How Ukrainian drone expertise is helping Colombian narcos

0:02Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Thursday, August 6th, and this is your FT News Briefing. There's some progress on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and the U.S. midterm election season has already become a bitter battle. Plus, Ukrainian war technology is changing Colombia's decades-long conflict with leftist rebels and drug traffickers. This is really the first time that armed groups are challenging the state's aerial supremacy. I'm Victoria Craig, and here's the news you need to start your day.

0:48Iran says it reached a plan with Oman to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Details are scant so far, but Iran's foreign ministry spokesperson said the country's agreed on a navigable channel through the vital waterway. He also said a joint statement with Oman is, quote, in the final stages. Crucially, though, the spokesperson said this would not ensure safety of ships so long as the U.S. keeps blockading Iranian ports. Still, diplomats hope that this will help revive the memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran from June. That was meant to extend their ceasefire and allow shipping through the strait to go back to its pre-war levels.

1:32Getting oil flowing again through the Strait of Hormuz has been a big goal for U.S. President Donald Trump. That is because as the midterm elections grow closer, pressure is mounting for him to bring down high gas prices. With inflation front and center for voters, Democrats hope to take back control of Congress in November. But a primary election this week in Michigan highlighted the deep divisions on display across the country. Our Deputy D.C. Bureau Chief Lauren Fedor joins me now to delve into how the midterm season is shaping up. Hey, Lauren. Hi there. So let's start with what is happening within the Democratic Party, because that race in Michigan turned into one of the most expensive primaries in history, and the victor won by a very slim margin.

2:16So just walk us through all this. What does this race in particular mean? So in Michigan, what we saw happen was a progressive challenger, a former public health official named Abdul El-Sayed. He was running against a congresswoman named Haley Stevens. She's much more of a kind of centrist, moderate character. This was a very expensive race. Haley Stevens and the super PAC supporting her outspent El-Sayed and his backers by a nearly four to one margin. But in the end, El-Sayed did eke out a victory. I know not everybody's going to agree with me on everything, but I do know that they agree with me on the need to hold Donald Trump accountable and the need to address the affordability crisis and the need to stop fighting stupid wars we should never be fighting.

2:59The election was held on Tuesday. The final call was actually made on Wednesday. It was that close. And this race in Michigan got particularly nasty by the end. And this is the latest in a string of victories for the progressive left. Sometimes, you know, intrafamily squabbles are the biggest ones. But we all know that when we walk out the House, we stand united. And I think will be a really interesting test case in November as to whether a more progressive candidate can win statewide, particularly in somewhere like Michigan, which is a swing state. We've often seen Democrats field much more kind of centrist candidates.

3:37So Lauren, it seems like this is really representative of an existential question for the Democratic Party, whether voters want the more traditional party values or a more left-leaning progressive view. What are the issues that are driving Democratic voters right now? So in the Michigan race in particular, I would say there were two main issues that stuck out. One was on health care. El-Sayed has really been a proponent of Medicare for All. That's like a universal public health care system, which is long alluded progressives in the U.S. The other main issue was actually foreign policy. We've seen not only in this race, but in races across the country that questions over U.S.

4:19support for Israel have really become a wedge issue for the Democratic Party. And so I think that Democrats are going to need to kind of put these intra-party squabbles behind them, focus on a message about countering Trump and the Republicans if they're in fact going to prevail in November. So if we look beyond Michigan now, what is the broader electoral picture looking like for the country? So the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of Congress, all of those members serve two-year terms. So everyone in the House is up for re-election this autumn. On the Senate side, which is the 100-member upper chamber, roughly a third of Senate seats are up for grabs.

4:58I think one other thing that's worth remembering here is that the midterms at the halfway point in any presidency are often a rebuke or a rejection of the party in power. The public has soured on the war in Iran. Economic concerns, questions of affordability and the cost of living continue. And so even at a time when the Democratic Party may be fighting, squabbling about all sorts of issues, the Republican Party is not in great shape either. And for Trump and the Republicans, a lot of heading into November is going to be about damage control and trying to stave off those losses that history would suggest they could be staring down in November.

5:37I sense a lot of sleepless nights for you as November etches closer. Lauren Fedor, our deputy bureau chief in Washington, thanks for your time. Thanks for having me.

