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SKorea’s few hours of martial law

South Korea’s leader lifted martial law Wednesday just hours after imposing it, following massive protests and swift political repudiation. In a surreal scene that played out overnight in Seoul, President Yoon Suk Yeol accused the opposition, which controls the parliament, of plotting an “insurgency” and sympathizing with North Korea. Lawmakers clashed with authorities as they tried to bypass police barricades set up outside the national legislature, where they eventually overturned Yoon’s surprise declaration, in a strong rebuke of the unpopular president. The won tumbled and South Korean stocks took a hit amid the drama, with a Globe and Mail columnist describing Yoon as a Donald Trump-inspired figure, whose actions seem to be “his January 6 taking place.”

China’s latest chip retaliation

Four Chinese tech and auto industry bodies called on their members to be wary of US chips and buy locally instead, in Beijing’s latest retaliation over Washington’s restrictions. Analysts said the rare coordinated response, which came a day after the Biden administration added more Chinese semiconductor companies to a trade blacklist, could hurt Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Intel, which all do business in China. “It seems pretty clear that now the gloves are off,” an expert at Trivium China said. The industry group directives are non-binding, but are typically obeyed as government orders. Chinese state media outlet Global Times wrote that in the global semiconductor race, the US is “a ship that has veered off course, posing significant risks to other vessels.”

Mexico vulnerable to Trump tariffs

Mexico’s position in North American trade will be more vulnerable in Donald Trump’s second term, analysts warned. While Trump’s first-term tariff threats against Mexico amounted to mostly bluster, investors shouldn’t shrug off his plan to impose a 25% duty on Mexican goods, the Financial Times’ Latin America editor wrote. This time, Trump is more determined and radical, he argued, as another expert said Mexico’s new leader is not “reading the room” on US cooperation. Mexico’s trade surplus with the US makes it a target, and “it’s hard to see Trump letting the status quo persist,” Reuters wrote. But a Mexico City-based expert argued that the country could push for closer US ties by leveraging its relationship with China.

Amazon announces new megacomputer

Amazon and artificial intelligence company Anthropic are building a massive cluster of computers that dwarfs the processing power used to build current AI models. While large language models are typically trained under one roof, this project, dubbed “Rainier,” is spread across multiple US locations and connected to act as one gigantic computer, Semafor tech editor Reed Albergotti reported. The announcement bucks the notion that the improvement of AI models is slowing, and pulls back the curtain on how much these endeavors cost, Albergotti wrote: Amazon expects its capital expenditures to hit $75 billion in 2024. Much of that is going to AI data centers, which are “among the most ambitious and expensive bets the big tech companies have ever made.”

Anime merch sparks craze in China

China’s obsession with buying anime-inspired collectibles is being felt in the country’s stock markets, Sixth Tone reported. Children and adults are spending big on trading cards, badges, posters, dolls, and toys, sparking a boom in the multibillion-dollar market known as “second dimension,” which encompasses the subcultures of anime, comics, and manga. Companies in the sector are rushing to list on Chinese stock markets, though their shares are volatile, prompting some firms to urge investor caution. The trend is fueled by young people’s fear of missing out: “Sometimes I think if others are buying so much, I also need to prove myself by buying more,” a college student said.

Uber expands India bus service

Uber is expanding its shared bus service in India, hoping to offer respite to commuters in a country with some of the world’s worst traffic. Uber Shuttle — which was developed by the company’s India-based teams and operates in more than 20 cities globally — aims to complement existing public transit, with 300 routes in the capital of Delhi alone, and plans to expand in Hyderabad, Mumbai, and the tech hub of Bengaluru, Rest of World reported. Reducing congestion and emissions is seen as key to India’s goal of becoming a developed nation by 2047, and Delhi recently stepped up road checks to ensure vehicles meet emission standards. But ironically, those measures have increased traffic congestion and exacerbated emissions, The Times of India wrote.

