Today’s briefing:
— Look who’s travelling
— Germany’s big hack
— Guess who’s home
Your Insider’s briefing:
— Look who’s travelling
— Germany’s big hack
— Guess who’s home
Good morning {{first_name | Intriguer}}. You might recall the other week we looked at the statecraft of aviation, and how much a national carrier can really function like a flying embassy.
But one thing I wanted to add at the time, and will now do so having trawled through the absolute depths of the internet to find a public reference: if state airlines are like flying embassies, the natural follow-up is whether those same flying embassies (per the terrestrial originals) likewise house spies in amongst all the pomp and chianti.
And sure enough yes, if you’ll take a trip with me back to 1991, NBC News levelled these exact allegations that Air France was knowingly hiring French intelligence officers as crew, and bugging first-class seats to eavesdrop on VIPs! The airline denied the claims, naturellement, but later reports added the long-running (and widespread) rumours of state airlines likewise placing micro-cameras above first-class seats for easy reading of any VIP papers. When passengers later found hidden cameras onboard Singapore Airlines, the carrier insisted they were disabled lah.
Anyway, with today’s look at the month’s most intriguing leader itineraries, and with tech now making micro-cameras and bugs virtually invisible to the untrained eye, you’ve got to wonder which state-owned aviation empire transiting millions of high-value targets every year wouldn’t try to pull that kind of Bond move.
 | Managing Editor Jeremy Dicker |
🙋♂️ Got a question for our team of ex-diplomats? Drop it here and we’ll answer it later this week via our latest Ask Intrigue Anything!
Timeframe of the day
“Months, not years”
That’s reportedly how long Japan has before it runs out of yttrium, the rare earth in everything from jet engines and semiconductors to EVs and LEDs. Tokyo is lobbying its US allies for help to ease China’s export controls on the mineral, imposed last year after PM Takaichi flagged a possible Japanese response in any war over Taiwan.
Charter diplomacy.
The big-dog world leaders mostly fly private, but some occasionally fly commercial, if at least to send a carefully crafted electoral message that they’re just like us.
So like SJP we got to thinking: do world leaders ever fly on points? Do they get a glass of complimentary bubbles just ‘cause? Do they send a strongly worded email to their transport minister over delays? Do they ever jostle over the armrest? Do they prefer window or aisle?
We can confirm the answers are respectively yes, yes, yes, yes, and window (their advisors can then shield them from pesky aisleway commoners once the initial ‘leader of the people’ footage gets uploaded to Insta).
Anyways, here are some of the world leaders with the most intriguing autumn travel plans, starting with…
🇫🇷 Macron makes the Gulf
With parts of Paris still in post-riot flames, what could possibly compel a French leader to nonetheless hop on the presidential jet to the Gulf the very next day?
Simple: energy.
With soaring prices feeding public fury, Emmanuel Macron is on a diplomatic sprint through Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain, and Qatar (his FM also just hit the Saudis).
His mission is nakedly transactional: “secure a certain number of commitments” for fuel, including for islands such as Reunion and Mayotte feeling like an afterthought.
Of course, that’s easier said than done given pretty much every other world leader is chasing the same barrels, though France has a unique advantage: Macron comes bearing genuinely advanced defence capabilities right as the Gulf monarchies wake up to their own vulnerabilities plus US limitations. Paris is already claiming success, with new pledges equivalent to roughly 10% of French diesel consumption.
But France isn’t the only Western power flying long-haul this week…
🇺🇸 Rubio runs off to Central and South Asia
With the US still locked in an Iran shooting war, his boss (Trump) ninja-starring concessions at Russia, and the US midterms just two weeks away, the secretary of state’s air time is really at a premium right now.
So of all the weeks and cities, why jet off to Samarkand (Uzbekistan)… now?
The answer has three layers, with the first (per State’s press release) all about leading a delegation of 200 US business leaders to meet reps from the five main ‘Stans (Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, and Turkmen). The draw? Sure, everything from critical minerals to energy and mega-infrastructure deals.
The second layer is that Putin’s disastrous invasion of Ukraine has cracked open a power vacuum in the old Soviet sphere, and DC sees an opportunity; not so much to fill the void but to offer more options, and thereby force Beijing to burn more energy competing across Eurasia rather than projecting out across the Pacific.
And the third layer is really political: Rubio has his eye on the White House for 2028 and presumably welcomes a bit of midterm media distance from an unpopular boss now making unpopular moves from Russia to Iran and beyond.
From Uzbekistan, Rubio then flies to India, but conspicuously skips the politics of Delhi to instead tap the economics of Mumbai and Jamnagar, home to the world’s largest single-site refinery, owned by the powerful Ambani family. The Ambanis are backing a new mega-refinery project in Texas (with obscure ties to Trump Jr, btw).
