🌍 Ambient superconductors: a new era for humankind?

Hi there Intriguer. It’s always good to get a second opinion, but Australia has stepped that up a notch by hiring consultants to consult on how to consult consultants.

Today’s briefing is a 4 min read:

• 🔬 Did Korean scientists just change the world?

• 🇨🇳 Why did China just replace its nuclear commanders?

• ➕ Plus: The US gets a downgrade, how the papers are covering Ukraine-Poland tensions, and some Olympic-level surveillance.

⏱️ Around the world in sixty seconds

1. 🇹🇼 Taiwan: Authorities have detained an army officer and others suspected of leaking Taiwanese military intel to China. This follows long-running reports of Beijing seeking to recruit retired Taiwanese military personnel to supply state secrets in exchange for money.

2. 🇭🇺 Hungary: The US has imposed visa restrictions on Hungarians due to concerns the one million foreigners granted Hungarian passports over the past decade were not adequately vetted.

3. 🇮🇳 India: Delhi is restricting the import of laptops, tablets and servers in a move designed to boost domestic manufacturing. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is seeking to elevate India as a tech manufacturing hub.

4. 🇳🇮 Nicaragua: The UN Green Climate Fund has suspended payments to a $117M forest protection project in Nicaragua due to human rights concerns. This is the first such halt since the fund’s creation in 2010.

5. 🇿🇲 Zambia: The UK and Zambia have signed deals worth $3.7B to deepen clean energy and critical mineral ties during a visit by British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly. Zambia is a major copper producer and has large deposits of cobalt, manganese and nickel.

🔬 South Korea | Science

Korean scientists claim a major breakthrough

Korean scientists claim to have developed the world’s first superconductor capable of working at room temperature and pressure. If true, this is big.

What’s a superconductor? It’s a material capable of conducting electricity without resistance. We only know how to make them work at ultralow temperatures or ultrahigh-pressure, severely limiting their use. Until now?

Sukbae Lee and Ji-Hoon Kim have developed a material with lead, oxygen, sulphur, and phosphorus called LK-99 (for ‘Lee’, ‘Kim’ and ‘1999’ when they first made it). They’ve released their findings, claiming it’s a superconductor at room temperature and pressure, heralding “a new era for humankind”.

So scientists are racing to replicate their results: early tests in India and China have dashed hopes, while another in China has spurred them.

Why the excitement? If LK-99 is the real deal, it could revolutionise anything that uses electricity or magnets, including the:

• ⚡ energy sector (sending more green energy over longer distances)

• 🩺 medical sector (cheaper, more powerful devices)

• 🚄 transport sector (cheaper, more practical maglev trains), and

• 💻 tech sector (cheaper, more powerful quantum devices).

Intrigue’s take: But (always the but), big claims merit scrutiny, and there are real questions here around the original methods and rigour. Plus, there are other theories to explain LK-99’s properties (it could just be diamagnetic).

So there’s a fair bit of scepticism building.

But while we await further testing, we can’t help but reflect on the way major finds like this can really shape our world: oil, nuclear, space, chips, critical minerals, AI… ambient superconductors? This is a heck of a time to be alive.

Also worth noting:

• The Korean Society of Superconductivity and Cryogenics has organised a committee to verify the LK-99 findings, which haven’t been peer-reviewed.

• Stocks seen as having relevance to LK-99 initially surged in Korea and elsewhere, before tanking today (Friday) as LK-99 doubts grew.

📰 How newspapers covered…

Tensions between Ukraine and Poland

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🇨🇳 China | Defence & security

A shake-up in China’s nuclear command

China’s President Xi Jinping replaced two top commanders of the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) earlier this week.

The shake-up in the PLARF, which manages China’s land-based nuclear arsenal, made waves for a couple of reasons:

1. 🕵️ The commanders were removed without explanation and haven’t been seen publicly in weeks, and

2. 🆕 For the first time in decades, the new leaders – one from the navy, the other from the air force – have never served in the PLARF.

Intrigue’s take: Shake-ups like this usually come down to one of two things: corruption or disloyalty. In this case, there’s speculation it could be both.

China is undertaking a rapid expansion and modernisation of its nuclear arsenal, which means plenty of cash has been flowing through the PLARF.

But for Xi, who undertook a widespread purge of the military after taking office in 2012, political disloyalty might be the bigger concern.

Also worth noting:

• Authorities said last week they were investigating allegations of military personnel “forming cliques and colluding in private” [link in Mandarin, but most web browsers can translate].

• China currently has around 400 nuclear warheads, with estimates this number could reach 1,500 by 2035. The US currently has around 3,700 warheads. Russia has around 4,500.

🎧 Today on Intrigue Outloud

Could Kenya help Haiti out of its security crisis?

➕ Extra Intrigue

We’re back with some weekend recommendations from Team Intrigue. If you’ve got:

• 5 mins: Read about France’s extensive surveillance apparatus to be unveiled ahead of next year’s Olympics.

• 50 mins: Listen to the first episode of ‘The Dropout’, the true crime podcast getting down to the DNA of the Theranos scandal.

• 2 hours: Watch ‘Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room’ on how one of America’s biggest corporations was levelled by fraud and corruption.

🐦 Tweet (or ‘X’…?) of the day

Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics (and a friend of Intrigue), had some words for rival ratings agency Fitch after they downgraded the US sovereign risk rating earlier this week. Fitch attributed its downgrading decision to an “erosion of governance” in the US.

🗳️ Quiz time!

Answers: 1-b, 2-d, 3-c