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We explore the shifting dynamics of global power&mdash;the alliances, strategies, rivalries, and events shaping the new great game and its impact on the future.

The Panama Canal Standoff: What China Actually Holds, and What Washington Wants
The waterway has been owned and run by the autonomous Panama Canal Authority since the U.S. handover in 1999, and fact-checks of Trump's claim that China "operates" it have found no evidence to support it. What actually drew scrutiny was a 1997 concession held by Hong Kong's CK Hutchison over the Balboa and Crist&oacute;bal ports at the canal's two entrances &mdash; a private Hong Kong firm, not a mainland state enterprise, though headquartered in a Chinese Special Administrative Region. Panama's own comptroller audited a 2021, no-bid 25-year extension of that deal and alleged it cost the state roughly $1.3 billion; Panama's Supreme Court ultimately ruled it unconstitutional and voided it.
What China Actually Holds
Beyond that now-defunct concession, Chinese state firms hold real but narrower interests: China Communications Construction Company and China Harbour Engineering Company continue building a fourth bridge over the canal and a metro extension beneath it, contracts unaffected by the ports dispute. Elsewhere, Chinese equipment shows up more than Chinese ownership &mdash; Panama's largest Caribbean port, Manzanillo, is U.S.-owned but uses Chinese-made cranes, and a cancelled Chinese port project left behind Huawei-donated security cameras. This is a genuine commercial footprint, concentrated in construction and equipment supply, not in canal ownership or operations.
The 2025&ndash;2026 Reckoning
Following Secretary Rubio's February 2025 visit, Panama withdrew from China's Belt and Road Initiative, becoming the first Latin American country to both join and leave it. CK Hutchison then agreed to sell its global ports business, including the Panama terminals, to a BlackRock-led consortium &mdash; a deal China's antitrust regulator froze, reportedly after state-owned COSCO demanded a majority stake. That sale remains unresolved. Separately, Panama's Supreme Court voided Hutchison's concession in January 2026, the government occupied the terminals in February, and interim operations passed to Maersk and MSC. Hutchison has since filed roughly $2 billion in arbitration alleging breach of its investor protections.
Washington's Broader Play
Beyond talk of "taking back" the canal, Washington's actual tools have been more measured: an April 2025 security memorandum lets U.S. forces use select Panamanian facilities for training without permanent bases, paired with diplomatic pressure and support for a Western buyer of contested assets. A June 2026 Congressional Research Service report frames this as part of restoring "American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere" &mdash; language suggesting Panama is a template Washington could extend elsewhere in the region. That approach carries real domestic cost for Panama, whose opposition has called the security pact a "camouflaged invasion."
Where This Leaves Each Player
Panama reasserted control over a contested concession but now faces a multibillion-dollar arbitration claim and the challenge of not appearing to have picked a side. The U.S. achieved several goals &mdash; BRI exit, the security MOU, the end of Hutchison's concession &mdash; without the most extreme options floated early on, though the marquee BlackRock sale itself remains stuck. China lost its most visible canal-adjacent asset and its first Latin American BRI partner, but retains construction contracts and regional ties, and continues to frame the episode as U.S. overreach rather than a legitimate security concern.
Related YouTube Videos&nbsp;
Johnny Harris &mdash; "The Dark Truth of the Panama Canal" &mdash; <a href="youtube.com/watch?v=GRDGQERSmDE" target="_blank" rel="noopener">youtube.com/watch?v=GRDGQERSmDE</a> Johnny Harris &mdash; "Control the Choke Point: How the US Stole the Panama Canal" &mdash; <a href="youtube.com/c/johnnyharris/videos" target="_blank" rel="noopener">youtube.com/c/johnnyharris/videos</a> Other Authentic Sources
CSIS, "Chinese Ports in Panama Come Under New Management" &mdash; <a href="csis.org/analysis/chinese-ports-panama-come-under-new-management" target="_blank" rel="noopener">csis.org/analysis/chinese-ports-panama-come-under-new-management</a> CSIS, "Key Decision Point Coming for the Panama Canal" &mdash; <a href="csis.org/analysis/key-decision-point-coming-panama-canal" target="_blank" rel="noopener">csis.org/analysis/key-decision-point-coming-panama-canal</a> CNBC, "Panama cancels China-linked port deal" &mdash; <a href="cnbc.com/2026/02/24/panama-officially-voids-annuls-ck-hutchison-contracts-interim-control-maersk-msc-canal-dispute.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cnbc.com/2026/02/24/panama-officially-voids-annuls-ck-hutchison-contracts-interim-control-maersk-msc-canal-dispute.html</a>

