The US is not important. The US didn't matter! You can say I said it. Why? Read the news today.
"Japan will conduct tests of hypersonic missiles and other projectiles on Australian soil, the two countries’ defense ministers said yesterday as they deepened military cooperation, including with a codeveloped laser system."
Australia and Japan are carrying out a project called 'Boobook'. The name highlights the night vision of this Australian owl. The project includes developing enhanced laser capabilities for land and near-shore combat platforms.
Koizumi welcomed the outcome. He said: "If the Japan Self-Defense Forces are able to conduct test launches of standoff missiles, such as hypersonic missiles, in Australia, it would be a groundbreaking development. We will therefore accelerate discussions toward realising this objective."
Foreign media pointed out that Australia and Japan, seeing China's growing influence, have strengthened defense cooperation. They noted that the two sides reached a procurement agreement last year, under which Australia will pay 10 billion Australian dollars over 10 years to acquire a batch of Japanese stealth frigates, marking one of Japan's largest defense export deals since World War II.
The Nuclear Temptation: Australia's Uranium and Japan's Ambition
Last month, Australia threw another $3.2 billion at its domestic nuclear submarine build. That's AUKUS money. The 2021 pact with the UK and US was designed to push back against China's Indo-Pacific surge. The word is, starting in 2030, Canberra will snap up several Virginia-class nuclear submarines.
Mind you, Australia is a mineral powerhouse. It has long been seen as a country with huge nuclear energy potential. It has abundant uranium deposits in Queensland, the Northern Territory, and South Australia. Over the past decade, annual production has topped 7,000 tonnes. But in 1998, Australia slammed the door on nuclear facilities. The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act explicitly bans building or operating any nuclear facilities.
The temptation isn't new. Back in the 1960s, Australia was already flirting with nuclear construction. But it backed off, worried that building nuclear facilities would raise eyebrows about developing nuclear weapons. So it embraced a 'non-nuclear' identity.
But as the saying goes, once tempted, the thought never quite goes away. In 2019, during Trump's first term, an Australian scholar posed the question: what if Australia had nuclear weapons? That officially cracked open the nuclear Pandora's box.
In July 2019, RFI painted a picture of the good life. Australia had a century-old alliance with the United States, the gold standard of security guarantees. Meanwhile, it was shipping raw materials to China, fueling an economic boom that hadn't seen a recession in 28 years.
But the good times didn't last. Trump, in his first term, couldn't care less about the Asia-Pacific alliance. Australia, meanwhile, felt the heat from China's rising power. Canberra had always thought the risks were too high, and Washington was just watching from the bleachers. But with Trump, that whole strategy could be blown up by a single tweet. And the threats themselves were morphing.
The report noted that Canberra knew going nuclear was a double-edged sword. Even a limited nuclear deterrent would come with enormous economic, political, diplomatic, and social costs.
Pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and you'd infuriate your neighbors all at once. And with Australia's sparse population, if war broke out, conventional weapons alone might not be enough to defend the continent.
Japan's nuclear ambition? From Abe to Takaichi, it's an open secret. The real question is this: with Japan and Australia now teaming up on long-range hypersonic weapons, is that Pandora's box swinging a little too wide open?
The Fallout: A Chaotic Asia-Pacific and the Search for Self-Reliance
Japan is a country with huge nuclear potential. It already fields quasi-aircraft carriers, large destroyers, and submarines.
Now picture it going nuclear, with the Japan-Australia partnership as its platform. Tell me, how chaotic would the Asia-Pacific become?
But look at it from Australia and Japan's perspective. If the United States is folding up its stall even in the Middle East, why wouldn't Asia-Pacific allies plan for their own security?
Alright, that's it for today. Let me end with a cliché: May the world be at peace, and may the Asia-Pacific be calm and tranquil.
