BLACKWATER USA | DAILY BRIEF - Blackwater Worldwide

Posted by BW Actual on Sep 8th 2025

Coming up this week

The 80th UN General Assembly (UNGA) opens today - although the most consequential sessions - including those at which several U.S. allies plan to break from U.S. policy and recognize Palestinian statehood - will take place during UNGA's final week from Sep. 23-27.
The UK hosts the biennial Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEI) - its biggest defense industry trade show - tomorrow through Friday. The UK courted controversy in July by announcing that "no Israeli government delegation would be invited to attend" the show because of Israel's escalation in Gaza.

[The press reported this as a "ban" on Israel's participation in DSEI, but in practice it only meant that Israel's offended Ministry of Defense lost interest in sponsoring a pavilion this year. Israeli defense companies were still warmly welcomed to attend DSEI, and - despite not being organized under an official pavilion - a record 51 of them will exhibit this year.]

Ethiopia plans to inaugurate the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) tomorrow. GERD will produce over 5,000 MW of electricity, which will more than double Ethiopia's current total output. Egypt and Sudan fought against GERD for the 14 years it was under construction, and continue to complain that it will deprive downstream populations of scarce water supplies.

Commodity and coin market prices

Gaza and West Bank

The Israeli military urged the estimated one million current residents of Gaza City to evacuate to a "humanitarian zone" in southern Gaza ahead of a nascent offensive to root out Hamas leaders Israel believes to be hiding out there.
Egyptian authorities are worried that the southward flow of refugees fleeing Israel's Gaza City offensive won't stop at the border, and will bring an influx of new dependents on Egypt's already-overburdened public systems.
Some Israeli officials - including Prime Minister Netanyahu - would like that outcome, and have called on Egypt to accept more Gazan refugees (although they haven't said whether they'll take them back after the war's end). Egyptian officials, in response, have called on Israel to end the war that's creating refugees in the first place.
Meanwhile, two Palestinian militants killed six people in Jerusalem before an Israeli cop and an armed civilian shot the attackers dead. Hamas lauded the assailants but didn't claim them as members, while Israel sent troops to surround the West Bank villages they came from.

Ukraine

Russia mounted yet-another record drone attack against Ukraine yesterday. For the first time since the war began in early 2022, Russian fire damaged a Ukrainian government building in Kyiv's central - and well protected - government district.
Meanwhile, Pres. Putin issued Russia's clearest threat yet against the possible post-war deployment of Western peacekeepers to Ukraine, saying that Western troops in Ukraine would be "legitimate targets for destruction."
Putin's threat is yet another demonstration of his disinterest in reaching a peace deal under any terms short of his own strongarm demands: in this case, he's preemptively blocking an idea that came about (in part) as a way to help Pres. Zelensky get comfortable making concessions towards Putin's terms.

Yemen

Several Red Sea fiber-optic cables were severed over the weekend, slowing internet access for some users in the UAE and Kuwait.
Some sensationalists were quick to speculate that Yemen's Houthi rebels were responsible. That's not impossible: the Houthis previously threatened to sever Red Sea cables in protest of the Gaza war, and the latest cuts happened on the outer edge of their plausible operating range (near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia).
While not impossible, it's implausible that the Houthis cut these cables. They haven't threatened cables in almost a year and - even if they did revive and carry out the threats they later disavowed - they'd certainly target one of the 14 cables that hug their coastline instead of segments 750+ miles (~1,200+ km) away. Plus, it's really hard to deliberately cut subsea cables - and really easy to accidentally or carelessly drag an anchor or trawling equipment over them.
The Houthis did, however, claim a separate attack over the weekend: a drone assault on southern Israel's Eilat airport that pierced Israel's usually-reliable air defenses and slightly injured two people. That's hardly the payback the Houthis promised for Israeli strikes that killed 12 senior Houthi leaders last week.

South Korea

U.S. immigration enforcement agents raided a Hyundai plant in Georgia, arresting 475 people - including around 300 nationals from Hyundai's home country, South Korea.
The raid created some complications for the U.S.-Korea relationship - and for Pres. Trump's dual priorities of attracting foreign investment in U.S. factories and managing migration to the U.S.
South Korea's Foreign Minister is traveling to Washington to smooth things over with Trump, and will perhaps remind him of Hyundai's pledge to invest $26 billion in the U.S. as part of the broader trade deal South Korea reached with Trump earlier this year.
Trump has actively courted such investment commitments, but maintains that foreign companies manufacturing in the U.S. must "hire and train American workers" and only import a few “very smart people."

France

France's centrist prime minister, François Bayrou, will probably lose a no-confidence vote today, following his minority government's failure to win support for the austerity budget it's been plugging for months.
Bayrou was Pres. Macron's fourth prime minister; whoever succeeds him will be Macron's fifth. Pundits suggest Macron will call on someone from the center-left Socialist Party since his center-right and centrist picks have fared poorly, but right-leaning lawmakers have already declared their intent to block a socialist candidate.

Japan

Japan's Prime Minister, Ishiba Shigeru, finally resigned yesterday as the inevitable outcome of the two clear electoral defeats the Liberal Democratic Party suffered under him.
Markets seem to expect Shigeru's successor to expand government spending and encourage the Bank of Japan to keep interest rates low: Japan's two main stock indices - the Topix and the Nikkei 225 - surged today on the news of Shigeru's resignation, reaching record and near-record highs (respectively).

Argentina

Argentina's chainsaw-wielding president, Javier Milei, suffered a midterm rebuke in Buenos Aires elections as his party lost in a landslide to the opposition Peronists. Voters are seemingly feeling the pain of Milei's uncomfortable - but fiscally prudent and long overdue - economic reforms.