US national security adviser Jake Sullivan starting Tuesday is meeting over a period of two days with his Chinese counterpart, senior foreign policy official Wang Yi in the Chinese capital. “President Biden has been very clear in his conversations with President Xi that he is committed to managing this important relationship responsibly,” Sullivan told Wang just ahead of the rare talks. Crucially this is the first trip by a sitting US national security advisor to China in eight years (since 2016).

Sullivan’s visit to the outskirts of Beijing where the meetings are being held will last until Thursday, and little is expected to be published or revealed in the aftermath. The immediate goal is the restoration of positive and more frequent communications, which broke down for most of 2022-2023.

“The key is to keep to the overall direction of mutual respect, peaceful co-existence, and win-win cooperation,” Wang has said. He called recent China-US ties “critical” but admitted the relationship has of late taken “twists and turns”.

China’s foreign affairs ministry in a separate statement said, “China will focus on expressing serious concerns, clarifying its solemn position and making serious demands on the Taiwan issue, the right to development and China’s strategic security.”

Also on the agenda is the expansion and normalization of military-to-military talks in order to avoid confrontation in places like the South China Sea, as well as efforts at de-confliction in the Taiwan Strait, along with discussion of Washington’s desire for China to crackdown on the development and distribution of chemicals that can be made into fentanyl.

High on Beijing’s agenda will be US tariffs, particularly those targeting Chinese chip makers. “The United States has continuously taken unreasonable measures against China in terms of tariffs, export controls, investment reviews and unilateral sanctions, which have seriously undermined China’s legitimate rights and interests,” the Chinese foreign ministry statement laid out.

Extensive piece in FT about the back channel discourse between the US and China lead by Sullivan and Wang Yi. The various relatively low-profile meetings set the stage for containing some of the tension in the Sino-American relationship creating some predictability.

There are,… pic.twitter.com/dbQ0J5F7VS

— Ali Ahmadi (@AliR_Ahmadi) August 27, 2024

Meanwhile, Financial Times in a fresh investigative report issued this week has described that leading up to this historic meeting, both Sullivan and Wang had met quietly to stabilize relations in ‘cloak and dagger’ summits around the world. This had reportedly gone on since 2023 in the aftermath of the Chinese spy balloon fiasco over the American east coast.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Friday that the Islamic Republic will have enough enriched uranium for producing fissile material to achieve a nuclear weapon within just “one or two weeks.”

“Iran, because the nuclear agreement was thrown out, instead of being at least a year away from having the breakout capacity of producing fissile material for a nuclear weapon, is now probably one or two weeks away from doing that,” Blinken said at a forum in Colorado.

He did add a caveat, saying there’s as yet no evidence Iran is actively pursuing a nuke at this point; however, the timing is interesting given the White House crisis of Biden’s reelection bid, as well as the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to address Congress next week.

“What we need to see, if Iran is serious about engaging, is actually pulling back on the work that it’s been doing on his program,” Blinken continued.

“Second, we have been maximizing pressure on Iran across the board. We’ve imposed more than 600 sanctions on Iranian persons and entities. We haven’t lifted a single sanction,” he said.

And yet the irony here is that clearly the sanctions haven’t worked. While Biden and Democrats in general had long ago been frequent critics of Trump’s prior “maximum pressure” campaign, in reality little has changed.

Blinken still touted the Biden admin’s record on Iran at the Aspen Security Forum, describing, “When this administration came in, we tried to pursue again, nuclear diplomacy with Iran, because if you could at least take one problem off the board, which is Iran potentially with a nuclear weapon, that’s inherently a good thing.”

The White House says it has still been wielding a big stick, particularly in light of the Gaza crisis and the prior Israeli massive attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus which sent tensions spiraling.

Axios reported earlier this week that the Biden admin’s behind the scenes pressure campaign has yielded limited results:

• The U.S. officials said the Iranians came back with a response that included explanations for these nuclear activities, stressing there has been no change in policy and they are not working on a nuclear weapon.
• The exchange of messages and other information obtained by the U.S. and Israel addressed some of the concerns and somewhat eased anxieties over the Iranian research and development activities, U.S. and Israeli officials said.
• A U.S. official said that the message the U.S. sent to the Iranians was effective, but added there are still significant concerns about the Iranian nuclear program.

Iran has grown bolder in its declarations of late, and so all of the above doesn’t actually sound like “effective” diplomacy.

JUST IN: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says Iran is "probably one or two weeks away" from getting their hands on a nuclear weapon.

