Today’s briefing:
— UNGA in five lines
— The Saudis reopen the taps
— What's a bushusuru?
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Your Insider’s briefing:
— UNGA in five lines
— The Saudis reopen the taps
— What's a bushusuru?
Good morning {{first_name | Intriguer}}. There’s a well-known management rule that once you cram more than six people into a meeting, nobody is listening and everyone is just waiting for their turn to speak.
Now ramp that number up to 130, make them all world leaders, and jam them all into Manhattan, and you might get an idea how this week’s big UN world leader gathering is playing out. Shall we?
 | Managing Editor Jeremy Dicker |
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Number of the day
33
That’s reportedly how many businesses are now closing in Argentina each day, with some blaming President Milei’s austerity drive for a fall in consumption, a spike in costs, and new competition from abroad. Milei says it’s just “creative destruction”.
UNGA games
The UN’s HQ in NYC.
Jamming 130 world leaders into UN HQ and telling them the theme is 'trust' feels like locking 130 alcoholics in a brewery and telling them the theme is sobriety.
But that's what's now underway at the UN's 81st 'High-Level Week', so here are the five lines you should know, starting with...
"The fault lines in our world are widening. Cracks have become canyons." — António Guterres, UN secretary-general
Delivering his final leader-week opener as UN chief, Guterres unleashed his signature existential realism, framing our world as now facing four "tests of power" (war, inequality, climate, AI) atop three shifts in power (between states, from states to firms, and from humans to machines).
A bitter swansong for Guterres, but also a grim job ad for the seven folks now racing to succeed him: the Security Council's latest secret straw-poll suggests it could be a photo finish between Costa Rica's Grynspan and Guyana's Rodrigues-Birkett.
Guterres also sounded like an Incredibles character when he argued, "Superpowers need a recognition that their power isn't so super." But we mention that because...
"Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild… or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic?" — Donald Trump, US president
That's the shock the hall packed out for, with Trump insisting it's a binary he'll settle after the midterms: it's an attempt to a) maintain his maximalist rhetoric amid military fatigue; b) blunt his war's costs as a campaign issue; but also c) curb Iran's presumed Carter/Bibi play (settling after the election to maximum political damage).
Talks are underway via Iran's UN delegation, but the regime's figurehead Pezeshkian seems busy running the opposite slogan ("Peace cannot be forged while missiles hang over our heads.") Survival is all the regime needs to claim a win, plus it's hard to see the mullahs gifting Trump a pre-election deal.
The US president then used the rest of his airtime to dunk on the International Criminal Court, announce two new bases on Greenland, and rebrand AI as "super intelligence" (because artificial sounds fake?) — he also pushed back on any global AI regulation designed to stifle the boom and cede dominance to China.
Then it was time to hear from Latin America's largest democracy...
"Brazil does not belong in anyone’s backyard." — Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil's president
With his own high-stakes, neck-and-neck election now less than two weeks away, Lula used his country's customary #1 speaker spot to appeal to folks back home, and even dunk on his conservative young rival Flávio Bolsonaro as attaching himself to "foreign interests contrary to the country" (a reference to junior's DC support).
It wasn't all domestic, however: Lula also co-launched the sexily-named Partners for Multilateralism (P4M 🇨🇦🇧🇷🇰🇪🇪🇺🇦🇺🇧🇧🇮🇳) — another middle-power coalition hoping to bypass the UN's superpower vetoes and force some much-needed reform from the middle out. It's hard to see how another informal group can force structural breakthroughs, but at least take it as a signal of the middle's growing discontent.
Speaking of which...
"This Israeli government's expansionist appetite is now a regional threat." — Jordan's King Abdullah II
It makes sense for Abdullah to raise the Israeli-Palestinian conflict given a) he borders the suffering, b) half his people have deep Palestinian roots (a delicate demographic balance for his monarchy), and c) his dad also occupied the West Bank before losing it joining the region’s war on Israel in 1967.
But the king's searing speech was more interesting for the way it framed Israel's recent incursions in Syria, Lebanon, and Iran as a regional threat, presumably in hopes of more international pushback.
Israel's Netanyahu gets his right of reply tomorrow (Thurs), and will no doubt pull a Lula appealing to his own pre-election voters, but safe to say Gaza — not Sudan, Congo, Myanmar, or Ukraine — is already shaping up as UNGA's top topic again.
Meanwhile, we heard about a different existential challenge in...
"Miquelon is becoming the first French town whose inhabitants must be relocated because of rising sea levels." — Emmanuel Macron, French president
With most small island states hitting the podium later this week, it was interesting to hear Macron’s line on the French overseas territory of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon off the coast of Canada. With many residents there living on a sandy strip just 2m (6.5ft) above sea level, Paris has launched a multi-decade initiative to move everyone higher, supported by the Barnier Fund (to buy homes threatened by climate change).