GeoPulse

Gulf Oil Giants Race to Build Routes Around the Strait of Hormuz
A Chokepoint at the Center of the Global Oil Trade The Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway separating Iran from Oman, has long been the world's most important oil transit point. In the years before 2026, an average of roughly 20 million barrels of crude oil and refined products moved through the strait daily, equal to about one-fifth of global petroleum liquids consumption and roughly a quarter of all seaborne oil trade, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the International Energy Agency. More than 80% of that oil flows to Asian buyers, including China, India, Japan and South Korea. Because so much crude passes through such a narrow channel, with few practical alternatives, disruptions there tend to ripple quickly through global energy prices. That vulnerability turned acute in 2026, after the U.S. and Israel struck Iran and Tehran responded by effectively blockading the strait, cutting transit volumes by nearly 30% year-over-year in early 2026 and pushing oil prices above $100 a barrel for the first time in years.
Billions Committed to New Pipelines and Ports That shock has accelerated years-old plans by Gulf producers to build infrastructure that avoids Hormuz altogether. Analysts at Goldman Sachs count at least seven pipeline projects across the Middle East under construction, in planning, or under discussion, with combined bypass capacity potentially covering more than 60% of the Gulf states' pre-war export volume by the end of 2028. The UAE is furthest along: state-owned ADNOC is building a second pipeline from Habshan to the port of Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman, reported roughly halfway complete in mid-2026 and targeted for completion around 2027. It would roughly double the capacity of the existing Habshan-Fujairah line, which already carries up to about 1.8 million barrels a day. Saudi Arabia has leaned on its decades-old East-West Pipeline, also called Petroline, built in the 1980s from Abqaiq to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, reported to be pumping around 7 million barrels a day after wartime repairs. Iraq has moved to reopen its pipeline to Ceyhan, Turkey, and is building a separate Basra-Haditha pipeline, while weighing long-shelved routes to Jordan, Egypt and Oman.
Bypass Routes Have Limits of Their Own Even with this spending, analysts caution the new infrastructure cannot fully replace Hormuz soon. The EIA estimates unused Saudi and UAE pipeline capacity available during a sudden disruption at only around 2.6 million barrels a day, and even once new projects finish, combined alternative pipeline capacity is expected to reach roughly 9 million barrels a day, short of the roughly 20 million barrels a day that normally transits the strait. The routes carry their own risks: oil rerouted through the Red Sea has been targeted by Yemen's Houthi rebels, and terminals such as Fujairah, Yanbu and Ceyhan are fixed, identifiable targets, unlike a dispersed tanker fleet. Some pipelines also send oil toward the Mediterranean rather than east, meaning it may need a far longer voyage around Africa to reach many of its usual Asian customers.
What Comes Next Is Still Uncertain Confirmed so far: Construction is underway on multiple pipelines, several governments have committed billions of dollars, and officials including ADNOC's chief executive have described the buildout as a direct response to the 2026 disruption. What remains speculative is how far the trend goes and what it means for markets. Some U.S. officials have suggested Hormuz's leverage will diminish as more pipelines open, while Iranian officials have themselves noted that restricting the strait undercuts its value as a transit route. Analysts say a more diversified export network could, over time, shrink the size of any future price spike from a Hormuz closure and modestly weaken Iran's leverage &mdash; but caution this is not guaranteed, since new routes bring their own vulnerabilities and will take years to reach meaningful scale. For now, forecasts of Hormuz's declining importance remain a prediction, not a settled fact.
&nbsp; Sources U.S. Energy Information Administration &mdash; World Oil Transit Chokepoints: Strait of Hormuz &mdash; <a href="https://www.eia.gov/international/content/analysis/special_topics/World_Oil_Transit_Chokepoints/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.eia.gov/international/content/analysis/special_topics/World_Oil_Transit_Chokepoints/</a> International Energy Agency &mdash; Strait of Hormuz &mdash;<a href="https://www.iea.org/about/oil-security-and-emergency-response/strait-of-hormuz" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> https://www.iea.org/about/oil-security-and-emergency-response/strait-of-hormuz</a> CNBC &mdash; Oil pipelines around the Strait of Hormuz won't end the threat Iran poses to Middle East crude exports &mdash;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/16/oil-pipeline-iran-strait-hormuz-red-sea-iraq-uae-saudi.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/16/oil-pipeline-iran-strait-hormuz-red-sea-iraq-uae-saudi.html</a> CNBC &mdash; The Strait of Hormuz: Alternative routes for oil exporters &mdash; <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/23/strait-hormuz-closure-alternative-routes-middle-east-oil-gas-pipelines.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/23/strait-hormuz-closure-alternative-routes-middle-east-oil-gas-pipelines.html</a> &nbsp; Related Videos The $60B Project to Completely Replace the Strait of Hormuz &mdash; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfpa0h8TFVU" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfpa0h8TFVU</a> 4 Megaprojects Under Construction to Bypass the Strait of Hormuz &mdash; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1plnwIvKuFM" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1plnwIvKuFM</a> The $10B Oil Route That Could Change Hormuz Forever &mdash; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ4B22rSsgg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ4B22rSsgg</a> Oil producers plan pipelines to bypass Strait of Hormuz amid Iran's threats (Fox News) &mdash; <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/video/6401222789112" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.foxnews.com/video/6401222789112</a>

