The Torch: What's New This Week?

40 minutes.
NOT available on DWAN.
In this episode of Hold Your Fire!, Richard is joined by Kyung-wha Kang, former South Korean Foreign Minister, CEO of Asia Society and Crisis Group trustee, to discuss North Korea and Russia’s strategic partnership, potential change Donald Trump might bring to U.S.-South Korea relations and what they mean for the Korean peninsula. They talk about North Korea’s deployment of troops to Russia’s Kursk region to assist Moscow in its war against Ukraine, what Pyongyang and Moscow seek to gain from strengthening their ties and how Beijing views the relationship. They also look at how Washington’s alliance with Seoul might evolve under a second Trump presidency and what a potentially more confrontational U.S.-China policy means for the prospects for nuclear diplomacy with Pyongyang and for North East Asia’s security more broadly.

Explorer comment la géographie, la cartographie, l’urbanisation et la justice spatiale jouent un rôle dans la compréhension de l’espace des humains et des sociétés.

SIPRI is an independent international institute dedicated to research into conflict, armaments, arms control and disarmament. Established in 1966, SIPRI provides data, analysis and recommendations, based on open sources.

Across Europe, we’re seeing more confirmed or suspected instances of Russian sabotage. It is part of a broader hybrid war campaign against NATO countries, aimed at eroding support for Ukraine and damaging Western cohesion. ... In the US, Russia is refraining from sabotage, but it’s working hard on disinformation....

Dans le paysage informationnel contemporain, la désinformation s’impose comme un phénomène protéiforme et endémique. Par désinformation, nous entendons ici l’ensemble des informations trompeuses ou biaisées, diffusées dans l’intention de façonner les représentations et d’influencer les opinions et les comportements. Cette désinformation recouvre un large spectre de productions discursives, depuis les multiples avatars de la propagande politique jusqu’aux discours du complot, en passant par les canulars, les rumeurs ou encore les récits de déni historique. Si l’on peine encore à mesurer les effets réels de cette désinformation – que certaines recherches récentes tendent toutefois à relativiser quelque peu –, cette prolifération de récits manipulateurs n’en constitue pas moins un défi majeur pour nos systèmes démocratiques, en ce qu’elle altère les conditions de possibilité d’une sphère publique : autrement dit, d’un débat éclairé, fondé sur des faits partagés et rationnellement établis....

Since the dawn of history, warfighting has gone hand-in-hand with technological innovation. With the risk of sounding technologically deterministic, one could hardly deny the importance and centrality of the available war technology at any battle, campaign, and war effort. Students of military history are bombarded with stories about how the stirrups or the gunpowder transformed not only the way wars were fought, but the extended socio-political structure of whole continents. Today, nearly every single article or book discussing the possible impact of military AI, references that one famous quote by Vladimir Putin: “Whoever leads in AI will rule the world.” An entire field of organizational studies, namely innovation studies, has been created to study exactly the circumstances under which innovation can foster, which actors can most suitably promote innovation, and how innovations might be militarily effective through proper implementation. But less attention has been drawn towards the relationship between technological innovation, and those who are most affected by it; in other words, the military professionals tasked with implementing, planning, and using it....

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In this presentation Tim Cook will discuss his new book, The Good Allies, a masterful account of how Canadians and Americans made the transition from wary rivals to steadfast allies, and how Canada thrived in the shadow of the military and global superpower. In exploring this complex and crucial dimension of the Second World War and its legacy, Tim recounts two nations’ story of cooperation, of sacrifice, and of bleeding together to save the world from the fascist threat....

China's fleet of warships is eclipsing the U.S. as it is now the top global ship maker by a wide margin. As tensions grow with Beijing, the U.S. looks to South Korea, one of its biggest allies in Asia, to help increase its battleship supply....

A vivid, thoughtful examination of how technological innovation—especially AI—is shaping the tensions between democracy and autocracy during the new Cold War.
So much of what we hear about China and Russia today likens the relationship between these two autocracies and the West to a "rivalry" or a "great-power competition." Some might consider it alarmist to say we are in the midst of a second Cold War, but that may be the only responsible way to describe today's state of affairs....

There are four possible outcomes for Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine: ‘long war’, ‘frozen conflict’, ‘victory for Ukraine’ and ‘defeat for Ukraine’. Regardless of which scenario emerges, the far-reaching and traumatic sociological, economic and political impacts of the war will be inescapable....