Latest news with #NorthVietnamese
Business Times
4 days ago
- Business
- Business Times
Vietnam's AI ambitions hinge on one US$6.8 billion tech company
[HANOI] Four decades ago, Truong Gia Binh set up a technology company using a single computer in a room loaned by his then-father-in-law, general Vo Nguyen Giap, revered for leading Vietnamese troops in defeating the French and US militaries. That company, FPT, is now Vietnam's biggest listed tech firm. It's central to the government's push to build a technology sector capable of competing with its regional rivals as it seeks to move the nation beyond assembling Nike shoes and Apple devices. FPT has already had some success. Globally, it lists 130 Fortune Global 500 companies, including Airbus, Halliburton and Ford Motor, as clients. It's also partnered with Nvidia to build an artificial intelligence (AI) data centre in Vietnam, another in Japan, and is expanding into semiconductor chip design. But there are significant challenges ahead as it seeks to compete with more established tech companies from the likes of India and Malaysia. FPT must also navigate a new era of tariffs initiated by US President Donald Trump. 'We work day and night,' Binh said. He's confident that, over the long term, the company can maintain an annual revenue growth rate of approximately 20 per cent. Developing a leading-edge technology sector is Vietnam's 'way out of being a low-cost economic hub', said Lam Nguyen, managing director of IDC Indochina. The Communist government sees FPT as a corporate model to help the nation transition beyond its traditional manufacturing base to industries specialising in areas such as AI-related products, which Bain & Co estimates could be a US$990 billion global market by 2027. A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU Friday, 8.30 am Asean Business Business insights centering on South-east Asia's fast-growing economies. Sign Up Sign Up While not directly at risk from new US duties, FPT could experience 'indirect impacts because many of our global customers are affected by these tariffs', the company said. FPT is bracing for possible global economic turbulence, and may 'adjust' its business plan for the challenging 20 per cent revenue growth target this year amid uncertainties, DNSE Securities said on its website, citing FPT chief executive officer Nguyen Van Khoa at the company's April shareholders' meeting. FPT is cutting 30 per cent of costs without hurting its core business, the brokerage said, citing Khoa. It may also need to negotiate a closer relationship with the nation's watchful police. When asked about reports that the Ministry of Public Security, which has been tightening Internet regulations in recent years, seeks to take a majority stake of the company's Internet unit, FPT Telecom, the company said it has 'no additional information on this matter'. Binh holds nearly 7 per cent of FPT, followed by the government, which has a 5.71 per cent stake. 'Followed' Ho Chi Minh Binh's life tracks the history of the winning North Vietnamese forces. In 1954, his family 'followed' revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi in the cause of independence, the FPT chairman said. The clan was so poor he wore clothes handed down from his sisters and watched as explosives from US bombers rained down on the city. 'My youth was about the lack of nearly everything,' said Binh, 69, who met Ho Chi Minh twice. As a teenager, he was handpicked by the government to study in the former Soviet Union. Upon his return, he and 12 others founded the company, originally called Food Processing Technology at the suggestion of a government minister. It's now the seventh-largest publicly traded company in Vietnam, with a market capitalisation of US$6.8 billion. FPT has more than 80,000 employees and operations in 30 countries. In 2024, the company recorded a 19 per cent jump in full-year revenue to 62.9 trillion dong (S$3.1 billion), aided by contributions from its FPT Software unit. From IT solutions for self-driving cars to industrial robots, FPT has diversified its product expertise in its quest for growth. In April, Sumitomo and SBI Holdings announced they were each acquiring a 20 per cent stake in a FPT unit to hasten AI adoption in Japan. FPT's emergence 'is very similar to the growth stories of some of the Indian IT leaders', said HR Binod, a former Infosys executive vice-president and an independent FPT board member. The company, though, faces mounting challenges, from rising global competition to US tariffs. 'On your home turf, you are strong,' said Louis Nguyen, chief executive officer of Ho Chi Minh City-based private equity firm Saigon Asset Management, which previously owned shares in the company. 