🌍 Is Azerbaijan prepping for a new invasion?

Hi there Intriguer. There's a New Mexico in Australia, a New Australia in Paraguay, a New Paraguay in Colombia, and to complete the circle… there’s a New Colombia in Mexico. Maybe everyone should just chill?

Today’s briefing is a 4 min read:

• ⚔️ Is another war brewing in the Caucasus? 

• 🛢️ Chevron is still betting big on oil.

• ➕ Plus: The World Bank talks defence, how the papers are covering the upcoming US visit by China’s foreign minister, and is the crypto winter over?

1. 🇨🇳 China: Beijing has opened a tax investigation into Taiwanese tech manufacturer Foxconn, one of China’s biggest employers and the single largest maker of iPhones worldwide. Foxconn founder Terry Gou is running for Taiwan’s presidency in January.

2. 🇫🇷 France: President Macron has travelled to Israel to meet Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. Macron expressed France’s solidarity with Israel and called for the “decisive relaunch” of a genuine peace process.

3. 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka: Colombo has approved visa-free visits for citizens from six countries including China, India, Russia and Japan. The idea is to boost the island’s ailing economy via tourism.

4. 🇲🇽 Mexico: A tropical storm has strengthened suddenly into the “catastrophic'“ Cat-5 Hurricane Otis, expected to make landfall near Acapulco this morning (Wednesday). This would be the first major hurricane to hit the resort city, home to a million people.

5. 🇹🇷 Turkey: President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has submitted Sweden’s NATO accession bid to parliament for ratification after months of uncertainty and negotiations. It remains unclear when exactly Turkish lawmakers will vote on the bill.

⚔️ Caucasus | Defence & Security

Is Azerbaijan preparing to invade Armenia?

Thousands of Azerbaijani and Turkish soldiers participated in military drills this week in locations across Azerbaijan, including in the newly seized territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Azerbaijan took Nagorno-Karabakh in a lightning 24-hour offensive last month, decades after the majority-Armenian enclave unilaterally declared independence, and months after Baku imposed a total siege around it.

More than 100,000 resident ethnic Armenians have since fled to Armenia.

Now, some warn this week’s exercises could be a prelude to further conquest. Expansionist politicians in Azerbaijan (including President Ilham Aliyev) have long eyed a land bridge to Nakhchivan, an exclave separated from the rest of Azerbaijan by Armenia’s 30km-wide Syunik Province.

So on Monday, the foreign ministers of Iran, Turkey and Russia met their Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts for peace talks in Tehran, “without the presence of foreigners” (i.e., without US or EU officials).

Meanwhile, Western players like France have been selling Armenia additional military kit, while the US has conducted (small) drills with Armenian troops – all part of an effort to deter another Azerbaijani move.

Intrigue’s take: Armenia is now isolated. It’s wedged between two foes (Azerbaijan and Turkey), its traditional security guarantor (Russia) is bogged down, and Western support for Armenia has seemed pretty symbolic to date.

An invasion could be unimaginably ugly. Yet regular readers will know by now: in this world of ours, we increasingly need to imagine the unimaginable.

Also worth noting:

• The US and Europe have yet to issue sanctions on Azerbaijan for its seizure of Karabakh. There’s speculation this is partly due to Azerbaijan’s leverage as a major gas exporter.

📰 How newspapers covered…

The upcoming US visit by China’s foreign minister

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🛢️ Chevron | Energy

Chevron acquires Guyana oil assets

Chevron, America’s second-largest oil company, has announced it’s buying fellow US producer Hess for a cool $53B, the biggest deal in Chevron history.

Where’s the international intrigue?

1. 🛢️ This is yet another big bet on oil, shrugging off the International Energy Agency’s recent forecasts that peak oil is on the horizon

2. 🤝 It’s another sign the sector is consolidating, as more players struggle with higher interest rates and lower economies of scale, and

3. 🇬🇾 It’s another big bet on Guyana (where Hess has a stake), with the South American country discovering 11 billion barrels of oil and gas in the past decade.

Intrigue’s take: Every past energy transition has been slow, uneven and contested. And we’ve generally seen more of an energy addition rather than transition: oil and gas overtook coal six decades ago, yet coal consumption has since tripled.

We say this not to claim how the world ought to be, but as a reminder of how it is. Speaking of which, there’s evidence we don’t have a lot of time.

Also worth noting:

• The IEA says about $2.8T will be invested in the global energy sector this year, with $1.7T going to clean tech and the remainder towards coal, oil and gas.

➕ Extra Intrigue

What we’re reading about cryptocurrency:

• A Wild Few Minutes Drive Bitcoin Above $35,000 as ETF Excitement Starts to Thaw the Crypto Winter

• Citing Hamas, the US Wants to Officially Treat Crypto Anonymity Services as Suspected Money Launderers

• Tougher UK crypto regime sparks boom for compliance advisers

• Bitcoin mining consumes more electricity than most countries, study suggests

🗳️ Poll time!

💬 Quote of the day

World Bank President Ajay Banga dropped some knowledge at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh yesterday (Tuesday), and argued defence spending is now crowding out other global priorities. The data backs him up: total global defence spending increased by $2.2T to hit new records last year.

Yesterday’s poll: Which infrastructure do you think is most vulnerable?

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📱 Tech hardware (5%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 💻 Tech software (28%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⚡ Energy (39%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🌉 Transport (2%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🚰 Water & sanitation (22%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ✍️ Other (write in!) (3%)

Your two cents:

• ⚡ D: “Without energy nothing else on this list functions.”

• 💻 Z.W.O: “As an AppSec consultant I say that almost anything can be attacked via software. And it does happen every day, hour and minute.”