Iran's Strikes Leave a Multi-Billion-Dollar Hole in US Intelligence Across the Middle East
The Report That Rattled Washington NBC News broke the story on August 25, 2026, citing four people with direct knowledge of the matter: Iranian missile and drone attacks have battered US intelligence posts and surveillance hardware across the Middle East on a scale the CIA and its sister agencies have never dealt with before. Repairs are expected to run into the billions of dollars, and Congress is already scrambling to find the money. Two of the sources told NBC that officials are now rethinking how personnel and intelligence resources get deployed in a region Tehran can clearly still reach.
Which Sites Actually Got Hit The Jerusalem Post, also drawing on the NBC reporting, named a CIA station in Riyadh and a separate facility in eastern Iraq as confirmed targets, alongside radar and surveillance equipment scattered across the region. Some of this hardware is shared between intelligence agencies and the military, which is part of why the damage is so hard to contain to one column of a budget. A separate Washington Post investigation, cited by Ynet, found that Iran's missile and drone campaign damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at US sites in the region, including hangars, fuel depots, radar, and communications systems. Making things murkier, the US pressed commercial satellite companies to restrict imagery of the war zone, so independent verification of the true scale has been slow and difficult.
A Rough Stretch for Israel Too This isn't purely a US story. Israel and the US ran deeply intertwined intelligence operations against Iran, right down to Mossad publicly thanking the CIA for its role once the "Twelve-Day War" wound down. That closeness is now a headache: the Post's reporting says the Pentagon is weighing whether to shift some US forces into Israel rather than rebuild damaged Gulf bases, and that idea has stirred real debate in Washington over concerns about Israeli espionage against its own ally. Israel has also leaned on military censorship to keep its own damage figures out of public view, so the full financial toll on Israeli assets remains harder to pin down than the US numbers.
What It Means for West Asia Iran's campaign has made one thing clear: fixed, high-signature American infrastructure in the Gulf is a soft target for drone and missile swarms, no matter how advanced the base defenses are supposed to be. Some Pentagon officials now frame the damage as a "once-in-a-generation opportunity" to restructure the US footprint in the region rather than simply rebuild what was there before. That's a notable shift in tone. For Gulf states hosting American forces, it raises uncomfortable questions about how much protection that hosting arrangement actually buys them. For Iran, even a war that cost it dearly, including the loss of its own leadership and heavy strikes on its nuclear sites, has produced a strategic win of sorts: proof it can impose real, lasting costs on the US and Israeli intelligence architecture in the region.
A Caution Worth Keeping in Mind Nearly every damage claim from this war, on the Iranian, Israeli, and American sides, has been contested by someone. Washington said Iran's nuclear sites were "obliterated," a leaked DIA assessment said the setback was closer to a few months, and Israeli intelligence landed somewhere in between. The same fog applies here. Treat the billions-of-dollars figure as a serious, well-sourced estimate, not a final, audited number.
Sources NBC News &ndash; Iran inflicted billions in damage to U.S. intelligence sites, sources say:
<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/iran-inflicted-billions-damage-us-intelligence-sites-sources-say-rcna591879" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/iran-inflicted-billions-damage-us-intelligence-sites-sources-say-rcna591879</a> The Jerusalem Post &ndash; Iranian strikes caused billions in damages to US intelligence hardware:
<a href="https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-906705" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-906705</a> Ynetnews (Washington Post report) &ndash; US weighs shrinking military footprint in Middle East after Iran batters bases:
<a href="https://www.ynetnews.com/article/s1e4uwmvml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.ynetnews.com/article/s1e4uwmvml</a>
Related YouTube Videos "Iran suffers BILLIONS in damage from US, Israeli strikes: 'DEVASTATING'" (Fox News):
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doeuUup11_A" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doeuUup11_A</a> "Iran Military Sites Destroyed &mdash; Satellite Imagery Shows Shocking Before &amp; After | US War | 4K":
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2J07QnO_L0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2J07QnO_L0</a>