'When you compete in the global arena, you go against giants.' Navigating growing geopolitical tensions and trade barriers means 'the company likely will need next-generation leadership with international experience', Lam Nguyen said. Overseas flop FPT's first overseas forays to Silicon Valley and Bangalore in the late 1990s were flops, said Chu Thi Thanh Ha, chairwoman of FPT Software. Facing what she described as a 'life-or-death moment', FPT Software gained a foothold in Japan in 2000 with a Nippon Telegraph & Telephone contract. FPT now has some 4,500 employees in Japan and expects that to rise to 5,000 this year, according to the company. FPT expects revenue from its Japan unit to jump to US$1 billion in 2027 from US$500 million in 2024. Domestically, the government looks to FPT in its quest to have three AI centres and at least 100 chip design companies by 2030 in the country, and a semiconductor industry with annual revenue of more than US$100 billion by 2050. 'It's a national hero,' said Vinnie Lauria, Ho Chi Minh City-based co-founder of Golden Gate Ventures. To that end, FPT – whose co-founders initially trained themselves with tech manuals purchased from Hong Kong during the US embargo of Vietnam – says it has trained thousands of technologists at its five universities nationwide. And it has set up 16 elementary to high school campuses where children as young as first grade begin learning programming languages. 'This is the new Vietnam,' Binh said. BLOOMBERG
Epoch Times
6 days ago
- General
- Epoch Times
50 Years Later, Vietnam POW Shares Hard-Won Lessons of Captivity
Commentary April 30, 2025, marked the Fast-forward to May 21, and I had the honor and pleasure of attending a presentation given by a Vietnam veteran who had been a prisoner of war (POW) in North Vietnam's infamous Hỏa Lò Prison, better known as the Preliminaries and Backstory Opening remarks were given by Halyburton's Remarks Related Stories 5/26/2025 5/26/2025 Cmdr. Halyburton spoke for over an hour, and though he's now 84 years old, he was full of pep and vigor in his speech delivery. I couldn't possibly do justice to the entirety of his talk within the short confines of this article, but I shall at least attempt to convey what stood out for me as most memorable and salient points. Halyburton started off by introducing his lovely wife, Marty, to whom he has been married for 62 years. From there, he mentioned that the first time he truly feared for his life as a POW was the Halyburton was not allowed communications with his family for the first five years of his captivity; it wasn't until after Ho Chi Minh's death in 1969 that family letters were allowed and the treatment of the POWs improved. Leadership and communication (especially the Back home, Halyburton was initially presumed to have been killed in action, and indeed a tombstone was engraved to honor his supposed death. 'Not too many people have their own tombstone, but I do, and it feels good to be able to look down on the damn thing!' he joked during his speech. 'Marty found out I was alive about the same time I found out that I was dead!' One day, his captors told him 'You must care for Cherry.' The 'Cherry' in question was then-U.S. Air Force Maj. (later Col.) However, the captors' assumption proved faulty, as Halyburton and Cherry became very close friends, and Halyburton credits his cellmate experience with Cherry as being a life-changing event: 'I saved his life, but it also saved me in terms of my outlook on life as a POW.' Book-Signing and Personal Conversation Afterwards, Cmdr. Halyburton stuck around for a book-signing, inscribing copies of both of his books, ' For example, the gentleman standing immediately in front of me in the line—who coincidentally was one of my fellow U.S. Air Force Officer Training School graduates—asked the author if he knew why When my turn came, being the military aviation technology geek that I am, I asked Halyburton a question true to my geekish nature. I asked him what his professional opinion was on how much of a disadvantage the early versions of the F-4 Phantom had against the North Vietnamese 'Well, if we had ever run into any MiGs, it would've made a big difference,' he replied. 'Because we had to do a visual identification we were going to shoot down, and that negated Thank you for that, Cmdr. Halyburton. As I type these words, it's Memorial Day weekend. God bless all who served. Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Asia Times
6 days ago
- General
- Asia Times
US Marine Sergeant's final farewell to American MIAs in Cambodia