India signs large deal for academic access

The Indian government bought subscriptions to 13,000 academic journals, allowing researchers and students to access their content through a single portal. India is the third-largest producer of research in the world. But journals charge high subscription fees, making access unaffordable for most Indian academics. The $715 million, three-year deal is the largest of its kind: The UK and Germany have similar but much smaller agreements with individual publishers. While many researchers cheered the move, saying it would enhance work at India’s universities and institutes, some believe the ultimate goal is to force journals into open-access business models that do not hide research behind a paywall. “At best, this is a short-term measure,” one researcher told Science.

Carlyle Co-Chairman David Rubenstein, Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin, former US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, and KKR Co-Chairman Henry Kravis will serve as co-chairs of Semafor’s World Economy Summit on April 23-25, 2025, in Washington, DC.

The third annual event will bring together US cabinet officials, global finance ministers, central bankers, and Fortune 500 CEOs for conversations that cut through the political noise to dive into the most pressing issues facing the world economy.

Join the waitlist for more information and access to priority registration

Hit Ukraine game shaped by war

The latest installment of Ukraine’s most famous video game has been heavily influenced by the war. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl was delayed two years, with many of its developers deploying to the frontlines. While the Ukraine war isn’t featured in the game, “the experience of the battlefield carries over,” Foreign Policy wrote in its review. The game sold more than 1 million copies in two days, which may reflect “support for a country under siege.” The video game’s design exemplifies an Eastern European tradition known as “Eurojank” or “Slavjank,” which focuses more on character interactions than presentation.

North Korea bans two SK staples

Pyongyang has banned two South Korean dishes over fears of its neighbor’s spreading cultural influence. Budae-jjigae, a spicy stew, and tteokbokki, sauce-covered rice cakes, were brought into North Korea in 2017 via Chinese-owned restaurants. South Korean culture, including “movies and TV shows, clothing and hairstyles, slang, humor and even dance moves,” has been creeping into the North in recent years thanks to videos and images on smuggled thumb drives, Radio Free Asia reported, and Pyongyang passed a law against “reactionary” thought in 2020 to stop it. While the two dishes are inexpensive in the South — budae-jjigae means “army base stew” and was originally made using leftover US Army food like hot dogs and Spam — they are considered luxuries in the North.

EU downgrades protection for wolves

Grey wolves lost their “strictly protected” status in the European Union, allowing for the possibility of culls. Forty-five years of the rule led wolf numbers to rise: The European Commission estimates the number in the bloc has almost doubled since 2012, to 20,000. One Romanian shepherd told the BBC he loses five or six sheep to wolves and bears each year. Wolves are now merely “protected,” meaning countries can choose to set cull quotas. But wildlife experts say culling would be a mistake. Wolves keep the deer numbers down, preventing damage to forests. And culling could leave more lone wolves, which find it harder to hunt wild prey and so are more likely to attack livestock.

Dec. 4:

• The UN’s humanitarian body launches its global needs assessment for 2025.
• The German Chamber of Commerce in China releases its annual Business Confidence Survey.
• A documentary about double bassist Orin O’Brien, The Only Girl in the Orchestra, premieres on Netflix.

An exhibition at London’s Tate Modern examines how artists used machines and algorithms to create work in the pre-internet age. Spanning the period from the postwar boom of the 1950s to the 1990s, with the World Wide Web about to enter millions of homes, Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet is full of “coursing, pulsing, propulsive, seductive energies,” The New York Times wrote. From mathematically generated psychedelic landscapes to radical artists using early home computers to imagine the future, the exhibition gestures both to possible utopias as well as tech’s dark underbelly, The Times wrote, citing an early media theorist’s caution that “we look at the present through a rearview mirror. We march backward into the future.”

Riyadh, a city known for its worsening gridlock, has finally launched its 85-station metro system, Semafor’s Sarah Dadouch reported. A construction boom over the last six years has transformed traffic jams into “endless nightmares,” she wrote, but Riyadh’s drivers are less than hopeful that the opening of the metro will solve the problem in the long term.