Today’s briefing:
— The future of war
— Mecca targeted?
— This bug can parallel park
Your Insider’s briefing:
— The future of war
— Mecca targeted?
— This bug can parallel park
Good morning {{first_name | Intriguer}}. I once somehow ended up visiting a boutique satellite manufacturer whose sole client was a certain US intelligence agency with the kind of name that gets redacted into oblivion.
To even get near the front door I first had to surrender my phone, don a hairnet for some reason, and sign an NDA so aggressive, I started to pre-emptively worry about even thinking of this place later while strolling through Sears or whatever.
Anyway, so they take us in for the big workshop reveal, which — and I kid you not — is all glassed off behind giant navy blue blackouts. So we saw nothing, other than our satellite-nerd hosts flashing knowing looks about how juicy it was on the other side.
The world’s defence-industrial bases are often dripping with this kind of breathless pageantry, so today’s edition tries to connect a few intriguing weaponry headlines and glean where we might all be headed. Now don that hairnet and follow me in, but you can keep your phone because otherwise how will you read this?
 | Managing Editor Jeremy Dicker |
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Number of the day
107,677
That’s how many centenarians are now living in Japan, exceeding the 100k mark for the first time. The health minister (Ueno) says he’s “delighted” by folks living so long, but is warning of the pressure an ageing population can place on the economy.
Sticking to my guns.
That’s Castelion’s new Blackbeard hypersonic (not in space, btw).
Sci-fi writers, please collect your royalty cheques, because several militaries are now filming a sequel, starting with...
🌌 The US has weapons in space
The annual Air, Space & Cyber conference in Maryland is usually a hotel-ballroom parade of acronyms, challenge coins, and very assertive PowerPoint presentations.
But this year, the US Air Force Secretary (Troy Meink) used his keynote to publicly and officially confirm — for the first time — that the US now has "on-orbit space control weapons" to defend US forces from "hostile adversary action"! Not out on a Nevada drawing board but up there, orbiting the Earth.
So what are we talking here… missiles? Space lasers? Sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads?
The Pentagon won't say, other than to note that Meink's language is vague enough to cover both the kinetic (🔥) and non-kinetic (jammers etc).
Maybe there's nothing surprising about a 'Space Force' having... Forces in Space? But DC's line has long been "Russia and China are militarising space, we're concerned" — perhaps that hasn't worked, so now it's "okay we're in space too".
Why? This is probably a case of deterrence by keynote: target our satellites, and you might get a nasty surprise. But the sweet spot is always deterrence without destabilisation, so the risk is now this news merely gives an incentive and cover for adversaries to accelerate their own space weapons programs. We'll see.
Anyway, while everyone's now busy squinting up into orbit...
🤖 China has an underwater drone mothership
New satellite imagery over a Shanghai shipyard has revealed a strange new craft: like some kind of amphibious dock ship that took the wrong supplements. It's got an open stern, a giant cradle, a massive hangar, and azimuth thrusters.
The experts over at Naval News are connecting the dots to suggest China might be launching the world's first purpose-built mothership for full-size uncrewed submarines, like the 40m (130ft) monsters China is already testing off Hainan.
Who cares? Sure, everyone is now racing for undersea autonomy: the US has its Orca, Australia has its Ghost Shark, and just last week Iran was parading an Anduril drone it scooped out of Hormuz.
But these drones still have a major flaw: short legs and limited battery life. A mothership potentially solves this range problem, enabling China to launch, service, and coordinate undersea drones thousands of miles beyond its own shores.
So with all these drones out there, perhaps it's no surprise that...
🤖 Australia can zap drones for dollars
Australia's Electro Optic Systems made a big splash at Poland's recent defence show in Kielce, unveiling an upgraded 'Apollo' laser that can fry 20 drones a minute at the speed of light, from up to 3km away, at about $5 a pop.
Plug it into an external power source, and it has unlimited ammo.
Who cares? Well between Russia and Iran, cheap drones have now upended traditional air defence economics, forcing defenders to incinerate million-dollar munitions to swat each attack away. So Australia is now selling the obvious answer, though it's still partial, and subject to power, portability, swarms, and even weather.
Anyway, while defensive layers try to slow things down...
🚀 The US is finally going hypersonic
The US navy has now put in a ~$200M order for a Californian startup to start mass-producing its 'Blackbeard' hypersonic, zipping from a Super Hornet towards targets at above Mach 5 (5x the speed of sound).