KOH TANG, Cambodia – US Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Clark Hale (Ret.) has agonized about the fate of three men in his platoon for 50 long years. US Marines Private First Class Danny Marshall, Lance Corporal Joseph Hargrove and Private First Class Gary Hall were inadvertently left behind on Koh Tang in what has been called 'The Last Battle of the Vietnam War.' Ironically, that battle took place in Cambodia, on a remote, uninhabited island of marginal significance. But Hale has thought about his soldiers almost every day since May 15, 1975, which has brought him back to Cambodia five times in the last 30 years, longing for some kind of closure he now admits will probably never happen. The Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975; Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese on April 30. In theory, the war was then over. But on May 12, the Khmer Rouge navy seized a US-registered container ship, the SS Mayaguez, headed from Hong Kong to Sattahip, Thailand. There are debates to this day as to whether the ship was in Cambodian or international waters. The ship was first taken to Cambodia's Paulo Wai Island, where it anchored overnight, then moved to Koh Tang about 160 kilometers north. Unbeknownst to the Americans, the crew was taken off the boat and moved to Rong Samlem island, closer to the mainland. Believing the crew was still on Koh Tang, US President Gerald Ford ordered an invasion of the island. US intelligence indicated it was thinly defended, with maybe '20 to 30 irregulars.' The intel was wrong. When US Marines hit two beaches on the morning of May 15, they were met with well-placed weapons and between 100 and 200 Khmer Rouge soldiers dug in behind the shoreline. The hail of gunfire was horrendous. Three US helicopters were shot down just off shore, and Marines on the beaches were under heavy AK-47, .30- and .50-caliber machine guns, and RPG fire. Later in the day, Clark Hale and his Marines landed on the East Beach. He laments the fact that he and his platoon, based in Okinawa, had had almost no time to train together. He said he couldn't even name the soldiers in his unit. Even worse, when they landed on the island, his unit only had one radio. Hale, a two-tour veteran of action in Vietnam in the 1960s, said that when platoons went into the field, they always had four radios. On Koh Tang, he couldn't communicate with his men spread along the beach, only with ships or aircraft offshore – in part a recipe for the disaster to follow. 'There was no communication—we had one radio per platoon. For a company commander to put a platoon in a combat situation (with one radio) was unheard of,' he laments. One of the most painful aspects of the whole operation was that when the Khmer Rouge realized how serious the US was about recovering the ship and its crew, especially as the US started bombing sites on the mainland, they agreed to release the sailors. They were picked up by the USS Wilson at around 10 am that morning. With mixed communications between the White House and various military services involved, more Marines were sent to Koh Tang two hours later, at around noon. When the Marines were pulled off the beach eight hours later that day, the situation was chaotic as soldiers, still under fire with some badly wounded, scrambled in the dark, sloshing through the sea to get on helicopters hovering offshore. There was no easy way to ensure that everyone had made it off the island. Hale and some of his men were flown to the USS Coral Sea. Others were taken to different ships. 'We were spread out on three ships,' says Hale. 'I started doing a head count; after an hour, I thought we were missing three men.' But he wasn't sure where they were. 'If I'd known they were (on the island), we maybe could have gotten them out…we just don't leave men behind.' When Hale got back to Okinawa, he was told, 'not to talk about it.' That is: the possibility soldiers were left alive on the island. Of the roughly 220 Marines who landed on Koh Tang in several waves and related helicopter crews carrying them, after a daylong struggle, 18 Americans were dead and another 50 wounded. Twenty-three US Air Force personnel also died when their helicopter—as part of the rescue mission—crashed in Thailand shortly after takeoff. * * * Over the years since, in interviews with former Khmer Rouge, it is believed – but not confirmed – that of the three Marines left behind, Hargrove was captured on May 16 and killed shortly after. Marshall and Hall were captured on the island after about a week when they were caught trying to steal food from the Khmer Rouge base on the island. Former Koh Tang Khmer Rouge commander General Em Son said in 2015, when Hale also visited the island, that when Hargrove tried to escape, one of his men fired into the sand and the bullet 'ricocheted up and killed one.' Son said the other two soldiers were sent to the mainland and held there before being executed in a temple used as a prison. Then one body was buried near the coast and the other dumped in the ocean. What happened after he turned over the captives, Son said, was not his responsibility. In 2015, former Khmer Rouge General Em Son said one of the