCo or Coca-Cola — it’s the global fishing industry. The single biggest source of plastic in the ocean is discarded fishing nets known as ghost gear. It doesn’t biodegrade, it’s hugely destructive, and it’s very helpful to the global fishing industry if everyone obsesses about plastic straws and bottles instead.
Conversations around fishing are tricky because they become a discussion about livelihoods and food security. How do you navigate these difficult issues?
It’s much easier to campaign against Coca-Cola than it is to campaign against local fishermen dropping their nets in the ocean. However, the most destructive fishing is conducted by very large and wealthy industrial fishing vessels, almost all owned by rich countries from Europe and Asia, not by local small-scale fishers. That said, there also needs to be training and engagement at the local level, which is difficult and time-consuming. One answer is to set parts of the ocean aside where you state there’s no fishing, and that makes it a lot easier to regulate. This requires government intervention and financial support for fishers who need to, for example, change their gear types or face a reduced catch for a short period while the spillover effect takes place. It becomes very complicated, and that’s why we’re making very slow progress toward the 30x30 goal.
One of the things we’ve been paying attention to is the nature tech market. What are some concrete examples of nature tech in the marine sector, and what role is the private sector playing?
I think it’s a really positive story. One of the most important, disruptive technologies that has helped in establishing and enforcing marine protected areas is satellite technology. I've been working for years on a UK program called Blue Belt. We work with local communities that are concerned about illegal fishing coming into their waters and far too remote to have their own enforcement capacity. The UK Government runs the satellite monitoring programs and then provides them with the intel. They can tag any suspicious activity and pursue the vessel legally through the Port State Measures Agreement. It’s a legal process where, if one of these vessels fishes illegally in these protected areas and then pulls into a port to offload the fish, the port state can take legal measures against the vessel, even though the vessel didn’t break any laws in that port state. This has been a very effective tool for protecting these areas.
This would not have been possible probably 15 years ago. That’s a really positive tech story to tell and something people should take some hope from because presumably this technology will only continue to improve and get more affordable. Bad news can be very overwhelming for people. So I think it’s good to remind people that good people are doing good things in the world.
María José (Majo) Valverde is a global sustainability analyst at Eurasia Group.
“I can tell you Europe is absolutely committed to tackling climate change, to developing this green economy, and to making the green transition a European success,” said Nadia Calviño, President of the European Investment Bank.
The rollout of artificial intelligence has raised big questions about how it will impact Europe’s transition to a more sustainable economy. During a Global Stage livestream at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Calviño stressed the continent’s role in addressing risks generated by AI. She said, “I think it will be key when we're talking about these technologies that have such a huge demand for energy supply.” Alongside countries being energy-conscious, Calviño stresses that building strong trust between businesses and citizens will help the new technologies “unleash their full potential.”
This conversation, moderated by Becky Anderson, was part of the Global Stage series at the 2025 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, presented by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft.
Click to watch the full discussion for our panel's insights on AI's future and how it is expected to transform our economy and society by 2030.
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"We are on the right path to building, what I call, the 'intelligence grid' alongside the electricity grid," said Peng Xiao, CEO of G42.
As Donald Trump begins his new term, artificial intelligence has reemerged as a major topic of discussion. During a Global Stage livestream at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Peng highlighted the benefits and challenges of advancing AI technology. He praised Trump’s global infrastructure build-out initiative and AI’s potential to integrate seamlessly into daily life but underscored, "We cannot afford for intelligence not to be equally distributed."
Peng emphasized the need for global governance and development to be "equitable, systematic, and coordinated across regions." Thus as private sector investments in AI surge, policy decisions in the coming months will be closely watched
This conversation, moderated by Becky Anderson, was part of the Global Stage series at the 2025 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, presented by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft.