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South Korea unveils record budget increase to cash in on AI boom
Lee Jae Myung’s spending plan looks to invest memory chip windfall in more technology to drive growth cycle
South Korea has unveiled plans to plough a tax windfall from the AI-driven semiconductor boom back into AI and other future industries as President Lee Jae Myung launched the country’s biggest spending increase on record.
Lee’s government on Tuesday unveiled a Won820.9tn ($598bn) budget for 2027, up 12.8 per cent from the previous year. That includes Won162.3tn for an endowment-style “Future Response Fund”, financed largely by soaring tax receipts from chipmakers such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.
The figure marks the first double-digit increase to the budget since 2009, when Seoul lifted spending by 10.6 per cent in response to the global financial crisis.
Budget minister Park Hong-geun said that the government was targeting a “growth-led virtuous cycle” in which public spending would act as “priming water” for economic growth, which in turn would strengthen public finances.
South Korea has been in an economic sweet spot, thanks to the global AI boom, which has created explosive demand for its memory chips, boosted the profits of its largest chipmakers and driven dizzying rallies on domestic markets. Some of that revenue has also begun to trickle down to employees, with windfall bonuses for semiconductor workers.
The new budget will allocate Won2.6tn ($1.9bn) for the chip sector, as well as funding for data centres and the robotics industry. Another Won3.4tn ($2.5bn) will go towards strategic weapons, including a nuclear-powered submarine programme. The “Future Response Fund” will begin by deploying Won45.4tn ($33.1bn) next year.
Seoul will also increase social expenditure, particularly for young people and families, alongside allocations for struggling regions outside the Seoul metropolitan area. Lee has promised to raise investment in regional universities, which are facing a crisis from the country’s declining birth rate.
The budget ministry projected record government revenues of Won880.8tn for 2027, exceeding planned expenditure by almost Won60tn. Public debt-to-GDP is forecast to fall from 51.6 per cent for 2026 to 48.3 per cent next year.
“Since Korea’s debt level is relatively low compared with those of other advanced countries, it would not be a bad idea to boost potential growth in order to address structural challenges such as the demographic crisis,” said Chong Hoon Park, head of research at Standard Chartered in Seoul.
The surge in public spending comes as the central bank is tightening monetary policy to calm inflationary pressure driven in part by the chip boom. The Bank of Korea last week raised its benchmark interest rate to 3 per cent, its second consecutive increase .
Lee said on Tuesday that higher rates were “unavoidable”, but added that “fiscal policy needs to play a carefully calibrated role in minimising the pain for vulnerable groups caused by higher rates and ensuring that growth potential is not damaged”.
The BoK also upgraded growth forecasts to 3.3 per cent for 2026 and 2.9 per cent for 2027.
But some analysts questioned the wisdom of a sweeping fiscal expansion, with inflation running above the BoK’s target, high property prices in Seoul and expanding household debt.
“The economy is not just hot right now; it is boiling hot,” said Kim Woo-chul, professor of taxation at the University of Seoul. “A fiscal expansion of this scale is completely inappropriate for the current situation.”
Shin Yul, professor of politics at Myongji University, added: “No one knows how long the semiconductor boom will last.”
Lee is also battling to reverse his sliding popularity. A survey released on Monday showed his approval rating had hit a record low of 38.9 per cent, down from 48.9 per cent in the second week of July.
Top policy adviser Kim Yong-beom resigned on Tuesday, following a cabinet reshuffle at the weekend that installed new finance and defence ministers.
The budget bill requires parliamentary approval, but Lee’s Democratic Party holds 161 of the 300 seats in the national assembly, enabling it to secure passage without cross-party consensus.
Wall Street banks push Big Law to cut fees because of AI
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Citi tell law firms their bills should fall because technology has made routine work faster
Wall Street banks are pushing large law firms to cut fees, arguing that the business model that has enriched top lawyers for decades is not sustainable in an era of AI.
Morgan Stanley and Citigroup have told major law firms they want to set up new payment arrangements that would save them money, the banks’ in-house lawyers told the FT.
Goldman Sachs had asked law firms how much the technology was saving them and expected to share in those benefits, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
The pressure from some of Big Law’s most valued clients could help overturn the financial model at the heart of the legal industry. Under the so-called leverage model, firms maximise profits for equity partners by billing hourly for work done by large numbers of more junior lawyers, often working late into the night at rates that far outstrip the cost of their salaries.
Much of that work, such as research, document review, assessing contracts and trawling through litigation discovery, can now be done far more quickly using AI.
“If the number of hours they’re working on a matter has come down because of AI . . . our expectation is for costs to come down significantly per transaction,” Adam Meshel, global head of legal at Citigroup, told the FT.
He said the bank had started asking law firms to bid for work, explaining during the bidding process how much they were saving using AI.
A “different working model” based on that approach would probably be in place within a year, Meshel said, adding that he wanted it to be worked out collaboratively so that it would work for both the bank and its outside lawyers.
Top lawyers have “for a long time been compensated on the foundation of [associates billing for long hours],” Eric Grossman, Morgan Stanley’s general counsel, told the FT. “Their compensation model is now extraordinarily unstable.”
The ability to complete tasks more quickly could mark “a fundamental altering of the revenue foundation for these mega firms”, he said.
Grossman said the bank was willing to continue to pay large sums for the judgment and talent of the best lawyers, but that by the end of this year most external legal work would be tendered through competitive bidding processes and paid for using alternative arrangements such as fixed fees.
That should cost the bank less, he said, but law firms could remain as profitable as before if they use AI to work on more matters and reduce costs.
Goldman Sachs asked law firms for information about how much more efficiently they were able to complete tasks because of AI, people with knowledge of the matter said. The bank declined to comment.
Hourly fees at top law firms have surged in recent years, in part to finance a war for talent in which they have poached rivals’ star partners with eye-watering pay packages.
Average hourly billing rates for associates at the largest US law firms hit $798 this year, up 33 per cent since 2023, according to the legal technology company Persuit. The rate for partners has risen 29 per cent in the same period.
Wall Street banks are among Big Law’s most important clients because of their scale and the range of tasks for which they need legal advice, from navigating the close regulation of the banking industry to dealing with everyday financing transactions, litigation, white-collar investigations and M&A.
Almost half of large law firms said AI had already affected their pricing model, according to a survey carried out this year by Citi’s law firms group, a unit of the bank that serves lawyers and firms.
So far, “it’s around the edges”, said Gretta Rusanow, head of advisory services for the law firm group. “We’re not yet seeing a formalised, firm-wide shift towards alternative fee arrangements, but it is likely to come,” she said.
“We’re likely to see more of a hybrid approach . . . [with] fixed fees for routine work and the billable hour for more complex work.”
Some law firms have already started hiring fewer new graduates than before. Forty-seven per cent saw a smaller intake of summer associates — the entry ticket to Big Law jobs — this year than last, the Citi survey found, and 49 per cent will have a smaller class next summer than this year.
However, some law firms expect associates to continue working long hours on matters despite the use of AI.
“Some tasks are low-hanging fruit, you can do [them] more quickly now,” said Sam Newhouse, global vice-chair of Latham & Watkins’ M&A and private equity practice.
“But what do you do when you’ve done that? A lot of our sophisticated clients are using the extra time and the extra data . . . to their strategic advantage. If you’ve got a chance to go through every merger agreement that ever existed and work out what position have people taken . . . it helps them strike better deals.”
Concerns about legal bills in a world of AI have rippled out into other industries too. Steven Croley, Ford’s general counsel, told the FT the carmaker was hiring more in-house lawyers and doing more legal work internally in circumstances where AI makes it cheaper to do so, reducing its use of outside law firms.
While law firms were using AI, he said, “it’s not showing up in billing relief or greater efficiencies that are obvious to us as their clients”.
He said AI would probably upend Big Law’s business model. “The pyramid economic model [of law firms], I would not bet on that,” he said. “It will be a shock, it will be a shift of the tectonic plates.”
How Aston Martin’s latest financing sparked a bondholder revolt
Luxury car maker’s controversial deal with BlackRock-owned credit firm HPS set up high-stakes legal battle
By mid-July, creditors owed more than £1.3bn by Aston Martin were watching the price of their bonds fall steadily as the company’s finances deteriorated. What gave them comfort, however, was that their debt was secured on the carmaker’s most valuable assets.
On July 22 that changed. James Bond’s favoured automobile company struck a surprise deal with BlackRock-owned private credit firm HPS, borrowing up to £550mn in exchange for pledging its most valuable assets to the new lender. The assets were removed from existing creditors’ reach in the process.
Now Aston Martin and a group including some of Europe’s most aggressive credit hedge funds are hurtling towards high-stakes litigation. Last week members of a creditor group owed £1.3bn filed for discovery against HPS and other parties, seeking documentation and testimony to be used in “a forthcoming foreign proceeding in England”.