Anyway, while Washington tries playing long-term chess in Asia…
🇷🇺 Lavrov leaves for Iran
Putin’s envoy jetted to Tehran yesterday (Monday) for a first wartime visit, seeing both his counterpart (Araghchi) and the regime’s figurehead president (Pezeshkian).
Sure, Lavrov framed Iran’s fight against the US as somehow identical to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and recommitted to their pre-war investment and energy deals.
But substantively, it’s all familiar turf: Putin has long used his UN Security Council seat to shield Iran from international scrutiny and thereby stretch US power, while quietly supplying intelligence and hardware that might’ve killed US personnel.
Now doubling down during an official wartime visit? As the Joker once said, it’s about sending a message, and this time he has an audience of one: President Trump. By flexing for the cameras in Tehran, Lavrov is trying to suggest that any Middle East off-ramp still runs through Moscow, and thereby still carries a cost in terms of whatever else Putin wants from Trump in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, southern Africa’s newest leader just pursued his own audience of one…
🇧🇼 Boko bails to China
Botswana’s Harvard-educated leader, who just ended the governing party’s six-decade rule in 2024, is now back from his first state visit to China. Why?
Sure, he and Xi Jinping saw a troupe of dancing robots and upgraded their ties to a Comprehensive Strategic Cooperative Partnership (say that five times fast).
But the real why? Boko inherited an economy in crisis, as the diamond industry (a ~third of Botswana’s GDP and ~75% of its foreign currency earnings) gets wiped by softer demand and lab diamond supply. Moody's has downgraded its debt rating twice in less than a year.
So what Boko really needs is urgent investment to diversify. And… did he get it?
Not really. China’s state-owned MMG miner was already pushing ahead with a $900M expansion of its newly acquired Khoemacau copper mine in Botswana, and Xi has now added vague promises to “enhance market access” for Botswana’s fading diamonds.
But even for that mid package, Boko still had to publicly back Xi’s claims on Taiwan, plus endorse his Global Security Initiative (broadly an alternative to US-led pacts).
And while the big powers trade threats and favours, let’s wrap with the world’s quintessential palate-cleanser…
🇨🇭 Parmelin pops over to Vietnam
Yes, Switzerland’s president just toured Vietnam, technically to mark their 55th anniversary, but really to pop champagne over a trade deal 14 years in the making.
How did Vietnam and the European Free Trade Association (🇳🇴🇨🇭🇮🇸🇱🇮) finally get their deal over the line? Amid the sting of global tariff wars and a broader diversification away from China, both mid-sized economies suddenly saw value in the other: Vietnam now gets high-tech European engineering and investment, while EFTA gets a foothold in Southeast Asia’s booming manufacturing hub.
Anyway, whether it’s a sudden energy sprint, or a pact 14 years in the making, take it as proof that in a messy, polyamorous world, maybe the most costly itinerary involves just staying at home.
Intrigue’s Take
Okay so Macron wants diesel, Rubio wants minerals, Lavrov wants leverage, Boko wants cash, and Parmelin wants trade. But the common thread?
Across it all, we’re still really watching…
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Sound even smarter:
Emirati envoy Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan is also now in India for talks with his Indian counterpart.
Boko isn’t the only African leader with a China trip on their October calendar, with the leaders of Togo and Djibouti also now returning or departing.
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Meanwhile, elsewhere…
🇺🇸 UNITED STATES — Anthropic for the people.
AI giant Anthropic has pledged 5% of its stock towards a ‘Public Benefit Fund’, with the aim of um, benefiting the public? Rather than commit to a single beneficial strategy, the company says funds could go to NGOs, affected populations, and cushioning AI’s labour market shocks. (Anthropic)
Comment: Call us cynics, but the pre-IPO timing looks less like altruism and more like risk management, hoping to soften regulatory and public scrutiny.
🇦🇺 AUSTRALIA — MP in critical condition.
Authorities have identified 43-year-old Brendan Nugent, a local activist and family friend, as the suspect in custody following the deliberate ramming of Australian parliamentarian Helen Haines. She remains in critical condition, with no word yet on the suspect’s motive. (ABC)
Comment: The shocking attack has rippled through a country that’s long prided its democracy’s open, unarmoured access to decision-makers, but where the gap between fringe online anger and real-world consequences seems to be closing at speed.
🇲🇦 MOROCCO — Cosmetic reshuffle?
A new government is now officially at the helm, led by the country’s first female prime minister, Fatima El Mansouri. (Al Jazeera)
Comment: Rabat is touting the post-election reshuffle as a fresh start, but the key portfolios are still firmly held by palace loyalists, and the king himself still retains absolute authority over anything that matters. So it really looks to us more like a makeover.
