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Tag: marine transportation

  • Ukrainians claim to have destroyed large Russian warship in Berdiansk | CNN

    Ukrainians claim to have destroyed large Russian warship in Berdiansk | CNN

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    Lviv, Ukraine
    CNN
     — 

    Ukrainian armed forces on Friday identified a large Russian landing ship that they said they destroyed at the port of Berdiansk in southern Ukraine the day before.

    The port, which had recently been occupied by Russian forces with several Russian warships in dock, was rocked by a series of heavy explosions soon after dawn on Thursday.

    Social media videos showed fires raging at the dockside, with a series of secondary explosions reverberating across the city.

    The Ukrainian armed forces on Friday named the ship as the “Saratov.” In earlier reporting, the ship was named as the “Orsk.”

    In a statement, the armed forces said: “In the Azov operational zone, according to updated information, a large landing ship “Saratov” was destroyed during the attack on the occupied Berdiansk port. Large landing ships “Caesar Kunikov” and “Novocherkassk” were [also] damaged. Other losses of the enemy are being clarified.”

    Several Russian ships had been unloading military equipment at Berdiansk in recent days, according to reports from the port by Russian media outlets.

    The United States said that Ukraine likely did conduct a successful attack against Russian ships in Berdiansk, according to a defense official, though it is unclear what type of weapon or weapons were used in the attack. It echoes a similar statement from the British Ministry of Defence, which said that Ukrainian forces have attacked “high value targets” in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, including a landing ship and ammunition depots at Berdiansk.

    Analysis of videos uploaded on Thursday showed that one Russian naval vessel left the port soon after the explosions.

    A screengrab of the fire.

    The Russian Ministry of Defense has made no official comment about the explosion.

    Berdiansk sits on the Azov Sea and is roughly 45 miles (70 kilometers) southwest of Mariupol. The city has a small naval base and a population of about 100,000.

    Russian military troops first occupied Berdiansk government buildings on February 27, three days after Russia’s invasion began.

    Mariupol still eludes Russian control despite being surrounded and mercilessly pummeled, block by block, by Russian firepower.

    Its defenders rejected an ultimatum to surrender by Monday morning, thwarting a Russian effort to finalize a land bridge linking Crimea with the separatist republics of the eastern Donbas region.

    Russia has fired on Mariupol from the Sea of Azov, according to a senior US defense official, using a group of approximately seven ships to launch attacks on the critical coastal city.

    Further west, Ukrainians have been fighting to take back the city of Kherson, as well as pushing Russian forces from the northeast of Mykolaiv, forcing them to reposition south of the city, a senior US defense official said Tuesday.

    The official cautioned that the US cannot say whether these moves are part of a “larger operational plan” by the Ukrainians, but called the Ukrainian defense “nimble” and “agile.”

    This story has been updated with new information from Ukrainian officials.

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  • Russia’s shadowy energy trade is raising fears of a devastating oil spill | CNN Business

    Russia’s shadowy energy trade is raising fears of a devastating oil spill | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    The waters of the Bay of Lakonikos, on the south-eastern side of Greece’s Peloponnese peninsula, are a bright turquoise color. Its shores are an important nesting site for sea turtles.

    Yet it’s not just a place of natural beauty. The area has become a key hub for tankers carrying Russian energy exports.

    As crude and refined petroleum products that would usually go to the European Union are rerouted to Asia — with most seaborne oil imports banned by the bloc in response to Moscow’s assault on Ukraine — cargoes are being transferred here onto larger vessels to make the long trip.

    Ship-to-ship transfers of Russian crude have mushroomed in recent months, reaching a record high during the first three months of the year, according to data from S&P Global, a research firm. Near Greece, more than 3.5 million barrels of Russian gasoil, a refined product used in heating and transport systems, were transferred between ships in March. That’s more than seven times the volume tallied by S&P Global for that month in 2022.

    The transfers highlight the dramatic transformation of the global oil market since President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly 14 months ago. As China, India and Turkey fill the void left by Europe, once the top buyer of Russian oil and oil products, trips have lengthened, requiring more ships — and S&P Global data indicates mid-journey handoffs have become more common.

    “We’ve seen a big increase in ship transfers in the Mediterranean,” said Matthew Wright, senior freight analyst at Kpler, a data group. “Smaller vessels come in from Russian ports, they transfer the cargoes onto larger vessels, and then those larger vessels will head off to Asia.”

    Many of these ships are part of what’s become known as the “gray fleet.” Industry insiders like Wright use this term to refer to vessels that started carrying Russian oil in the past year. For many, little is known about their owners, which may be a shell company.

    The “gray fleet” isn’t necessarily doing anything underhanded. But Western observers like Wright say the emergence of this network, where ownership is often masked, has reduced transparency in the oil market, making it harder for regulators to keep watch.

    Australia, Canada and United States recently said in a submission to the International Maritime Organization that more ships were illegally turning off their transponders, or “going dark,” before transferring oil in international waters. Switching off transponders, which transmit location data, can be a way of dodging sanctions, they said.

    Fred Kenney, the IMO’s director of legal and external affairs, told CNN that alarm about this practice had grown over the past year. Collisions are more likely in such cases, raising the odds of a devastating oil spill.

    It’s also harder to tell whether the vessels with murky ownership comply with the strict rules governing oil transfers at sea, according to Kenney.

    “There is a significant level of concern that the regulatory regime that ensures safe and secure shipping on clean oceans is being undermined,” he said.

    Russia’s oil export volumes have rebounded to levels last seen before it invaded Ukraine, according to the International Energy Agency, although the country is still grappling with a sharp drop in revenue from these exports. Group of Seven nations have imposed a cap on the price of Russian oil and oil products, and a smaller pool of buyers can also negotiate greater discounts.

    China’s imports of Russian oil in the first quarter of the year rose 38% compared with a year prior, according to Kpler data. India’s have skyrocketed almost tenfold.

    As trade of Russian oil has become more complex, many Western shippers have pulled back. New, more opaque players have stepped in, contributing to the formation of the “gray fleet.”

    According to VesselsValue, a UK-based market intelligence firm, sales of oil tankers to newly formed companies or undisclosed buyers account for roughly 33% of tanker deals so far this year. Sales to unknown buyers accounted for just 10% of the total in 2022 and 4% in 2021.

    Using satellite images from space technology firm Maxar, CNN was able to home in on pairs of oil tankers dotting the Bay of Lakonikos. Together with Kpler, CNN has worked out the details of one of the transfers.

    According to data from the two ships’ transponders, the smaller tanker docked in St. Petersburg, Russia, where it picked up a cargo of fuel oil in late February. CNN then tracked it around Western Europe to the Mediterranean Sea. At that point, it unloaded its cargo onto the larger ship that had arrived from the direction of the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk in Russia. Kpler considers this vessel to be part of the “gray fleet.”

    From there, the larger tanker continued through the Suez Canal, the primary sea route from Europe to Asia.

    As transactions such as these become more common, experts are growing increasingly worried about the risks.

    While transferring oil from one ship to another is not unusual, Kenney of the IMO said “gray fleet” ships — more difficult to monitor if it’s not clear who owns them — might not be following best practices.

    “There [are] myriad things that can go wrong in a ship-to-ship transfer, which is why there is a comprehensive set of industry rules that govern these transfers,” he said, noting the potential for a spill.

    Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom have pointed out that there is a higher risk of accidental collisions between ships if transponders are turned off. Kpler documented multiple instances of this practice, which is almost always illegal, in 2022.

    “When we see ships, or we get reports of ships turning off their transponders, it’s concerning to us,” Kenney said.

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  • Historical society solves century-old lake mystery | CNN

    Historical society solves century-old lake mystery | CNN

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    Historical society solves century-old lake mystery

    The Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society has found two of three ships that sank in the same Lake Superior storm more than a century ago, locating one in 2021 and the other in 2022.

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  • Passenger ferry carrying almost 600 people runs aground in Washington | CNN

    Passenger ferry carrying almost 600 people runs aground in Washington | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    All passengers have safely disembarked a passenger ferry that ran aground on Saturday in Rich Passage near Bainbridge Island in Washington state.

    A total of 596 passengers and 15 crew members were aboard the ship, according to a tweet from US Coast Guard Pacific Northwest, which responded to the scene. The last of the passengers had safely disembarked by 10 pm, Washington State Ferries said in an update.

    The ferry Walla Walla ran aground at around 4:30 pm Saturday while making the trip from Bremerton to Seattle, Washington State Ferries wrote in a tweet.

    There were no injuries reported, said Washington State Ferries. The agency said that initial signs suggest the vessel suffered a “generator failure” and an official investigation is forthcoming.

    Passengers were transferred to Kitsap Transit vessels that took them to Bremerton, said Washington State Ferries. Travelers with cars on the grounded ferry were instructed to retrieve them at the Bremerton terminal on Sunday morning.

    “We know it’s not ideal, but thanks for helping us make the best of a bad situation,” officials wrote on Twitter. The agency also mentioned that they are “working on a process for refunding all of tonight’s customers for their uncompleted trips.”

    The Washington State Department of Ecology reported that “no pollution or hull damage” was detected from the ship’s grounding.

    One passenger aboard the Walla Walla when it ran aground described hearing sirens and seeing lights flicker as the ship lost power, according to CNN affiliate KOMO.

    “We heard some sirens going off and the lights flickering on and off and then you can feel the ferry lose power,” said Matt Holyoak.

    “They made another announcement saying ‘everyone needs to come to the passenger deck, we’ve lost steering (control) and everyone needs to brace for impact,’” he went on, according to KOMO. “And so we were all sitting down and a little concerned.”

    The voyage from Bremerton to Seattle typically takes around an hour, according to the Washington State Department of Transportation’s website. The department deployed another ship, Issaquah, to take over the Walla Walla’s route on Sunday.