The HPS deal led to the carmaker’s bonds sinking further while credit ratings were cut deeper into junk territory. The deal — described by one creditor as an “aggressive asset strip” — has pitted the struggling carmaker against its bondholders.
Creditors — including London-based hedge funds Arini Capital Management and Tresidor Investment Management — have called the HPS transaction “a value-destructive liability management exercise”. The two funds this week filed for discovery in New York, in preparation for the legal battle, seeking information from HPS, US branding giant Absolute Brands as well as Moelis and Lazard, advisers to the private credit firm.
“Even the most aggressive private equity guys in the US don’t do these things,” said one Aston Martin bondholder.
Prior to Aston Martin’s agreement with HPS, existing creditors had also offered the carmaker new financing. The company’s readiness to strike the deal with HPS has not only frustrated the bondholders, who were cut out of the deal, but also spooked Aston Martin’s employees about the long-term prospects of the group, according to people familiar with the situation.
The UK-listed carmaker is backed by Canadian billionaire and chair Lawrence Stroll, China’s Geely and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, but “the fact that Aston Martin has had to turn to HPS for financing indicates that none of its current major shareholders are willing to put in more capital”, said Scott Sherwood, an independent analyst of luxury car brands.
“Aston Martin has once again done just enough to stay alive — or, in other words, ‘to die another day’,” he added.
Chief executive Adrian Hallmark has defended the deal as giving the company “additional resilience and further flexibility to execute our current and future product plans”.
Under the HPS deal, the company borrowed £450mn and has the option to draw down a further £100mn in the future.
Authentic Brands, which owns brands ranging from Brooks Brothers to the David Beckham brand rights, also participated in the financing, providing £100mn of the initial £450mn, according to people familiar with the matter. HPS holds a minority stake in Authentic Brands.
While Aston Martin hinted that the transaction would weaken the pool of collateral that underpinned existing creditors, it has repeatedly refused to tell bondholders what assets have been moved from their reach.
Despite the company’s silence, filings on the UK’s trademark register have since revealed that Aston Martin’s most valuable branding and naming rights have been transferred to a Cayman Islands entity called Silverco — a new “unrestricted” subsidiary that now secures HPS’s lending.
Just under 200 trademarks including the words “Aston Martin”, the winged Aston Martin logo, and the shape and design of the DB6, the model used as James Bond’s car in the 1964 movie Goldfinger, have been pledged as part of the HPS deal.
The remaining £100mn of its new facility, to be provided by the private credit firm, can be drawn if Aston Martin transfers a 50.1 per cent stake in its non-automotive IP to Authentic Brands.
For those who know Aston Martin, its latest dash for cash may feel familiar, with the century-old company having gone through seven bankruptcies in the past.
Since floating on the London Stock Exchange in 2018, at a valuation of more than £4bn, the company has sought continuous equity injections, with its share price plummeting from almost £20 to 33p. The carmaker now has a market capitalisation of £350mn. Its debt pile, meanwhile, has grown to more than £1.5bn.
Stroll first gained partial control of the carmaker when he led one such emergency financing in 2020, acquiring an initial 16.7 per cent stake that has since risen to 33 per cent.
Stroll convinced Hallmark, the former chief executive of Bentley, to take over the car company in 2024 but even under new leadership its finances failed to stabilise. Hit by weak China demand and US tariffs, Aston Martin reported operating losses for six straight quarters and burned through nearly £200mn in cash during the first six months of this year despite rising revenue.
To plug another shortfall, the company turned to HPS.
Grappling with why their own offer of new money was rejected in favour of the HPS offer, creditors have begun scrutinising the relationship between the wider Aston Martin group and the private credit firm.
HPS, a $200bn US direct lending giant that was acquired by BlackRock last year, knows the Aston Martin brand and Stroll well.
About two years before acquiring a stake in Aston Martin, Stroll had led the rescue of the Force India Formula 1 racing team that had fallen into administration for £90mn. Under Stroll’s consortium, the team was rechristened Racing Point and finished as high as fourth in 2020.
But for a man who made his name in luxury brands, “Racing Point” never felt apt. Once Stroll took a stake in the supercar maker, the Aston Martin name made its way into Formula 1. For the first time since 1960, the marque was back in British racing green colours.