The comment 'ironically' came at the same time as Rep. Michael Waltz said Trump's would-be assas*in Thomas Crooks had "3 encrypted overseas… pic.twitter.com/IqCQjfYbcp

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 19, 2024

Without doubt, Iranian leadership is watching the US presidential race closely, given that a potential future Trump administration will be stacked with Iran hawks, as was the first.

Israel has meanwhile vowed preemptive attack if its intelligence believes Tehran is bent on developing a nuke, and if it is on the threshold. At the same time, critics of Netanyahu have alleged his hawkish position is rooted in political survival, like with his hardline Gaza policies.

In conversation with the State Department’s chief data and AI officer Matthew Graviss, he cited a number of initiatives – such as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and Washington’s Enterprise AI Strategy as the foundations for the ultimate goal – using AI to “advance our foreign policy.”

The second part of the push to equip the State Department with AI tools is to – “strengthen this institution.”

According to Blinken, his department is a leader within the government when it comes to testing and “harnessing” the technology. Some reports speak about this as combating whatever happens to be considered foreign disinformation.

And while on the subject of meddling, the Washington Times says AI tests are “part of an ambitious media monitoring and analysis project that spans the globe.”

As sinister as that may sound, packaging the message as the need to combat (only) “foreign disinformation” certainly makes the policy more palatable at home, where the department’s past activity features in congressional probes into government-orchestrated online censorship.

This scrutiny is presented as something hindering the Department of State’s “anti-disinformation” work – while the tools now in development are quite openly described as a possible different means “to pursue the same goals.”

Blinken’s remarks reveal how the technology is used seemingly innocuously as a (translation and summarization) tool “in multilateral organizations;” but then he praised the ability of AI-powered tools to make mass surveillance (“monitoring”) cover a much larger number of media, making its scope and scale “vast,” as the report put it.

And also – combat “disinformation” – which Blinken quite dramatically refers to as “one of the poisons in the international system today.”

“We have one program that we’re using that is able to basically ingest a million articles every day from around the world — to be able to do that in a couple hundred countries in over a hundred languages — and then immediately translate, synthesize and give you a clear picture of what’s happening in the information space immediately,” the secretary is quoted as saying.

But given the scale of the operation, and the shortcomings of the current limitations of AI – those in the know might wish Blinken good luck with the accuracy and reliability of getting that “immediate, clear picture.”

However, when the “AI weapon” is pointed at online platforms as a means of identifying and censoring “disfavored” speech, it is objectively more likely to be efficient.

And the State Department is no stranger to such – strange given its mission – activities: after all, it is the home of the investigated-by-Congress and highly controversial Global Engagement Center.

Bloomberg revealed that his modified Boeing 737 experienced a critical issue following the detection of an oxygen leak, rendering the aircraft unsafe to fly.

Earlier, during a Davos panel, Blinken discussed the Middle East, emphasizing the need for stability and calling the situation an “inflection point” that demands difficult decisions. He expressed confidence in finding a resolution to end the Israel-Hamas conflict.

“We’re in the midst of what is human tragedy in so many ways in the Middle East right now — for the Israelis and Palestinians alike,” he said.

Blinken reiterated the necessity of a “pathway to a Palestinian state” and stressed that Israel would not “get genuine security absent that.” He acknowledged the challenges in reaching a resolution and the need for a mindset open to that perspective.

Ultimately, Blinken said, Israelis must decide on their leadership and direction, and whether they can “seize the opportunity that we believe is there.”

Before attending the Davos event, Blinken spent a week in the Middle East attempting to ease regional tensions.

Article generated by Discern Reporter from corporate media reports.

In the last 32 months they have been proven utterly disastrous. Hamas has gone full ISIS, and is now in addition reportedly beheading captured Israeli soldiers.

Note that the Mahmoud Abbas, “president” for life of the PNA, and a recipient of U.S. aid, has been cheering on Hamas.

So of course have the usual suspects, such as the hard Western Left, the Ivy-League pampered student crowd, the Squad constituencies, the Taliban, Qatar, especially Iran, the parent of the current mass killing, and even Turkey.

Is it the mass mutilations, the rapes, the desecrations of corpses, the beheadings, the murdering of women, the elderly, and children, that so excites them all—as if they were gleefully watching sacrificial victims marched up to the top of an Aztec temple in ancient Tenochtitlán?

Or rather is their frenzy due to unspoken terror that Hamas at last has gone too far in its premodern savagery? There are now no more of its patrons with the power to call off the IDF. And so they may finally get the existential war that Hamas always for decades had bragged about and begged for.

And the proper response to all this here in the U.S.?

