Corrections: July 19, 2025
The headline of an article on Friday about an N.Y.P.D. officer accused of theft incorrectly described his employment status. He is still employed by the department, but has been suspended without pay.
An article on Thursday about the Chinese A.I. industry misquoted Jia Haojun, the founder of Deep Principle. He said it would be a huge benefit if the government helped cover '13 to 15 percent' of early-stage research costs, not '10 to 15 percent.'
Errors are corrected during the press run whenever possible, so some errors noted here may not have appeared in all editions.
To contact the newsroom regarding correction requests, please email nytnews@nytimes.com. To share feedback, please visit nytimes.com/readerfeedback.
Comments on opinion articles may be emailed to letters@nytimes.com.
For newspaper delivery questions: 1-800-NYTIMES (1-800-698-4637) or email customercare@nytimes.com.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fox News
31 minutes ago
- Fox News
China controls over 80% of battery materials crucial to US defense equipment, unsettling report reveals
In a damning new report, researchers reveal how China came to control over 80% of the critical raw battery materials needed for defense technology — posing an urgent national security threat. Through lax permitting processes, weak environmental standards, and aggressive state-led interventions, China has come to dominate global supplies of graphite, cobalt, manganese, and the battery anode and cathode materials that power advanced defense systems. "Batteries will be one of the bullets of future wars," the report's authors warn, citing their essential role in drones, handheld radios, autonomous submersibles, and emerging capabilities like lasers and directed energy weapons. According to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has weaponized global battery infrastructure through a combination of state subsidies, forced intellectual property transfers, and predatory pricing practices. China didn't just rely on low-cost tactics — it also used its financial muscle abroad. Over the past two decades, at least 26 state-backed banks have pumped roughly $57 billion into mining and processing projects in Africa, Latin America, and beyond. These investments, often structured through joint ventures and special-purpose vehicles, gave Chinese firms controlling stakes in mineral mining, the report said. Through its Belt and Road Initiative, China has leveraged influence in resource-rich developing nations, securing control over massive critical mineral deposits. Today, it processes approximately 65% of the world's lithium, 85% of graphite, 70% of cathodes, 85% of anodes, and a staggering 97% of anode active materials. Beyond powering drones, handheld radios, and electric vehicles, lithium is critical in strategic military systems: lithium-ion batteries are used in grid support for bases and emerging directed-energy weapons. Moreover, Beijing has begun weaponizing export controls: since 2023, it has tightened restrictions on processed graphite, gallium, and germanium — later adding antimony, tungsten, and rare earths to the roster. These measures curb exports via a licensing regime and broad bans on exports to the U.S., signaling a clear geopolitical leverage too, according to the report. Both lithium and graphite are essential for modern nuclear weapons. Cobalt alloys are used in jet engines, naval turbines, electronics connectors, and sensors capable of withstanding extreme temperatures, vibration, and radiation-making. While American and allied reserves of lithium — both brine and hard rock — are being tapped, with new projects in North and South Carolina targeting domestic spodumene processing, the report claims U.S. mineral mining and refining are not advancing quickly enough to meet national security demands. Permitting obstacles account for roughly 40% of all delays in mining projects, the report notes, with processing operations facing similarly cumbersome constraints. Chinese subsidies "dwarf" those available to U.S. firms, and include tax exemptions, direct manufacturing grants, and ultra-low-interest loans, the report said. U.S. firms are now accelerating investment in domestic alternatives to China's lithium. With new Trump administration initiatives aimed at incentivizing critical mineral development—and forecasts projecting the U.S. lithium market to grow by roughly 500% over the next five years — American companies are beginning to build out processing capacity on home soil. Piedmont Lithium is developing a lithium hydroxide facility in North Carolina to process spodumene concentrate from its U.S. deposits, while Albemarle recently announced plans for a new lithium processing plant in Chester County, South Carolina. Both projects are designed to feed a fast-growing domestic battery ecosystem and reduce dependence on Chinese supply chains. But to become globally competitive, the report argues, the U.S. must take a far more proactive approach, including incentivizing private-sector investment, streamlining federal permitting, establishing a national critical minerals stockpile, building technical talent pipelines, creating special economic zones, and developing robust domestic processing infrastructure. The authors also stress the importance of ally-shoring, recommending diplomatic coordination with trusted partners — similar to prior U.S. efforts involving Ukraine, Greenland, and the DRC in rare-earth sourcing — to construct resilient supply chains beyond China's reach. "Despite China's control of the battery supply chain, this is a time of great vulnerability for Beijing, while the United States and its core allies remain strong," the report concludes. "It is time for new guardrails, muscular statecraft, and a unified international response to non-market manipulation. Building critical supply chains that are independent of China's coercive economic practices can help unleash a wave of cooperation among free-market nations that will lift up both established allies and emerging market partners and turn the tide against China's parasitic economic model."