In 2024, HPS struck a deal to acquire about 19 per cent of the privately owned Aston Martin F1 team. Although Stroll’s consortium owns less than half of Aston Martin Racing, he in effect controls the company.
Under the deal using a “hybrid” instrument, the equity came alongside $400mn in lending from HPS with an interest rate of 10 per cent.
Stroll has used the racing arm to prop up the carmaking business, which follows years of steep losses. The carmaker raised £50mn this year by selling the rights to use its name for the Formula 1 team to AMR.
The £50mn deal was criticised by existing shareholders who questioned the valuation as too low considering that Stroll and other AMR shareholders, such as HPS, had secured perpetual rights to use Aston Martin for the racing name.
Aston Martin said the additional liquidity would put the group in a stronger financial position and benefit all its stakeholders. “The board considered the available financing options and selected the one it judged to be in the best interests of the company,” it said.
BlackRock and HPS did not respond to requests for comment.
Debt investors will be closely watching the legal battle that is set to put not only the HPS financing under scrutiny but also Stroll’s dealings across the Aston Martin empire and measures used to keep the lossmaking carmaker alive.
“I did not think [Aston Martin] would be anywhere near this aggressive . . . They are pushing the limit on what’s considered acceptable behaviour,” said one distressed debt investor, who does not own Aston Martin bonds.
Illegal streaming costs UK £1.4bn a year, broadcasters and sports bodies warn
Coalition seeks government support to crack down on pirated content and restore lost revenue
Illegal streaming costs at least £1.4bn in lost revenue across the sports, TV and film industries every year, according to a coalition of broadcasters, sports bodies and law enforcement organisations that are seeking government support to crack down on pirated content.
Almost one in three UK adults — about 16.8mn people — say they have used illegal streaming to access content within the past three months, a report backed by groups including Sky, the BBC, the Premier League and Formula 1 as well as the City of London Police found.
The report is an attempt to put firm numbers on the cost of illegal streaming. Many consumers assume that watching pirated football matches or films via modified Amazon Firesticks, social media feeds and file-sharing services, or VPNs to access overseas content is a victimless crime.
Sir John Whittingdale, MP and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Intellectual Property, said: “This report should act as a wake-up call: intellectual property theft and illegal streaming is a serious threat and urgent action is needed.”
The Price of Piracy research found that £700mn in revenues was lost every year because of illegal streaming of live sports, with a further £653mn linked to illegal streaming of film and TV. It estimated that this translated to 10,400 fewer jobs in the industry or about £366mn a year in lost tax revenues.
The report, produced by WPI Economics, also challenges the assumption that illegal streaming is mostly an issue for live sports given the widespread use of pirated streams to watch Premier League football in the UK. The research found that almost nine in 10 of the so-called “active pirates” illegally stream film and television shows compared to three in five who illegally stream live sports.
The campaign by BeStreamWise — a group set up to warn consumers about the cyber security, financial and legal risks of piracy — urged the government to work with the industry to help better inform consumers who knowingly use illegal streams and expose themselves to fraud.
Many of the streams and apps also expose users to malicious software. While the practice is illegal, authorities focus their efforts on suppliers and streamers rather than targeting consumers directly.
The group wants a government-backed anti-piracy strategy that would make illegal content harder to access and less readily available, which they argue could significantly impact infringement rates in the UK. It recommends a voluntary, cross-sector framework for platforms, connectivity providers and content services to work together to take action against illegal streaming.
The media industry has taken a number of routes to fight pirated material in the past, with broadcasters such as Sky in particular seeing the impact of people illegally streaming sports such as the Premier League, which has cost the group billions of pounds to secure the rights.
Sky has won High Court orders requiring internet service providers to block illegal streams of linear channels such as Sky Sports and Sky Atlantic. The Premier League also has a court order requiring ISPs to block unauthorised live streams of its matches. Police forces have pursued criminals running illegal streaming networks, which have been linked to organised crime groups.
Matt Hibbert, group director of anti-piracy at Sky, said: “Illegal streaming ... takes money out of the creative economy that would otherwise support investment in British television, film and sport, while exposing consumers to fraud, scams and identity theft.”
Disasters to cost world $450bn a year from climate change and development
More than half of losses not covered by insurance as carriers carve out risk and cut exposure
Natural catastrophes are expected to cost the world $450bn in a typical year, according to a new forecast, with less than half of those losses covered by insurance.