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  • Italian Coast Guard escorting 1,200 migrants on boats in Mediterranean Sea | CNN

    Italian Coast Guard escorting 1,200 migrants on boats in Mediterranean Sea | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The Italian Coast Guard was on Tuesday escorting two boats carrying 1,200 migrants in the Mediterranean Sea, as part of a major operation in a region that has seen migrant arrivals spike in the past year.

    Emergency workers were racing to rescue a barge with 400 migrants onboard that had ran out of fuel, according to the volunteer-run service Alarm Phone. The Coast Guard told CNN later Monday that it is also escorting another vessel carrying 800 migrants.

    Alarm Phone said in a tweet it had spoken to passengers at 10.56 a.m. local time (4.56 a.m. ET), describing the situation on board as “dramatic,” with the boat starting to leak. “They report several medical emergencies, water filling the vessel and no fuel left. We have informed the authorities,” Alarm phone said.

    The coast guard is traveling next to the boat en route to Italy because an escort is “safer” than attempting to rescue those on board in poor weather, said Felix Weiss, a spokesman for Sea-Watch International, a German organization that runs search and rescue operations in the central Mediterranean.

    The migrants had been stranded along an immigration route between Italy and Malta that NGOs have warned is perilously dangerous.

    The boat with 400 migrants departed from Tobruk, Libya, and had been at risk of capsizing with water in the hull, according to Alarm Phone. The service also said many on board required medical attention, including a child, a pregnant woman and a disabled person.

    The Italian Coast Guard also said Monday that more than 1,700 migrants had arrived on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa in the last 48 hours. Lampedusa, the closest Italian island to Africa, is a major destination for migrants seeking to enter European Union countries.

    Every year, tens of thousands of migrants fleeing war, persecution and poverty risk the treacherous route in search of safety and better economic prospects. In many cases, their vessels are overcrowded and unfit for the journey, and the need to rescue migrants on board often leads to disputes between countries about who should take them in.

    More than 28,000 migrants have arrived in Italy so far this year, according to the country’s Interior Ministry – a significant surge compared to recent years. The number of migrants arriving in Italy this year are the highest seen in the country since 2017, according to figures by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

    Most arrivals have journeyed from the Ivory Coast, Guinea, Bangladesh, Tunisia and Pakistan.

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  • Shelter-in-place order is issued for neighborhoods near a burning fishing vessel as the EPA conducts air monitoring | CNN

    Shelter-in-place order is issued for neighborhoods near a burning fishing vessel as the EPA conducts air monitoring | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A shelter-in-place order was issued Sunday for neighborhoods near a burning fishing vessel in the Hylebos Waterway in Tacoma, Washington, where a “significant explosion” took place and fire conditions have worsened, officials said.

    The burning vessel – which is believed to be carrying 55,000 gallons of diesel and 19,000 pounds of freon on board – caught fire early Saturday morning while moored in the waterway, the US Coast Guard said in a news release.

    “We were very fortunate that the fire was quickly spotted and reported and the crew onboard was able to safely evacuate,” US Coast Guard Lt. Stephen Nolan told CNN affiliate KING-TV.

    There was a “significant explosion” linked to a heated compressed gas cylinder on the vessel, and smoke production shifted toward Northeast Tacoma, Port of Tacoma officials said Sunday night, citing fire officials.

    “Due to smoke from a boat fire in Tacoma, Twin Lakes and Green Gables residents should avoid prolonged outdoor exposure whenever smoke odors are present or if smoke is visible,” Federal Way mayor Jim Ferrell tweeted late Sunday night.

    By Sunday, the fire had spread throughout the vessel and was about 100 feet from the ship’s freon tanks, according to the Coast Guard. Freon is a trademark name typically used to refer to several different refrigerants, including chlorofluorocarbons, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

    As the fire continues to burn, the heat from the flames can build pressure in the freon tanks, which have built-in heat-activated pressure relief valves designed to release pressure from the tanks in an emergency, according to the Coast Guard.

    “While freon can be toxic if inhaled in large quantities or in a confined space, the release of freon into the atmosphere is not expected to pose any health and safety risks to the public,” the Coast Guard said.

    Still, the City of Tacoma Fire Department asked residents of the Northeast Tacoma, Browns Point and Dash Point neighborhoods to “remain indoors and limit exposures to smoke.”

    “Residents concerned about smoky conditions can provide additional protections by keeping doors closed and shutting outside air vents. Residents may also want to avoid any strenuous activity or exercise outdoors,” the mayor tweeted.

    The EPA has been conducting air monitoring in the surrounding areas and first responders have deployed floating barriers around the vessel to contain any spills, the release said.

    The Coast Guard has also closed the Hylebos Waterway for all commercial and recreational vessel traffic.

    As of Sunday night, no injuries had been reported and there were no signs of maritime pollution, the Coast Guard said.

    As crews continue to battle the fire with cooling spray, it remains unclear what ignited the blaze. Authorities said the cause of the fire remains under investigation.

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  • China appears to simulate first aircraft carrier strike on Taiwan | CNN

    China appears to simulate first aircraft carrier strike on Taiwan | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    For the first time, the Chinese navy appears to have simulated strikes by aircraft carrier-based warplanes on Taiwan, as drills around the island wrapped up on their third day.

    Beijing launched the drills on Saturday, a day after Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen returned from a 10-day visit to Central America and the United States where she met US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

    Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense reported on Monday that during the past 24 hours four J-15 fighter jets had crossed into the southeastern portion of the island’s air defense identification zone – a self-declared buffer that extends beyond the island’s airspace.

    The J-15 is the version of J-11 twin-jet fighter that was developed for use on Beijing’s growing fleet of aircraft carriers.

    A CNN review of Taiwan Defense Ministry records shows it to be the first time the J-15s have crossed into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone.

    Meanwhile, the Japan Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed in a press release that Japanese forces had observed 80 fixed-wing aircraft take-offs and landings during the Chinese exercises from the Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong, which was in the Pacific Ocean east of Taiwan and about 230 kilometers (143 miles) south of the Japanese island of Miyako in Okinawa prefecture.

    Japan scrambled Air Self-Defense Force fighter jets in response, the Joint Chiefs said.

    The J-15 flights were among 35 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft that had either crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or entered the islands air defense identification zon in the 24 hours ending at 6 a.m. Taiwan time on Monday, according to the island’s Defense Ministry.

    It also said 11 PLA Navy vessels were in the waters around Taiwan, without specifying their distances from the island.

    Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported on Monday that the Eastern Theater Command of the PLA was continuing military drills around Taiwan as part of its Operation Joint Sword that began two days earlier.

    Monday’s drills focused on practicing “maritime blockades” and “targeted ambush assaults on enemy mooring vessels” in the Taiwan Strait, as well as northwest, southwest and waters east of Taiwan, CCTV reported.

    Over the weekend, multiple PLA services had carried out “simulated joint precision strikes on key targets on Taiwan Island” and in the surrounding waters, CCTV reported.

    It said in a statement later it had completed the military exercises and “comprehensively tested joint combat capabilities of its integrated military forces under actual combat situation.”

    “Forces in the command is ready for combat at all times, and will resolutely destroy any type of ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist or foreign interference attempts,” the statement added.

    China’s ruling Communist Party claims the self-governing democracy of Taiwan as its territory despite never having ruled it, and has spent decades trying to isolate it diplomatically. It has not ruled out using force to take control of the island.

    Analyst Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center, said the PLA was “practicing and probably refining the aerial coordination and joint operations required to initiate a blockade of Taiwan’s ports and air lanes.”

    A Chinese blockade of Taiwan could choke off supplies coming into the island, including any military aid or other shipments from the United States or its partners.

    The US, through the Taiwan Relations Act, is legally obligated to provide Taiwan with defensive weaponry, but it remains deliberately vague on whether it would defend Taiwan in the event of an attempted Chinese attack.

    Beijing had repeatedly warned against Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy and threatened to take “strong and resolute measures” if it went ahead.

    After the drills commenced, Beijing described them as “a serious warning against the Taiwan separatist forces’ collusion with external forces, and a necessary move to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

    Taiwan Defense Ministry spokesperson Sun Li-fang said the PLA’s exercises had “destabilized” the region.

    exp taiwan will ripley live FST 040812ASEG1 cnni world_00002804.png

    Taiwan’s president meets with U.S. lawmakers

    “President Tsai’s visit became their excuse to conduct exercises and their actions have severely jeopardized the security of the surrounding region,” he said, adding that the island’s air defense units were on “high alert.”

    Beijing conducted similar large-scale military exercises around Taiwan last August, after then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island.

    Those exercises included Chinese missile launches over the island, something that has not been seen so far in the current drills.

    But Schuster said this weekend’s exercises “are simply extensions and expansions from the August exercise.”

    “The tactical complexity is greater than last year’s, but operationally this exercise seems simpler,” he said.

    And the Communist Party’s message remains constant, Schuster said.

    “As is always the case with PLA exercises in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea areas, Beijing is telling the US, regional countries, Taiwan and its own people, that the PLA has the capability to conduct blockade and joint air and missile strikes on targets in and around Taiwan,” he said.

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  • Two migrants found dead in shipping container on train in Uvalde County, Texas | CNN

    Two migrants found dead in shipping container on train in Uvalde County, Texas | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Two migrants were found dead in a shipping container on a train the authorities stopped east of Uvalde, Texas, on Friday, according to local police. One other person was left in serious condition and another in critical condition.

    In a news release Friday night, Uvalde police said they “received a 911 phone call from an unknown third-party caller advising there were numerous undocumented immigrants ‘suffocating’ inside of a train car.” US Border Patrol stopped the train, which was operating on Union Pacific tracks, near the town of Knippa, northeast of Uvalde, police said.

    A total of 17 people were found on the train, including 15 men and two women, according to an official for Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). Union Pacific previously told CNN there were 15 people found in two different train cars. The railway reported that two of them died, four were airlifted to San Antonio, and six were taken to local hospitals.

    San Antonio’s University Hospital said they had received two adults, one in serious condition and one in critical condition.

    Three other individuals were found in a hopper car, which is used to transport loose bulk commodities like coal or grain.

    The HSI official said the two people who died were men from Honduras.

