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Panama, China, Congo, Mexico, Canada, Suecia, Iran… (The Cipher Brief, Feb 3, 2025)

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Monday / February 3 / 2025
What you need to know tonight about national and global security

RUBIO HAILS PANAMA’S PIVOT FROM CHINA – Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino announced his country will not renew – and may terminate – its participation in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), its landmark global infrastructure scheme. Mulino said Panama’s deal with the project expires in two to three years, without elaborating. It’s a significant pivot away from Beijing; Panama was the first Latin American country to officially endorse the BRI in November 2017. China’s U.N. Ambassador Fu Cong called the move a “regrettable decision” and blamed the U.S. and other Western countries for a “smear campaign” against China and the BRI.

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President Mulino also signaled a willingness to review Panama’s 25-year concession with Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison Holdings for the operation of entrance points at the Panama Canal.

 

The announcements came after Mulino’s meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is on a Latin America tour for his first trip abroad as the U.S.’s top diplomat. Rubio reportedly warned Mulino that the U.S. would “take measures necessary” if Panama does not take steps to end what it sees as Chinese influence and control over the Panama Canal. After the talks, Rubio called the decision for Panama to let its participation in the BRI expire “a great step forward for U.S.-Panama relations” and a “free Panama Canal.” 

 

President Donald Trump’s recent calls for U.S. control of the canal have referred to longstanding U.S. concerns about Chinese companies’ operations at the canal. 

 

“There’s really a plethora of Chinese infrastructure projects in and around the canal zone that are going up,” Ryan Berg, Director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies told us. “That has worried U.S. policymakers of back doors and ways in which China can lock certain countries into international standards that accord more with Chinese state-owned enterprises than with Western companies.”

 

“There’s concern about what China may or may not be doing in the canal,” Cipher Brief Expert Martin Petersen, former Acting Executive Director of the CIA, said. “And Chinese hacking, cyberattacks, including some recent reports that they’ve also targeted U.S. infrastructure, naturally arouses suspicions about what may or may not be going on with Chinese activity in the canal, given its strategic importance to us.” Read more about what’s happening at the Panama Canal in The Cipher Brief.

 

CONGO’S M23 REBELS DECLARE UNILATERAL CEASEFIRE – Some potential respite for Congo: the M23 rebels declared a unilateral ceasefire in their conflict with Congolese forces. The rebels, who seized the major city of Goma in eastern Congo last week, said they are enacting the ceasefire on humanitarian grounds. The M23 rebels added that they did not intend to capture other areas in Congo, including the nearby provincial capital of Bukavu, which they were reportedly advancing towards. The announcement came after the World Health Organization said fighting in Goma, a city of 2 million people and a hub for refugees in the area, had killed at least 900 people.

 

Congo’s government did not comment on the ceasefire announcement, but it has called on the international community to sanction Rwanda, which is accused by the U.N., U.S. and others of backing the M23 militia. U.N. experts say that some 3,000-4,000 Rwandan soldiers have been supporting M23 fighters in the latest fighting in east Congo. Rwandan President Paul Kagame told CNN today that he does not know if any of his troops are inside the DRC.

 

Cipher Brief expert Darrell Blocker, a former Senior CIA Executive and former CIA Station Chief in East Africa, explained that the M23 conflict is founded, in part, on longstanding Hutu-Tutsi ethnic tensions in the region; the Congolese Tutsi-led M23 rebels say they are protecting Tutsis, who were targeted in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, wherever they may be. Blocker told us that the M23 group says that they “are going to speak for all Tutsis, whether they live in the Eastern Congo, whether they live in Rwanda… or wherever they happen to live, we are going to be their umbrella.”

 

Blocker also said that a key factor here is that Congo is “the most resource rich country on the planet.” As he put it, “at the end of the day, it’s really about money… I guarantee you every Western power out there is vying for it, and the Russians and the Chinese, for that same mineral resource.” Stay tuned for more from Blocker on the Congo conflict in The Cipher Brief

 

MEXICO AND CANADA SEND TROOPS TO U.S. BORDER; TARIFFS ON HOLD, FOR NOW – President Donald Trump has paused imposing 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada for a month, temporarily easing concerns that North America is about to be fully engulfed in a trade war. 

 

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum confirmed the pause, saying that her government has agreed to deploy 10,000 National Guard troops to Mexico’s northern border to counter drug trafficking as part of the arrangement.  Trump said on his Truth Social platform that the Mexican troops will focus on stopping “the flow of fentanyl, and illegal migrants” into the U.S.

 

Similarly, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau likewise said he is sending “10,000 frontline personnel” to Canada’s southern border to “stop the flow of fentanyl” in exchange for a pause of at least 30 days on the planned tariffs. Trudeau spoke with Trump this afternoon about the matter.

 

Trump threatened the tariffs, which were set to go into effect on Tuesday, over what he said was Mexico and Canada’s failure to stop illegal fentanyl and migrants from getting over the U.S.’s southern border. The measures were set to upend two of the U.S.’s most critical trade relationships.

 

A 10 percent tariff on China, over the role Chinese companies play in producing chemicals for fentanyl production, remains in place. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump will speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the next 24 hours, likely about the tariffs.

