Not Even China Does This

Hi Global Recap readers,

While reading the story below, I caught myself thinking, "Okay, they’re just borrowing from China and North Korea’s playbooks."

But the further I got, the clearer it became—they’re not copying… they’re getting creative with it.

Gotta give it to them. They’re downright innovative at this stuff. 👇️

🇷🇺 RUSSIA
Wartime Web
Gets Quiet

Russia’s wartime mobile internet blackouts have turned from rare annoyance into daily routine across much of the country. Even credit cards, transit gates, medical apps, and group chats all now depend on a signal that keeps vanishing on purpose.

• Pattern: Since May 2025, authorities have repeatedly cut cellphone data in dozens of regions, with an activist group counting daily disruptions in about 57 regions by November, while home broadband and Wi-Fi mostly stay up.

• Justification: The Kremlin says outages help stop Ukrainian drones from using mobile networks for navigation, and spokesman Dmitry Peskov calls them "absolutely justified and necessary," even as analysts note that drone strikes on oil refineries keep coming.

• Control: But it could also serve a dual purpose. During outages, users are shunted onto tightly curated "white lists" of government-approved sites such as official portals, Yandex services (Russia's Google, basically), a couple of online marketplaces, and in some cases a banking app, which leaves many people staring at a nearly empty internet.

• Replacement: WhatsApp and Telegram, with around 96 million and 91 million monthly users, face throttled calls and patchy access, while a state-favored messenger called MAX is preinstalled on all new phones, openly promises to share data with authorities, and still trails far behind in daily use.

• Creep: That’s not all. New rules impose 24-hour "cooling periods" for SIM cards that went abroad or sat idle for 72 hours, blocking data and texts and stranding anything that cannot read SMS, from car modems to smart meters, which even lawmakers warn could turn into a "massive problem."

I don’t think even China does this.

Are They Getting Desperate?

Did you know Russia once tried to pull a similar trick on our Business Basics podcast ("allegedly")?

• After releasing a few episodes on Putin, I went to bed with nearly a 5-star channel… and woke up to a 2.9.

• You’d normally need to subscribe and actually listen before leaving a review, so to tank ratings that fast takes a lot of coordinated bot action.

Thankfully, nearly 1,500 of you jumped in to help.

• That surge lifted us from 2.9→3.1 (and now 3.6!), which shows just how much coordinated effort it took to hammer the channel in the first place.

• And honestly? If they’re getting that desperate, why would I slow down now. I’m more pumped than ever.

If you haven’t subscribed yet (or you want to help fight the Russian nesting doll of bots) now’s the perfect time. Dive into the podcast rabbit hole on whatever platform you use, and give the show a quick follow and rating while you’re there!

It genuinely helps more than you’d think.

🇺🇦 UKRAINE
Choose: Dignity or
Key Partner

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has gone on national TV to warn that Ukraine could lose U.S. backing if it rejects a White House peace plan to end the war with Russia. The 28 point offer effectively asks Kyiv to swap land, troops, and NATO ambitions for vague security guarantees and Russia’s route back into the global club.

• Warning: In a ten minute address filmed outside his office in Kyiv, Zelenskyy said Ukraine may face "a very difficult choice: either losing dignity, or risk losing a key partner," calling this "one of the most difficult moments in our history."

• Plan: The leaked U.S. blueprint would see Ukraine withdraw from remaining parts of Donetsk, accept de facto Russian control over Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea, freeze front lines in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, cap its armed forces at 600,000 troops, and formally shelve its bid to join NATO.

• Pressure: Trump has publicly said that Zelenskyy is "going to have to approve" the deal and has suggested Thanksgiving as an "appropriate" deadline for a response, even as Kyiv still depends on U.S. weapons, air defenses, and intelligence to blunt Russia’s invasion that began in 2022.

• Moscow: Vladimir Putin has welcomed the proposal as a possible "basis" for a settlement while telling senior officials on Russia’s Security Council that Russia will keep advancing if diplomacy stalls, confident after slow but real gains that now leave it holding roughly a fifth of Ukrainian territory.

• Europe: Zelenskyy has spoken by phone with leaders in London, Paris, and Berlin, who, according to their official readout, assured him of continued support and stressed that Ukraine’s forces must remain able to defend its sovereignty.

  • European officials and Ukrainian sources say Kyiv and its main European allies are now working on a counter-proposal to the U.S. plan.

  • In Kyiv, at least one resident interviewed by the BBC described the proposal as "not a peace plan, but a plan to continue the war," while others have called it a "plan of capitulation."

🇯🇵 JAPAN
Takaichi Defies
China On Taiwan

Japanese PM Takaichi has refused Beijing’s demand to retract her Taiwan comments, standing by language that hints at possible Japanese military involvement if a Taiwan crisis threatens Japan’s survival, even as China warns of serious economic countermeasures.

• Remark: Takaichi recently became the first sitting Japanese leader in decades to publicly link a China-Taiwan crisis to the potential deployment of Japanese troops, framing a conflict that uses military force as a possible "survival-threatening situation" for Japan, which is the legal trigger that could let Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) help defend "friendly nations."

  • And remember: Japan’s post-war constitution was designed to renounce war outright and block the creation of an offensive military. The JSDF exists only under the banner of "self-defense," though recent reinterpretations have stretched that mandate to include aiding partners when Japan’s own survival is on the line.

• Backlash: In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning accused Tokyo of crossing a red line and warned China will take "serious countermeasures" if Takaichi does not back down.

• Pressure: China has already leaned into economic tools, telling tourists not to visit Japan, freezing moves to resume imports of Japanese seafood, and halting approvals for new Japanese films, while carefully keeping a bigger gun holstered so far—cutting rare-earth supplies to Japan.

• Spin: Although, since then, Takaichi has shifted back to the safer wording used by recent Japanese PMs, saying that in any crisis "threatening Japan’s existence" the government would make a "comprehensive judgment" based on the specific situation, yet she pointedly refused to retract her earlier comment and insisted "the government’s stance remains consistent."

• Posture: Tokyo is pairing firm language with visible defense moves. Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi is set to tour bases on Yonaguni, Ishigaki, and Miyako islands on November 22–23, with Yonaguni sitting roughly 100km (62 miles) from Taiwan.

🇨🇳🇺🇸 CHINA/US
Quiet Talks in Hawaii

The U.S. and Chinese militaries just wrapped up three days of maritime security talks in Hawaii, described by Beijing as "frank and constructive."

• Setting: Working-level delegations met from November 18 to 20 in Hawaii under the long-running Military Maritime Consultative Agreement, which exists specifically to stop encounters at sea and in the air from spiraling into something ugly.

• Tone: China’s navy said both sides traded candid views on the current maritime and air security picture between the two countries, framing the conversations as professional and practical.

• Complaint: However, it wasn't all warm and fuzzy. Beijing used the meeting to slam U.S. transits in the Taiwan Strait and freedom-of-navigation operations in the South China Sea, areas the U.S. and Taiwan regard as international waters (high seas/EEZ), which China disputes (asserting sovereignty or jurisdiction).

• Nuts-and-bolts: Officers reportedly walked through “typical cases” of recent ship and aircraft encounters, trying to nail down safer behavior for front-line crews so that the next close pass or radar lock does not require a hotline call in the middle of the night.

• Backdrop: The session follows an April MMCA meeting and a recent sit-down in which U.S. War Secretary Pete Hegseth warned Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun about rising Chinese activity near Taiwan, even as Washington pushes for more routine military communication channels. A follow-up MMCA gathering is already penciled in for 2026.