    HSI has opened an investigation into human smuggling regarding the incident.

    “We are heartbroken to learn of yet another tragic incident of migrants taking the dangerous journey,” Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Friday night in a tweet.

    In another tweet Mayorkas thanked “the Border Patrol Agents who responded to the scene and the HSI Agents who are supporting the investigation in Uvalde. We will work with the Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office to hold those responsible. Smugglers are callous and only care about making a profit.”

    In a statement, Union Pacific said that they were “deeply saddened by this incident and the tragedies occurring at the border.”

    “We take the safety of all individuals seriously and work tirelessly with law enforcement partners to detect illegal items and people riding inside or on our rail cars.”

    In the past years, migrants have taken increasingly risky paths to evade detection and enter the US. Immigrant rights advocates have attributed the rise in deaths at the border to policies that have made it more difficult for migrants to seek refuge in the US, according to CNN’s previous reporting.

    2022 was the deadliest year so far for migrants crossing the US-Mexico border, with 748 people dying at the border, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

    Friday’s discovery follows a June 2022 incident in which 53 migrants died after being packed into a tractor-trailer and abandoned on the outskirts of San Antonio.

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  • Truck fire shuts major Maryland highway weeks after deadly tanker fire in the region | CNN

    Truck fire shuts major Maryland highway weeks after deadly tanker fire in the region | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A tanker crash sparked a massive fire on a Baltimore County interstate Friday morning, state police and local officials said, just weeks after a deadly tanker fire about 50 miles away.

    Firefighters stood back as a yardslong trail of bright orange and red flames roared from the pavement, fueling thick black smoke that rose into the predawn darkness, an image released by the Baltimore County Fire Department shows.

    The tanker overturned and was the only vehicle involved in the crash, Sgt. Arthur Horton of Maryland State Police told CNN. A tanker strike team responded, the fire department said.

    The crash on I-795 forced all ramps from inner and outer loops to close, Maryland’s State Highway Administration said.

    The fire was put out, the fire department said in a Twitter post shortly before 9 a.m., and crews were working with the Maryland Department of the Environment to contain diesel fuel. “Beltway will be shut down for an extended period. Avoid the area,” the fire department said.

    The tanker driver was taken to a local trauma center with non-life-threatening injuries, police said.

    The crash happened weeks after a deadly gas tanker explosion following a crash on a highway in nearby Frederick, Maryland. The March 4 explosion on US Route 15, about 50 miles west of Baltimore, damaged homes and vehicles and killed the tanker driver. Hazardous materials, including gasoline and diesel fuel, were contained within hours, Frederick County officials said.

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  • Hawaii to remove grounded boat resting feet from sacred Hauola Stone | CNN

    Hawaii to remove grounded boat resting feet from sacred Hauola Stone | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Officials in Hawaii seized a motorboat that had been floating just feet away from a sacred site on Maui known as the Hauola Stone.

    The officials told the boat owner they are taking control of the 56-foot grounded motorboat, named Kuuipo, in order “to avoid damaging a culturally significant site,” the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources said in a Facebook post Saturday. The department’s Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation, known as DOBOR, is “immediately hiring a contractor to move the vessel to a safe location,” the department said.

    The incident began on March 8 when the boat grounded on the north side of Lāhainā Boat Harbor. The boat owner, Vernon Ray Lindsey, of Wailuku, told government staff he was hiring a salvage company to remove the boat, and he was informed he couldn’t bring the boat anywhere near the Hauola Stone, the department said.

    However, the division learned on Saturday that the boat had been refloated about 8 feet away from the stone, the department said.

    “You are hereby notified that in order to protect this culturally significant site as well as to protect the natural resources … the State of Hawai’i, through DOBOR, is immediately taking control of Kuuipo,” DOBOR Assistant Administrator Meghan Statts wrote in a letter to Lindsey.

    The Hauola Stone is a chair-shaped stone along the western coast of Maui that has been used as a birthing site for royalty and a healing site for ailing people over centuries, according to a sign posted at the location.

    “The Hauola stone is where the Pi’ilani ali’i line of Maui birthed their children. It is a sacred site,” the natural resources department’s Deputy Director Laura Kaakua said in a statement. “DLNR did not permit the owner to bring their boat anywhere near the stone, and specifically directed the owner to stay far away from the cultural site.

    “The majority of boat owners are responsible, but recent actions by a few have harmed Hawai’i’s natural and cultural resources. Damage to our reefs and cultures sites is unacceptable. DLNR is exploring ways to enforce responsible ownership to protect our ocean environment.”

    Unauthorized individuals who try to access the boat could face trespassing charges, and the owner is responsible “for all costs and expenses associated with the removal and disposal,” Statts said.

    The owner could also be responsible for coral or live rock damage, due to the grounding of the boat, the department said.

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  • Australia, the UK and US are joining forces in the Pacific, but will nuclear subs arrive quick enough to counter China? | CNN

    Australia, the UK and US are joining forces in the Pacific, but will nuclear subs arrive quick enough to counter China? | CNN

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    Canberra, Australia
    CNN
     — 

    More than a year after the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia dropped the tightly held news they were combining submarine forces, the trio released more details Monday of their ambitious plan to counter China’s rapid military expansion.

    Under the multi-decade AUKUS deal, the partners will build a combined fleet of elite nuclear-powered submarines using technology, labor and funding from all three countries, creating a more formidable force in the Indo-Pacific than any of them could achieve alone.

    But the long timeline and huge financial costs – running into the hundreds of billions for Australia alone – poses questions about how far the partners’ plans could stray from their “optimal pathway” in the decades to come as governments, and potentially priorities, change.

    In a joint statement Monday, US President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and UK counterpart Rishi Sunak said the “historic” deal will build on past efforts by all three countries to “sustain peace, stability, and prosperity around the world.”

    The plan begins this year with training rotations for Australian personnel on US and UK subs and bases in the expectation that in roughly 20 years, they’ll commandeer Australia’s first ever nuclear-powered fleet.

    But there’s a long way to go between now and then, as outlined in a series of phases announced by the leaders as they stood side-by-side in San Diego Harbor.

    From 2023, along with training Australians, US nuclear-powered subs will increase port visits to Australia, joined three years later by more visits from British-owned nuclear-powered subs.

    Come 2027, the US and UK subs will start rotations at HMAS Stirling, an Australian military port near Perth, Western Australia that’s set to receive a multibillion dollar upgrade.

    Then from the early 2030s, pending Congress approval, Australia will buy three Virginia-class submarines from the US, with an option to buy two more.

    Within the same decade, the UK plans to build its first AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine – combining its Astute-class submarine with US combat systems and weapons.

    Soon after, in the early 2040s, Australia will deliver the first of its homemade AUKUS subs to its Royal Navy.

    As a series of bullet points on the page, the plan seems straightforward.

    But the complexities involved are staggering and require an unprecedented level of investment and information sharing between the three partners, whose leaders’ political careers are set to be far shorter than those of the man they are working to counter: China’s Xi Jinping.

    Last week China’s political elite endorsed Xi’s unprecedented third term, solidifying his control and making him the longest-serving head of state of Communist China since its founding in 1949.

    The most assertive Chinese leader in a generation, Xi has expanded his country’s military forces and sought to extend Beijing’s influence far across the Indo-Pacific, rattling Western powers.

    Richard Dunley, from the University of New South Wales, said Australia was under pressure to respond after years of inaction and the proposal is an impressive scramble for a workable plan.

    “It’s a last roll of the dice. And they’ve managed to just about thread the eye of a needle coming up with something that looks plausible.”

    A rush of diplomacy took place before Monday’s announcement, partly to avoid the shock impact of the initial announcement in 2021, when French President Emmanuel Macron accused former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison of lying to him when he pulled out of a 90 billion Australian dollar deal to buy French subs.

    That deal would have delivered new submarines on a faster timeline, but they would have been conventional diesel-powered vessels instead of state of the art nuclear ones.

    Australia learned from that diplomatic row and its senior leaders – including Albanese – made around 60 calls to allies and regional neighbors to inform them of the plan before it was announced, according to Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles.

    China wasn’t one of them.

    Biden told reporters Monday that he plans to speak with Xi soon but declined to say when that would be, adding that he was not concerned Xi would see the AUKUS announcement as aggression.

    That contrasts with the sentiment emerging from Beijing including its accusations the trio is fomenting an arms race in Asia.

    At a daily briefing Monday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said the AUKUS partners had “completely ignored the concerns of the international community and gone further down a wrong and dangerous road.”

    He said the deal would “stimulate an arms race, undermine the international nuclear non-proliferation system and damage regional peace and stability.”

    Peter Dean, director of Foreign Policy and Defense at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, said the Chinese claims are overblown.

    “If there is an arms race in the Indo-Pacific, there is only one country that is racing, and that is China,” he told CNN.

    The US will sell up to five Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines to Australia.

    Smaller countries around the region are watching the AUKUS plan with concern that a greater presence in their waters could lead to unintended conflict, said Ristian Atriandi Supriyanto, from the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University.

    “With more rotational presence of US and UK subs in Australia, there is a greater necessity for China to surveil these units and thereby, increase the likelihood of accidents or incidents at sea,” he said.

    Biden stressed Monday that he wanted “the world to understand” that the agreement was “talking about nuclear power not nuclear weapons.”

    According to a White House fact sheet, the US and UK will give Australian nuclear material in sealed “welded power units” that will not require refueling. Australia has committed to disposing of nuclear waste in Australia on defense-owned land. But that won’t happen until at least the late 2050s, when the Virginia-class vessels are retired.

    Australia says it doesn’t have the capability to enrich it to weapons grade, won’t acquire it and wants to abide by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) principles on non-proliferation.

    The AUKUS plan is an admission by Australia that without submarines that can spend long periods of time at great depths, the country is woefully unprepared to counter China in the Indo-Pacific.

    “It is hugely complex and hugely risky,” said Dunley from the University of New South Wales.

