🌍 Updates on the Finnish pipeline damage

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Today’s briefing is a 4 min read:

• 🇫🇮 Finland looks at China in pipeline damage probe.

• 🇵🇰 Pakistan’s exiled prime minister is back.

• ➕ Plus: Where the rich stash their cash, how the papers are covering Israel and Hamas, and why folks in China are tweeting about California’s governor.

¿Hablas español? ¡Check out our weekly edition in Spanish!

1. 🇯🇵 Japan: Tokyo’s fair trade watchdog has opened a probe into Google after the tech giant allegedly pushed smartphone makers to use its search engine by default. India, the EU, and the US have all levelled similar accusations in recent years.

2. 🇮🇸 Iceland: The prime minister will join tens of thousands taking part in Iceland’s women’s strike today. The first such strike in 1975 brought the country to a standstill and led to several policy reforms.

3. 🇵🇭 Philippines: Manila has summoned China’s ambassador after two vessels ‘bumped’ Philippine resupply ships over the weekend. At the time of the incident, Manila was resupplying a WWII-era ship it grounded in 1999 to check China’s vast South China Sea claims.

4. 🇭🇹 Haiti: Haitian police have arrested a key suspect in the 2021 homicide of President Jovenel Moise. The former justice ministry official is accused of ordering the president’s assassination.

5. 🇮🇷 Iran: A state media outlet says Armita Geravand, a teenager allegedly assaulted by the morality police in December, now appears “brain-dead”. Her case has elicited parallels with the case of Mahsa Amini, whose death sparked major unrest last year.

🇫🇮 Finland | Intelligence & security

Finland eyes Chinese ship in pipeline probe

Finnish authorities say they’re investigating a Hong Kong-flagged vessel in connection with this month’s suspected sabotage of a gas pipeline and data cable in the Gulf of Finland.

Here’s what happened. 

On 8 October, authorities registered a leak in the 77km Balticconnector gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia. It now remains offline for months of repairs, leaving Finland to rely on LNG shipments instead.

Finnish authorities say they believe the damage was caused by “an external mechanical force”, and they’re looking into two vessels that were in the pipeline’s vicinity that night:

1. 🇨🇳 The NewNew Polar Bear*, a Chinese cargo ship travelling between Russia and China, whose movements “​​coincide with the time and place of the gas pipeline damage”, and

2. 🇷🇺 The Sevmorput, one of Russia’s four nuclear-powered merchant ships, now operated by a Russian state-owned energy company.

For their part, both China and Russia deny any role.

And of course, there’s a less intriguing possibility: a rogue anchor might’ve caused this, accidentally or otherwise. It’d fit reports that an object (not a blast) was at fault, and that an “extremely heavy object” was found nearby.

Intrigue's take: It’d be surprising for China to have played a deliberate role in an incident so far from its turf, particularly using a ship that the world was already watching so closely (the NewNew Polar Bear just became the first regular vessel to reach Kaliningrad via the Northern Sea Route).

Either way, this whole saga reminds us of five things:

• First, undersea infrastructure is more critical today than ever

• Second, it’s also more vulnerable than ever

• Third, grey zone tactics are becoming more common (i.e., inflicting damage without crossing the threshold of armed conflict)

• Fourth, this all makes attribution both high-stakes and hard, and

• Fifth, this all in turn makes the democratic preference for transparent investigations one heck of a delicate balancing act.

Also worth noting:

• Russia has expressed dissatisfaction numerous times at Finland’s recent NATO accession.

• Natural gas accounts for around 8% of Finland’s energy needs.

• * The NewNew Polar Bear isn’t new (it was built in 2005).

• Sweden said yesterday (Monday) it’s treating the parallel damage to the Estonia-Sweden communications cable as a related incident.

📰 How newspapers covered…

Israel and Hamas

🇵🇰 Pakistan | Politics

A former leader shakes up Pakistan’s election

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif returned to the country over the weekend after a four-year self-imposed exile in the UK.

Sharif is no ordinary former prime minister:

• He served for nine non-consecutive years (1990-93, 1997-99, and 2013-17), making him the longest serving leader in Pakistani history

• But he was ousted before finishing each one of his three terms

• He was then convicted of corruption and disqualified from office, but

• He then had his disqualification reduced to five years after his brother Shehbaz became prime minister last year.

Lawyers say Sharif may still have legal hurdles to clear before he can run in Pakistan’s election in January, but his party has been clear: the aim is for him to become prime minister a fourth time.

Intrigue’s take: Nothing in Pakistani politics gets done without the military’s permission, and the military is no great friend of Sharif’s (it removed him from office in 1999 and forced him into his first decade-long exile).

So why’d it let Sharif back into the country now? Because the military has a bigger problem: the party led by strident critic (and former PM / cricket star) Imran Khan remains immensely popular, despite him being in prison.

The enemy you know…

Also worth noting:

• According to a snap survey, 30% of Pakistanis believe Sharif can pull Pakistan out of its current crisis, versus 22% for Khan.

• Critics have claimed Pakistan’s decision to push its election back from November to January was to accommodate Sharif’s return.

• A Pakistani court said yesterday (Monday) that Imran Khan could face the death penalty over charges that he revealed state secrets.

🎧 Today on Intrigue Outloud

Can NATO defend the Baltic Sea from saboteurs?

➕ Extra Intrigue

Here’s what folks have been tweeting about lately:

• 🇨🇭 “Chiesa” was trending in Switzerland after the national-conservative Swiss People’s Party of Marco Chiesa won federal elections on Sunday.

• 🇨🇳 Folks in China tweeted about “#Newsom” after Californian governor Gavin Newsom landed there to talk climate change yesterday.

• 🇻🇪 And Venezuelans had a lot to say about “María Corina Machado,” who won the opposition’s presidential primary on Sunday.

🗳️ Poll time!

📊 Chart of the day

Where do rich folks stash their cash abroad? According to a new report by the EU Tax Observatory, offshore centres in Asia such as Singapore and Hong Kong have soared in popularity since the early 2000s. In parallel, Switzerland has gone from hosting half of all global offshore wealth to about 20% today, as authorities have curtailed Swiss bank secrecy.

Yesterday’s poll: Who would you have supported in Argentina's presidential election yesterday?

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ 📈 Sergio Massa, current economy minister (35%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⚡ Javier Milei, populist libertarian (39%)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 👩‍💼 Patricia Bullrich, former security minister (26%)

Your two cents:

• 📈 B.C: “It's a real Sophie's choice, isn't it? Massa shares responsibility for Argentina's current state, but electing Milei is like cutting off the proverbial nose.”

• ⚡ T: “Out with the old, in with something new.”

• 👩‍💼 J.M.F: “Regardless of the victor, the economy will be due for a reckoning during or after the transition in December.”