Eric Branstad, son of U.S. Ambassador to China, Terry Branstad, has used his connections to President Trump to improve his business ties in the country, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The big picture: The younger Branstad is a former Trump official, having worked as the U.S. Commerce Department's White House liaison until the beginning of this year. According to the Journal, this isn't technically outlawed by ethics rules, as former U.S. officials have done this before, but it does "raise the appearance of ethical conflicts."
The United States took the top spot in the TOP500, a biannual ranking of the world's fastest computing systems, for the first time since 2012 with the new Summit supercomputer, but it continues to lose ground to China overall.
Why it matters: In an ever-advancing industry, the world's most powerful computers are continually growing stronger and faster — and, in the burgeoning tech war between the U.S. and China, they're a mark of a nation's technical prowess.
North Korea is believed to have increased development of fuel for nuclear weapons at "multiple secret sites in recent months," NBC reports, citing over a dozen U.S. officials familiar with the issue.
Why it matters: This is a contradiction of what President Trump said he and Kim Jong-un agreed on during their summit. Officials tell NBC that North Korea is "positioning itself to extract every concession it can from the Trump administration," while continuing its march toward nuclear weapons.
President Trump has repeatedly told top White House officials that he wants to withdraw the United States from the World Trade Organization, Axios' Jonathan Swan reported earlier today.
My thought bubble: China has benefited enormously from its accession to the WTO and it does not want global trading disrupted by anyone else. It also sees massive propaganda value in portraying itself as a responsible actor in contrast to the U.S. under President Trump, and it is finding many supporters among nations that in a different time would be on the U.S.' side.
