BLACKWATER USA | DAILY BRIEF - Blackwater Worldwide

Posted by BW Actual on Nov 6th 2025

Sudan

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres joined the chorus of concern for the fate of civilians in El Fasher following the city's fall to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) last week. Guterres said the situation in El Fasher was "spiralling out of control" and called for an immediate ceasefire.
RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo, aka "Hemedti," has acknowledged that his forces committed some abuses in El Fasher, but characterizes the incidents as isolated infractions by a few bad actors that the RSF has already reprimanded for their misdeeds. Victims' accounts and satellite imagery tell a different story of the (mainly Arab) RSF committing widespread and systematic atrocities against the (mostly black) population of El Fasher - and specifically targeting its fighting-age men.
The U.S. has proposed another ceasefire plan, but the army is not interested in it. Defense Minister Hassan Kabroun rejected the latest U.S. proposal and - demonstrating why he's a defense minister and not a law professor - called the army's war preparations "a legitimate national right."
The details of the proposal the army rejected are not public, but the terms must've been slanted in the RSF's favor: while Kabroun and the army roundly rejected it, the RSF's main backer - the United Arab Emirates - enthusiastically embraced it.

China

In an interview with the Financial Times, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang bluntly assessed that "China is going to win the AI race" if the U.S. continues to impose curbs on China's access to advanced U.S. tech.
Huang has a vested interest in looser rules for tech exports: his company's chips have been one of the main targets of the restrictions he's arguing against. He believes that such rigid policy is "caus[ing] America to lose half of the world's AI developers" as China's developer base turns to rapidly-improving homegrown alternatives instead of Nvidia chips.
Huang's appeals to Pres. Trump to loosen export controls seem to be working: after several meetings with Huang, Trump now says he's open to Nvidia selling some chips to China, as long as its most advanced technologies - like its leading-edge Blackwell chips - are reserved exclusively for its U.S. customers. Experts are divided on whether such a bifurcated approach would work: some think China would not be satisfied with inferior tech and would continue to invest in developing its own advanced chips to rival Nvidia's best.

Afghanistan

Afghanistan and Pakistan began a second round of ceasefire talks in Istanbul today.
This round is likely to face the same disagreements that blocked a truce in the last round: Pakistan wants the Afghan Taliban to stop hosting and supporting the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), while the Afghan Taliban denies backing the TTP and resents Pakistan's intrusions of Afghan sovereignty.
Still, neither side wants war, and they're likely to continue to agree to disagree.

Venezuela

Speaking from hiding by video to a U.S. audience, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Corina Machado applauded Pres. Trump's aggressive stance against illegitimate Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro as "absolutely correct."
Machado echoed the official U.S. line that Maduro is "not a legitimate head of state" - and thus a perfectly legitimate target for U.S. intervention, and she particularly cheered for U.S. efforts to "cut those cash flows" that are sustaining Maduro's regime.
Separately, the WSJ reported that Trump's administration is still weighing its options in Venezuela. Trump has said he "doubt[s]" the U.S. and Venezuela will engage in a full-blown war, but he's reportedly deliberating between using kinetic strikes to remove Maduro or engaging Maduro in negotiations to extract concessions from him instead.
The White House says it has no timeline for a decision.