US Marines was killed inadvertently after being captured. No one believed him. Photo: Michael Hayes At the time, Em Son was no doubt aware of the ongoing Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Phnom Penh and most likely worried he might be arrested and tried for war crimes. Was he telling the truth? It is impossible to know for sure. In 2015, Hale and six other Mayaguez vets were taken to the temple and then to spots along the coast of Sihanoukville where Marshall and Hall's bodies were allegedly left by the ocean. * * * Hale and his wife Teresa, from Noble, Oklahoma, were joined on their latest return visit to Cambodia by Danielle Jones, the niece and surviving next of kin to MIA Danny Marshall. Born in 1983, Jones never met her 'Uncle Danny', but her family has anguished over his fate, especially Marshall's mother and grandmother–both now deceased–for decades. Jones, from Marietta, Ohio, became close over the years to members of an informal Mayaguez veterans group. She said she has spent countless hours on the phone letting the vets talk at length – some of whom she says still suffer from 'survivors' guilt.' 'I gained two platoons worth of uncles,' Jones said, referring to her involvement with Mayaguez vets over the last two decades. When Hale called her seven weeks ago and asked if she wanted to go to Cambodia, she had to scramble to get her first-ever US passport. The flight to Phnom Penh—paid for by Mayaguez vets – was her first time on an airplane, and the trip to Koh Tang was the first time she had seen an ocean. On May 14, Hale, Jones and others on the trip organized by Vietnam veteran John Muller were taken to the temple in Sihanoukville, where the two Marines were thought to have been executed. The place where her uncle was possibly buried is now an abandoned construction site and the beach was unreachable. But that didn't prevent her from becoming overcome with grief she has harbored for so many years. 'Here we are 50 years later and none of the three Marines are back,' she grumbled to this reporter later that day. Danielle Jones, consumed by grief at the site in Sihanoukville where her uncle Danny Marshall was allegedly buried. John Muller, a Vietnam vet who organized the trip, tries to offer some solace (May 2025). Photo: Michael Hayes * * * The US government, for its part, has spent multiple thousands of hours and a bundle of what the US military sometimes calls 'treasure' looking for American MIAs in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. When official relations were re-established—after an 18-year hiatus – with the Cambodian government in 1993, recovery efforts were started under an effort called the Joint Task Force/Full Accounting (JTF/FA), which has been re-named the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA). After 1975, there were 81 American servicemen listed as 'Missing' in Cambodia. Over the last 32 years, 41 remains have been recovered in the country. Digs have been undertaken all over Cambodia, including as many as 15 on Koh Tang. The exact number of recovery missions undertaken on Koh Tang was not available from US government sources on short notice to this reporter for this article. DPAA is understandably reluctant to openly discuss details of their ongoing recovery efforts (and their previous ones) out of fears that hopes will be raised with loved ones back in the United States, only to be dashed again if no remains are found. Some skeptics, however, accuse the government of trying to hide the truth. The work is exhausting, time-consuming and often frustrating, like looking for a needle in a haystack when even the location of the haystack itself is open to serious debate. One of JTF/FA's more extensive operations—which this reporter visited – took place on Koh Tang in November 1995, when the USS Brunswick, a navy salvage ship equipped with underwater search gear and teams of SCUBA divers, spent several months examining the three helicopter wrecks off the beaches there, while separate teams also scoured sites on land. Multiple teams were set up who sifted through buckets of silt and soil, looking for bones or other human artifacts, including clothing or anything that might be used for identification purposes. US Marine Staff Sargent Clark Hale has visited Koh Tang three times in the last 30 years, hoping to find answers to what happened to three of his men. Above, in 2015, remains of a US helicopter shot down were still on the beach. Picture: Michael Hayes Sixty Cambodian soldiers based on the island were paid to help dig and sift. In the sea, gear was used to siphon up silt and debris from helicopter wreckage. Offshore, 161 pieces of human remains—teeth, arms, legs, fingers, ribs and jawbones—were recovered at one helicopter crash site, after which they were sent to labs in Hawaii for DNA testing. The remains