🌍 Three surprising arms numbers
Plus: Will they find MH370?
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Today’s briefing: |
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Good morning Intriguer. Media narratives fascinate me — how they start, gain momentum and credibility, and how quickly they can completely flip the status quo.
Take defense spending. I’m old enough to remember when defense primes were the comfy undies of western democracies — essential, supportive, but best not talked about in public. Now every country and its dog is bragging about ballooning defense budgets, and “innovative” arms companies are now a consensus public good. I understand why and certainly don’t disagree — it’s just that the narrative has completely changed and darn quickly too.
But what of the actual data? Well, we read the latest SIPRI report so you don’t have to — the mainstream narrative on this one is bang on, defense spending is way up, but there are some surprising nuggets in there as well. Let’s get stuck in, shall we?
Rebrand of the day
The Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace
That’s the new name for the US Institute of Peace (USIP), the Reagan-era Congress-funded thinktank which President Trump moved to gut via DOGE’s cost-cutting mandate earlier this year. The administration then quietly disbanded DOGE itself last month.
Armazing
When rattled world leaders issue a desperate call to arms, who answers?
Well of course, that’d be Lockheed, Raytheon, Northrop, Boeing, General Dynamics, AVIC, BAE, L3Harris, Norinco, Rheinmetall, and the China South Industries Group!
Thankfully, the number-crunchers at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) just dropped their latest arms industry report, so here are three stats to know:
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$679B
That’s how much the world’s top 100 arms-makers earned in 2024, with ‘Murica alone accounting for ~half that revenue, and four of the world’s five biggest defense players — Lockheed alone earned a crisp $65B.
But the two of you who saw Black Widow (2021) will already know that big spends don’t necessarily guarantee good outcomes: Lockheed’s coveted F-35 now runs an average of 238 days late per aircraft, with a lifetime cost now at an extraordinary $2.1T.
Though delayed or not, the Saudi ruler’s latest DC pilgrimage was a reminder how much the F-35 is still the hottest (if not cheapest) defence system in town.
Okay, so if America’s pole position is unsurprising, here’s a stat that is surprising…
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193%
These days we barely go a week without slipping Europe’s rearmament into conversation, but this 193% surge isn’t from giant Germany or even the bullish Baltics. Nope, that’s Prague’s Czechoslovak Group (CSG), enjoying a 193% revenue spike to $3.6B with more than half tied to helping Ukraine defend itself with ammo and equipment.
And that’s intriguing — local coalition talks persist, but the Czechs have likely now voted for Ukraine-sceptic billionaire populist Andrej Babiš to take the helm as PM! Still, many Czechs clearly back Ukraine’s self-defence — after all, their mostly ceremonial president is also the pro-NATO ex-general we famously likened to Tom Cruise playing ripped Santa.
And at the end of the day, it’s not like CSG is just donating the ammo — it’s all paid for by a coalition of mostly fellow NATO and EU members.
But while we’re talking surprises…
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-10%
China's eight top defence contractors just saw a 10% drop in revenues to $88B! Surely this means peacenik China is now beating its swords into ploughshares, no?
Well think of it like this: was Chris Pratt more formidable as chubby Andy Dwyer in Parks & Rec, or when he trimmed some lbs to become the shredded Star-Lord in Guardians?
To put it another way, President Xi’s corruption purge has now rippled out of the People’s Liberation Army, with arms contracts now getting hit. Headlines gawk at the missing generals (like Xi’s own vice-chair on the Central Military Commission), but Norinco’s chair (Liu Shiquan) getting implicated triggered a 31% revenue crash!
Ditto, Xi’s earlier troop and officer number cuts were really about tackling graft, inefficiency, and disloyalty to strengthen — not soften — his posture. His related new disciplinary rules will hit 1 January.
So maybe that’s where we wrap: numbers reveal a lot, but not always what we think?
Intrigue’s Take
Zoom out a little, and these stats reflect the world we grew up in: the longest-running major-power world peace in millennia, sustained (or imposed?) by US power.