Who cares? The US has long treated defence tech like exquisite glass art: hyper-engineered, eye-wateringly expensive, and too delicate to test, let alone use. Meanwhile, Russia has been firing ✌️hypersonics✌️ at Ukraine for years, while China has been testing them on Gobi Desert targets that look a lot like US aircraft carriers.
So the US now finally seems to be going cheaper, more scalable, and more usable. If Castelion hits its target price, these Blackbeards could cost 1% (!) of what the army is spending on its own Dark Eagle (which offers more range and punch).
Anyway, that's four sci-fi sequels in a week. It's almost as if our rattled world is gearing up for the next war?
Intrigue’s Take
The obvious and easy temptation here is to observe four increasingly bonkers weapons and conclude okay, the future of war is going to look like a Michael Bay film. But zoom out and really, something more interesting is happening…
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Intrigue’s Take
The obvious and easy temptation here is to observe four increasingly bonkers weapons and conclude okay, the future of war is going to look like a Michael Bay film. But zoom out and really, something more interesting is happening: we’re seeing the economics of military power getting rewritten in real time.
Classic defence economics long rested on the better weapons = expensive weapons equation. And that equation in turn rested on the massive gap between the world’s sole superpower and everyone else: the US saying (and showing) that its capabilities were so far ahead (‘exquisite’ is the term nerds love), it’s best to just play nice. Deterrence.
But as other powers close the gap with the US and one another, that deterrence fades, wars simmer, and exquisite weapons suddenly don’t seem so exquisite.
And that’s what makes today’s Michael Bay headlines above worth noting: we’re heading to an age where the most consequential military tech may not be the weapons themselves, but the industrial base behind them.
So yes flaunt your space weapons, float your drone mothership, sell your $5 zap, and order your pirate-themed hypersonics. But counterintuitively, exquisite weapons might soon feel like a peacetime luxury. Meanwhile, the new deterrence might shape up more like how many factories you have and, critically, how many of them still work on day two.
Other intriguing weaponry headlines…
Japan’s defence minister (Koizumi) has said Tokyo “won’t rule out” getting nuclear-powered subs. We’re still just talking propulsion (not warheads), but it’s a crack in Japan’s post-1945 taboo, and a nod to the fact that China, the US, and (soon) South Korea already run such subs in the same waters.
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Meanwhile, elsewhere…
🇺🇸 UNITED STATES — Do you yield?
Yields on 10-year Treasuries just briefly reached 5.04%, their highest levels since 2007, as a global government bond selloff continues. (Bloomberg $)
Comment: It all puts the Warsh-led Fed in a tricky spot for its next rate decision today (Wed): hold and the market keeps selling, sending yields higher (aka the price of American borrowing); or hike and get a fight with a White House demanding cheaper money (while spending like a drunken sailor). We recently explored Secretary Bessent’s role in these bond market antics here.
🇸🇦 SAUDI ARABIA — Mecca targeted?
Houthi officials are denying Saudi claims that a Houthi drone was approaching the holy city of Mecca when local air defences shot it down. The Houthis have also just claimed a hit on a Saudi fighter jet! Meanwhile, Riyadh has now cut some of its oil shipments to Europe, citing the damage to its East-West pipeline caused by Iran-aligned drones. (CNN)
Comment: We wrote about this new Houthi offensive and what it could mean for Saudi Arabia and the world here. The Houthis hold similar reverence for Mecca, but see the Saudis as unfit custodians. There was a similar “you targeted Mecca” spat back in 2017, when the Houthis insisted they were actually going for a nearby airbase. The Saudis would have an incentive to ping a Mecca attempt on the Houthis, potentially uniting the broader Ummah against the group and its Iranian sponsors.
🇮🇳 INDIA — Secondary tariffs?
Delhi’s DC diplomats are in damage control, with the US House potentially set to approve the Lindsey Graham Sanctions bill today (Wed) — if it passes unchanged, the bill then goes to the White House for Trump’s signature, empowering (though not requiring) him to hit Putin’s top oil customers (China and India) with tariffs of up to 100%. (RFE)
Comment: Trump will probably welcome the leverage ahead of his Xi summit later this month, though Xi already called Trump’s trade bluff last year, and not enough has since changed to disentangle US supply chains. Bessent and his Beijing counterpart (He) are due to meet in New York this Sunday to iron out the summit details, though they seem mostly focused on how to kick the can down the road via a truce extension, rather than any meaningful resolution. As for India, we occasionally get “but what about Europe” emails, so okay: Europe has cut its Russian oil habit from 26% pre-war to 2% today (just Hungary and Slovakia on the Druzhba pipeline), while India has gone from its 1-2% pre-war reliance to ~half its total imports by July, blunting (with China) the impact of Europe’s move.