All monies to the West Bank and Gaza should be immediately cut off. The Iran transfers, if our State Department’s pleas are correct that they are not yet finalized, should be stopped immediately.

Sanctions and embargos should be placed on all Iranian exports. The alternative would be to keep subsidizing those who provide the wherewithal for murderers, rapists and precivilizational mutilators.

If it is true that Hamas killer-masterminds have been residing in Qatar, and, as often has been alleged, enjoying Qatar as a financial clearing-house for terrorist operations, and given Qatar has been blaming Israel for its own murdered, then why do we persist in basing the United States Central Command (USCC) and United State Air Force Central Command (USAFCC) at Qatar government facilities?

There are, of course, realist arguments for our relationship with Qatar. But the world in the Middle East has now irrevocably changed and we need to make the necessary adjustments and separate from this de facto Al Jazeerist enemy.

Expect some terrorists to attempt to join the swarm at our open border. And soon “refugees” from Gaza and the West Bank will be likely demanding asylum here in the Great Satan.

In reaction, we should not only bar all travel from Palestinian territories into the US, as well as from Iran and Qatar, but yank all visas of any of those nationals who currently reside in the U.S. and send them home to enjoy the advantages now offered on nightly video displays in their own native countries.

The national security team of this administration—gifts from the failed Obama administration that is responsible for much of the current Middle East mess— remains confused and inept.

And that’s a charitable assessment. It of course starts at the top. Joe Biden is neither physically nor cognitively up to the task of Commander in Chief in a crisis. He has more or less disappeared other than offering an occasionally brief appearance where he mumbles about standing with Israel and then vanishes again.

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken recently deleted a tweet calling for an immediate cease-fire–music to the ears of Hamas and Iran.

Why? Does he believe it is moral to allow Hamas to murder 900 Jews, beat their chests about such savagery, and then head home with human trophies to be tortured and executed without a response?

Blinken noted that he and the Turkish foreign minister had talks that led to such an absurd statement.

And what about Turkey, the erstwhile Obama key to the Middle East?

Its intrusive armed drone was shot down recently in Syria by the US Air Force and remains an unapologetic pro-Hamas partisan.

And whether long-term it can remain in NATO—long opposing Sweden’s entry, chronic overflights of the Greek islands in the Aegean, supplier of weapons to Russia, threatening to send missiles into Athens, a security risk anytime it receives US weapons—is a real concern, given it has the largest, non-US army in NATO and hosts a nuclear-armed U.S. base.

Blinken also blasted critics who deplored his outreach to Iran, disparaging them as misinforming and misinformed.

He is petulant because he knows that the Iranian expectation of an upcoming $6 billion US-driven cash transfer (another sick idea to buy back hostages from a murderous Tehran) gives them in the here and now fungible opportunities to send more cash and arms into the hands of anti-Israeli terrorists.

As far as Iran’s role in the Hamas orgy of killing, Blinken also declared that there is no evidence of “anything that shows us that Iran was directly involved in this attack, in planning it or in carrying it out.”

No one but you, Secretary Blinken, believes that.

When one remembers Blinken’s Palestinian Affairs office in the State Department and its even worse ceasefire tweet, which, like Blinken’s, disappeared without comment, the appointment of the Iranian megaphone Robert Malley (currently under investigation by the FBI) as our point man on the bankrupt Iran Deal, and Blinken’s recent brag about all the hundreds of millions of dollars we have sent to the Palestinians, the picture is one of partisan incompetence.

That pattern goes all the way back to the 2021 Chinese humiliation in Anchorage of both Blinken and Jake Sullivan.

Or perhaps both were suspect even earlier when we recall it was campaign honcho Blinken who on the eve of the 2020 election apparently thought up the nasty idea of calling on ex-interim CIA director Mike Morell to round up 51 intelligence “authorities” to lie to the American people that the Hunter Biden laptop under FBI wraps was somehow a product of “Russian disinformation” and not authentic (a claim even Hunter Biden could not make).

That gambit was designed to fuel Biden in the upcoming debate and indeed warp the election itself. And it did.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has a similar politicized record, as one of the principles seeding the 2016 Clinton-campaign lie that a mythical Trump server was communicating with the Russians and thus proof of “Russian collusion”.

Sullivan, remember, just a week before the Hamas slaughter assured us that “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”

So Hamas kills, while we tweet and delete….

David Sachs has asked the unsettling question, Is Ukraine about to become a Forever War? 