And yet America keeps signalling those days might now be coming to an end: its recent elections suggest folks want to ease any US burden, and debt markets suggest they might have to: the US now spends more on net interest than it does on defence.
As for what might come after Pax Americana? Nobody really knows, but the above offers hints: Europe’s defence surge suggests it’ll shoulder more of the burden, though the Czech case also hints at how fragile that might be — just one populist away from the wall.
Ditto, China’s case captures the uncertainty of its own future role: immense scale and strength, but masking some unpredictable brittleness within.
Meanwhile, elsewhere…
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🇺🇦 UKRAINE – More talks. |
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🇺🇸 UNITED STATES – Closed. |
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🇱🇧 LEBANON – Direct talks. Comment: The biggest question mark right now is whether they can align enough to disarm Hezbollah without destabilising the region again. |
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🇧🇷 BRAZIL – TikTok’s expanding. Comment: Brazil is TikTok’s third-biggest market, but the warming Brazil-China ties will no doubt have helped in the giant’s decision-making process. |
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🇰🇷 SOUTH KOREA – Negotiated exit. Comment: These are classic pre-negotiation negotiations: the North’s Kim says he won’t even talk to Trump or Lee unless they drop their denuclearisation demands, so Lee is seemingly offering to tone down the drills instead. Either way, it’s still arguably giving something (whether demands or drills) for nothing (talks that’d just legitimise Kim anyway). You could also see it all as a softening of Lee’s more hawkish announcement that he’ll now build nuclear-powered submarines in the US. |
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🇮🇹 ITALY – Gold fever. Comment: This specific case aside, it seems inevitable that any politicisation of the US Fed will inspire others abroad: if they get a piggy-bank, why not us? |
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🇲🇾 MALAYSIA – Search again. Comment: This resumption seems less about any new evidence, and more about a new funding model that flips the ROI back in favour of hopefully finding the jet’s black box, and thereby solving one of modern aviation’s greatest mysteries. |
Extra Intrigue
Leaders are squeezing in their final trips of the year…
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🇷🇺 Russia’s Putin is in 🇮🇳 India for his annual summit with Modi. So far, India has clinched a $2B deal to lease a nuclear-powered submarine from Russia.
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🇩🇪 Germany’s foreign minister (Wadephul) will travel to 🇨🇳 China next week, right on the heels of the French president’s own China visit.
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🇮🇱 Israel’s Netanyahu is due back in 🇺🇸 the US on 28 December for his fifth visit of the year.
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And the 🇩🇪 German president (a mostly ceremonial position) is now in the 🇬🇧 UK for the first such state visit in 27 years.
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Consulate of the day
Ribbon getting cut like nobody’s business. Credits: @USCGERBIL via Twitter/X.
The US just opened the world’s largest consulate in… Erbil.
That’s the capital of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region. Bigger than the Pentagon, and half the size of the Vatican, this US consulate is more a fortified city than an office.
And guess where the world’s largest (US) embassy is? That’s right, just down National Highway 2 in Baghdad. And it’s the same size as the Vatican, in case you were wondering.
Successive US administrations have pledged a Pacific pivot to counter China, but the US diplomatic footprint in the Middle East still seems pretty, pretty, pretty big.
Anyway, the only size that really matters in diplomacy is the size of your (ahem) commitment to advancing the national interest.
Today’s poll
What do you think would follow any end to Pax Americana? |
Yesterday’s poll: What's the best fix for India’s cybercrime problem?
🔨 Government tools and monitoring (13%)
📱 More digital literacy and caution (36%)
🛡️ Stronger private-sector solutions (banks, apps, etc.) (49%)
✍️ Other (write in!) (2%)
Your two cents:
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🛡️ D.S.A: “People replace their phones more often than they do their banks, shopping sites or other necessities. The phones are vulnerable to many different attacks, but the information inside an app is more valuable.”
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✍️ A.A: “Invest in the economy. Provide better jobs for a fair wage. Reduce governmental corruption.”
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📱 C.S.C: “It is the same answer for really everything. Know what tool you are using and know how it can be used against you, and know how to defend yourself against it.”