ExclusiveIs the Iran Conflict a Preview of a U.S.-China War? | China in Focus

Welcome to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. Our top story, a modern war is unfolding in the Middle East. A competition of military power, geopolitics and energy all closely tied to the global economy. Singapore's foreign minister warns the most critical battlefield lies in the Indo-Pacific between China and the U.S. The main danger is that relationship fractures. If they go to war in the Pacific, what you're witnessing now in the state of Hormuz is just a dry run. Is the next phase of drone warfare upon us? An expert breaks down reports that China can charge drones midair. The U.K. is warning of rising cyber threats from hostile nations. Officials say China and Russia are driving new concerns over critical systems and infrastructure. The A.I. frontier heating up. Anthropix Mythos can reportedly detect critical software flaws at unprecedented speed, raising alarms for cybersecurity analysts. In blackened walls and charred memories awaited Doris Chuang as he returned home for the first time after Hong Kong's devastating fire. Singapore's foreign minister says the Iran situation is just a dry run for what a U.S.-China conflict in the Pacific could look like. As the situation in Iran turns more volatile, Indo-Pacific leaders are watching closely and weighing what it could mean for them going forward. China commentator Dr. Jason Ma weighs in. Here's NTD's Flora Hua with the story. It's now been roughly 55 days since the Iran conflict began. The U.S. has launched not only Operation Epicurie but also Economic Fury, maintaining maximum military and financial pressure on the Iranian regime. China commentator Dr. Jason Ma says the U.S. operation is indirectly targeting China. If the United States seriously starts tracking ships, seizing vessels, finding companies, and going after intermediaries this time, it may appear to be targeting Iran on the surface. But in reality, it is directly going after the great network of energy and material flows behind Iran, centered around the Chinese Communist Party. From U.S. forces enforcing a blockade on ships tied to Iran to Treasury sanctions targeting banks that do business with Tehran, Dr. Ma says Washington may be looking beyond the current conflict, testing ways to counter Beijing in a future war. The United States is also using this to test its ability to impose a maritime blockade against a specific country on a global scale. The very process of carrying this out serves as a powerful deterrent to the Chinese Communist Party. It could well be a rehearsal for a larger effort in the future to choke off China's maritime lifelines, making it increasingly difficult for a sanctioned regime to breathe. This method is simply more modern, more precise, and harder to counter. It represents a new way of warfare, one that achieves prolonged strategic pain at a much lower political cost. The Indo-Pacific remains a top priority for the Pentagon even as the conflict in Iran continues. And the self-governed democracy Taiwan has been the focal point of geopolitical tensions in the region. The U.S. relies on the island's advanced microchip production and sees it as a key regional ally. But the Chinese Communist Party has threatened to annex the island by any means, keeping the option of invasion on the table. Beijing has carried out multiple war games around Taiwan in recent years. The Taiwan Strait, which separates Taiwan and China, is also a vital energy lifeline for U.S. allies like Japan and South Korea. Speaking at a CNBC event Wednesday, Singapore's foreign minister weighed in on how a potential conflict between the U.S. and China could unfold. The main danger is that relationship fractures. If they go to war in the Pacific, what you're witnessing now in the Strait of Hormuz is just Britain is warning of a growing cyber threat now extending beyond criminal hackers to hostile nations. The head of the U.K.'s National Cyber Security Center, Richard Horne, says the country is already dealing with several major incidents every week. On Wednesday, he warned the threat is only expected to grow. He says China in particular is emerging as a We know that China's intelligence and military agencies now display an eye-watering level of sophistication in their cyber operations. This, combined with their whole-of-state approach, means we face more than just a capable cyber threat, but a peer competitor in cyberspace. Officials say the most serious attacks are already tied to countries like Iran and Russia, especially as tensions rise and cyber threats get more advanced. They say ransomware and everyday hacking are still common, but it's the ones linked to nation-states that are becoming the biggest concern. British officials warn in a major conflict, large-scale cyber attacks could disrupt critical infrastructure. And unlike ransomware, there may be no way to pay to recover systems. The government is now calling on tech companies to step in and help build stronger AI-powered defenses. It's also putting up hundreds of