    “But when the original announcement and decision was made in 2021, there were very few good options left for Australia. So I think they’ve come out as well as they could have done,” he added.

    Multiple challenge are posed by a project of this scale, which includes many moving parts with potential knock-on effects to the timeline and cost.

    The deal involves upgrades to ports and fleets, including expanding the operational life of Australia’s Collins-class submarines to the 2040s, to aid in the transition to nuclear.

    “You’re having to take submarines out for quite a significant chunk of time to refit them, and if there are delays or issues that could cascade and you could see issues where Australia actually doesn’t have enough submariners to maintain its current forces of mariners, let alone augment that,” Dunley said.

    As all three countries race to expand their fleets, training enough staff could become a serious challenge, Dunley said.

    The security element of the roles mean the pool of skilled workers is inevitably shallow. Efforts are being made in all countries to entice trainees to a life below the surface of the sea for months at a time – potentially not an easy sell in a competitive jobs market.

    And then there’s the funding.

    The Australian government says it’ll find 0.15% of gross domestic product every year for 30 years – a cost of up to $245 billion (368 billion Australian dollars).

    Max Bergmann, the director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the deal will ultimately require healthy economies, and all three countries are dealing with cost of living pressures.

    “The UK economy is not doing great. And part of what it will need is a thriving economy, such that it can maintain the level of spending needed,” he told a reporter briefing.

    Xi’s move to allow himself to retain the Chinese leadership for life means he could be approaching his 90s by the time Australia and Britain have launched their new AUKUS fleets.

    By then, the landscape of the Indo-Pacific could be vastly changed.

    Xi, 69, has made it clear that the issue of Taiwan, an island democracy that China’s Communist Party claims but has never ruled, cannot be passed indefinitely down to other generations.

    For now, Australia says it is confident of continued bipartisan support in Washington for program, which will rely on the ongoing transfer of nuclear material and other weapons secrets from the US.

    “We enter this with a high degree of confidence,” Defense Minister Marles said Monday.

    However the risk remains that in future years an inward-facing US leader in the style of former President Donald Trump – or even perhaps Trump himself – could emerge to threaten the deal.

    Charles Edel, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the deal was about much more than a combined effort to change China’s calculations about its security environment.

    “It’s meant to transform the industrial shipbuilding capacity of all three nations, it’s meant as a technological accelerator, it’s meant to change the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific, and, ultimately, it’s meant to change the model of how the United States works with and empowers its closest allies.”

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  • China looms large as Biden makes submarine moves with UK, Australia | CNN Politics

    China looms large as Biden makes submarine moves with UK, Australia | CNN Politics

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    San Diego
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden was flanked on Monday by a 377-foot submarine – the USS Missouri – as he announced an accelerated timeline for Australia to receive its own nuclear-powered submarines early next decade.

    But looming much larger was the increasingly tense US relationship with China, which has emerged as a central focus of Biden’s presidency. That relationship has been magnified in recent weeks by a slew of global events, from the dramatic downing of a Chinese spy balloon to the revelation that Beijing is considering arming Russia – all taking place amid Chinese President Xi Jinping’s unprecedented consolidation of power and a growing bipartisan consensus in Washington about the risks China poses.

    US officials readily acknowledge that tensions with China are higher than they have been in recent years and that Beijing’s heated public rhetoric of late is reflective of the state of private relations. It’s why Biden’s multi-pronged China strategy has involved a bid to normalize diplomatic relations even as the US pursues policies like Monday’s submarine announcement designed to counter China’s global influence and its military movements.

    “Today, as we stand at the inflection point in history, where the hard work of enhancing deterrence and promoting stability is going to affect the prospects of peace for decades to come, the United States can ask for no better partners in the Indo-Pacific, where so much of our shared future will be written,” Biden said Monday, standing alongside his Australian and British counterparts.

    The effort to re-open lines of communication with China, especially between each country’s top military brass following the spy balloon incident, has shown no signs of progress, according to a senior administration official.

    “Quite the contrary, China appears resistant at this juncture to actually move forward in establishing those dialogues and mechanisms,” the official said. “What we need are the appropriate mechanisms between senior government officials, between the military, between the various crisis managers on both sides to be able to communicate when there is something that is either accidental or just misinterpreted.”

    Against that backdrop, Biden faces a series of decisions over the coming weeks and months that have the potential to exacerbate tensions further, including placing new curbs on investments by American companies in China and restricting or blocking the US operations of the popular social media platform TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company. And in Beijing, Chinese officials must soon decide whether to flaunt US warnings and begin providing lethal weaponry to Russia in its war in Ukraine.

    Monday’s update on the new three-way defense partnership between the US, Australia and the United Kingdom is the latest step meant to counter China’s attempts at naval dominance in the Indo-Pacific and, potentially, its designs on invading self-governing Taiwan. Australia will now receive its first of at least three advanced submarines early next decade, faster than predicted when the AUKUS partnership launched 18 months ago, and US submarines like the USS Missouri will rotate through Australian ports in the meantime.

    “The United States has safeguarded stability in Indo-Pacific for decades, to the enormous benefits of nations throughout the region from ASEAN to Pacific Islanders to the People’s Republic of China,” Biden said during his remarks. “In fact, our leadership in the Pacific has been the benefit to the entire world. We’ve kept the sea lanes and skies open and navigable for all. We’ve upheld basic rules of the road.”

    His British counterpart was more explicit, naming China as a cause for concern.

    “China’s growing assertiveness, the destabilizing behavior of Iran and North Korea all threaten to create a world defined by danger, disorder and division,” said Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. “Faced with this new reality, it is more important than ever, that we strengthen the resilience of our own countries.”

    Even before Biden traveled to Naval Base Point Loma in California to herald that progress alongside the British and Australian prime ministers, China was quick to lambast the move as advancing a “Cold War mentality and zero-sum games.”

    That China did not wait for the announcement itself to lash out is a sign of just how closely Beijing is watching Biden’s moves in the Pacific, where the US military is expanding its presence and helping other nations modernize their fleets.

    And it’s another example of Biden’s view of China as the leading long-term threat to global peace and stability, even as Russia’s war in Ukraine consumes current US diplomatic and military attention.

    The first shipment, due in 2032, will be of three American Virginia-class attack submarines, which are designed to employ a number of different weapons, including torpedoes and cruise missiles. The subs can also carry special operations forces and carry out intelligence and reconnaissance missions.

    That will be followed in the 2040s by British-designed submarines, containing American technology, that will transform Australia’s underwater capabilities over the course of the next 25 years.

    Before then, US submarines will rotationally deploy to Australia to begin training Australian crews on the advanced technology, scaling up American defense posture in the region.

    The submarines will not carry nuclear weapons and US, Australian and British officials have insisted the plans are consistent with international non-proliferation rules, despite Chinese protestations.

    The message sent by the announcement is unmistakable: The US and its allies view China’s burgeoning naval ambitions as a top threat to their security, and are preparing for a long-term struggle. Already this year, the US announced it was expanding its military presence in the Philippines and welcomed moves by Japan to strengthen its military.

    “It’s deeply consequential,” a senior administration official said of the AUKUS partnership. “The Chinese know that, they recognize it and they’ll want to engage accordingly.”

    US officials said Britain’s participation in the new submarine project is a sign of Europe’s growing concerns about tensions in the Pacific – concerns that have emerged within NATO, even as the alliance remains consumed by the war in Ukraine. And in conversations with European leaders over the past month, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Friday, Biden has raised the issue of China in the hopes of developing a coordinated approach.

    The looming question now is whether China will choose to reengage and improve diplomatic relations with the US despite the heightened tensions.

    Successive phone calls and a November face-to-face meeting with Xi have so far yielded only halting progress in establishing what administration officials describe as a “floor” in the relationship.

    Four months after that meeting, progress has largely stalled on reopening lines of communication between Washington and Beijing, once viewed as the primary takeaway from the three-hour session in Bali. Speaking to CNN in late February, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said it had been months since he’d spoken to his Chinese counterpart.

    And public remarks from Chinese leaders, including Xi, have begun to sharpen over the past week, a sign the confrontational approach of the past year is not waning.

    Biden and his advisers have largely downplayed the new, sharp tone emanating from Beijing. Asked by CNN on Thursday about the meaning of new rebukes from Xi and Foreign Minister Qin Gang, Biden replied flatly: “Not much.”

    On Monday, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said a conversation between Biden and Xi would likely occur now that China’s National People’s Congress has concluded and a slate of Chinese officials take up their new positions following the rubber-stamp parliament’s annual meeting.

    “We have said that when the National People’s Congress comes to a close, as it now has, and Chinese leadership returns to Beijing, and then all of these new officials take their new seats, because of course you now have a new set of figures in substantial leadership positions, we would expect President Biden and President Xi to have a conversation. So at some point in the coming period,” Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One.

    He said there was no date set yet for a Xi-Biden phone call, but that Biden “has indicated his willingness to have a telephone conversation with President Xi once they’re back in stride coming off the National People’s Congress.”

    Tensions appeared to hit a new level last week after Xi directly rebuked US policy as “all-round containment, encirclement and suppression against us.” Qin, in remarks the next day, defined the “competition” Biden has long sought to frame as central to the relationship between the two powers as “a reckless gamble.”

    “If the United States does not hit the brakes but continues to speed down the wrong path, no amount of guardrails can prevent derailing, and there will surely be conflict and confrontation,” Qin said.

    A senior administration official acknowledged that Xi’s recent rhetoric has been “more direct” than in the past, but said the White House continues to believe that Xi “will again want to sit down and engage at the highest level” now that he has completed his latest consolidation of power.

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  • After a tragic shipwreck, no peace for the dead or living | CNN

    After a tragic shipwreck, no peace for the dead or living | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Two weeks after a boat packed with migrants sank off the coast of southern Italy, there is still no peace for the living or the dead, and the missing – mostly children – continue to wash up on the beaches.

    The latest – a girl aged five or six – was discovered on Saturday morning, bringing the toll from when the ill-fated boat broke apart on the rocks on February 26 off the village of Cutro to 74. Nearly half were minors.

