Flagship

Israel warns war could last months

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarized, and Palestinian society must be deradicalized” before Israel’s assault on Gaza would cease. Only when those three “prerequisites for peace” are achieved, Netanyahu wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, can “Gaza be rebuilt.” The head of the Israeli army also said the war would last “many months.” With the conflict at risk of becoming a “multifront war,” Israel “will need to scale back its objectives,” Daniel Byman, an international-relations scholar, wrote in Foreign Policy. “It may need to settle for regular raids on and deterrence with Hamas and a chaotic situation in Gaza,” he said.

Intel’s $25B Israel investment

Intel will invest $25 billion expanding its chip-making factory in Israel after being granted $3.2 billion in incentives by the Israeli government. Intel is trying to make up ground on its chief competitors, Nvidia and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., and also to diversify its supply chain outside East Asia, which dominates the market. Its Kiryat Gat site already employs 11,700 people in Israel. The investment is a major boost for Israel’s government: Its ongoing assault on Gaza has led to calls for a boycott, and Washington, while remaining supportive, is applying pressure on Israel to increase restraint. Intel’s investment, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the “largest ever” by a foreign company in the country, represents a large vote of confidence.

Iran boosts nuclear-fuel output

Iran tripled its output of near-weapons-grade uranium over the past three months. Under a back-channel deal with the U.S. last year, Tehran agreed to reduce its output of enriched uranium in exchange for the unfreezing of assets. But after the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas, which is funded by Iran, tensions with Washington increased, Semafor’s Jay Solomon reported. Since then, Iran-backed groups in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq have launched attacks on U.S. interests, and the nuclear compromise appears to have fallen apart. The International Atomic Energy Agency said that since November, Iran has upped its output from 6lb to 18lb of 60%-enriched uranium a month, and is dangerously close to the 90% purity required for nuclear weapons.

Fusion lab regularly achieving ignition

A U.S. nuclear research facility can now regularly achieve fusion “ignition.” The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory won headlines in 2022 for successfully making a fusion reaction “ignite,” or put out more energy than it directly consumed, after 10 years of trying. Now it has done the same thing at least three times out of five more attempts, proving the original to be no fluke. It’s still a long way from here to a commercial fusion reactor connected to the power grid — the LLNL’s lasers are inefficient, meaning the total energy used hugely outstrips the output — but “We now know it will work,” one scientist told Nature. As a result, the U.S. Department of Energy is establishing three new fusion research centers.

China sanction threat to Taiwan

Beijing threatened Taiwan with increased sanctions if Taipei “stubbornly” continued to support independence. Taiwan’s presidential elections on Jan. 13 will take place in the shadow of increasing pressure from China: Chinese leader Xi Jinping reiterated his support for “reunification” at an event Tuesday celebrating the 130th anniversary of Mao Zedong’s birth. The Chinese government, which views Taiwan as a breakaway province, dislikes the island’s pro-independence ruling party that is again leading the polls. It’s another escalation in a growing war of words: Earlier this month Taipei accused Beijing of economic coercion after it increased import tariffs, while Beijing said Taipei had violated the terms of a trade deal.

Semafor’s 2024 World Economy Summit, on April 17-18, will feature conversations with global policymakers and power brokers in Washington, against the backdrop of the IMF and World Bank meetings.

Chaired by former U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein, and in partnership with BCG, the summit will feature 150 speakers across two days and three different stages. Join Semafor for conversations with the people shaping the global economy.

BYD on course to overtake Tesla

China’s BYD is poised to overtake Tesla as the world’s biggest electric-vehicle seller. It’s another sign of China’s growing clout in the automotive industry: Chinese automakers have long dominated the huge Chinese market, but the country now rivals Japan as the world’s biggest car exporter, having overtaken Germany, South Korea, and the U.S. in recent years. And of the 3.6 million cars it exported in 2023, 1.3 million were electric. BYD began by making “no-frills econoboxes,” Bloomberg reported, but as its sales have grown, so has its confidence: Its most expensive mode, the Yangwang U8 SUV, retails at $150,000.