millions in new funding to protect critical systems and businesses. While it's designed for defense, Anthropic's Mythos AI could also be used to attack infrastructure. The company says the system can identify and exploit serious software vulnerabilities at a level approaching, and in some cases exceeding, that of top human experts. Tech firm Anthropic says its new AI model, Mythos, could be too dangerous to be released to the public. That sparked fears that the same AI capabilities that could help defenders could also help attackers find new ways into critical systems. This particular tool seems to be more powerful than anything else we've seen before, and it's able to identify vulnerabilities that others, including humans, have overlooked for decades. If the tool is as good as it seems, then maybe attackers could use it to layer several different layers of vulnerabilities or exploit several sectors in parallel, for example, power and water infrastructure, and then really launch an attack that is more powerful than anything we've seen before. Cybersecurity involves a constant race between those trying to find and fix weaknesses and those trying to exploit them. Mythos signals a significant step forward in that cyber arms race. Industries already feeling vulnerable may now have more cause for alarm. I think the financial market has been particularly vocal about the fear of what this means to the banking sector, the potential to disrupt banking and processes of financial services. There's also concern that this could be used by attackers to exploit vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure, which already relies on pretty outdated infrastructure in many cases already. To limit access, Anthropic placed Mythos in a restricted initiative called Project Glasswing. Project Glasswing brings together companies including Amazon Web Services, Apple, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Google, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Palo Alto Networks, as well as more than 40 additional organizations that build or maintain critical software infrastructure. Anthropic says that the purpose of Project Glasswing is to use Mythos to help secure critical software before others weaponize similar capabilities. The fact that this is one company that has the power to decide now which of its selected partners has access to this really illustrates how powerful these tech companies are, and that at the moment it's really unclear who has access to this and are there any European companies, for example, that have access to the tool. So I think there's many questions that are left unanswered at the moment that add to this hype and this perception of it being an absolute game changer. The bigger issue may be less whether Mythos alone changes cybersecurity than whether it signals a broader shift. Anthropic says it sees no reason to think Mythos represents a plateau and says frontier capabilities are likely to advance substantially over the next few months. CEO Dario Amadai in February suggested we may be on the cusp of a new era where computer thinking surpasses the human intellect. We're increasingly close to what I call the country of geniuses in the data center, a set of AI agents that are more capable than most humans at most things and can coordinate at superhuman speed. Sam Altman is accusing Anthropic of using what he calls fear-based marketing around its new AI model, Claude Mythos. Speaking on a podcast Tuesday, he called it incredible marketing to suggest a company has built a powerful, potentially dangerous system, then frame restricted access or security tools as the solution. Anthropic's decision to restrict access to the model has sparked debate in tech sectors. Instead, access is limited to a small group of major companies under what it calls Project Glasswing, including Google, Microsoft and NVIDIA. Altman says there are legitimate safety concerns around advanced AI, but he argued the broader push to keep such systems in the hands of a few could be seen as control rather than being cautious. Open AI, on the other hand, will prioritize wider releases even for powerful models while still addressing safety concerns. Is the next phase of drone warfare upon us? China is testing new technology that can charge drones mid-air. Joining us now to unpack where China stands compared to the U.S. and allies and what it means for the battlefield is Rick Fisher. He's a senior fellow on Asian military affairs at the International Assessment and Strategy Center. Rick Fisher, thank you so much for joining us. Great to have you back on the show. Tiffany, thank you for having me back. With evolving warfare, there's a big focus on drones right now, and there's a new report out that says China has a new type of technology that they've been testing, which is sending microwave beams from the ground to charge drones while they're in the air, essentially getting rid of the need for batteries. First, what do you make of this? How likely is it that China has a tech like this, and is it scalable? It's very likely that China