5:52Scammers are taking advantage of a change in EU crypto law. The bloc enacted tough new rules back in July to shrink the cryptocurrency industry. Companies now have to apply for a license to operate in the EU. Because of that, an estimated nearly 2 ,000 groups are considered illegal, and they have to tell customers to either withdraw their assets or move them. And that is where the fraudsters come in. They're impersonating both crypto companies and the regulators and trying to trick customers of those unlicensed companies into transferring their assets into fake accounts.

6:32Colombia will swear in its new president tomorrow. His name is Abelardo de la Espriella, and among his many challenges is a growing security dilemma. The issue revolves around, and stay with me here, Colombia narcos traveling to Ukraine to fight and then bringing back warfare intel with them. Here to discuss what exactly is going on is the FT's Joe Daniels in Bogota. Hi, Joe. Hi, Victoria. So just to explain this for me, because we've got a lot of countries in the mix here, what's happening and why are Colombian soldiers fighting in Ukraine? So Colombian former soldiers, veterans, are fighting in Ukraine.

7:14It's part of a phenomenon, really, that we've seen Colombian veterans do all around the world. They've popped up in Sudan, they've popped up in the Middle East, and also in Ukraine. And essentially, Colombian soldiers are highly trained, skilled, and experienced in fighting. And so when they retire, they are ripe for being recruited by private security companies around the world and also foreign militaries. Now, one of the things that you found in your reporting is that many of these veterans are connected to Colombian armed groups like guerrillas and cartels. And on the battlefield in Ukraine, they're learning a lot about drone warfare and then bringing that info back home.

7:55So what are they doing with all of that sort of intelligence? Well, they're using drones in Colombia's own internal armed conflict against the state. these armed groups, they began with political ideologies and origins going back as far as the 60s. Some of them are with leftist origins and others sort of right-wing paramilitary armed groups. All of them are involved in the drug trade, in illegal mining, in extortion rackets. And as a result, they've been at war with the government who is trying to disrupt their illegal activities. And now they're using drones in order to drop bombs on military targets.

8:41So what has this meant for the Colombian government and its ability to fight back against these guerrilla fighters? Well, this is a new frontier in Colombia's internal conflict. This is really the first time that armed groups are challenging the state's aerial supremacy. The government claims to be doing fairly well in fighting back against these attacks. The Defence Ministry has estimated that last year, the military neutralised 96 % of attempted drone attacks. But it's kind of a cat and mouse thing because the armed groups are now starting to use technology that has been deployed on the front lines of Ukraine, where they're using these first person view drones, they call them, which are much more agile, much harder to shoot down.

9:34So every time the state kind of makes an advance, armed groups are sort of figuring out how to get around it. And so there's this tension constantly. What does that mean for the incoming president when he takes office tomorrow? So when Abelardo de la Speria takes office tomorrow, he's inheriting a country that in many ways, its security context has got a lot more complicated over the last four years. He is taking over from a leftist government that had a policy of trying to negotiate with Colombia's armed groups. And during the previous government's policy of negotiations, a lot of them strengthened.

10:15A lot of them took advantage of ceasefires and negotiations to recruit more people. Meanwhile, the gold price over the last four years has gone up significantly. The demand for cocaine globally has gone up. So there's a lot more money in the illegal economy than there was before. So Abel de la Spiria is inheriting that. And the drone element is just another front in which the armed groups have got more technological. And he seemed aware of the challenge. Of course, whether he can actually turn rhetoric into policy is something that remains to be seen. Joe Daniels covers Latin America for the FT.

10:57Thanks so much, Joe. Thank you, Victoria.

11:05We've got one more story before we go. Google's AI lab DeepMind is continuing its shakeup. The company announced that co-founder Demis Husibis will step down as CEO, but stay on his chair. His replacement, though, will not take on the chief executive title and will instead be senior vice president. That suggests that DeepMind will be further incorporated into Google's broader business. Google's parent company, Alphabet, stock fell 5 % on the announcement.

11:37You can read more on the AI shakeup and all of the stories in today's podcast for free when you click the links in our show notes. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Check back tomorrow for the latest business news.

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