Britain's "DARPA" and the Push to Turn the Sky Into a Sensor
ARIA: A High-Risk Research Agency, not a buyer of kit The Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) is a UK government body, set up by Act of Parliament and made operational in January 2023, that backs high-risk, high-reward science conventional grant systems are too cautious to fundis a United Kingdom government research funding body, established by Act of Parliament in 2022 and made operational in January 2023, that backs "high-risk, high-reward" science and technology which conventional grant systems are seen as too cautious to fund. It sits under the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, not the Ministry of Defence, and launched with roughly &pound;800 million over four years, a figure since raised toward &pound;1 billion through 2028-29headquartered in London and sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, it is modelled on the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and is widely called the "British DARPA." ARIA launched with a budget of approximately &pound;800 million over four years, a figure the June 2025 Spending Review raised to at least &pound;1 billion through the end of 2028-29. Unlike conventional procurement, which specifies a requirement and buys a proven system, ARIA runs on term-limited "Programme Directors" who set an ambitious technical goal and fund a portfolio of outside teams to chase it, expecting most bets to failmany features of the agency are admittedly DARPA-inspired, such as the use of term-limited program managers, which ARIA calls program directors. These program directors serve as chief visionaries for their programs as well as fund and actively manage teams of coordinated external researchers towards a program's well-defined goal. What to fund is decided by ARIA's own leadership, not ministers.
Sensing the Sky: The Building Blocks ARIA isn't a defence agency, but a couple of its live programmes build exactly the technology an "air-as-surveillance" concept would need. Its &pound;50 million Enduring Atmospheric Platforms programme is funding fixed-wing, lighter-than-air and hybrid aircraft meant to loiter in the stratosphere for a full week, delivering continuous power to a payload while holding a fixed line of sight to the groundThis programme aims to build that missing link by unlocking the stratosphere as a persistent operating environment. We are backing teams to solve the interdependent challenges of flight and energy to create a resilient and sustainable platform layer between Earth and space. ARIA frames the goal as low-cost, sovereign infrastructure for communications, an alternative to satellite constellationsThis programme addresses the challenge of achieving ubiquitous, resilient connectivity by establishing a regionally scalable, high-performance alternative to LEO scaling, offering a sovereign and more resilient alternative, while also noting that platforms flying entirely within national airspace are easier to govern and secure. Separately, its Extending Our Perception opportunity space funds "Hypersensory Intelligence" work that pairs new sensors with AI to pick up chemical, acoustic and other signals current systems missAI is co-designed with novel sensing technologies to directly capture high-dimensional signals from the physical world. Neither programme is billed as military. But distributed sensing, autonomous aerial platforms and AI-driven signal fusion are the same raw ingredients used across defence sensing more broadly.
From Sensing to Warfighting: Where The Military Application Actually Sits The explicit effort to turn UK airspace and the electromagnetic spectrum into a networked surveillance and targeting system is happening mostly outside ARIA, inside the Ministry of Defence. The 2025 Strategic Defence Review named cyber and the electromagnetic spectrum ("CyberEM") a distinct warfighting domainThe 2025 Strategic Defence Review recognised cyberspace and the electromagnetic spectrum as a distinct military domain (CyberEM) and announced plans to create a "CyberEM Command" by the end of 2025, and a new Defence Cyber and Electromagnetic Force stood up soon after. The MOD's Digital Targeting Web, backed by roughly &pound;1 billion with first elements due in 2026, is meant to connect sensors on ships, aircraft, satellites and drones to "deciders" and "effectors" so targets can be found, tracked and hit across domains far faster than beforeThe Digital Targeting Web will enable rapid, integrated battlefield decisions by linking sensors and shooters across domains. Counter-drone trials such as Project Synergia have already tested radar, electro-optic and RF sensors around UK bases to detect and defeat hostile UASit will enable the RAF to establish the most effective way to detect, track, identify and defeat hostile drones, as well as evaluate a range of capabilities including advanced radar, electro-optic and radio frequency sensors, and counter-measures. Passive radar, which reads reflected background signals instead of emitting its own, is becoming central to this kind of contested-airspace sensing precisely because it's harder for an adversary to locatePassive radar systems are more likely to detect stealth aircraft than active radar systems, as they typically use lower-frequency radio waves that are not usually countered by stealth aircraft design.
What's Confirmed, and What isn't Nothing in the public record shows ARIA itself running a defence-labelled "air-surveillance-network" programme. Its sensing and atmospheric-platform work is described in dual-use, civilian terms, aimed at communications and Earth observation. The clearer, better-documented push to network UK airspace and spectrum for sensing and targeting sits with MOD initiatives like the Digital Targeting Web and the CyberEM Force, and even there the government says much of the underlying investment detail is held back at a higher classificationdue to the sensitivities of technology under development, further detail is held at a higher classification. RUSI analysts have also flagged organisational, procurement and funding hurdles that could make the Digital Targeting Web harder to deliver than its architecture suggestsjoint low-latency targeting is seemingly within reach, but organisational complexity, procurement and funding challenges and a dearth of outcome metrics threaten to make its delivery targets more aspirational than assured. Any link drawn between ARIA's frontier research and a specific warfighting capability is best read as informed inference about where dual-use technology is heading, not a confirmed programme connection.
&nbsp; Sources Related Videos
"The Digital Targeting Web explained" &mdash; Sitrep podcast (BFBS):
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJtGC7oZ9gw" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJtGC7oZ9gw</a> ARIA official channel (programme updates, talks by ARIA leadership):
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqCCrdgpr02zZxe9Dyaw_kg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqCCrdgpr02zZxe9Dyaw_kg</a> DARPAtv, the US model ARIA is compared to, for context on how these agencies communicate their work:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/darpatv" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.youtube.com/darpatv</a>