At the moment that not only is the West risking escalation by continually testing Russia’s red lines, which could even enter the nuclear arena by supplying main battle tanks and soon F-16 jets, Zelensky continues demanding an invitation to NATO, even threatening to sit out the upcoming major NATO summit in Vilnius in July.

While NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and other officials have said Ukraine will not become a full member anytime soon, but have hinted that it would be likely only after the war is concluded, certain security guarantees are currently on the table, but which will only ensure a drawn out, massive Washington commitment.

For example, the Biden administration has been talking up the possibility of giving Ukraine “Israel status” – which would involve a commitment of permanent and rotating weapons shipments and foreign aid, akin to what Washington has long done for the Jewish state.

Sachs commented on the “Israel status” possibility as follows:

This consists of long-term security guarantees (which run for ten-year intervals in Israel’s case) including weapons, ammunition, and money “not subject to the fate of the current counteroffensive or the electoral calendar.”

In other words, America won’t reassess support even if the counteroffensive fails. Indeed, support won’t cease even if voters want to make a change in the next election. Some observers may see here a classic bait and switch.

This would obviously mean continued American involvement and escalation of its role on the losing side.

Washington enjoyed widespread public support (and importantly the support of its allies) for its policies so long as Ukraine could be presented as “winning”…

“Last year, after Ukraine retook land around Kharkiv and Kherson, the American people were assured that the Ukrainians would complete the job in the spring and summer of 2023,” observed Sachs. “This new Ukrainian counteroffensive would roll back Russian territorial gains, perhaps even threaten the Russian hold on Crimea, and thereby drive Moscow to the negotiating table and end the war. Many Americans supported the $100+ billion in appropriations for Ukraine on this basis.”

But, he continued, “The implicit promise was that this was a one-time expense, not the baseline for an annual appropriation in a new Forever War.”

“Zelensky should be at the negotiating table but instead tours the world selling his forever war as Ukraine is destroyed and conscripted Ukranians are killed by the tens of thousands.”

~ Mick Wallace

pic.twitter.com/nYH9K1Npze

— James Melville (@JamesMelville) April 16, 2023

The pattern looks very familiar, Sachs concluded in his fresh comments:

Now a difficult start to the counteroffensive coupled with a proposed multi-year deal at Vilnius makes clear that this was a lie or a pipe dream. But isn’t this what always happens? Administrations ease us into war with promises of quick and easy victory, and then once involved, tell us we can’t back out no matter the cost because American credibility is at stake. It’s Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq all over again, except this time with a nuclear-armed adversary creating the heightened risk that the war could escalate into WWIII at any point.

Indeed we’ve barely exited two-decade long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and already are well into another ‘forever occupation’ in northeast Syria, with no actual strategic goals or “mission” to speak of.

David Sachs has more detailed analysis in his new article at Responsible Statecraft entitled, Will upcoming NATO summit launch forever war in Europe?

According to Inforwars:

Speaking to reporters in Washington, Blinken boasted that the US is now “the leading supplier of [liquefied natural gas] to Europe.” In addition to shipping its own fuel to Europe, Blinken said that the US is working with European leaders to find ways to “decrease demand” and “speed up the transition to renewables.”

“It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from [Russian President] Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs,” Blinken declared.

The US likely stands to gain the most from the destruction of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, which were damaged by a series of explosions off the Danish island of Bornholm earlier this week. Washington has for years been trying to convince European leaders to swap Russian gas for its LNG, and the severity of the damage to the undersea conduits now means that Europe is “indefinitely deprived” of Russian gas via this route, Russian energy operator Gazprom stated on Friday.

In a speech on Friday, President Vladimir Putin blamed the explosions on “the Anglo-Saxons,” a Russian colloquialism for the US-UK transatlantic alliance.

“It’s obvious to everyone who benefits from it,” Putin explained. “Those who benefit are the ones who have done it.”

As we inch closer to nuclear war, massive food shortages, an energy catastrophe, and half-a-dozen other existential threats that will have generational effects on western society and the world, the Secretary of State of the United States of America should not be making such comments. It does not behoove us to brag about how much a cataclysmic event benefit us, which is pretty much how Blinken came across.

Watch:

.@SecBlinken celebrates Nordstream bombings: "A tremendous opportunity to once & for all remove the dependence on Russian energy & thus to take away from Putin the weaponization of energy … That's very significant & offers tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come" pic.twitter.com/ra64B00yqd

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 3, 2022

Nobody wants to think the U.S. government is capable of participating in such an event, but anyone who thinks it’s not possible is being naïve. I love this nation tremendously, but I’m not blind about what evil men in government are capable of doing.