🌍 Mongolia’s prime minister lands in the US

Hi there Intriguer. In this captivating world of ours, we’re constantly hammering out sentences we never thought we’d type. Like this one: Kenya has suspended the local activities of Worldcoin, a biometric cryptocurrency startup offering free tokens to folks who agree to have their eyeballs scanned.

Today’s briefing is a 4 min read:

• ✈️ Mongolia’s prime minister heads to the US.

• 🇹🇷 Turkey racks up yet another drone sale.

• ➕ Plus: Heavy rains in Beijing, how papers around the world are covering Donald Trump’s latest indictment, and when it’s easier to buy Coke than water.

1. 🇹🇲 Turkmenistan: Turkmenistan Airlines will no longer fly directly to Moscow, citing a series of recent drone attacks on Russia’s capital. Flights will instead go to Kazan, around 800km east of Moscow.

2. 🇵🇱 Poland: The Polish defence ministry will move more troops to the eastern border after locals there photographed two Belarussian helicopters violating Polish airspace on Tuesday (1 August). Belarussian officials have denied any incursion into Polish territory.

3. 🇧🇩 Bangladesh: The exiled leader of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party was sentenced in absentia yesterday (Wednesday) to nine years in prison on graft charges. The decision triggered protests from opposition supporters who called the trial politically motivated.

4. 🇨🇦 Canada: Meta has started restricting news content appearing on Facebook and Instagram in Canada, after a new law there required social media platforms to compensate news outlets for such content. Canada’s new law is similar to a 2021 law in Australia which led to tech firms paying news outlets in the country.

5. 🇸🇳 Senegal: Authorities suspended the use of TikTok yesterday (Wednesday), days after dissolving the country's main opposition party and detaining its leader. In a statement, the communications minister wrote that TikTok “is the social network favoured by people with bad intentions”.

✈️ Mongolia | Geopolitics

Mongolia’s prime minister lands in the US

Mongolian leader Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai is in the US this week for talks with Vice President Kamala Harris and other senior US officials.

Why? Mongolia wants to:

• ☟ Reduce its dependence on neighbouring China and Russia

• ⚒️ Diversify its resource-heavy economy

• 🤝 Lower its inherent isolation as a landlocked nation, plus

• 📸 The photo ops play well ahead of Mongolia’s 2024 elections.

As for the US, it wants to:

• 🎲 Dilute the influence of Beijing and Moscow on Mongolia’s choices

• 🌏 Nudge Mongolia towards Western efforts at balancing China

• ⛏️ Tap Mongolia’s vast critical mineral reserves for the US tech, energy, and defence sectors, and

• 💪 Reduce China’s dominance in those same mineral supply chains.

So how do they try to achieve all this? The two countries have:

• 🛫 Finalised an Open Skies pact to facilitate direct air travel

• 📈 Worked on a ‘third neighbour’ economic plan (per Mongolia’s policy of finding partners to balance its two neighbours), and

• ✍️ Signed a critical minerals deal back in June.

Intrigue's take: These kinds of deals open a door, but ultimately it’s still up to each person and business whether they want to head on through. That’s why Mongolia is chatting in more detail with key players like Google, SpaceX, and others.

But even with the door open, and leaders cheering folks on, there’s such a strong gravitational pull in other directions: both countries naturally trade the most with their own two immediate neighbours.

So a lot in this visit probably still comes down to signalling (particularly to China and Russia) that both the US and Mongolia have options.

Also worth noting:

• US-Mongolia trade in goods was ~$175 million last year. China-Mongolia trade was $13.7B (64% of Mongolia’s total trade).

• Mongolia has abstained from UN resolutions condemning neighbouring Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

• After Mongolia welcomed a visit by the Dalai Lama in 2016, Beijing raised fees on Mongolian products and restricted an important border crossing.

📰 How newspapers covered…

The indictment of former US President Donald Trump

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🇹🇷 Turkey | Defence & security

Turkey’s defence industry is booming

Indonesia has announced it’ll purchase 12 Turkish-made ANKA drones for $300M, with the first shipment expected to arrive in November 2025.

Drones have become some of Turkey’s highest-profile exports. Just in the last month:

1. 🇰🇼 Kuwait purchased $367M of TB2 drones from the firm Baykar

2. 🇽🇰 Kosovo also bought an undisclosed number of TB2s, and

3. 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia sealed Turkey’s largest ever defence export deal, buying ~$1B worth of Baykar’s newer Akinci drones.

Plus, there are another 30 countries that own and operate Turkish drones, which have appeared on battlefields around Libya, Azerbaijan, Syria, Ukraine and beyond.

Intrigue’s take: You can see why Turkey’s drones are popular – they’re durable, effective, and cheap. Hence their reputation as the ‘Toyota Corolla of drones’.

And Turkey itself benefits, too: it needs the export revenue, plus having nations dependent on it for defence kit gives Ankara leverage.

Also worth noting:

• Foreign sales accounted for 90% of Baykar’s revenues in 2022.

• Baykar’s chair and chief technology officer is married to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s daughter.

➕ Extra Intrigue

What we’re reading and watching about water security.

• When it’s ‘easier to buy Coke than water’

• The quest for new water sources

• Desertification is an existential challenge for Iran

• China and India might be most at-risk of water shortages

🗳️ Poll time!

📸 Photo of the day

Beijing recorded its heaviest rainfall in 70 years this week as tropical storm Doksuri hit China’s northeastern coast. More than 120,000 people were evacuated from 13 districts across the capital.

Yesterday’s poll: Do you think the US should open more nuclear reactors?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🔋 Yes, they're a reliable source of energy (47%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 💚 Yes, they're a green source of energy (34%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💸 No, they're too costly (5%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💀 No, they're too dangerous (11%)

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

Your two cents:

• 🔋 B.F.C: “The nuclear power industry has a major marketing problem. The average person hears 'nuclear' and thinks of Chernobyl and Homer Simpson, not a clean, reliable energy source.”

• 💀 M.H.M: “The US has not yet determined how to handle spent radioactive waste. There is no point in creating more until we decide how to manage the current waste.”

• 💚 C.O: “It's well past time to revisit thorium-based fission. Meltdown free and difficult to weaponize.”