In Geopolitics Today - Tuesday, February 1st
US to Designate Qatar as a Major Non-NATO Ally, Machine Learning Tool Overcomes Language Barriers for US Intelligence, Egypt Signs $1.65B Arms Deal with South Korea
US to Designate Qatar as a Major Non-NATO Ally
US President Joe Biden has notified Congress of his administration’s decision to designate Qatar as a major non-NATO ally. If confirmed, Qatar would become only the third country in the Gulf region to become a US major non-NATO ally after Kuwait and Bahrain. Qatar’s ruling emir also met with senior US officials on his visit to Washington, where the emir was reportedly involved in talks covering the potential Qatari deliveries of liquified natural gas to Europe, the Iranian nuclear agreement and matters relating to Afghanistan.
The Qatar-US relationship has significantly strengthened over the last year, with Qatar playing a critical role in facilitating US diplomatic efforts with the Taliban in Afghanistan as well as acting as a bridge for Washington’s discussions with Iran. The status of a major non-NATO ally would give Qatar special economic and military privileges in its relationship with Washington. The two sides have already signalled an interest in military and economic cooperation going forward, with Qatar Airways placing a large provisional order for passenger jets manufactured by Boeing as Sheikh Tamim visited Washington. Closer ties could also serve as a means to integrate Qatar into the US-led defence network across the Middle East. Biden applauded the deal, estimated to be worth roughly $20 billion, and stated that the deal is “one of the largest deals that Boeing aircraft has ever had.”
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Machine Learning Tool Overcomes Language Barriers for US Intelligence
The US intelligence community is said to be in possession of a powerful new tool which allows the country’s intelligence agents to analyse text and speech made in foreign languages. The tool, developed by Raytheon BBN Technologies in partnership with the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, reportedly enables search queries in English scour through documents and files which are recorded in foreign languages and return results to an intelligence agent in English.
The system is a product of the Machine Translation for English Retrieval of Information in Any Language program which was launched in 2017, and functions as an “English-in, English-out” tool that allows its operators to search foreign documents in any foreign language, find results, and understand their context and meaning without requiring the appropriate language skills from the user. Raytheon said that the tool has been designed to allow for effective analysis of foreign language documentation which have low amounts of digital data such as Kazakh, Pashto, Somali, Swahili and Tagalog, and has undergone extensive testing in Bulgarian, Farsi, Georgian and Lithuanian. If the reports are accurate, the tools developed under the program will significantly boost the ability of US intelligence agents to find, examine and analyse content without the need for learning foreign languages.
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Egypt Signs $1.65B Arms Deal with South Korea
South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) has announced a major arms deal worth an estimated $1.65 billion between the South Korean arms producer Hanwha Defense and the defence ministry of Egypt. The deal will involve the transfer of an unspecified amount of self-propelled K9 howitzers and a technology transfer contract which will allow Egypt to set up production facilities locally. The agreement means Egypt becomes the eighth country to acquire K9 howitzers from South Korea, and the very first in the African market.
In addition to the sale of self-propelled artillery, Egypt's defence ministry and DAPA also signed a separate memorandum of understanding which will see both countries establish mutual cooperation in defence research and development. The K9 is becoming a popular choice in service with many countries over the world including Australia, Estonia, Finland, India, Norway, Poland and Turkey, with more than 1,700 different K9 variants in active service globally. Egypt has in recent years sought to modernize its military forces by striking large arms deals. Leadership in Cairo has also built new military bases as the country expands its naval and air power to help secure vast desert and sea borders. Moreover, the ongoing dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam as well as recent discoveries of significant gas deposits in Egypt’s Mediterranean waters work as significant incentives for the country to modernize its armed forces.
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