Pentagon Wants AI-Generated "People" to Mask Military Cellphone Signals
What's Being Reported The Pentagon wants technology that floods cellphone networks with AI-generated "people," meant to confuse anyone trying to track real military personnel through their phones. Using fake radio signals to spoof the enemy is a common stratagem, and the Department of Defense wants to take that idea one step further by wielding AI-generated "personalities" to mimic real people and fool enemy AI trying to identify patterns in friendly cellphone traffic. The Department of Defense Small Business Innovation Research solicitation was first reported by Military Times on September 4, 2026. The specs call for AI-powered personas broadcast simultaneously from each decoy device, with a threshold of two and an objective of four or more. This is separate from, though related to, a more widely covered 2024 effort by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) to build deepfake social media personas, first reported by The Intercept.
The Technology Behind the Claim "Digital exhaust" is the metadata phones constantly emit, things like location, device identifiers, and network connections. Intelligence agencies, police, and criminal groups already mine this data to reconstruct someone's routine or locate sensitive facilities. The solicitation describes a "digital exhaust deception system" built around decoy hardware, including Wi-Fi router sized team devices and puck sized personal devices, meant to generate patterns of life realistic enough to survive automated scrutiny. That's distinct from the earlier JSOC program, which sought StyleGAN style deepfake photos, video, and voice to build convincing fake social media accounts rather than phone signal decoys. Both rely on generative AI, but for different jobs: one obscures real radio traffic, the other fabricates online identities.
What's Actually Confirmed Two things check out. The JSOC procurement listing is a real document, a 76-page "wish list" obtained and published by The Intercept in October 2024, seeking tools to build online personas that appear human but don't exist. Separately, the cellphone-decoy solicitation is a genuine, publicly posted DoD funding opportunity opening September 23 and closing October 21, 2026, with stated requirements on persona count, device weight, and battery life. What isn't confirmed: whether either program has moved past the request-for-proposals stage, how either would actually function in the field, or that the explicit goal is "deceiving enemy spies" in a literal sense, rather than defeating automated traffic analysis and metadata tracking, which is the language the solicitation itself uses.
Concerns Raised by Experts Researchers point to a contradiction: the same government that has repeatedly warned about foreign deepfakes is now pursuing similar technology itself. Georgetown's Daniel Byman told The Intercept the effort risks making the US look hypocritical and could weaken domestic trust in official information. Heidy Khlaaf of the AI Now Institute argued that deepfake personas serve no purpose beyond deception, and warned that US military use could normalize the tactic for adversaries like Russia and China. Legal questions remain publicly unresolved, including whether such systems could amount to fraud if third parties are deceived, how they square with international norms on deception in intelligence operations, and what happens if an AI decoy gets mistaken for a real person by a civilian or a journalist.
Why This Matters Neither program is confirmed as deployed. Both are procurement efforts, requests for companies to build capabilities the Pentagon says it wants, not proof the systems already exist or are in active use. That distinction matters when weighing viral claims about "AI armies" flooding networks. Still, the broader pattern, a military simultaneously pursuing fake phone signals and fake online identities, suggests AI-driven deception is becoming a standard tool of modern statecraft rather than a hypothetical one. As the SBIR window closes in late October, more technical detail could surface, but the operational picture stays speculative for now.
Sources
<a href="https://www.militarytimes.com/industry/techwatch/2026/09/04/pentagon-wants-to-use-ai-generated-personalities-for-decoy-cellphones/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.militarytimes.com/industry/techwatch/2026/09/04/pentagon-wants-to-use-ai-generated-personalities-for-decoy-cellphones/</a>
<a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/10/17/pentagon-ai-deepfake-internet-users/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://theintercept.com/2024/10/17/pentagon-ai-deepfake-internet-users/</a>
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Why Is BRICS Exploring Cross-Border Payments?