Congo opposition to protest polls

Opposition candidates in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s chaotic presidential elections planned on marching today in Kinshasa despite a government ban on protests. Organizers claimed last week’s election was a fraud, rife with irregularities and state meddling. “We are going to protest because we can’t accept another electoral coup d’etat,” one of the leading opposition figures told Reuters. Although the vote took place more than a week ago, no clear winner has emerged. Early results, however, suggested President Felix Tshisekedi secured almost 80% of the vote, despite his popularity slipping rapidly in the run-up to the election.

Mexico’s army-run airline

The first flight since the relaunch of Mexico’s government-owned, military-run airline Mexicana was forced to land unexpectedly. The flight was between the country’s two new military-built airports, highlighting the government’s increased reliance on the armed forces. The airline, which is forecast to lose almost $150 million over the next five years, joins a growing list of what The Economist called government-backed “boondoggles.” President Andres Manuel López Obrador’s administration has spent tens of billions of dollars on public infrastructure projects, including railways and an oil refinery, that Mexicans are likely to subsidize “for years to come.”

Latest Apple Watches banned in patent row

Apple will appeal after it was banned in the U.S. from selling its latest smartwatches. A rival firm, Masimo, accused Apple of poaching its blood-oxygen-monitoring technology, and U.S. regulators agreed. The ban on Apple’s two latest models went into force on Tuesday after Washington declined to overrule it. The tech giant is scrambling to circumvent the decision through technical and legal means, including a redesign of both models and an emergency appeal, but there is no guarantee that either will work. Nine years after its first release, the Apple Watch is big business: 53.9 million were sold in 2022, and its health-monitoring features are a key selling point, with Apple advertising them as potentially life-saving.

AI cannot hold patents, says UK court

The U.K. Supreme Court ruled that artificial intelligence tools cannot invent things or hold patents. Stephen Thaler, a computer scientist, wanted his AI “Dabus” to be recognised as the inventor of two devices, but the court said that only a person could hold patent rights. It adds to a growing body of law around the world on the increasingly relevant subject of AI creativity: A U.S. court ruled in August that AI-generated art cannot be copyrighted, while earlier this month a Beijing court said the opposite. Thaler, who said that Dabus is “conscious and sentient,” was also told that he could not be the holder of the patent himself.

• The body of a high-ranking Iranian general who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Syria arrives in Iraq’s holy Shi’ite city of Najaf for burial.
• Senior U.S. officials visit Mexico to discuss migration amid concerns about increased crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border.
• Peruvian shamans and healers gather for an annual ceremony where they predict events for 2024 and ask for world peace.

The return on investment made by Jessica Vincent, a thrift-store shopper who bought a $4 vase at a Goodwill in Virginia and sold it for $107,100 at auction in New York. The vase turned out to be Murano glass, designed by the Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa in the 1940s. Murano, an island in Venice, Italy, has been famous for its luxury glassware since the 13th century: In particular, it is notable for colored glass embedded inside clear glass during the glassblowing process, creating striking patterns. The Scarpa piece is a “Pennellate,” meaning brushstrokes, with brush-like swirls within the clear glass. “Never in 35 years have we had a piece like this in our hands,” the auction house told Elle Decor ahead of the sale.

A painting co-created by all four Beatles while on tour in Tokyo in 1966 is up for reauction. The untitled work, often called Images of a Woman, is expected to fetch up to $600,000 when it goes on sale in February. The rockstars painted in oils and watercolors while holed up in their hotel between gigs, as authorities worried they’d be mobbed if they ventured outside. “Lennon opted for geometry and Harrison abstraction; McCartney took to organic forms and Starr cartoony contours,” Artnet reported. It’s the only painting they all collaborated on and later signed.

• Israel is willing to let the Palestinian Authority govern Gaza after military operations against Hamas cease. Despite Netanyahu’s contempt for the PA, it may be Israel’s best bet for stabilizing Gaza.
• 2024 will be the year AI moves from hype to helpful, Semafor’s tech journalists write in their forecast for next year.
• Semafor asked experts for their forecasts in real estate, dealmaking, antitrust enforcement, and more.