As much as 62 per cent of global losses from natural disasters are uninsured, according to new research from risk-modelling firm Verisk, leaving homes, businesses and governments facing about $279bn in uninsured losses in an average year, and far more in the most disastrous years.
The growing price tag reflects the mounting toll of climate change and urban expansion, which has put more property at risk, as well as the rising price of residential construction, which in the US has outpaced inflation.
The insurance industry also faces rising losses from catastrophe risk, although it is covering a shrinking share of total estimated damages.
Last year was the sixth consecutive year in which global insured losses breached $100bn. Although no hurricane made landfall in the continental US, insurers paid claims for record-setting expensive California wildfires and severe thunderstorms, which have become increasingly costly.
In response to rising costs from US storms, including roof repair costs, insurers have tightened contract terms and carved many of these risks out of standard policies. Major carriers have also exited some regions altogether by opting not to renew contracts with homes deemed to be at-risk.
In many emerging markets hard hit by costly natural catastrophes, homes and businesses buy little or no insurance. As a result of these trends, the share of global losses covered by insurance is falling.
An earthquake in Myanmar in March 2025 caused about $12bn in damage, of which insurers covered less than $100mn, Verisk said, reflecting low uptake of insurance in the market.
Texas floods in July 2025, which killed more than 130 people, were expected to cost $1.1bn, but most of those losses were uninsured, since flood cover is excluded from standard homeowners’ insurance policies in the US.
Los Angeles wildfires in January 2025, which caused as much as $65bn in economic losses, mostly damaged properties with home insurance coverage.
But as much as 35 per cent of properties lacked insurance, Verisk said, due to “insurer retrenchment” — big carriers leaving the state due to rising costs — which had pushed many homeowners on to California’s state-backed insurer of last resort, the Fair Plan.
Despite the rise in industry-wide losses, US home insurers have enjoyed a run of strong profits buoyed by raising premiums and cutting their exposure to riskier homes.
State Farm, the US’s biggest property and casualty insurer, in 2024 said it would not renew policies for 72,000 property owners across California, where other carriers such as AIG have largely exited the regulated insurance market.
Progressive said on an earnings call this month that it had “intentionally reduced availability by requiring more underwriting reviews as a way to carefully control growth and protect profitability”.
The carrier also declined to renew policies for high-risk coastal properties in Florida and had cut its exposure to storm and wildfire risks elsewhere, it said, while “growing faster in lower-weather-risk markets.”
Insurers “pull back from areas that they don’t want to insure anymore, dump that risk on to governments and private individuals, break local markets and then jack up their rates. That’s a pattern,” said Pete Sikora, a senior adviser for activist group New York Communities for Change.
US carrier visit to Thailand's Pattaya lifts hope and sex-tourism risk
USS Abraham Lincoln is due to dock after more than 200 consecutive days at sea
Pattaya mayor says each US service member could spend up to 3,000 baht per day ashore
Local police plan extra patrols and drone monitoring around beachfront and night life district
BANGKOK, Aug 31 (Reuters) - After a long deployment in the Middle East, a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier will dock in Thailand's resort city of Pattaya this week, raising hopes of an economic boost, even as local authorities cracked down on parts of the sex tourism destination.
The Abraham Lincoln is due to dock on Wednesday at nearby Laem Chabang, with two accompanying Navy vessels, to allow nearly 5,000 sailors and Marines aboard to rest and recuperate after over 200 days at sea, according to Thai officials.
Ahead of its arrival, police are preparing additional patrols around Pattaya's main beachfront and nightlife district besides raids over the weekend that led to 40 to 50 people in detention for suspected prostitution, officials said.
"We are doing our best, but it is difficult," Pattaya police chief Anek Srathongyoo said on Monday, explaining that sex workers could potentially solicit in public areas without the knowledge of the authorities.
Prostitution is illegal in Thailand and, despite occasional crackdowns, the sex industry is openly visible in major tourism hubs, including parts of Bangkok and Pattaya.
The Lincoln left its home port of San Diego in November and was later redirected to the Middle East to support military operations in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran — setting a modern-day record for consecutive days at sea, according to Democratic lawmakers.
But the prolonged deployment has also brought with it reports of mental health concerns and deteriorating conditions aboard, with two military-focused outlets this month describing suicide attempts and declining morale on the ship.
In Pattaya, a fishing village partly transformed into a tourism centre on the back of U.S. servicemen seeking succour during the Vietnam War, some are hoping for a financial boost.