    The local coroner’s office provided names for many of the dead including Torpekai Amarkhel, a 42-year-old female journalist from Afghanistan, who was killed along with her husband and two of their three children.

    Her other child, a seven-year-old daughter, is among the approximately 30 people still missing, presumed dead, from the tragedy.

    Amarkhel had fled Afghanistan with her family following the clampdown on women, her sister Mida, who had emigrated to Rotterdam, told Unama News radio, a United Nations project Amarkhel was involved in.

    Shahida Raza, who played football and hockey for Pakistan’s national team, was also among the dead. A friend said she was traveling in the hope of securing a better future for her disabled son.

    Initially, those found were given alphanumeric code numbers, rather than names. When first responders found the corpse of 28-year-old Abiden Jafari from Afghanistan, they identified her only as KR16D45 – KR for the nearby city of Crotone, 16 because she was the 16th victim found, D for donna or woman, and 45, her estimated age.

    But after taking her to the morgue, they discovered she was a women’s rights activist who had been threatened by the Taliban, likely causing her to risk her life at sea.

    The body of a six-year-old boy, first identified as KR70M6, was named by his uncle as Hakef Taimoori.

    The uncle had a family photo showing the young boy wearing the same shoes as he had on when he washed up on the beach. His parents and two-year-old brother also died in the disaster. A third brother remains among the missing.

    The dead have also been caught in a struggle between the Italian state and family members.

    The Interior Ministry ordered that all bodies be transferred from Calabria where the caskets have been on display in an auditorium, to the Islamic cemetery of Bologna for burial, in keeping with Italy’s protocol for irregular migrants who die attempting to enter Italy.

    Family members who either survived the wreck or came from other parts of Europe to claim their loved ones’ remains protested with makeshift signs and a sit-in in front of the auditorium on Wednesday.

    After a tense negotiation, the Prefecture of Crotone confirmed to CNN that 25 families, mostly Afghan and Syrian, agreed to have their loved ones buried in Bologna,.

    All those who have not been identified will also be buried in Bologna along with the remains of a Turkish national who has been identified as one of the human traffickers.

    Pieces of wood wash up on a beach, two days after the boat carrying migrants sank off Italy's southern Calabria region.

    Many of those who died will not be returned home to be buried.

    The fate of the rest remains a point of negotiation, but the mayor of Crotone Vincenzo Voce said the Italian state would pay for any repatriations either to countries of origin or to be buried with family members in other parts of Italy.

    The Italian Interior Ministry told CNN it could not comment on what would happen to the victims’ remains, but confirmed that past protocol is not to pay for repatriating anyone who died attempting to enter Italy as an irregular migrant but to make the country of origin pay costs. In the last decade, no repatriations have taken place, the ministry said.

    Of the 82 survivors, three Turkish citizens and one Pakistan citizen have been arrested for human trafficking, and eight people are still hospitalized.

    Most of the survivors were moved this week to a Crotone hotel after human rights advocates led by Italian leftist politician Franco Mari protested the conditions in which they were being kept, which included one shared bathroom for men and another for women near sleeping quarters that included only benches and mattresses on the floor to sleep.

    Mari, who visited the reception center, tweeted that none of the survivors had sheets, towels or pillows. Twelve others were moved to a reception center for unaccompanied minors.

    Against the backdrop of the saga about what to do with both the survivors and the victims, there is a growing firestorm about the rescue itself.

    A surveillance plane for European border control Frontex had identified the ill-fated vessel the day before it sank and had alerted the Italian Coast Guard.

    The Coast Guard said in a statement that the vessel was not identified as a migrant boat, and that, at any rate, it did not seem in distress.

    Heat sensing surveillance images released by the Coast Guard show that only one person was visible on board the ship when they flew over it.

    Survivors recounted to media and human rights groups that they were locked in the hull of the ship and allowed to come up for air at intervals during the four-day journey from Turkey.

    The Crotone public prosecutor’s office confirmed to CNN that it had opened a criminal investigation into the circumstances of the failed rescue after more than 40 human rights associations and NGOs signed a petition to demand all records be made public to determine if anyone failed to provide assistance to the boat in accordance with maritime law.

    On Thursday, the Council of Ministers led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met on the disaster in Cutro and said they would focus on targeting trafficking rings and increasing jail time for human traffickers to 30 years.

    Protests broke out against Italy's government, who have made stopping migrant boats a priority.

    Many of the government cars were pummeled with stuffed animals by protesters in Cutro who held signs that said “not in my name” to protest against blocking migrants and refugees from entering Europe through Italy.

    The ministers also discussed “speeding up the mechanism for applying for asylum” rather than increasing the quota, which stands at accepting 82,700 migrants who qualify for asylum in 2023. So far this year, more than 17,600 people have reached Italy by sea.

    In 2022, 105,131 people entered the country by sea. The process to apply for asylum often takes between three and five years, depending on the country of origin. People who are not from asylum-producing countries, but are economic migrants, are repatriated back to their countries of origin.

    Italian President Sergio Mattarella said the Afghanistan citizens who survived would be prioritized for asylum. It is yet unclear if those who do not qualify will be repatriated to their countries of origin.

    Meloni’s right-leaning government has vowed to clamp down on human traffickers and NGO rescue vessels. But the boats keep coming – hundreds of migrants were rescued this weekend – and signs are that they arriving earlier than ever. This tragedy is unlikely to be the last.

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  • Children and women among 63 dead as migrant boat hits rocks near Italy | CNN

    Children and women among 63 dead as migrant boat hits rocks near Italy | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    At least 63 people including children and women died after a wooden boat carrying migrants from Turkey broke apart on rocks off the coast of Calabria on Sunday, Italian authorities said.

    More bodies were being pulled from the Mediterranean Sea on Monday, where bad weather hampered search efforts and made the field of debris larger.

    More than two dozen of the dead were Pakistani nationals, the country’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, said Monday. Sharif described the news as “deeply concerning and worrisome” and directed Pakistan’s foreign ministry to investigate.

    At least 82 passengers survived the shipwreck, an official from Italy’s Crotone prefecture said Monday. Among those on board were people from Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, according to rescuers.

    The vessel left the Turkish city of Izmir three or four days before the wreck, with 140 to 150 people on board, Reuters reported. The first three bodies washed up on the beach near Staccato di Cutro in southern Italy around 4:40 a.m. local time Sunday.

    The full breakdown of migrants by gender and ages who have died were set to be released soon and the total number of people missing had not yet been established, Manuela Curra, prefect of Crotone, told CNN on Monday.

    Some of the migrants who were saved from a deadly shipwreck over the weekend were rescued and warmed by blankets on February 26, 2023.

    Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni blamed human traffickers. “It is criminal to launch a boat just 20 meters long with 200 people on board in adverse weather,” she said in a statement. “It is inhumane to exchange the lives of men, women and children for the price of a ticket under the false perspective of a safe journey.”

    Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi added that new measures must be instituted to reduce such perilous journeys. “It is essential to continue with every possible initiative to stop departures and discourage crossings in any way which takes advantage of the illusory mirage of a better life,” he said in a statement.

    Meloni made stopping migrant boats a priority of her hard-right government. This week parliament approved new laws making it more difficult for NGOs to carry out rescues.

    In Vatican City on Sunday, in reference to the victims of the shipwreck, Pope Francis said: “I pray for each of them, for the missing, and for the other migrants who survived. I thank those who are helping them and those who are giving them assistance. May the Virgin Mary help these brothers and sisters.”

    Police officers standing at the beach where bodies were found. One survivor has been arrested on migrant trafficking charges.

    UNHCR records show that 11,874 people have arrived in Italy so far in 2023 by sea, with 678 of them arriving at Calabria.

    Typically, arrivals are from African countries, rather than the Middle East and Asia, with the majority of boats setting off from Libya.

    Only 8.3% of arrivals are from Pakistan, 6.7% from Afghanistan and 0.7% from Iran. The rest are primarily from Africa, with 17.3% of arrivals from Ivory Coast alone, 13.1% from Guinea. Other African nations, including North African countries, make up most of the rest.

    The most deadly migration route is the Central Mediterranean route, where at least 20,334 people have died since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project.

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  • A twisted tale of celebrity promotion, opaque transactions and allegations of racist tropes | CNN Business

    A twisted tale of celebrity promotion, opaque transactions and allegations of racist tropes | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Sitting across from Jimmy Fallon on “The Tonight Show,” Paris Hilton, wearing a sparkling neon green turtleneck dress and a high ponytail, looked at a picture of a glum cartoon ape and said it “reminds me of me.” The audience laughed. It did not look like her at all.

    Hilton and Fallon were chatting about their NFTs – non-fungible tokens, typically digital art bought with cryptocurrency – from the Bored Ape Yacht Club. The camera zoomed in on framed printouts of the ape cartoons. “We’re both apes,” Fallon said. Hilton, with her signature vocal fry, replied, “Love it.”

    “The Tonight Show” episode from January 2022 is a YouTube time capsule showing the temporary alliance between celebrity marketing and the crypto industry. Bored Ape Yacht Club was not the biggest crypto phenomenon, but it was one of the top beneficiaries of celebrity hype. That celebrity hype, in turn, helped draw new consumers to crypto — an industry rife with manipulation and fraud, and one that US regulators are now giving more scrutiny in the wake of the collapse of crypto exchange FTX. But for a time, when crypto’s prices seemed to have no limit, the money appeared too good for some to ask questions — questions like: Why are some of those apes wearing prison clothes?

    “That was a very significant moment, because the audience for that show is very different from the typical crypto person,” explained Molly White, a software engineer and a fellow at the Harvard Library Innovation Lab. The Bored Apes — a computer-generated collection of 10,000 cartoons — were being presented as a status symbol, membership in an exclusive club. Hilton, Fallon, and other celebrities had joined — and viewers could join, too, if they bought an NFT.