of nine servicemen killed in action were identified from that operation. Over the years and multiple visits, remains of 13 of the 18 servicemen who died on Koh Tang have been identified. There have been six books and dozens of articles written about the Mayaguez Incident. They are all tough to read. A recent May 6, 2025, article by David Vergun in DOD News quotes Navy Commander Richard Hughes, who some years ago wrote, 'The US ground assault was ill-advised, a risky insertion of poorly prepared troops on an island where none of the crew was located. The crew's release was made in spite of, not because of, the island assault.' Ralph Wetterhahn, in his book 'The Last Battle: The Mayaguez Incident and the End of the Vietnam War', gives a summary overview of the operation with a bit more oomph. He writes: The struggle on Koh Tang was, in a sense, a metaphor of the entire Vietnam War: an action begun for what seemed a good cause and a noble purpose, which quickly degenerated into an ugly, desperate fight, micromanaged by no less than the office of the president of the United States. While Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger improvised tactics, confusing political expedience with military reality during a black-tie dinner, Americans lay bleeding and dying needlessly on a distant spit of land. In so many ways, the Mayaguez Incident mirrors the outcome of the Southeast Asian conflict itself.' For Clark Hale, 77, his latest visit to Koh Tang is probably an incomplete closure to a half-century ordeal. 'This is my last time to come here—as a Marine looking for my Marines,' he said haltingly at the US Embassy ceremony on May 16 honoring those who died and Hale's three men still listed as fate 'Unknown' on the embassy memorial. 'As far as the Mayaguez and my men…I don't think they will ever be found.' As a small personal coda to this sorry tale, and having visited Koh Tang three times since 1995, the whole episode is part and parcel of the larger conflict in Indochina that lasted too many decades. In Cambodia, literally millions of citizens, especially those now still alive and over 40, lost family members during almost three decades of war since 1970. The Khmer Rouge Tribunal has determined that as many as one million people were executed during the Khmer Rouge's three years, eight months and 20 days in power between 1975 and 1978. Among my own Cambodian newspaper staff, numbering about 100 over many years, all lost relatives during the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror and none, to my knowledge, have any idea where family members' remains are. There is no closure for these folks, just the determination to try and cope forever with terrible loss and move on. Wars are often most painful for the survivors. Michael Hayes was co-founder, publisher & editor-in-chief of the Phnom Penh Post from 1992 to 2008.
Straits Times
6 days ago
- Business
- Straits Times
When it comes to the economy, ‘madman' antics could backfire on US
The trade policy of the Trump administration is an example of the madman theory applied to economic policy – probably for the first time by the US. PHOTO: AFP In international relations, there is a strategic concept called the 'madman theory'. It refers to a leader deliberately acting irrationally and unpredictably to gain leverage in negotiations. The idea is to threaten reckless and extreme measures to force concessions from adversaries. During the Vietnam War of the 1960s and 1970s, then US President Richard Nixon is said to have acted this way, encouraging his aides to make the North Vietnamese enemy believe he would do something crazy, to pressure them to engage in peace negotiations. The Nixon tapes later revealed that he told his national security adviser Henry Kissinger: 'I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war.' Eventually, there were peace negotiations, so it could be argued that the madman theory worked in this case. Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
From Agent Orange to 'Hanoi Jane,' traces of the Vietnam war remain
Vietnamese people are celebrating the unification of their country after the Vietnam war that left people and land alike deeply scarred - and divided. Some veterans and activists from the United States joined the parties, celebrations and parades, and spoke of their ongoing sense of guilt at their involvement. Bill from Florida was a peace activist back then and was imprisoned in his home country for it, he says. "It was very important to me to be here in Vietnam for the anniversary to honour the people of this country," he adds, tears coming to his eyes. The complex war, fought in bloody jungle battles, began shortly after Vietnam became independent from France, a Colonial power until 1954. After the mid-1960s, the US became heavily involved, supporting South Vietnamese