Forbes
2 hours ago
- Forbes
Trump's Risk With Looming European Union Trade War: Maybe Your Health
President Trump met with Ireland's prime minister, or taoiseach, Micheal Martin, at the White House ... More in March, a few week before Liberation Day on April 2, when Trump announced his global trade war, and well before threatening 30% tariffs on the 27-nation European Union, set to go into effect on Aug. 1. Ireland is a large supplier of critical, often life-saving medicines to the United States. The European Union dominates a wide range of U.S. imports of medicines for treating diabetes, high blood pressure, depression and cancers as well as many of the chemical compounds that are then used to produce some of these same drugs and others domestically. That's why, with President Trump's threatened 30% tariffs on the 27-nation European Union set to go into effect on Aug. 1, the stakes are more consequential to Americans than with trade wars he initiated with countries that provide cell phones, sweaters, toys or even motor vehicle parts. Increased costs for critical medicines would hit the nation's poorest and uninsured the hardest, of course. The European Union is sending some signals that it does not intend to back down. The tariff fight with the European Union is unique in that Trump tends to prefer bilateral negotiations; the European Union is composed of 27 countries. Trump has twice delayed imposing most of the tariffs he initially announced on April 2 against the world, including more than 100 nations with which the United States has a trade surplus. The 10% baseline tariffs are in effect as well as some other industry-specific tariffs. In taking on China, Canada, Mexico and the European Union, Trump is focusing on some of the largest U.S. trade deficits – but at the same time focusing on some of the United States' largest export markets, damaging a key metric in the process. Overall, the European Union is accounting for 20.22% of all U.S. imports and 18.57% of all U.S. exports through May, the latest data available from the U.S. Census Bureau. To see what imports would be most detrimental to the United States should the 30% tariffs actually go into effect next Friday, I focused on the categories of imports where the European Union has the greatest market share globally. I focused on the top 50, which account for 73.29% of all its imports through May rather than all 1,200-plus. (For those familiar with the harmonized system, I am working at the four-digit level.) What I found was that six of the 10 with the largest global market share were related to healthcare, ranging from 62.36% for one to 99.22% to another. While medicines that are critical to Americans' health, and sometimes their lives, are in the bull's eye of American health, so too are U.S. exports for Europeans' health and well-being. Six of the top 10 U.S. exports, calculated as in the manner described for imports above, are also related to healthcare. In fact, three of the six are the same for both exports and imports. On the export list, the European Union percentage of these six U.S. exports ranges from 46.78% to 98.86%. Ireland dominates U.S. imports from the world of the category that includes insulin, hormones and ... More steroids. Looking first at the U.S. imports, 99.22% of $42.95 billion in U.S. shipments in the insulin, hormone and steroid category (HS code 2937) are from the European Union, with 98.48% coming from Ireland. It is the top import from the European Union this year. The same category is a top U.S. export to the European Union, accounting for 53.85% of $4.94 billion in U.S. exports to the world, ranking fourth overall. The category that includes U.S. imports of plasma, vaccines and other blood "fractions" experienced ... More its best May ever. topping $10 billion for the first time. In the import category of plasma, vaccines and other blood 'fractions,' 84.56% of the $54.29 billion total is entering from the European Union. Ireland and Germany are accounting for 47.57% of all U.S. imports in this category (HS code 3002) while the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland and Italy account for another 28.07%. It is the second most important import from the European Union this year. On the export side, the United States sends 53.85% of the $22.97 billion in shipments to the world to the European Union. It is the United States' fourth-ranked export to the European Union. The third category (HS code 3003) that