A Bloc Tired of Paying the Dollar Tax BRICS nations move a huge amount of money across borders every year, and most of it still runs through the same old route: convert to dollars, send it through SWIFT, let a chain of correspondent banks take their cut, then convert again on the other end. That's slow, and it's expensive. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, plus newer members like Egypt, the UAE and Iran, together account for close to 40% of global GDP. Yet their trade with each other still leans on infrastructure built and controlled elsewhere. It's a strange mismatch, and it's the main reason payment reform keeps showing up on the BRICS agenda year after year.
What's Actually Being Discussed At the 2026 summit hosted by India, the conversation moved from talk to something more concrete. Reserve Bank of India Governor Sanjay Malhotra confirmed that member states are weighing two main options. One is linking domestic fast-payment systems directly, so India's UPI could talk to Brazil's Pix or China's CIPS without routing through a third currency. The other is central bank digital currency interoperability, letting sovereign digital currencies settle transactions between countries without a middleman. Neither idea is finalized. Malhotra was upfront that discussions remain "at an early stage," and there's no agreement yet on a shared BRICS currency or a single unified platform. What exists instead is a handful of overlapping projects, including BRICS Pay, a messaging layer meant to connect existing national systems, and proposals for a Decentralized Cross-border Messaging System designed to work independently of Western financial rails.
Sanctions, Costs, and a Bit of Self-Interest Russia has pushed hardest for alternatives, for obvious reasons. Its banks have struggled with payment delays even for trade with friendly partners like China and Turkey, as Western regulators lean on intermediaries to scrutinize anything touching Moscow. But sanctions exposure isn't the whole story. India sees real commercial upside in cheaper, faster settlement for everyday trade and tourism. China already has one of the most advanced domestic payment ecosystems in the world and wants that infrastructure to matter beyond its own borders. Even without a single unifying motive, the members share enough overlapping pain points, cost, speed, and dependency on someone else's rails, to keep the conversation alive.
Why It's Harder Than It Sounds Building the technology is arguably the easy part. A prototype tested in Moscow back in 2024 reportedly handled 20,000 transactions per second, so raw capacity isn't the bottleneck. The real friction is regulatory. Five-plus countries with different banking laws, different compliance standards, and different risk appetites don't align overnight. The Bank for International Settlements has pointed out that connecting payment rails without agreeing on shared messaging standards and compliance rules just shifts the bottleneck from technology to paperwork. Then there's the CBDC question specifically: who settles a transaction, where does the risk sit, and how do you stop the system from becoming a workaround for money laundering or sanctions evasion? None of that gets solved by good software alone.
Where This Leaves Things For now, BRICS is building plumbing, not a rival currency. The realistic near-term outcome looks like interoperable national systems working alongside the dollar-based system, not replacing it outright. That's a meaningfully different story from the "BRICS currency" headlines that circulate online every few months, and it's worth keeping that distinction straight. Whether these payment links actually launch at scale will depend less on ambition and more on whether five very different regulatory systems can agree on the boring details.
&nbsp; Sources
BRICS Members Explore Cross-Border Payment System Links (IDN Financials, Reuters-sourced):
<a href="https://www.idnfinancials.com/news/67297/brics-members-explore-cross-border-payment-system-links" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.idnfinancials.com/news/67297/brics-members-explore-cross-border-payment-system-links</a> BRICS Seek Enhanced Financial Connectivity for Cross-Border Payments (East &amp; Partners):
<a href="https://eastandpartners.com/news/brics-seek-enhanced-financial-connectivity-for-cross-border-payments/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://eastandpartners.com/news/brics-seek-enhanced-financial-connectivity-for-cross-border-payments/</a>\ BRICS Looks to Build New Corridors for Cross-Border Payments (The Digital Banker):
<a href="https://thedigitalbanker.com/brics-looks-to-build-new-corridors-for-cross-border-payments/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://thedigitalbanker.com/brics-looks-to-build-new-corridors-for-cross-border-payments/</a> Related YouTube Videos
BRICS Focus Shifts To Cross-Border Payment Systems | WION News:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBcRGMz1Zjs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBcRGMz1Zjs</a> BRICS Launches New Payment System in 185 Countries...Watch Out Dollar!:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJZ6fpt3wv4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJZ6fpt3wv4</a> BRICS+ Eyes De-Dollarisation of Global Cross-border Payments:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM-Zr5Gwols" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM-Zr5Gwols</a>