Each U.S. military personnel could spend 1,000 to 3,000 baht per day ($30 to $91), depending on how long they stayed ashore and whether they stayed overnight, said Pattaya Mayor Poramase Ngampiches.
Shore leave is typically staggered, meaning not all personnel will step off the vessels at the same time.
"It should help stimulate Pattaya's economy in the short term," Poramase said.
RISK OF SEXUAL EXPLOITATION
But money may also flow into the unseemly part of Pattaya's entertainment industry, so massive that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation described it a decade ago as "one of the world's leading sex tourism destinations."
"The risk to health and safety, as the influx of a large number of customers may increase the likelihood of sexual exploitation and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases," said Pipatpong Fakfare, an associate professor at Bangkok University's School of Humanities and Tourism Management.
He also pointed to reports of stress and suicide attempts among personnel aboard the aircraft carrier that add another layer of concern.
The overall commercial impact on Pattaya, which has over 300,000 rooms, would depend partly on where personnel chose to spend their time, as some could travel to the capital Bangkok, said Thanet Supornsahasrungsi, president of the Association of Chonburi Tourism Federation.
"When we heard the news that a U.S. Navy warship would be docking in Pattaya, it became a source of hope for us," said Lisa Hamilton, president of the Pattaya Nightlife Business Association.
"I have lived in Pattaya for more than 20 years, and I have never seen any year as slow as this one."
($1 = 32.9500 baht)
China-Linked Activist Network Preparing To Activate Against Carney's Rare-Earths Push
The Ring of Fire sits about 500 kilometers northeast of Thunder Bay in the muskeg of Ontario’s James Bay Lowlands, on Treaty 9 territory. Prospectors found it in 2007 and named it after a Johnny Cash song.
Beneath the peat moss lies the Canadian Shield, deeply seamed with nickel and cobalt for batteries used in electric vehicles and smart phones, copper for the grids that power data centers, titanium, platinum and palladium for aerospace, and the largest deposit of chromite — critical to stainless steel — in North America.
Nine Cree and Ojibwa communities live in and around it.
On September 14, Prime Minister Mark Carney opens the Canada Investment Summit in Toronto, where he is expected to pitch the Ring of Fire as Canada’s answer to a new world in which access to critical minerals has become an instrument of great-power leverage.
A coalition that advertises itself as anti-capitalist will be in Toronto too.
One of its three conveners has direct organizational ties to CODEPINK, the American anti-war group now under investigation in Washington and London.
The Indigenous and eco-justice coalition says it brings together labor unions and climate networks, and opposes “the sell-off of Canada’s public infrastructure and resources to global private capital.” From September 12 to 14, it will hold a counter-summit, “culminating in a mass rally and demonstration to crash Mark Carney’s Investment Summit.”
Of the conveners, World BEYOND War has the deepest international connections. Headquartered in the United States, it obtained its own charitable status in September 2021 after years under a fiscal sponsor. CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin sits on its advisory board.
Whether interests from Beijing sit behind CODEPINK’s funding is now a question for two Five Eyes governments. No such allegation has been made about any organization in the Ring of Fire coalition.
The Telegraph reported in August that Britain’s Home Office was examining claims that Beijing was funding pro-Palestinian protests to “sow division and chaos” in Britain.
The paper also reported that a British company linked to CODEPINK allegedly received about £250,000 from businesses connected to Neville Roy Singham, a China-based technology millionaire accused of financing Chinese propaganda.
Singham has consistently denied allegations of Beijing backing.
Yet footage from a November 2025 academic forum in Shanghai, co-sponsored by Singham with East China Normal University, showed him standing with attendees, fists raised, as the communist anthem “The Internationale” played. He is married to Jodie Evans, CODEPINK’s other co-founder.
In Washington, a congressional committee and the Justice Department are running parallel inquiries into whether Singham used his money to spread pro-China propaganda and advance the interests of Beijing.
The New York Times documented in 2023 that entities linked to Singham had supplied more than $1.4 million to CODEPINK — close to a quarter of its donations since 2017. The Times’ investigation, cited since in congressional letters and at a February 2026 Ways and Means hearing on foreign influence in American nonprofits, opened not on the Middle East causes the Telegraph raised this year but on a street fight in London.
“The protest in London’s bustling Chinatown brought together a variety of activist groups to oppose a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. So it was peculiar when a street brawl broke out among mostly ethnic Chinese demonstrators,” the Times reported. The fight, in November 2021, “started when men aligned with the event’s organizers, including a group called No Cold War, attacked activists supporting the democracy movement in Hong Kong.”