We mention it because small-island leaders have been saying "we are drowning" for a decade and getting a standing ovation plus a side event, but this passing Macron line will feel different for many: it’s now EU and NATO-linked turf at risk, and maybe that starts to shift the world from distant solidarity to oh crap?
Intrigue’s Take
These days, the obvious if cynical way to think about the UN’s annual High-Level Week is like a speech contest. But a better option might be to listen out for the clocks…
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Intrigue’s Take
These days, the obvious if cynical way to think about the UN’s annual High-Level Week is like a speech contest. But a better option might be to listen out for the clocks.
The first is the December 31 countdown until Guterres finishes his term and performs what we can best describe as a hospital pass to his successor: taking the reins of a UN system struggling for solvency and relevance in a low-trust world. A pulpit with little leverage.
The second is the electoral clock now shaping so many of those messages at the podium, whether for Trump in November, Lula and Bibi in October, or beyond — a reminder how much UNGA has stopped resembling a debate or a practical forum for solving global crises, and often more another venue for domestic political theatre.
The third clock is environmental, long ticking loudest for the world’s lower-lying island nations, but maybe a little louder for the rest of us now that Paris is footing a multi-decade relocation bill for French citizens on a sand spit. Perhaps a hint of a future in which climate adaptation ceases to be about pledges we make to others, and more a kind of domestic triage we increasingly confront back home.
And the fourth is technological, now running at a rate that makes our international system look like it’s still written in quill and ink, shifting beyond borders, battle groups, and GDP, to weirder questions around compute, data access, and stack control. Relying on 20th-century institutions to set AI’s guardrails feels a bit like trying to build a border fence around a hurricane.
And maybe that brings us back to this week’s official theme of Restoring Trust. History suggests trust can take decades if not centuries to build, but these four clocks are now ticking in real time.
Sound even smarter:
South Korea’s President Lee used his podium speech to call for a resumption in US-North Korea talks, plus used a separate interview to call for an easing of sanctions on the North, in hopes of nuclear de-escalation.
The US is reportedly withholding UNGA visas for Sudanese junta leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan unless he agrees to a 90-day US-backed ceasefire.
President Trump just met Venezuela’s Delcy Rodriguez for the first time. No real word on substance, but back home, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has now reportedly attempted to re-enter Venezuela three times in the past 24 hours, seizing on Rodriguez’s UNGA absence. She’s previously faced obstacles from both the US and Rodriguez.
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Meanwhile, elsewhere…
🇸🇦 SAUDI ARABIA — Grand reopening.
The critical East-West oil pipeline out to the Red Sea is now partly back up and running, a week after drone strikes sent it offline. The news has helped ease oil prices back under $100, their lowest since 8 September. (Reuters)
Comment: We wrote about what the Houthis mean for global oil here.
🇺🇸 UNITED STATES — Wearer of many hats.
Treasury Secretary Bessent is reportedly emerging as the lead candidate to double as President Trump’s new ‘AI Tsar’, after David Sacks returned to Silicon Valley. (AA)
Comment: Bessent is already running Treasury, co-leading on trade, acting as IRS chief, and driving talks with China. Throwing AI into the mix could just reflect Bessent’s cred with Trump, but probably also reflects the administration’s hard-nosed AI philosophy mixing national security, trade leverage, and systemic financial risk.
🇺🇸 UNITED STATES — FBI hack!?
Ransomware hacker group ShinyHunters is claiming to have breached FBI protocols and stolen vast amounts of data on current and past employees, in response to the FBI’s targeting of ShinyHunters earlier this year. (CNBC)
Comment: Details are still emerging, but this alleged breach could have profound ramifications and expose agency staffers to all kinds of dangers, like blackmail, blown cover, and beyond.
🇪🇺 EUROPEAN UNION — (un)sanctioned.
Europe has agreed to remove Russian billionaires Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman from the bloc’s sanctions list, which is otherwise now being extended for another three years on the 3,000 remaining targets. (EuroNews)
Comment: Paris is only giving vague natsec explanations, but likely pushed to shield Usmanov as part of a delicate prisoner swap with Azerbaijan. That swap only makes sense to us (if at all) if the jailed Frenchman was with the DGSE, or if the DGSE managed to flip Usmanov. The Luxembourg story seems more obvious: the guy they wanted exempt is suing the grand duchy for $16B over frozen assets. Anyway, unanimity rules make for strange compromises, and this all risks undermining Western unity via a slippery new precedent in front of an expansionist Russia. On the bright side, it also suggests these sanctions really do hurt.
