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by ian bremmer

Jess Frampton

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will appear before Congress on Thursday to deliver one message: We come in peace.

The popular video-sharing app’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, has been locked in a years-long battle with the US government that has become a flashpoint in the increasingly strained relationship between the United States and China.

Intelligence officials and lawmakers from both parties say TikTok poses a threat to national security, arguing the Chinese government can use it to surveil and manipulate Americans at will — a charge that TikTok and Beijing deny. TikTok has been on the chopping block since former President Donald Trump tried and failed to ban it in 2020. Last December, the government prohibited its use on federal devices following months of congressional hearings, and many states and colleges have followed suit. Yet the app can still be used on personal devices, and its reach continues to grow unabated, with nearly half of all Americans (!) now active users of the app.

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Jess Frampton

China announced last Friday it had brokered a deal to restore diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia for the first time in seven years. Beijing will also reportedly host a summit later this year, bringing together representatives from Iran and the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council. Like all early stage diplomatic breakthroughs, this one remains fragile. It will take at least two months to hammer out details, and Iranians and Saudis aren’t about to become fast friends. But President Xi Jinping wouldn’t trumpet this news unless he believed all relevant parties were sincerely interested in an agreement of substance.

This is something Joe Biden might call a “big F deal.”

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Jess Frampton

With so many other international stories dominating the news these days – Russia’s war in Ukraine, US-China tensions, Iran’s nuclear program, etc. – it’s easy to lose track of more positive stories. And when it comes to Mexico, the headlines suggest the country is struggling.

And I could write that story too. In most media, today’s Mexico conjures images of violent drug cartels and other organized crime groups, trouble at the US border, or large-scale protests led by an opposition that accuses the country’s president of a power grab that threatens democracy.

Mexico has its share of problems. But today, I want to give you three reasons for optimism that, politically and economically, Mexico is strong and getting stronger.

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Luisa Vieira

The US Department of Energy made unlikely headlines over the weekend when The Wall Street Journal reported that new evidence had led the agency to conclude with “low confidence” that the COVID-19 virus probably escaped from a Chinese lab. The DOE’s findings match up with the FBI’s, which point to an accidental leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology with “moderate confidence.”

This follows investigations by four other agencies plus the National Intelligence Council that concluded with low confidence that the virus spread naturally from animals to humans, possibly in a wet market in Wuhan. Other intelligence agencies, including the CIA, remain undecided, much like DOE was until recently.

The bottom line is we still don’t know how the pandemic got started. Both origin stories – natural transmission and laboratory leak – are scientifically plausible. The DOE’s report should lead us to update our beliefs slightly toward the lab-leak theory, but the score in the intelligence community is still 5-2 in favor of zoonotic transfer, and all but the FBI’s conclusions were reached with low confidence.

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A year of war is closing with a week full of sound and fury.

Annie Gugliotta

Two days shy of a year since Russia invaded Ukraine, there’s no end in sight to the war.

Momentum has swung back and forth between the two sides multiple times, and with it so has the narrative. But zoom out and some things haven’t changed at all: Ukraine remains a sovereign nation. Volodymyr Zelensky remains president. Kyiv remains free. The West remains united and steadfast in support of Ukraine. Russia remains unable to achieve its war aims. Ukraine remains unable to take back all its land. Peace remains far out of reach.

Will any of this change anytime soon?

The answer may be playing out as we speak. Between the Munich Security Conference, Biden’s Kyiv and Warsaw visits, and Putin’s big speech, it’s been an eventful week – and it’s only Wednesday.

Let’s go over what happened, what’s next, and what it all means for the war.

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The Nord Stream gas pipeline whodunit.

Luisa Vieira

The controversial Nord Stream gas pipelines connecting Russia to Germany and Europe made headlines last September when several sections mysteriously exploded deep underwater, causing the surface of the Baltic Sea to bubble.

Multiple investigations determined the explosions were an act of sabotage, but they failed to identify a culprit. Most experts in the West pointed the finger at Russia, suspecting it was an attempt to worsen the winter prospects of an already energy-starved Europe to weaken its resolve to support Ukraine.

But I never fully bought into that theory.

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Luisa Vieira

By now you’ve heard and read plenty about the Chinese spy balloon that floated across the continental United States last week before it was shot down off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4, so I’ll spare you the details. Absurd as it was, we’re not going to remember the incident in a couple of months. Heck, you probably don’t care already.

And that’s fair enough: The fact is the hullaballoo(n) was no big deal, for several reasons.

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