does have such a technology. It really is a derivative of technology that many of us already have had for probably a decade, and that's a wireless mobile phone charger. How many of us have these plugged into the wall and just put the phone down on top of it, come back an hour later, presto, it's all charged? Well, that technology, when projected through a microwave beam, aimed by a laser beam, has already been proven to hold the potential to increase the endurance of battery-powered drones, and this is something that is being pursued in multiple countries, the United States, as far away as Australia, and of course, the Chinese would be very interested in this. But in terms of China, this report by the South China Morning Post says that for this test, at least, it was able to keep the drones airborne for hours, as in charging them. It did say, though, this is very new technology, early stages, and it had significant energy loss. A lot of the power didn't even reach the drone, so there's still a lot of work being done here. But if this is, say, at scale, how would this change the dynamic on the battlefield? Well, just to give you sort of an almost real-world example, on Monday, I was able to attend the U.S. Navy League exhibition here in Washington, D.C., an annual exhibition of naval military technology, and a new company is now developing a drone, a quad-rotor drone, four-rotor drone, that eventually will be able to carry about 3,000 pounds of all kinds of cargo between ships, called vertical replenishment. When conducted with a normal-sized helicopter, it's a very dangerous operation. Ships are moving, winds are always chancy, and maintaining your position over the fantail of a ship and making sure the nets that you're using don't get damaged all contribute to a very complicated mission. An unmanned drone would take much of the complexity out of that mission. Instead of having to take the payload to the fantail, you could, for example, take it directly to the elevator on an aircraft-carrying ship, saving transport time and increasing safety. In terms of the U.S., there's Secretary of War Pete Hagseth. He's been focusing a lot of drones, or talking a lot about that, and ramping up the Pentagon's production and security of that, trying to get rid of, for one, the DJI drones from China. Where do you see the U.S. moving in this direction? Is the U.S. doing enough? The American effort is very substantial. In a sense, the United States has pioneered the use of development of unmanned systems. Going back to the Vietnam War, we were flying unmanned reconnaissance drones over North Vietnam, many of which were captured by the North Vietnamese and given to the Chinese, who then copied them. The kinds of technology that we see being used in Ukraine by the Russians against the Ukrainians and vice versa, yes, we're very much at that level in terms of the development of the technology, but it's the deployment of that technology where we lag. Our army, for example, is simply not as well-drone armed, unmanned armed, as is the Ukrainian army. Taiwan is investing hand over fist in these capabilities. It could become a potential source for American soldiers, should we decide to knock on their door. What are you watching for in this space to see when the U.S. is combat ready or has that deployment ability to send that message of deterrence more Well, we are rapidly trying to develop what we call cooperative combat aircraft. These are almost fighter-size unmanned aircraft that will fly alongside combat aircraft, performing air-to-air and air-to-ground or surveillance missions, essentially being controlled by a pilot in a piloted aircraft, a slow one or a fast one, or from various controllers in the air or on the ground. This is also a vital area of competition with China. We must be a leader in deploying these cooperative combat aircraft. I believe we may succeed in doing just that, but China is investing heavily in this field as well. The ability to take one fighter aircraft and control five others to make one pilot responsible for the mission capability of five combat aircraft is a huge advance being sought by the United States, by China, and by others. We need to get there first. Definitely a lot at stake here. Rick Fisher, as always, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Atlanta police arrested 40 individuals over the weekend at what they described as a large marijuana pop-up event. Authorities provided footage of the bust, part of an effort dubbed Operation No Smoke. Upon our arrival on this scene, we had plenty of customers, about 18 that were lined up for this event before the event started. At this time, we were able to get those customers off the scene and safely away from the scene. At this point, we began to identify the difference between the vendors and the customers. What we noticed was the vendors ran back inside the location and they barricaded themselves inside. Shortly thereafter, a ton of people started running out the back side of that warehouse. So now we have what you guys are seeing. We have approximately 70 