    A class action lawsuit, filed in December, alleges Hilton, Fallon, and other celebrities conspired in a “vast scheme” to artificially inflate the price of Bored Ape NFTs and enrich themselves, the crypto payments company they used to get the apes, MoonPay, and the company that made the Bored Apes, Yuga Labs.

    Hilton and Fallon did not respond to requests for comment.

    In April 2021, Yuga Labs released the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection of cartoon apes with a computer-generated combination of features and accessories, such as gold fur, a sailor hat, laser eyes, 3-D glasses, a cigarette, as well as “hip hop” clothes, a “pimp coat,” a prison jumpsuit, a pith helmet, and a “sushi chef” headband. The founders were anonymous, known only by their online screen names.

    That fall, Hollywood agent Guy Oseary reached out to Yuga Labs, eventually investing in the company and joining its board. Soon celebrities started posting their Bored Apes on social media — including Oseary’s client Madonna, along with Steph Curry, Lil Baby, DJ Khaled, Snoop Dogg, Gwyneth Paltrow, and more. Bored Apes started selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Justin Bieber bought an ape for $1.3 million. By March 2022, Yuga got a $450 million venture capital investment, and was valued at $4 billion.

    Guy Oseary and Madonna at a 2016 Billboard Women In Music event. Oseary said both bought NFTs from Bored Ape Yacht Club.

    The class action lawsuit claims, “this purported interest in” Bored Apes “by high-profile taste makers was entirely manufactured by Oseary at the behest of” Yuga Labs. “In order to make the promotion of, and subsequent interest in, the BAYC NFTs appear to be organic (as opposed to being solely the result of a paid promotion), the Company needed a way to discreetly pay their celebrity cohorts.” The suit alleges they did this through MoonPay.

    When Jimmy Fallon introduced his audience to crypto, he also presented a frictionless way to buy in: MoonPay, a payments company that allows customers to buy crypto through most major payment systems like with a credit card. In November 2021, Fallon said on “The Tonight Show” that he’d bought his first NFT through MoonPay. “MoonPay? MoonPay! I did my homework — Moonpay, which is like PayPal but for crypto,” Fallon said. The following January, when Hilton showed her ape on the show, she said, “You said you got it on MoonPay, so I went and I copied you.”

    A few months later, in April 2022, MoonPay announced more than 60 celebrities and influencers had invested in the firm. MoonPay spokesman Justin Hamilton told CNN that Hilton became an investor, but not until after she spoke with Fallon on “The Tonight Show.” The FTC generally requires an endorser to disclose when they have a financial interest in promoting a company.

    The celebrity hype and unbelievable prices generated enormous media interest. “Rolling Stone” minted NFTs of the magazine with Bored Apes on the cover. Guy Oseary was on the cover of “Variety” under the headline “NFT King.”

    Independent journalists, under the names of Coffeezilla and Dirty Bubble Media, noticed blockchain ledger records suggesting not everything was as it appeared. Cryptocurrency is traded on the blockchain, a permanent and public ledger of every transaction. That means it can reveal financial relationships, if you figure out the right questions to ask.

    Hours before Justin Bieber bought an ape for the equivalent of $1.3 million on January 29, 2022, Bieber received Ethereum worth about $2.5 million in his crypto wallet, the blockchain shows. A couple weeks before Post Malone released a music video in November 2021 in which he bought a Bored Ape through MoonPay, MoonPay transferred cryptocurrency then worth about $760,000 into the artist’s wallet, and sent two more payments, worth about $640,000, a couple weeks after. MoonPay admits it paid for the placement in Post Malone’s video but says other celebrities paid full price for their service in US dollars.

    Many celebrities who got apes thanked MoonPay on social media. Gwyneth Paltrow tweeted, “Joined @BoredApeYC ready for the reveal? Thanks @moonpay concierge.” The rapper Gunna posted on Instagram, “I Bought A @boredapeyachtclub NFT worth 300K No Cap ! His Name is BUTTA Thanks @moonpay !” Lil Baby mentioned MoonPay in his song “Top Priority.”

    The blockchain shows MoonPay paying high prices for the apes, and then transferring them to purported celebrity wallets for free. MoonPay explains this as a service that helps wealthy people buy NFTs without setting up their own crypto wallet.

    The company says the “white-glove” service was created because MoonPay’s CEO, Ivan Soto-Wright, had a lot of celebrity friends, and many of them asked how they could get an NFT. Jimmy Fallon, Lil Baby — they were Soto-Wright’s friends, Hamilton said.

    CNN spoke to several former MoonPay employees who said they were skeptical the celebrities paid for their NFTs, because there was no evidence on the blockchain.

    The company’s ape purchases have been significant. Since 2021, one of its wallets, “MoonPayHQ,” has spent at least $25 million on NFTs — 60% or about $15 million of that was spent on Bored Apes. The company told CNN they had 14 apes in a cold storage wallet, which offers more safety. It said that five of those NFTs were “purchased by concierge clients that are in the process of being transferred.” The last ape was purchased in April 2022, 10 months ago, according to blockchain records.

    One influencer has said he was approached about an ape. In a Twitter Spaces audio chat last year, celebrity jeweler Ben Baller said, “Real talk: not once, not twice, three times, I’ve been offered a Bored Ape through MoonPay. … The fact that some of these super top-tier all-star NBA players have them? And I was like, ‘Yo this is all cap [lies.]’ They didn’t buy this sh*t.” Baller did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. MoonPay’s spokesman said this didn’t happen.

    Oseary, the Hollywood agent and MoonPay/Yuga investor, texted CNN in response to a question: “NO ONE is paid to join the club and Yuga do NOT and have NOT given away any apes.” He said he paid full price for his Bored Ape, and so did Madonna.

    Yuga Labs declined an on-the-record interview with CNN. In a statement, the company said, “In our view, these claims are opportunistic and parasitic. We strongly believe that they are without merit, and look forward to proving as much.” Hamilton, MoonPay’s spokesman, said of the lawsuit, “We look forward to it being dismissed.”

    “The fine art market is a scam – that’s OK, at least there’s art going on,” said Max Gail, who’s been a blockchain developer since 2010, and founded Omakasea and Eth Gobblers.com. (Gail hosted the Twitter Space in which Baller discussed Bored Apes.) The NFT market, he said, “is like a parody of the fine art market. They took the same strategies that had been employed in the fine art market, but then distorted it with some strange crypto economics.”

    Anonymous buyers and sellers dealing in items whose values are difficult to calculate has made the fine art market susceptible to money laundering, a Senate investigation found in 2020. In 2022, an average of more than half of NFT trading volume on the Ethereum blockchain was “wash” trading, according to an analysis at Dune Analytics. (Most NFTs are on Ethereum.) Essentially, wash trades are a transaction in which the buyer and seller are the same person, or they’re working together. Wash trading has been illegal in traditional finance since the Great Depression, because it can distort the market by making people believe there is a high volume of interest in the investment. The ability to open many anonymous cryptocurrency wallets makes wash trading NFTs easier. A Chainalysis report found one “prolific NFT wash trader” made 830 sales to self-financed wallets in 2021.

    Though NFTs have been celebrated as the future of digital art, and a way for artists to earn royalties, many NFT collections operate more like securities — a financial instrument, like stocks or bonds, that hold some monetary value. “People will say that the technology itself has provided this whole new way of creating digital art,” Harvard’s Molly White said. “It’s not that unique. The unique part of it is the speculative bubble.”

    Mad Dog Jones' SHIFT// goes on view as part of 'Natively Digital: A Curated NFT Sale' at Sotheby's in June 2021. NFTs have been celebrated as the future of digital art.

    The NFT marketplace does not always make sense even to those who benefit from it. “Bored Apes have gone from $100 to $100,000 in a year. Nothing appreciates that fast,” a successful NFT artist said. The artist’s own works had gone from a couple hundred dollars to tens of thousands. One of the artist’s major collectors “treats me as a commodity and my art is a commodity and he’s always pumping and dumping it. … It’s being treated as a financial vehicle.”

    But there is pressure not to raise questions about the system. The NFT artist did not want to go on the record, saying it would be career suicide. “The big collectors watch for artists that FUD. And as soon as an artist FUDs, they get cancelled,” the artist said. FUD is “fear, uncertainty, and doubt,” or criticism of crypto.

    Beyond how the Bored Ape NFTs are traded, what they depict is at issue in yet another Yuga Labs legal battle.

    In the fall of 2021, accusations began swirling on social media that the Bored Ape Yacht Club contained visual references to racist memes from the troll site, 4chan. The artist Ryder Ripps — who’s worked with stars like Kanye West and Tame Impala — started tweeting about the claims of racist imagery. Ripps claims Guy Oseary, the Hollywood agent on Yuga’s board, called to pressure him to stop talking about the claims. (Oseary told CNN, “I can’t speak on active litigation.”)

    Ripps doubled down and made a website cataloging the claims. Then, in an act he says was meant to protest the alleged racism and comment on the idea you can’t copy an NFT, Ripps made copycat NFTs he sold as RR/BAYC. Yuga sued Ripps for trademark infringement, and argues that his maligning of the Yuga apes is nothing more than a profiteering tactic. Ripps says Yuga is trying to silence its critics, and has doubled down on his claims as part of his defense in the trademark suit.

    Yuga Labs called the accusations “the incoherent ramblings of a small group of for-profit conspiracy theorists.” However, the Yuga lawsuit against Ripps could affect the class action lawsuit against Yuga. Ripps’s lawyers have issued subpoenas to Paris Hilton and Jimmy Fallon.

    To assert its trademark rights, Yuga must show that consumers associate its logos with its products, and it did so in a legal filing, in part, by pointing to celebrity owners “including TV host Jimmy Fallon…”

    Ripps’s lawyer, Louis Tompros, asserts Yuga compensated celebrities for promoting its NFTs, and they did not disclose it. “And by doing that, in our view, they have gotten this public notoriety for their brand improperly,” Tompros told CNN. “And so having gotten it improperly, they now can’t go and assert that they have these rights.”

