Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at long-anticipated U.S.-China talks, Israel’s and the Palestinian Authority’s U.N. speeches, and the risk of all-out war in Ethiopia.
Lots of Pomp, Little Progress
It’s been more than a decade since Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the United States, and in that time, geopolitical tensions between the superpowers have only heightened. Artificial intelligence, critical minerals, human rights, tariffs, and Taiwan were just a few of the items on U.S. President Donald Trump’s agenda as he welcomed Xi to the White House on Thursday.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at long-anticipated U.S.-China talks, Israel’s and the Palestinian Authority’s U.N. speeches, and the risk of all-out war in Ethiopia.
Lots of Pomp, Little Progress
It’s been more than a decade since Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the United States, and in that time, geopolitical tensions between the superpowers have only heightened. Artificial intelligence, critical minerals, human rights, tariffs, and Taiwan were just a few of the items on U.S. President Donald Trump’s agenda as he welcomed Xi to the White House on Thursday.
But a day that began with much pomp and pageantry suffered from little substance and concluded with few major breakthroughs—that is, unless you count Xi’s announcement that two giant pandas will be sent to the Atlanta Zoo.
Thursday’s high-level summit was in the works for months, though the White House’s preparation was “unsurprisingly chaotic and incompetent,” FP’s James Palmer wrote this week. Still, in a sign of goodwill, both leaders issued statements on Thursday appealing to the need for closer cooperation.
“Achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America great again can go hand in hand,” Xi told reporters, with Trump similarly hailing his “truly great friendship” with Xi and even greeting the Chinese leader on the tarmac rather than at the White House.
That is where the leaders’ shared interests appeared to end. At time of writing, Trump and Xi have not announced any comprehensive deals addressing tariff concerns, rare-earths competition, or soybean purchases. Late on Wednesday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent agreed to extend the countries’ trade truce by another two months; the deal was set to expire in mid-November.
But Trump and Xi chose not to move past that arrangement, with the United States still heavily reliant on China’s critical minerals and Beijing still insisting that Washington needs to open its market to more Chinese goods, such as electric vehicles.
The two also butted heads on Taiwan, with Xi urging Trump to oppose Taipei’s independence. The United States must “adhere to the correct position of opposing Taiwan independence and handle the Taiwan issue with prudence,” China’s Xinhua News Agency reported on Thursday in one of Xi’s most explicit calls for a change in policy. The Trump administration has yet to publicly respond.
Xi used the summit to reiterate warnings of a “Thucydides trap,” when a rising power and an established power go to war. “It should be a race of catching up with one another, not a wrestle in which one either wins or loses,” Xi said.
Perhaps nowhere is that race more prevalent than in the AI sector. Many experts have urged China and the United States—the world’s two leaders in AI advancement—to establish basic international principles for governing the developing technology, akin to U.S.-Soviet cooperation on nuclear arms control during the Cold War.
However, neither Trump nor Xi appeared interested in such safeguards. “Super Intelligence (SI) will be a big topic of discussion, but I want to leave it exactly where it is,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday, arguing that the United States’ guardrail was the Justice Department. “That is China’s position also.”
Earlier this week, Trump told the United Nations General Assembly that “I’m not going to stifle growth of something that will be bigger than the Industrial Revolution.”
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Dueling narratives at UNGA. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas denounced Israeli actions in the West Bank and Gaza during his virtual address to the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday. He condemned Israel’s “malicious colonial scheme” in the occupied territories and accused the Israeli military of persecuting “a genocidal war that has created an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.”
At the same time, Abbas reiterated support for a two-state solution, a policy that he has backed for decades. “We will not leave our homeland, we will not accept displacement, and we will not allow anyone to decide our future on our behalf,” Abbas said.
Hours later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the stage. He slammed Abbas’s allegations, arguing that Israel took “innumerable steps to protect the civilian population” and that accusing it of genocide is “the greatest lie of the century.” He praised Trump as Israel’s greatest partner but attacked New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, calling him an antisemite.
Netanyahu also he struck an unapologetic tone toward Israel’s actions against Iran, suggesting that “taking out Iran’s nukes” defended many of the nations whose delegates had boycotted his speech.
Ethiopia on the precipice of war. Fighting between the Ethiopian army and rebel forces in the northern Tigray region erupted on Wednesday, shattering a four-year peace deal and threatening all-out war. Leaders of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), now aligned with six other armed groups, said they have launched a “defensive” conflict against the Ethiopian government to oust Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
According to Getachew Reda, an advisor to Abiy and a former TPLF official, rebel forces have “taken over federal controlled airports in Tigray leading to the suspension of flights to and from Tigray.” Flights were reportedly suspended to the historic town of Lalibela on Thursday due to nearby fighting, and violence has been reported in the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions.
On Thursday, the Ethiopian military issued its first public statement, claiming that it had inflicted heavy casualties on TPLF forces and seized some of their weaponry. But experts fear that this could only be the beginning of a drawn-out conflict.
The last time that fighting erupted between the two sides, around 600,000 people were killed, making it one of the world’s deadliest conflicts this century. The African Union Commission has since called for immediate de-escalation and direct talks, and the U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia has condemned the TPLF’s actions.
Rogue AI hack. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese accused an OpenAI agent on Wednesday of infiltrating a Medicare data portal in June. According to the Australian leader, an AI agent was conducting research on health care spending when it circumvented blocks on “public and non-public” information that it had no clearance to.
Defense Minister Richard Marles announced a task force on Thursday to investigate the incident, which may have affected three other government systems. Albanese blamed the U.S.-based firm of failing to adequately alert Canberra about the breach.
“It took the company way too long to inform the government what had occurred, and the nature of the way that notification occurred as well was unacceptable,” Albanese told reporters on the sidelines of UNGA, adding that the alert was sent to a public mailbox on Sept. 10. OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri said that the firm only became aware of the breach in August.
Although the incident is expected to have little impact on the public, it highlights the risks of rogue AI as world leaders and tech developers are calling for a slowdown or pause in its advancement. On Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, along with the top executives of Anthropic and Hugging Face, urged the U.N. Security Council to adopt benchmarks that assess safeguards and measure AI’s capabilities.
Odds and Ends
Prost! The world’s largest beer festival kicked off in Munich on Saturday, attracting what is expected to be millions of people celebrating Oktoberfest.
It’s certainly not the cheapest activity; the price of a single liter ranges from $16.84 to $18.09, a roughly 2 percent hike from last year. If consumption rates meet 2025’s figures (or 6.5 million liters sold), then that would amount to at least $109.46 million spent on beer alone.
But the two-week festivity is not just about German lager: Traditional Bavarian food, dress, and music are also exhibited to commemorate the region’s rich heritage.