troops in their attempt to prevent the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. Vietnamese people, looking back at the conflict, call it "The American War." The North Vietnamese fought as the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam – or "Vietcong" - backed by the former Soviet Union and led by Ho Chi Minh, affectionately known as "Uncle Ho." He is still revered in much of Vietnam today. And Saigon's official name became Ho Chi Minh City after the war. When the US withdrew in 1973, it had suffered the first major military defeat in its history and lost 58,000 soldiers. Deadly weapons - no match for the Vietnamese Despite the use of horrific weapons such as the incendiary agent napalm and Agent Orange – a highly toxic defoliant – the GIs ultimately had no chance against the sophisticated guerrilla tactics of the Viet Cong. The victorious communists remain in power and keep alive the memory of the war, estimated to have cost the lives of 2 to 5 million Vietnamese people, also for tourists. Directly behind the entrance to the impressive War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, visitors see fighter jets and tanks and also Hui, 56, who lost both arms and one leg and is blind in one eye. "I was eight years old when I stepped on a mine from the war times in the Central Highlands," he says. Unable to work, he sells books in front of the museum and tells tourists his life story, over and over again. Inside, a room is dedicated to the US chemical weapon Agent Orange, showing photos of generations of Vietnamese people and documenting their torment and later suffering from tumours and deformation, causing many visitors to burst into tears. World famous photo Other photos have become burned into the collective memory - like the one in 1972 of a little girl who tore her burning clothes off after a napalm attack. Phan Thi Kim Phuc, known as the "Napalm Girl," still suffers from severe burns. The photo, credited to AP photographer Nick Ut, who was 21 at the time, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 - though who actually took the harrowing picture is in dispute. A documentary released this year raised doubts about the photographer, suggesting that it was more likely that a freelance AP employee captured the scene. He is said to have received $20 for the picture. The World Press Photo Foundation has suspended the author attribution for the iconic photograph. Not under dispute is that Ut drove the injured girl to a hospital in Saigon, where she received treatment for months - and they are still in touch. "Fifty years on from that fateful day, the pair are still in regular contact – and using their story to spread a message of peace," US broadcaster CNN reported in 2022. The Viet Cong tunnels Two hours' drive from Ho Chi Minh City are the Cu Chi tunnels, a legendary tunnel system extending more than 200 kilometres that contributed significantly to the Viet Cong's victory over US troops. Now a tourist attraction, the claustrophobic tunnels were far more than underground secret passages. People lived on three levels that housed accommodation, kitchens, schools, infirmaries and command centres. The tunnels were home not only to male Vietcong fighters, but also to many women and children who were also fighting against the enemy, as can be seen in the film "Dia Dao" ("Tunnel: Sun in the Dark") by director Bui Thac Chuyen. It is an epic released to mark the 50th anniversary and is breaking box office records in Vietnam. Meanwhile two hotels in Vietnam show you history up close. During the war, the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi in the northern capital Hanoi not only accommodated many reporters and embassies, but also prominent US peace activists such as actress Jane Fonda. She caused a scandal in 1972 when she had her picture taken sitting astride a Vietcong fighter's cannon in North Vietnam, earning her the name "Hanoi Jane." Like folk singer Joan Baez, the Hollywood star sought shelter in the hotel's bunker during a bombing raid, as the hotel's historian Nguyen Thanh Tung recounts. Meanwhile at the Continental, visitors can stay in the room where British author Graham Greene once wrote his famous Vietnam novel "The Quiet American." The hotel also features prominently in the 2002 film of the same name starring Michael Caine. Vietnam has its own large café chain: Cong Caphe, with a trademark khaki-green exterior and waiters clad in Vietcong uniforms. "With our outfits we want to honour the soldiers that fought for our country in the past," says employee Duc Anh Lee. Behind the tables are tools from the war while the walls are adorned with camouflage helmets. For young Vietnamese people sipping hip coffee creations, this backdrop is part of daily life. The war is still omnipresent in Vietnam, told by its communist victors.