 

SWEDEN SAYS IRAN USED STOCKHOLM MOSQUE FOR SPYING – Sweden accused Iran of using the Imam Ali Islamic Center in Stockholm, a Shi’ite Muslim mosque, as a platform to spy against Sweden and the Iranian diaspora

 

Sweden’s Minister for Social Affairs called the situation “extremely serious” and said that all state monetary aid to the center has been halted. He also said “an additional process” is underway, without elaborating. The center said on its website that it is independent without ties to any political party or state. 

 

Iran’s official news agency IRNA reported that Iran summoned Sweden’s ambassador in Tehran on Sunday to protest the reported detention of the head of the center. «Diplomatic regulations were not respected in his case, he was not allowed to see his family members or Iranian diplomats, which begs questions and to which we express our objection,» a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said. Swedish authorities did not confirm if a person had been denied. 

 

Meanwhile, former British soldier Daniel Abed Khalife has been sentenced to more than 14 years in jail for collecting sensitive information to allegedly send to Iran. Prosecutors said Khalife collected data on “individuals in the Special Air Service and the Special Boat Service” – including on Solder TT, “who was in E squadron, a particularly secretive unit.” Prosecutors said that when he was taking up this information, Khalife had substantial contacts with agents linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Khalife was convicted last November for obtaining the information from between 2019 and 2022. He also admitted to attempting to escape prison in September 2023 in a stint that triggered a nationwide manhunt. 

 

WHAT CHINA’S DEEPSEEK BREAKTHROUGH MEANS FOR NATIONAL SECURITY — China’s AI startup DeepSeek upended markets and the U.S. tech community last week when it launched an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant that it said could compete with top-tier U.S.-made models at a fraction of the cost. National security implications are now coming to the fore, with comments from the White House, the U.S. military and experts outside of government warning of the risks — from data privacy to influence operations to cybersecurity threats — to the U.S. “If anyone believes the Chinese government doesn’t have their hands in this, they haven’t been paying attention,” Rick Ledgett, former NSA Deputy Director warned. “They absolutely do.”

 

The development also raises questions about how China caught up so quickly, especially given U.S. export controls aimed at slowing China’s AI growth. “This is about more than technology,” Cipher Brief Expert Jennifer Ewbank, former CIA Deputy Director for Digital Innovation said, “it’s about strategic competition between two competing views of the world.” Read more in The Cipher Brief.





ON THE CIPHER BRIEF’S RADAR

 

Feb. 3 / 10:00-11:00a EST / Virtual / Donald Trump’s Second Term: Thinking through the Transition / Wilson Center 
 

Feb. 3 / 10:00-11:30a EST / Washington, D.C. and Virtual / The State of the Nation Project: A comprehensive discussion on America’s successes and failures / Brookings Institution 
 

Feb. 3 / 10:00-11:00a EST / Virtual / Atoms and Algorithms: A View from the Regulator, with Gretchen Stewart, Chief Data Scientist at Intel / Stimson Center 
 

Feb. 3 / 12:00p EST / Virtual / What DeepSeek’s Breakout Success Means for AI / MIT Technology Review 
 

Feb. 3 / 12:00p EST / Virtual / Why Ecuador matters for the future of the Western Hemisphere’s security / Atlantic Council
 

Feb. 3 / 2:00-3:00p EST / Washington, D.C. and Virtual / Security in Focus: Poland’s EU Presidency and the Transatlantic Alliance in 2025 / Wilson Center 
 

Feb. 4 / 9:00-10:00a EST / Virtual / Standoff at the Border: Rebuilding the India-China Relationship / Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 
 

Feb. 4 / 11:00-11:45a EST / Virtual / The Impossible State Live Podcast: North Korean Troops in Russia: Comrades in Arms or Cannon Fodder? / Center for Strategic and International Studies 
 

Feb. 4 / 12:00-1:00p EST / Virtual / Book Talk | Punishing Putin: Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia / Wilson Center 
 

Feb. 5 / 9:30a-2:05p EST / Washington, D.C. and Virtual / Resilient Allied Energy Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific / Center for Strategic and International Studies 
 

Feb. 5 / 10:00a EST / Washington, D.C. and Virtual / Full Committee Hearing — The State of U.S. Science and Technology: Ensuring U.S. Global Leadership / House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
 

 Feb. 5 / 10:00-11:00a EST / Washington, D.C. and Virtual / A Conversation with Former President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko / Hudson Institute
 

 Feb. 5 / 4:00-5:30p EST / Virtual / The Decline of the “Anglo-Saxon” System of Capitalism / Information Technology and Innovation Foundation 
 

Feb. 6 / 9:00-10:30a EST / Brussels, Belgium and Virtual / Steering the Transatlantic Relationship in a New Era of Geopolitics / German Marshall Fund
 

Feb. 6 / 12:00-1:00p EST / Virtual / Biopower: Securing American Leadership in Biotechnology / Center for a New American Security
 

Feb. 6 / 1:00-2:00p EST / Virtual / Broadband Beneath the Waves: Understanding the World of Submarine Cables / Information Technology and Innovation Foundation 
 

Feb. 6 / 2:30p EST / Washington, D.C. and Virtual / Navigating the future of payments with Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller / Atlantic Council 
 

Feb. 7 / 12:00p EST / 12:00p EST / Washington, D.C. and Virtual / Report launch: Water insecurity in Central Asia / Atlantic Council

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