    This week Yuga co-founder Wylie Aronow published a 24-page letter explaining that he was stepping back from the company and addressing widespread rumors that the company and its products were connected to the alt-right.

    “I will soon call out this utter bullsh*t under oath,” he wrote.

    So what are the racist references alleged by Ripps and others? To start, there’s what’s right on the surface: some of the NFTs are pictures of apes in “hip hop” clothes, a “pimp coat,” a prison uniform, a bone necklace, gold and diamond grills. Record executive Dame Dash, a crypto enthusiast, pointed out on a podcast last year that monkeys and apes are old racist tropes.

    “Think if you were a racist, like ‘Guess what I’m gonna do? I’mma get Black people to love monkeys so much that they gonna buy them, wear them on their neck… go to something called ApeFest and they’re gonna like it!’ Wouldn’t that sound funny?” Dash said on the podcast. “That’s what’s happening.”

    Dash told CNN he hadn’t intended to target Yuga directly. But he’d started to wonder if he was being trolled, given the ubiquity of apes in crypto. “Racism is different these days — you can’t be so overt about it. You have to kind of troll,” Dash said.

    This week Yuga agreed to settle a lawsuit with a developer who worked with Ripps, with the developer agreeing to pay them $25,000 and saying he would reject all disparaging statements against Yuga Labs.

    Ryan Hickman, a software engineer who also worked with Ripps on RR/BAYC, is also being sued separately by Yuga. Hickman, who is Black, thought the Bored Apes looked like stereotypical portrayals of Black people as stupid or lazy. He said he thought this would be obvious to most people the second they saw an image of a Bored Ape. But, he said, “then somebody says, ‘Well, it’s worth $100,000.’ They say, ‘Okay well, tell me more.’”

    In a statement, Yuga said, “Our company and founders strongly condemn the spread of hate, in any form, against any group.” Hollywood agent Oseary said he’d never been on the troll site 4chan.

    The crypto community has adopted a lot of terms — rekt, frens, wagmi — that were popularized on 4chan, and it’s not always clear if the person using them understands where they came from. “I doubt that they were a massive alt-right troll campaign,” Harvard’s Molly White said. “I do think it’s likely that the creators of the project basically included some nods to 4chan.”

    “It’s not one thing that makes it racist. It’s everything together as a package,” programmer and 8chan founder Fredrick Brennan said, looking at comparisons between Pepe the Frog memes and Bored Apes. Brennan took an interest in the claims that Yuga referenced 4chan memes, because he’d seen them so often when he was running 8chan, a similar troll site. He quit 8chan in 2016, and in 2019 pushed for it to be taken down because it had become a hub for extremist violence. He began to suspect the Yuga founders were like the people he used to know.

    Take one of the apes’ characteristics, which Yuga calls a “sushi chef headband.” Brennan reads and speaks Japanese, and saw the headband actually said “kamikaze,” which has been used as a slur against Japanese people. A similar headband appeared on a Pepe meme. “That one was the most shocking,” he told CNN.

    In a legal filing connected to the Ripps case, Yuga said the apes reflected a combination of many traits, “not any person’s purported racism.”

    “I was hoping, in my eternal optimism,” Brennan said, “that people would become a lot more skeptical of tech bros. … And that liberal — so-called — celebrities in Hollywood would view these people with suspicion. Apparently not.”

    – CORRECTION: This story has been updated to clarify when Paris Hilton invested in MoonPay. Jimmy Fallon is not an investor, a company spokesman said.

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  • Russian warship armed with hypersonic missiles to train with Chinese, South African navies | CNN

    Russian warship armed with hypersonic missiles to train with Chinese, South African navies | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A Russian warship armed with advanced hypersonic missiles completed a drill in the Atlantic Ocean, ahead of joint naval exercises with the Chinese and South African navies scheduled for next month, the Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday.

    Russia’s Admiral Gorshkov frigate, armed with Zircon hypersonic missiles, practiced “delivering a missile strike against an enemy surface target,” the ship’s commander Igor Krokhmal said in a video released by the ministry.

    The exercise, described by state news agency Tass as an “electronic launch” or virtual simulation, confirmed the “designed characteristics” of the missile system, said Krokhmal, who pointed to the missiles’ purported ability to reach distances of more than 900 kilometers (559 miles).

    The test was part of a long voyage of the Admiral Gorshkov frigate launched earlier this month, when Russian state media said the warship was dispatched with the hypersonic missiles. The deployment will also include joint training with the Chinese and South African navies off the coast of South Africa, according to Moscow and Pretoria.

    The exercises come as Russia nears the first anniversary of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and marks both a show of force and – with the joint exercises – an opportunity for Moscow to show it is not isolated on the world stage, despite wide international condemnation of its unprovoked war.

    The White House on Monday said the US “has concerns about any country … exercising with Russia while Russia wages a brutal war against Ukraine.”

    US Coast Guard says this ship off Hawaii coast is a Russian spy ship

    During a joint meeting in Pretoria Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his South African counterpart Naledi Pandor defended the naval drills, with Lavrov saying Moscow does not want any so-called “scandals” regarding the exercises.

    Pandor, who posed alongside Lavrov while smiling and shaking hands, claimed it is normal practice for all countries to conduct military exercises with “friends worldwide.”

    “There should be no compulsion on any country, that it should conduct them with any other partner. It’s part of a natural course of relations between countries,” she added, without explicitly referencing criticism leveled at South Africa for its refusal to condemn Russia’s invasion.

    In a separate statement detailing the joint exercises, which run February 17-27, South Africa’s Defense Department said that “contrary to the assertions” from critics, South Africa “was not abandoning its neutral position on the Russian-Ukraine conflict” and “continues to urge both parties to engage in dialogue as a solution to the current conflict.”

    China has not made a statement directly confirming its participation, but its Ministry of Defense website on Monday posted an article from state news agency Xinhua referencing South Africa’s announcement of the drills. China is celebrating a week-long Lunar New Year holiday.

    The US has repeatedly warned Beijing – which has a close strategic partnership with Moscow – against providing material support to the Russian army in its war in Ukraine.

    The Biden administration recently raised concerns with China about evidence it has suggesting that Chinese companies have sold non-lethal equipment to Russia for use in Ukraine, though it was not clear whether Beijing was aware of the purported transactions.

    The joint maritime exercise is expected to include some 350 South African National Defense Force personnel participating alongside their Russian and Chinese counterparts, according to South Africa. An earlier exercise between the three navies took place in 2019.

    It’s the first time that the drills will include the Admiral Gorshkov frigate carrying Zircon hypersonic missiles, which were first tested in late 2021.

    The long-range weapons, which Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month said had “no analogues in any country in the world,” travel more than five times the speed of sound and are harder to detect and intercept.

    The frigate was actively involved in testing the missiles, designed and produced by the Research and Production Association of Machine-Building, part of Russia’s Tactical Missiles Corporation, according to Tass.

    It’s current deployment, initiated January 4, was expected to see the ship transit through the Mediterranean Sea and into the Indian Ocean, Tass reported at the time.

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  • Cargo ship capsizes off Japan’s coast with 22 aboard | CNN

    Cargo ship capsizes off Japan’s coast with 22 aboard | CNN

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    Tokyo
    CNN
     — 

    Nine crew members remain missing after a cargo ship capsized off Japan’s Nagasaki prefecture on Wednesday, the Japan Coast Guard told CNN.

    The coast guard said it received a distress signal from the Hong Kong-flagged vessel Jin Tian late on Tuesday night as it cruised 110 kilometers (68 miles) west of the Danjo Islands in the East China Sea with a crew of 22 people aboard.

    The crew – 14 Chinese and eight Myanmar nationals – are believed to have been transferred to lifeboats before rough seas impacted their rescue, the Japan Coast Guard said.

    Thirteen crew members have been rescued so far – five by commercial vessels cruising nearby, two by Japan Air Self-Defense Force helicopters and six by the South Korean maritime police, the Japan Coast Guard said.

    The coast guard said the Jin Tian had been expected to reach the port of Incheon, South Korea, on Wednesday. It left Malaysia’s Port Klang in early December, according to tracking site MarineTraffic.

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  • Cruise ship rescues 17 migrants from vessel near the Bahamas | CNN

    Cruise ship rescues 17 migrants from vessel near the Bahamas | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Seventeen migrants were taken onboard a Royal Caribbean cruise ship Saturday after it encountered a small vessel adrift on its way to the Bahamas, according to a statement from the cruise line.

    The Liberty of the Seas was sailing to the Bahamas when it encountered a small vessel adrift and in need of assistance, according to Royal Caribbean officials.

    “The ship’s crew immediately launched a rescue operation, safely bringing 17 people onboard. The crew provided them with medical attention and is working closely with the United States Coast Guard,” the statement said.

    RacQuelle Major-Holland, a passenger on the cruise liner, told CNN the captain made an announcement their ship was diverting from its path to Nassau to see whether the small boat needed help.

    “He shared there appeared to be people onboard and he mentioned the maritime law that ships have to check in and rescue if needed,” Major-Holland said Monday.

    She said the small boat was hard to see at first but within about 45 minutes of the announcement, the people were onboard the Liberty of the Seas.

    “The individuals on the boat were waving and … they were smiling and happy to be rescued,” said Major-Holland, a travel blogger from Pickerington, Ohio.

    Video that Major-Holland recorded shows the boat getting closer to the ship. The tiny craft has just a few oars and a piece of tattered green fabric from what appears to be a makeshift flagpole.

    Officials didn’t identify what country the people in the boat were from, but the rescue comes during a surge of Cubans and Haitians attempting to make it to the United States.

    It isn’t new for cruise ships traveling near Florida to come upon boats of migrants. But a series of recent rescues and social media posts about them have brought a fresh wave of attention to these dramatic moments at sea and the migration crisis behind them.

    The small boat in this case was in Bahamian waters and the people onboard reported there was another vessel out as well, a spokesperson from the US Coast Guard District Seven told CNN.

    Because of the location of the vessels, the Bahamian authorities are leading the investigation with assistance from the Coast Guard.

