Today’s briefing:
— Why governments use influencers
— Guess who sailed through Hormuz
— Monks got caught with what?!
Good morning {{first_name | Intriguer}}. Folks who’ve worked in diplomacy might’ve arranged ‘familiarisation tours’ or ‘leadership exchanges’. They’re effectively a junket arranged by a host government to bring ‘influential’ foreign figures to town to foster international understanding and promote the nation’s best-in-show.
These days, the idea of running these programs seems rather poor bang for buck, especially when it’s difficult to quantify the exact amount of influencing these special visitors actually do back home. Instead, more governments are opting for a cheaper and effective update to this tradecraft by engaging with actual influencers online, who are able to disseminate more widely, authentically, and transparently (at least optically).
Surely no harm done…? But as we’ll see in today’s top story, it’s much more complicated than that. Let’s dive right in.
Element of the day
Samarium
That’s the heavy rare earth element (Sm on the periodic table) that Aussie outfit Lynas has started producing in oxide form out of Malaysia. This makes Lynas the world’s only non-China commercial producer of what is a critical input across defence, electronics, and tech.
Please like and comment 🤝
215,000 subscribers on YouTube is a solid haul for a guy who calls himself Wheelsboy and does nothing but showcase China’s tech-laden EVs to curious Western audiences.
Like virtually every other YouTube success, Ethan Robertson (aka Wheelsboy) does paid colabs, and is now even leading personalised Beijing Auto Show tours for $399 a pop!
Why are we telling you this? He’s the latest example of the grey area between influencers and diplomacy, joining others like…
IShowSpeed, America’s chaotic 21-year-old YouTuber livestreaming his ‘unfiltered’ world travels across China and beyond to 53 million subscribers
Emilian Cretu, the Moldovan influencer who partnered with the EU to push European solidarity messages ahead of Moldova’s high-stakes elections, and
Carlos Engracia, the Spanish influencer who Delhi flew in last year to show Spanish-speakers “the real India”.
Their vibe, message, and language may differ, but they’re all popular voices that capitals tap — consensually or not — to help shape foreign public opinion.
And it’s exploding right now: broader “look at my abs” influencer marketing is now a $33B industry, up 20x in a decade. That’s a lot of abs, and governments — from India and the EU, to the US and the UK — are getting onboard.
What’s the appeal for governments?
We’ve long explored the fight to control social media platforms like TikTok, but the actual messages matter, too. And the reality is…
A single influencer can reach more young folks than an entire embassy
Influencers feel more authentic and engaging than most official comms, and
Platforms reward and amplify human content rather than wooden bureaucrats.
And of course… this isn’t exactly new. Recall DC recruited 75,000 volunteer ‘Four Minute Men’ to deliver short propaganda speeches in cinemas during WWI, and UNICEF has long tapped celebs like Bono to help amplify humanitarian causes.
But what’s changed is the reach: IShowSpeed's six-hour Shenzhen livestream reached nine million viewers, more than the US Committee on Public Information reached… ever! His whirlwind trip through the Baltics? It reached more than the entire Baltic population!
So… how do capitals use influencers? There’s a spectrum ranging from…
Full-blown propagandists like Putin’s Z-bloggers embedded with his flailing troops in Ukraine, or North Korea’s stilted influencers trying to soften its image
Sponsored ✌️familiarization tours✌️ that only ever seem familiar with skyscrapers and smiles rather than slums and surveillance (even the democratic Baltics coughed up $30K each in ‘stipends’ for IShowSpeed’s regional tour)
Soft amplification like how China’s state media hyped IShowSpeed’s 2025 tour
Useful independents who are genuinely pumping out content that happens to align with a country’s preferred image (eg Wheelsboy), and…
Useful idiots like those vloggers who explored (with regime guides) “the real Syria the media won’t show you”, whitewashing Assad’s crimes.
So… what’s the harm?
First, it’s not as simple as paying a creator then watching the tourist dollars flow — control too tightly, and you end up with a Potemkin village folks can sniff a mile away.
Second, keep in mind influencers own their own audience, and they can take those eyeballs to your arch enemy next if you don’t pay up.
And third, there are risks for the creators, too — when China’s fast-fashion giant Shein flew a bunch to Guangzhou, fans quickly accused them of being propagandist cogs.
So… are influencers going to replace diplomats?
No, but that’s not the right question. It’s better to ponder whether states that fail to adapt to this new ecology might end up in a content war armed with nothing but a press release.
Intrigue’s Take
The closest we have to an influencer is resident memelord Jeremy (aka @DickerPiccs), who’s amassed a following across governments without removing a single item of clothing (though everyone has their price). But even his memes about the absurdities of diplomacy are really just a very public form of post-diplomacy therapy.
What we here at Intrigue lack in abs, we try to make up via authenticity — we’re not some faceless conglomerate, but a small team of ex-diplomats who’ve been in the room, and now reach an amazing 160,000 folks (and growing!) by sharing what we see.
While everyone’s feeds get sloppy, our only moat against AI is ourselves — our dumb jokes, our real experiences, our unique insights, and our Intrigue community. Ourselves.
Our point? The free world’s governments are full of authentic, engaging voices atop real, compelling stories, but they’re too often muzzled by risk-averse bureaucracy, or irrelevant divisions about who we really are, and which free-world abs we really want to flex.
So yes, governments need to adapt to this new world of influencer diplomacy, which is looking more and more like a forward operating base in the battle for hearts and minds.
But part of that adaptation just means empowering diplomats to be themselves, all in the knowledge that a real-but-slightly-off-message tweet can have way more impact than a formal statement cleared by committee, let alone today’s worst-case scenario: silence.