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We track critical turning points in global conflicts and crises, analyzing geopolitical tensions, possible outcomes, and their wider implications for international relations and the global order.

We decode global policies and strategies shaping international relations, tracking geopolitical shifts, diplomatic developments, and their impact on the evolving global order.

In this channel, we track the geopolitical trends shaping today&rsquo;s world&mdash;from shifting alliances and rising powers to strategic rivalries and major global developments. We simplify complex international dynamics to understand their impact on the global order.

We track pivotal global events&mdash;from high-stakes diplomacy and emerging crises to major geopolitical shifts&mdash;providing clear analysis of what is happening, why it matters, and what could come next.

We explore cultural diplomacy and the power of art, education, heritage, and shared experiences to build international ties, bridge differences, and ease geopolitical tensions.

We decode geopolitical strategy through power plays, resource competition, strategic decisions, and shifting alliances, examining how nations balance interests and shape the global order.

We explore the dynamics of hegemonic diplomacy, examining power rivalries, strategic alliances, policy shifts, and cultural exchanges that shape global influence and international relations.

We explore the emerging New World Order through power shifts, alliances, conflicts, and geopolitical trends shaping international relations. Our analysis cuts through complexity to understand the forces redefining the global balance of power.

Global politics rarely waits for a convenient explanation. We provide one.
This presence offers clear, well-researched coverage of international affairs and geopolitics, organized into channels that follow the topics that matter most. Whether it's a regional conflict, a shifting alliance, or an economic policy with global reach, each channel is built to keep you informed without the jargon.
Our coverage will continue to grow as the world does, expanding to meet new events as they unfold.
Explore the channels, follow the stories, and keep track of what the world is negotiating next.