plus people running from the location, jumping on top of roofs, jumping over fences, running on the railroad tracks. All this because of this event that they planned. The Atlanta Police Department said the event was expected to attract more than 1,400 registered attendees as well as walk-ups. Officers seized more than 1,200 pounds of marijuana, hundreds of pounds of edibles, mushrooms, nine vehicles and 15 guns. Coming up, blackened walls and charred memories awaited George Chuang as he returned home for the first time after Hong Kong's devastating fire. Welcome back to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. Tonight in Canada, NTD's powerful new documentary Unbroken, the untold story of Shen Yun, is having its highly anticipated premiere. The film follows the world-renowned classical Chinese dance company Shen Yun performing arts as it rises to international acclaim while facing escalating intimidation, smear campaigns and threats from the Chinese Communist Party. Blending personal stories with hard-hitting investigation, Unbroken reveals what happens when art, faith and freedom confront authoritarian power. Canadian officials are cheering the event. Deputy Opposition Leader Melissa Lantzman thanked the artists for fearlessly continuing their mission despite aggression and threats. Member of Parliament Garnet Jennis added that the documentary will help audiences understand the suppression Shen Yun has faced and inspire viewers with its story of resilience. If you can't be there in person, you can still watch the premiere event live on NTD.com. You can also watch the film on UnbrokenShenYunMovie.com. South Korean police have requested a detention warrant for the chairman of K-pop agency HYBE over alleged illegal trading tied to the company's initial public offering. South Korean police have asked the court to issue a detention warrant for Bang Si-hyuk, the chairman and founder of HYBE, the K-pop agency that is home to BTS. That's over alleged illegal stock deals linked to the firm's initial public offering. The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said Bang is suspected of violating capital market laws by misleading early investors before the IPO. Police say he encouraged them to sell their shares to a private equity fund connected to his associates. According to investigators, the fund then sold at stake after HYBE went public. Bang reportedly received about 30% of the profits, earning around $129 million in illegal gains. However, he has previously denied any wrongdoing. Bang has been banned from leaving South Korea since August last year amid probes into the IPO. After the report, HYBE shares reverts earlier gains to close over 2% down. After losing his home in November 2025 when a fire tore through seven residential towers in Taipo District's Wangfu Court complex, Dors Chung returned on Tuesday. He was searching for belongings that survived the blaze. Suffocated was how Dors Chung felt when returned to his fire-damaged apartment in Hong Kong on Tuesday, his first time back in months. He lost his home in November last year when a fire tore through seven residential towers in Taipo District's Wangfu Court complex, killing 168 people. Chung, who lived in the complex with his grandmother, was at work when the blaze began. Blackened walls, floors covered in ash and soot, and a ruined kitchen greeted Chung when he returned, a site he struggled to process. The moment I saw the kitchen, it was really shocking because as soon as you enter the house, the kitchen is on the left. At that moment, I was like, wow, and I felt suffocated. Yeah, it's really like no matter how much mental preparation you do before facing something like this, it still feels useless. Nonetheless, Chung quickly went about sorting through the personal memorabilia that survived. He was able to find some precious items unscathed, like running medals, old family photos, and his grandmother's 50-year-old journals filled with reflections on the Bible. Chung found himself emotional as he went through the belongings he retrieved from the apartment. Why did this tragedy happen? Why did we, 1,900 households, have to suddenly go through something so cruel and heartless? You just find yourself constantly swinging between anger and sadness. The Hong Kong blaze was more deadly than London's 2017 Grenfell Tower disaster. After being displaced by the tragic incident, Chung and his grandmother now live in separate 100-square-foot temporary housing units in the same complex elsewhere in Hong Kong. Life must go on. I think when something huge happens, I need time to process my emotions, but I can't let emotions completely control me. After you've cried and broken down, you really have to find a way to stand back up again. That's all for today's China In Focus. Tiffany Meyer, if you have any feedback on the show or have something you'd like to see us cover, send us an email at chinainfocusatd.com. We'd love to hear from you. For on the clock original news coverage, visit us at ntd.com or download our NTD app. Thanks for watching. See you tomorrow.