🇨🇳 CHINA — New chip in town.
Alibaba has unveiled its new in-house AI accelerator, billing the Zhenwu V900 as China’s most powerful chip, with 3x the performance of its predecessor. (Bloomberg $)
Comment: Alibaba still relies on China’s local SMIC chipmaker which — amid US sanctions — still relies on older Deep Ultraviolet (DUV) tech rather than the better Extreme Ultraviolet lithography. Alibaba isn’t revealing its new specs, but SMIC is maxing out at the 5nm process node (versus the 2nm Taiwan’s TSMC is now shipping), and even at 5nm, the older DUV tech means brutally low yields and massive production costs. Crucially, however, this new chip does potentially outperform America’s slower Nvidia chips specifically authorised for sale in China, a potential tipping point to drive more revenue and R&D for China’s chip-sovereignty push. The announcement is probably timed to fill President Xi’s sails ahead of Thursday’s big Trump summit (Xi arrives Wed night) — we’re still expecting a trade-truce extension and some photos, not a treaty.
🇦🇺 AUSTRALIA — How did those get there?
Australia’s defence minister is downplaying the missing F-35 fighter jet parts that somehow got diverted to — then lost in — Hong Kong, arguing the components that departed Australia weren’t particularly sensitive. US outlets are taking a different line, flagging that the shipment actually included a special radar-absorbent canopy. (Guardian)
Comment: Absent further details on what (if anything) is going on, it’s another awkward lesson in allied supply chains, just as these two allies plough on with their ambitious AUKUS submarine plans.
🇺🇾 URUGUAY — Latin American paradise.
Silicon Valley-backed venture Praxis says it’s reached a deal to build its first physical “crypto/AI” city for 10,000 tech elites in Uruguay. (NYT $)
Comment: The venture is one thing (founded by a professional surfer and backed by tech luminaries like Altman), but we’re more interested in their selected location: Uruguay offers stability, proximity, a digital-native demographic, and digital-nomad tax perks; but these utopian ideas still eventually tend to hit some familiar brick walls — zoning, politics, and the uncomfortable reality that there’s a limit to how much any sovereign nation is willing to tolerate a sovereign tech-bro enclave within its borders.
Extra Intrigue
Intrigue’s commodities corner is back
Potash: After President Trump suggested the US could import the fertiliser from Belarus rather than Canada, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko admitted his country doesn’t actually have the necessary supplies.
Copper: The metal is flying off the shelves and directly into manufacturers’ hands, leaving warehouses in London and Shanghai approaching empty.
Diesel: With US refineries now at 98% utilisation and diesel prices unlikely to ease until next year, the US president is now mulling an export ban on the fuel.
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Slang of the day
US President George HW Bush, Japanese PM Kiichi Miyazawa and First Lady Barbara Bush. Credits: CNN.
You know you screwed up when Japan invents a slang term just for you.
Take ‘bushusuru’. It translates to ‘pulling a Bush’ (the ‘H. W.’ one), and refers to when the US president threw up in the lap of Japanese PM Kiichi Miyazawa in 1992.
Bush had been on a 12-day Asia trip, and had played a tennis doubles match against the Japanese emperor and crown prince that same day (team USA lost), before heading to a grand dinner in his honour. Evidently tired from his day and suffering from what was later described as gastroenteritis, POTUS fainted and threw up over his host, apparently telling his aides to just “roll [him] under the table”.
But the story doesn’t stop there! As the news broke, CNN received a call from a man claiming to be the president’s physician. He confirmed Bush had suffered a medical episode at dinner, but went further, claiming the US president had later died.
CNN anchor Don Harrison started to run the scoop on air, before being told to backtrack by an offside voice. The prankster was a 71-year-old Idaho man.
Today’s poll
Have you ever had an embarrassing incident at a high-stakes event?
Yesterday’s poll: Do you think India and China will have another border skirmish in the next 5 years?
🔥 Yep, it's a powder keg (69%)
🕊️ Nope, they both need a stable border (29%)
✍️ Other (write in!) (2%)
Your two cents:
🔥 J.G: “Look at the map of the China, Pakistan, and India border lands. When China builds supply chains through there it cements legitimacy to border claims.”
✍️ A.R: “Indian here. Border skirmishes will continue while India quietly (and grudgingly) buys Chinese tech and invites Chinese investment because there's no other alternative.”
🕊️ Kevin M: “Fingers crossed.”
PS — shout-out to ‘DD’ in the group-chat for today’s CowabUNGA heading 😁. Become an Insider and join the chat today!