“On the surface, No Cold War is a loose collective run mostly by American and British activists who say the West’s rhetoric against China has distracted from issues like climate change and racial injustice,” the paper reported.
“In fact, a New York Times investigation found, it is part of a lavishly funded influence campaign that defends China and pushes its propaganda. At the center is a charismatic American millionaire, Neville Roy Singham, who is known as a socialist benefactor of far-left causes.”
Mr. Singham, the Times added, “works closely with the Chinese government media machine and is financing its propaganda worldwide.”
CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin’s connection to World BEYOND War is financial as well as advisory.
Her family foundation, Arc of Justice, reported a $100,000 grant to World BEYOND War in its 2022 federal tax filing, recorded as general support. The same filing lists $355,350 to CODEPINK.
The two organizations also share an institutional funder, the Tides Foundation, a large American grantmaker. World BEYOND War names Tides among its foundation supporters; Tides reported grants of $104,500 to CODEPINK in 2022 and $54,500 in 2023.
In March, CODEPINK helped organize what it called a humanitarian convoy to Cuba with The People’s Forum, one of the New York groups the Times identified as funded by Singham. Medea Benjamin, whose CODEPINK had received more than $1.4 million from Singham-linked entities, joined the trip, along with political streamer Hasan Piker. The Treasury Department opened an administrative review. Benjamin called it intimidation and denied reports that she had been subpoenaed.
In March 2025, World BEYOND War joined an anti-mining protest in Toronto — at the world’s largest mining gathering — alongside the Palestinian Youth Movement, the Sudanese Solidarity Collective, and Canadian indigenous groups.
The demonstrators denounced what they called conflict minerals and green militarism, naming cobalt, coltan, antimony, rare earths, niobium and thorium. “Every F-35 fighter jet has about 900 pounds of rare earths in it,” one argument ran. “Those weapons are being used to bomb civilians in Gaza.”
Another held that “Canadian companies can dig up critical minerals used to make the bombs that are bombing other Indigenous people, on their lands, around the world.”
On January 21, 2026, World BEYOND War published on its own site an essay by CODEPINK’s “War Is Not Green” campaigner, arguing that artificial intelligence data centers are an engine of militarized extraction, relying on critical minerals.
“The process of obtaining these minerals ... requires the militarization, destabilization, and total plunder of mineral-rich regions.”
The question of whether foreign money moves through Western environmental coalitions was put to Brenda Shaffer at a Hudson Institute panel in Washington on May 19, convened by former U.S. national security official Michael Doran with research fellow Zineb Riboua and this reporter. Shaffer teaches at the United States Naval Postgraduate School’s Energy Academic Group.
She was asked about Tides — which World BEYOND War lists among its funders — and called it “an American based organization” that is “strongly affiliated with democratic causes in the US.”
“Many, many organizations and American organizations work as pass throughs for China to block energy in Canada, but also to block energy in the United States,” Shaffer said. “For instance, there’s Energy Foundation, which is based in San Francisco, which used to be a legally explicit Chinese organization, but it broke off to an American organization and a Chinese organization.”
“You see the 990 forms and you see money comes in from China to Energy Foundation,” she said. “Money goes from Energy Foundation into various environmental movements in the United States that are working against fossil fuels. And if China was really so interested about stopping fossil fuels, you would think they, the largest consumer of coal in the world, the largest producer, they would stop it at home.”
On December 16, 2025, 26 state attorneys general asked Attorney General Pamela Bondi to investigate Energy Foundation China under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, alleging it “is supervised by the National Development and Reform Commission — an arm of the Chinese government” and is led by Beijing-based former Chinese Communist Party officials. Its chief executive, Ji Zou, previously served as a deputy director general of China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy. The letter says that “in 2023 alone it gave over $156 million in grants to environmental and climate-focused groups.”
A search of the Tides Foundation’s amended 2022 Form 990 shows that it reported $16,292,728 in grant-making expenditures and investments in East Asia and the Pacific. The filing itemizes 157 grants of more than $5,000 to recipients in that region.
Because the public-disclosure form leaves foreign recipients’ names and employer identification numbers blank, it cannot be determined from this filing whether Energy Foundation China or any other particular entity received those funds.
The public filing also does not identify Tides’ contributors, so it cannot establish whether Tides received funds from Asia.