🇲🇽 MEXICO — Cooperation, or treason?
President Sheinbaum is defending the high-treason charges that federal prosecutors are now bringing against a former attorney-general of border state Chihuahua, amid claims he authorised illegal CIA operations against cartels in Mexico. Those operations first emerged in public after an April shootout left two CIA officers dead. (El Universal)
Comment: Long-time Intriguers will recall we flagged at the time our doubts around the official narrative that these two mysterious US citizens had died in a car crash (a common agency cover story). Cross-border intel-sharing has been pretty routine for decades, often managed in a way to give Mexico’s central administration a bit of plausible deniability. The guy now on trial (Jáuregui) seems not to have done anything particularly new here, but rather might’ve now learned the hard way that old red lines are shifting rapidly in the icy new cross-border climate of Trump 2.0.
🇧🇩 BANGLADESH — Outrage at executed nationals.
Dhaka is demanding urgent answers from Riyadh after learning that the Saudis secretly executed a Bangladeshi couple on indecency charges. (MEE)
Comment: Pending further details, there’s also mounting outrage that the Saudis may not have notified the Bangladeshi embassy of the execution in advance. It’s all complicated by the fact Bangladeshis make up the single biggest group of foreign workers in the kingdom, with ~3.5 million sending home $5B in remittances each year. You can also notch it up as yet another crack in the kingdom’s attempted rebrand as a global entertainment hub.
🇩🇪 GERMANY — AfD data dump?
Someone has reportedly hacked Germany’s populist-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, leaking around half a million internal documents, private messages, and party member databases. (DPA)
Comment: German outlets are only just sifting through all the material, whose full authenticity and scope remains unclear, but this could prove explosive as the AfD continues to gain political ground. Given the AfD’s relative sympathy for several of Putin’s positions, our initial guess is the culprit lies further West than East.
🇹🇷 TURKEY — Pay-for-access drama.
Turkish outlets and political circles are buzzing over reports former Trump envoy Ric Grenell pitched to get local billionaire construction magnate Turhan Mildon access to President Trump for $6M. Grenell denies any wrongdoing. (Turkiye Today)
Comment: With this new White House ethics probe coming after Guilfoyle got sacked as Athens ambassador, maybe we’re finally getting a sense where this administration’s red lines are — at least when the paper trail goes public. It’ll be a jolt for Turkey’s elites who’ve long relied on informal channels to navigate DC (Mildon is married to former Trump attorney Alina Habba and holds extensive state contracts in Venezuela).
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Remote worker of the day
That’s Paul on the left, and his favourite Swiss home hotel on the right.
The president of Cameroon is currently in Cameroon!
Okay, not ordinarily newsworthy for a world leader to be present in the country they’re leading, but Cameroon’s 92-year-old Paul Biya is no ordinary leader.
Ruling oil-rich Cameroon since 1982, the world’s oldest head-of-state basically lives at the InterContinental Geneva, where his delegation books out the entire 16th floor.
After setting a new personal record of more than 70 consecutive days in Geneva (smashing his last personal best of 42 days back in 2024 — go Paul!), he finally returned to Cameroon back in August. Why?
Partly to quell rumours he wasn’t even alive. But everyone also assumed he’d finally deliver on his New Year’s Eve promise to announce a new government “in the coming days”. Those days kept coming, but nothing else came. He’s been back in Cameroon two months now, and still no promised cabinet shuffle.
Anyway, while your HR department ramps up the moral coercion or bribery enticing you back to HQ with Office Taco Tuesdays or whatever, tell them that if Paul Biya can govern 28 million people from the 16th floor of a Swiss hotel, then you can absolutely sign off on those s23 budget approvals from that sweet Airbnb in Lisbon.
Today’s poll
On average, world leaders travel...
Yesterday’s poll: What do you think most explains President Trump's latest concessions to Moscow?
🕊️ He just wants peace (7%)
✊ He just respects strongmen (14%)
😡 He just hates Zelensky (12%)
🏴 Putin has dirt on Trump (59%)
✍️ Other (write us!) (8%)
Your two cents:
🏴 T.D: “The Soviets/Russians are known for videos and cameras everywhere.”
✊ S: “It would be easy to assume that Putin has something on Trump, except what could be worse than we already know that would make Trump truly that afraid? Anything short of Trump personally emailing Putin the nuclear codes I think is probably insufficient.”
😡 R: “Trump sees Zelensky as the one who's preventing him from winning the peace prize.”
✍️ H.B: “Trump never thinks beyond the next news cycle. He's desperately trying to bring down the price of diesel before election day.”
✍️ J.C: “Another option should have been that he, his family, and his oligarch bros see a better opportunity for making more money.”