    CNN has reached out to the Bahamian Defense Force for additional information.

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  • US carrier strike group begins operating in South China Sea as tensions with China simmer | CNN Politics

    US carrier strike group begins operating in South China Sea as tensions with China simmer | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A US carrier strike group began operating in the South China Sea on Thursday, the Navy announced, amid heightened tensions with Beijing, which claims much of the body of water as its sovereign territory.

    Two Chinese ships are already tailing the US group, a defense official told CNN, which consists of an aircraft carrier, a guided missile cruiser, and three guided missile destroyers.

    The Nimitz Carrier Strike Group, which has lethal and non-lethal capabilities from “space to undersea, across every axis, and every domain,” according to its commander, entered the South China Sea for the first time as part of its current deployment.

    The deployment comes as the US military bolsters its presence in the region in an effort to deter China, which is undergoing a rapid modernization and expansion of its own military and nuclear capabilities.

    This week, the US and Japan announced a bolstered US Marine presence in Okinawa, which would have advanced intelligence and anti-ship capabilities. The two allies also announced a series of other initiatives designed to bring the militaries closer together in the face of what they see as China’s growing assertiveness in the region.

    “We share a common vision with Japan to maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific and all the things that we’re doing, you know, point towards that direction,” said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Wednesday, speaking with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and their Japanese counterparts in Washington.

    Three weeks ago, a Chinese J-11 fighter jet intercepted a US RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft over the South China Sea in what the US called an “unsafe maneuver.” The RC-135 Rivet Joint was forced to take evasive action, the US said, when the Chinese jet closed to within 20 feet of the larger, slower reconnaissance jet.

    The People’s Liberation Army fired back with their own account of the interception, claiming it was the US aircraft that had “abruptly changed its flight attitude” with a “dangerous approaching maneuver,” despite a Chinese military video showing nothing of the sort.

    The encounter underscored the inherent tensions related to the South China Sea, where Beijing has used its own artificial militarized islands to advance a claim of sovereignty not recognized by the US or its allies.

    The Chinese Navy routines tails US warships operating in the South China Sea, even claiming on occasion that it drove away the US vessels after they have left the disputed waters.

    In November, China claimed that it forced the USS Chancellorsville out of the South China Sea after it “illegally entered” the waters without Beijing’s approval, which showed the “US is a true producer of security risks” in the region.

    The US responded bluntly, calling the Chinese account “false” and the “latest in a long string of (People’s Republic of China) actions to misrepresent lawful US maritime operations and assert its excessive and illegitimate maritime claims at the expense of its Southeast Asian neighbors.”

    The US guided missile cruiser was operating in the South China Sea as part of a freedom of navigation operation under international law, the Navy said.

    “All nations, large and small, should be secure in their sovereignty, free from coercion, and able to pursue economic growth consistent with accepted international rules and norms,” the US said at the time.

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  • War game suggests Chinese invasion of Taiwan would fail at a huge cost to US, Chinese and Taiwanese militaries | CNN Politics

    War game suggests Chinese invasion of Taiwan would fail at a huge cost to US, Chinese and Taiwanese militaries | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A Chinese invasion of Taiwan in 2026 would result in thousands of casualties among Chinese, United States, Taiwanese and Japanese forces, and it would be unlikely to result in a victory for Beijing, according to a prominent independent Washington think tank, which conducted war game simulations of a possible conflict that is preoccupying military and political leaders in Asia and Washington.

    A war over Taiwan could leave a victorious US military in as crippled a state as the Chinese forces it defeated.

    At the end of the conflict, at least two US aircraft carriers would lie at the bottom of the Pacific and China’s modern navy, which is the largest in the world, would be in “shambles.”

    Those are among the conclusions the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), made after running what it claims is one of the most extensive war-game simulations ever conducted on a possible conflict over Taiwan, the democratically ruled island of 24 million that the Chinese Communist Party claims as part of its sovereign territory despite never having controlled it.

    Chinese leader Xi Jinping has refused to rule out the use of military force to bring the island under Beijing’s control.

    CNN reviewed an advance copy of the report – titled “The First Battle of the Next War” – on the two dozen war scenarios run by CSIS, which said the project was necessary because previous government and private war simulations have been too narrow or too opaque to give the public and policymakers a true look at how conflict across the Taiwan Strait might play out.

    “There’s no unclassified war game out there looking at the US-China conflict,” said Mark Cancian, one of the three project leaders and a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Of the games that are unclassified, they’re usually only done once or twice.”

    CSIS ran this war game 24 times to answer two fundamental questions: would the invasion succeed and at what cost?

    The likely answers to those two questions are no and enormous, the CSIS report said.

    “The United States and Japan lose dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and thousands of service members. Such losses would damage the US global position for many years,” the report said. In most scenarios, the US Navy lost two aircraft carriers and 10 to 20 large surface combatants. Approximately 3,200 US troops would be killed in three weeks of combat, nearly half of what the US lost in two decades of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    “China also suffers heavily. Its navy is in shambles, the core of its amphibious forces is broken, and tens of thousands of soldiers are prisoners of war,” it said. The report estimated China would suffer about 10,000 troops killed and lose 155 combat aircraft and 138 major ships.

    Japan expands defense of its southern front line to counter China (April 2022)

    The scenarios paint a bleak future for Taiwan, even if a Chinese invasion doesn’t succeed.

    “While Taiwan’s military is unbroken, it is severely degraded and left to defend a damaged economy on an island without electricity and basic services,” the report. The island’s army would suffer about 3,500 casualties, and all 26 destroyers and frigates in its navy will be sunk, the report said.

    Japan is likely to lose more than 100 combat aircraft and 26 warships while US military bases on its home territory come under Chinese attack, the report found.

    But CSIS said it did not want its report to imply a war over Taiwan “is inevitable or even probable.”

    “The Chinese leadership might adopt a strategy of diplomatic isolation, gray zone pressure, or economic coercion against Taiwan,” it said.

    Dan Grazier, a senior defense policy fellow at the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), sees an outright Chinese invasion of Taiwan as extremely unlikely. Such a military operation would immediately disrupt the imports and exports upon which the Chinese economy relies for its very survival, Grazier told CNN, and interrupting this trade risks the collapse of the Chinese economy in short order. China relies on imports of food and fuel to drive their economic engine, Grazier said, and they have little room to maneuver.

    “The Chinese are going to do everything they can in my estimation to avoid a military conflict with anybody,” Grazier said. To challenge the United States for global dominance, they’ll use industrial and economic power instead of military force.

    But Pentagon leaders have labeled China as America’s “pacing threat,” and last year’s China Military Power report mandated by Congress said “the PLA increased provocative and destabilizing actions in and around the Taiwan Strait, to include increased flights into Taiwan’s claimed air defense identification zone and conducting exercises focused on the potential seizure of one of Taiwan’s outlying islands.”

    In August, the visit of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the island prompted a wide-ranging display of PLA military might, which included sending missiles over the island as well as into the waters of Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

    Since then, Beijing has stepped up aggressive military pressure tactics on the island, sending fighter jets across the median line of the Taiwan Strait, the body of water separating Taiwan and China and into the island’s air defense identification zone – a buffer of airspace commonly referred to as an ADIZ.

    And speaking about Taiwan at the 20th Chinese Communist Party Congress in October, Chinese leader Xi Jinping won large applause when he said China would “strive for peaceful reunification” — but then gave a grim warning, saying “we will never promise to renounce the use of force and we reserve the option of taking all measures necessary.”

    The Biden administration has been steadfast in its support for the island as provided by the Taiwan Relations Act, which said Washington will provide the island with the means to defend itself without committing US troops to that defense.

    The recently signed National Defense Authorization Act commits the US to a program to modernize Taiwan’s military and provides for $10 billion of security assistance over five years, a strong sign of long-term bipartisan support for the island.

    Biden, however, has said more than once that US military personnel would defend Taiwan if the Chinese military were to launch an invasion, even as the Pentagon has insisted there is no change in Washington’s “One China” policy.

    Under the “One China” policy, the US acknowledges China’s position that Taiwan is part of China, but has never officially recognized Beijing’s claim to the self-governing island.

    “Wars happen even when objective analysis might indicate that the attacker might not be successful,” said Cancian.

    The CSIS report said for US troops to prevent China from ultimately taking control of Taiwan, there were four constants that emerged among the 24 war game iterations it ran:

    Taiwan’s ground forces must be able to contain Chinese beachheads; the US must be able to use its bases in Japan for combat operations; the US must have long-range anti-ship missiles to hit the PLA Navy from afar and “en masse”; and the US needs to fully arm Taiwan before shooting starts and jump into any conflict with its own forces immediately.

    “There is no ‘Ukraine model’ for Taiwan,” the report said, referring to how US and Western aid slowly trickled in to Ukraine well after Russia’s invasion of its neighbor started and no US or NATO troops are actively fighting against Russia.

    “Once the war begins, it’s impossible to get any troops or supplies onto Taiwan, so it’s a very different situation from Ukraine where the United States and its allies have been able to send supplies continuously to Ukraine,” said Cancian. “Whatever the Taiwanese are going to fight the war with, they have to have that when the war begins.”

    Washington will need to begin acting soon if it’s to meet some of the CSIS recommendations for success in a Taiwan conflict, the think tank said.

    Those include, fortifying US bases in Japan and Guam against Chinese missile attacks; moving its naval forces to smaller and more survivable ships; prioritizing submarines; prioritizing sustainable bomber forces over fighter forces; but producing more cheaper fighters; and pushing Taiwan toward a similar strategy, arming itself with more simple weapons platforms rather than expensive ships that are unlikely to survive a Chinese first strike.

    Those policies would make winning less costly for the US military, but the toll would still be high, the CSIS report said.

    “The United States might win a pyrrhic victory, suffering more in the long run than the ‘defeated’ Chinese.”

    “Victory is not everything,” the report said.

    China Amb Nicholas Burns vpx

    Breakdown in US-China relations a ‘manufactured crisis,’ US ambassador says (August 2022)

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