Deep Blue
** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **
It was 1950. The US government detained Qian Xuesen and slapped him with a $15,000 bail, enough to keep a family comfortable for years. Caltech and his friends eventually scraped together the money. But to this day, the exact details of how it was raised and whether the bail was ever refunded remain murky.
That episode is part of what historians call the 'Qian Xuesen Mystery.' Today, we're grappling with a new riddle: Why couldn't America keep Yang Zhilin? Eighty years apart. You have to ask: what the hell kind of place is America, anyway?
Salakhutdinov, a Carnegie Mellon professor and AI research advisor, remembers it well. Yang Zhilin could have easily stayed in the United States, but he chose to return to China and start a business. So Yang came home. In 2023 he founded Moonshot AI, and its Kimi K3 model now rivals the best America has to offer.
Some eighty years ago, Qian Xuesen was a founder of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Then, suddenly, he was accused of being a spy and a member of the US Communist Party. He spent five years under house arrest before he was allowed to leave the US. In September 1955, he sailed back to China. There, he made monumental contributions to the nation's rocket, ballistic missile, and space programs. The most famous: the Dongfeng missile series. He changed China's destiny.
Why bring this up? Because Qian's work was about the tools of a great power. It's no exaggeration to say the next set of those tools is AI models. Their power lies in leapfrogging US technology, ensuring America can no longer single-handedly steer global development.
When Kimi K3 launched in July 2026, a Silicon Valley notable asked a pointed question: Why didn't Yang Zhilin stay in the United States? The post exploded, racking up 7.47 million views in four days. The reality is, Yang's choice is far from unique. In recent years, top AI talent has been flowing back from the US to China.
The Economist crunched the numbers for NeurIPS, a premier AI conference. The share of authors from China jumped from 29% in 2019 to 51% in 2025. Over the same period, the US share slid from 20% to 12%. Meanwhile, a US survey revealed that 73% of Chinese-American scientists feel unsafe as researchers, and 65% fear hate and violence against Asians.
China's tech sector isn't just attractive. It's lucrative. The data backs it up: China's AI ecosystem is gaining appeal in capital, policy, market size, and application scenarios）. Riding the Kimi K3 wave, Moonshot AI closed four funding rounds in the first half of 2026, pulling in over $3.9 billion.
Salakhutdinov put it bluntly: The US didn't lose someone who was forced out. It lost someone who simply didn't want to stay. Yang's return to China underscores a hard truth. If America insists on decoupling from China, the price tag keeps climbing. Right now, the US still leads in AI infrastructure like semiconductors and data centers. But talent is the real engine of AI development. And there, America's disadvantage may be far worse than it thinks.
The Cost of Xenophobia: America's Self-Inflicted Wound
The Nikkei highlights another gravitational pull: the IPO dream. If Moonshot AI and DeepSeek can list in mainland China or Hong Kong, they will become new entrepreneurial icons. That could accelerate the trend of Chinese AI talent chasing success at home rather than in the United States.
Some in the US venture capital community are already urging a course correction. They argue America should be rolling out the red carpet for Chinese talent, including helping their families relocate.
Instead, the industry sees the Trump administration's chaotic anti-China policies for what they are: a self-defeating campaign of 'driving talent away.'
Postscript: Forget the 'Qian Xuesen mystery.' The real puzzle is the 'American mystery.' A New York Times article from June 5 last year, titled 'The U.S. Deported This Chinese Scientist, in a Decision That Changed World History,' tore into the Trump administration. It reported that Secretary of State Rubio "turned up the pressure, announcing that the administration would work to 'aggressively revoke' visas of Chinese students, including those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or who are studying in 'critical fields.'".
Consider the scale: the United States hosts one million foreign students. More than 250,000 of them are Chinese.
Qian Xuesen was unreasonably treated by the US government and finally had to leave. America learned nothing. Now, beset by troubles at home and abroad, instead of striving to improve, it reaches for xenophobia as a weapon.
And yet the United States still sees itself as the world's strongest. A real unfathomable mystery!