appears on both top 10 lists is for pharmaceuticals that are not in an individual dose form, such as pills. On the U.S. import side, the European Union accounts for 76.05% of the $1.33 billion total through May; on the U.S. export side, the European Union accounts for 85.03% of the $541.75 million total. On the import side, there are two categories of heterocyclic compounds, commonly used in the production of medicines. With one (HS code 2934), the European Union accounts for 84.56% of all U.S. imports and the other (HS code 2935), 62.36%. The value of the first is $4.48 billion, with the second at $2.61 billion. The sixth and final import category where the European Union has the greatest market share is a category which, is something of a grab bag of chemical contraceptives, contrast agents administered during X-rays and other tests, and so-called sterile surgical catgut, which is used for internal stitches. In the case of the European Union, 74.37% of the $2.42 billion global total, $1.1 billion is chemical contraceptives. Two of the four categories among the top 10 on the import side that do not fall under the broad umbrella of the healthcare industry are, however, well known U.S. imports from Europe, wine and perfume. The European Union is responsible for 79.77% of the $2.97 billion in wine imports into the United States through May and 80.78% of $2.15 billion in perfumes. While these are the U.S. import categories that the European Union dominates by global market share, they are not the largest by value. Among those not mentioned above for market share that are among the top 10 by value from the European Union: Switching over to the U.S. export side, these three were among those with the largest market share not previously mentioned: Four top 10 exports by value, rather than market share, headed to the European Union are worth mentioning: The range of U.S. imports sent from the European Union and U.S. exports to the European Union is wide-ranging but when looking just as where the E.U. is either a dominant importer into the United States or buyer of U.S. exports, healthcare holds a dominant presence, making Trump's threatened 30% tariffs on imports from the 27-nation bloc set to go into effect on Aug. 1, particularly risky for Americans and Europeans alike.
New York Times
2 hours ago
- New York Times
China Flexes Muscles at U.N. Cultural Agency, Just as Trump Walks Away
Any traveler who has picked up an international guidebook knows the UNESCO designation as shorthand for a must-see cultural destination that's worthy of a detour. But the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has also become the target of an intense Chinese influence campaign in recent years as Beijing has sought to increase its reach over educational curriculums, historical designations and even artificial intelligence. President Trump's decision Tuesday to withdraw the United States from the group removes a powerful check on China's effort, in the latest example of how the White House retreat from international institutions offers an opening for China to advance its soft power. The United States was once the largest UNESCO backer, accounting for nearly 25 cents of every dollar. But Washington has had an on-again-off-again relationship with it for years, especially since Mr. Trump first took office in 2017, and China has stepped up to take its place. A Chinese official is now UNESCO's deputy director general, a post that diplomats said is often awarded in exchange for political or monetary favors. UNESCO has lent support to major priorities for China's top leader, Xi Jinping, including the global infrastructure program known as the Belt and Road Initiative. Beijing has also lobbied heavily for World Heritage designations and is jockeying to surpass Italy as the country with the most culturally significant sites. Some of those sites are in oppressed regions like Tibet and Xinjiang, where many local residents view them as an attempt to appropriate and control their culture and history. And while UNESCO wields tremendous clout over what counts as history, it is also the U.N. agency in charge of setting artificial intelligence guidelines. UNESCO has an agreement with iFlytek, a major Chinese A.I. company, to cooperate on higher education in Asia and Africa, according to Chinese state media. (UNESCO said it has partnerships with many artificial intelligence companies worldwide.) Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