🇳🇱 NETHERLANDS — Sabotage.
Dutch authorities suspect sabotage after a major outage — caused by unspecified “material” placed on tracks — hit the national railway. (AP)
Comment: While Putin has form in offering village idiots cash to cause chaos, another live theory among Dutch outlets is it might’ve actually been the handiwork of farmers angry about the government’s new nitrogen rules that’d cap herds to safeguard EU nature sites.
🇺🇸 UNITED STATES — Wedding favours.
Donald Trump is denying ever knowing Umar Kremlev, the Putin-adjacent oligarch who recently bankrolled two days of his son Trump Jr’s post-wedding celebrations. (Reuters)
Comment: Kremlev’s role *might* explain why Trump skipped his own son’s wedding. But then why did Jr go ahead anyway, knowing Putin’s oligarchs don’t typically blow piles of cash out of the goodness of their own hearts? Here’s hoping the new congressional investigation underway might shed some light.
🇵🇭 PHILIPPINES — First-ever regional election.
Voters in the Muslim-majority Bangsamoro autonomous region have cast votes in their first-ever parliamentary election, capping a decades-long transition away from armed rebellion to electoral politics. (Independent)
Comment: It’s a hard-fought win for Manila’s 2014 peace deal with the (ahem) ‘MILF’ separatists. The bigger picture is if this pivot sticks, it removes a major internal security headache for President Marcos Jr, potentially freeing him up to counter China’s continued absolutist claims across the South China Sea.
🇰🇪 KENYA — Sports host.
World Athletics has finally tapped Nairobi to host the 2029 World Athletics Championships, making Kenya Africa’s first nation to secure track-and-field’s premier global showcase after a failed 2025 bid. (The Star)
Comment: It feels overdue for the world’s second-most successful athletic nation (behind only the US in medals), but it’s also a platform for President Ruto to tap some more sports tourism, showcase his big-ticket infrastructure, and project a bit more East African soft power.
Extra Intrigue
The world’s top three search terms so far this year for…
🇺🇸 Americans: weather, Google, and YouTube
🇲🇾 Malaysians: WhatsApp, Google, and translate
🇦🇺 Australians: weather, Google, and news
🇹🇷 Turks: weather, YouTube, and… gold!
(maybe not a surprise given the Turkish lira has depreciated 15% against the USD over the past 12 months, and 82% over the past 5 years)
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Weird breakthrough of the day
The nervous system of a male fruit fly. Credits: Google.
What would you do with an extra brain? Apparently the answer is: play Minecraft and learn how to parallel park.
Researchers at Virginia’s HHMI Janelia have, in collaboration with Google, just released a digital map of all 166,000 neurons that make up the brain of a male fruit fly. Basically, it’s like they downloaded a fruit fly’s nervous system in a breakthrough they hope will lead to advances in neuroscience.
The internet is obviously now testing the fly-brain in ridiculous scenarios like trading Bitcoin (it’s down $2.00), playing Doom (it sucks), and writing LinkedIn posts (“after a transformative period near the sink, I am jooooniNg the bananA”.
And while we were tempted to reach out to congratulate Mr Fruitfly on this exciting next chapter, the news more grabbed our attention as an example of the next frontier in synthetic intelligence: take biological architecture then run it as executable software.
Today’s poll
Which theatre do you think will be most important for any future war?
Thursday’s poll: Do you think the Saudis will be drawn into an all-out war in Yemen?
🚀 Yes, their economy and reputation is on the line (63%)
💥 No, it would be a disaster (34%)
✍️ Other (write in!) (4%)
Your two cents:
🚀 H.L: “The Saudis need to sell their oil. They’ll find a way.”
💥 G: “No, they don't have the troops.”
✍️ Kerry: “Surely the Houthis have logistics and supply problems. They have one patron, with its own problems and limited capabilities, and no allies. This is Houthi over-reach.”