Sound even smarter:
Turns out there’s no official collective noun for a group of influencers, so we hereby suggest it should really be an ‘impression’ of influencers.
Would you like to sponsor Intrigue and reach our amazing and authentic and influential community across 120+ countries? More info here!
Today’s briefing is presented by…
Heavy Machinery Hasn't Changed in 100 Years. Until Now.
Every bulldozer, crane, and military vehicle on earth still runs on hydraulic fluid invented before your grandparents were born. RISE Robotics is the company finally replacing it with a patented electric system already trusted by the U.S. Air Force.
Meanwhile, elsewhere…
🇮🇷 IRAN - Spicy Merz.
As we foreshadowed, the US has dismissed the latest Iranian ceasefire proposal, which would’ve reopened Hormuz but kicked nuclear talks down the road. Meanwhile, Germany’s Merz has argued the US is being “humiliated” by Iran’s leaders, who are “letting the Americans travel to Islamabad and then leave again without any result”. (Guardian)
🇨🇳 CHINA - Export restrictions.
In swift retaliation after the EU’s latest Russia sanctions targeted China-based entities for supplying Putin’s war-machine, Beijing has slapped seven European defence and telecom firms with export curbs over their sales to Taiwan. (Reuters)
Comment: China’s move is semi-symbolic in the sense Europe sells very little direct weaponry to Taiwan, but the resulting EU pain is real: those firms now stand to lose access to (say) China-made dual-use components and rare earths. The message is a mix of punishment and deterrence: target our firms again and it’ll hurt you. Meanwhile, today’s politburo meeting in Beijing just reiterated similar economic ‘stability’ priorities to last year — one interpretation of this repeat is that actual progress is still pending.
🇬🇧 UNITED KINGDOM - Royal diplomacy.
King Charles III has kicked off his four-day state visit to the US — the first by a British monarch in nearly 20 years — ahead of the USA’s 250th anniversary on July 4th. (France24)
Comment: It’s officially about an important anniversary, but the timing helps the Brits use their diplomatic superpower (royal pageantry) to sweeten up a Starmer-sceptical Donald Trump and stabilise UK-US ties amid ongoing spats over Iran.
🇮🇳 INDIA - Russian troops in India?
Russia has published the details of an Indian defence pact that entered force in January, enabling the two neighbours to station up to 3,000 troops, five warships, and 10 military aircraft on each other’s territory for the next five years. (Al Jazeera)
Comment: Moscow is hardly known for its transparency, but had a clear incentive to trumpet these details: it’s signalling it still has friends. Meanwhile, India would’ve preferred discretion, but this is basically a doubling-down on Delhi’s omni-directional strategy in a tough neighbourhood (China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc).
🇨🇴 COLOMBIA - Wanted.
Colombia is offering a record $1.4M reward for dissident FARC guerrilla leader ‘Marlon’, accused of ordering Saturday’s deadly Pan-American Highway bombing which left 20 civilians dead. (BBC)
Comment: We’re a month out from Colombia’s elections to replace termed-out left-leaning incumbent, Gustavo Petro. On current polling, we’ll most likely see a June run-off between his austere leftist heir (Senator Cepeda) versus whoever consolidates the conservative vote — but investors have sold Colombian assets this week after a poll suggested Cepeda is now polling higher than his two conservative rivals combined, suggesting more popular-but-pricey social policies ahead.
🇸🇴 SOMALIA - Beware, pirates.
Suspected pirates have hijacked a cement-laden ship off the coast of Somalia, the second such attack in a week. (Al Jazeera)
Comment: It’s likely a side-effect of Western navies getting stretched across the Red Sea (Houthis) and Hormuz (Iran). We wrote about the world’s most pirate-infested waters here.
Extra Intrigue
Here’s what people are googling…
Folks in 🇳🇴 Norway looked up ‘NordStream’ amid a new book detailing the 2022 sabotage of Russia’s infamous gas pipe into Europe. Bonus fact: ‘Nord’ is also the name of the $700M superyacht owned by a Putin-loyal oligarch (Mordashov) that somehow sailed through Hormuz over the weekend.
🇺🇸 Americans googled ‘monks’ after local authorities arrested 22 Buddhist clerics at a Sri Lankan airport with 110kg of weed. Real mile-high club stuff.
And 🇪🇹 Ethiopians searched for ‘Claude AI’ after Anthropic ran an internal office marketplace, allowing AI to close 186 real employee deals buying/selling stuff.
Artefact of the day
Credit: Sotheby’s
It’s incredible to think that way back in the 17th century, a family in Lahore was producing an early kind of supercomputer — and somehow, they did it without first hopping on a quick call with stakeholders, let alone syncing via Microsoft Teams! If you needed tech support back then, we like to think they’d suggest turning it off then back on again.
These ‘astrolabes’ date back to ancient Greek astronomers, but the Lahore School really finessed them into interlocking brass systems that function as a kind of four-in-one inclinometer, calculator, navigator, and surveyor!
So still searching for gift ideas ahead of Mother’s Day? Pop down to Sotheby’s tomorrow and an original astrolabe could be yours / your mom’s for the low low price of $3M.
Today’s poll
Do you think the free world should work more with influencers?
Yesterday’s poll: What do you think poses the bigger long-term risk to the US?
🤼 Internal divisions (84%)
👾 Rising foes (14%)
✍️ Other (write in!) (2%)
Your two cents:
🤼 A.E: “Simply put: big countries usually don’t fall apart all at once, they wear down from the inside. When people stop trusting each other, politics becomes endlessly divided, and society pulls in different directions, it gets harder to govern effectively.”
✍️ K.J.S: “The punishing debt!”