TheChek News Flow

Apple’s trade secret lawsuit against OpenAI is packed with a number of extraordinary allegations that paint a picture of a coordinated effort to extract confidential information from current and former Apple employees. But what’s perhaps most striking is how casually the alleged misconduct is described, including one message that reads, “LOL, I found out I can access the [network storage], so funny.”

The 41-page complaint, which was filed on Friday, is filled with unusually detailed allegations, like this and others. Here are some that stood out the most to us:

So far, OpenAI has only commented publicly via a statement shared on X on Friday, which reads: “We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets. We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.”

Sam Altman and Elon Musk traded barbed social media posts over the weekend, drawing new attention to the gap between vision and reality for the space-compute business.

Responding to Musk accusing him of being a scammer, Altman said, “homeboy you’re the one sellling [sic] public market investors on short-term space datacenters.”

Setting aside “homeboy,” Altman is saying what a lot of experts have concluded but public market investors seem to be ignoring: Space data centers are not going to be a serious business anytime soon.

SpaceX’s plans to launch a fleet of orbital data centers to perform AI inference tasks are the main driver behind the company’s 2-trillion-dollar valuation. Bullish analysts say that the potential for that processing power to fuel SpaceXAI’s models or act as an orbital neocloud are unprecedented in the AI boom.

But when you talk to subject-matter experts — whether it’s the entrepreneurs behind other space data center startups, the team at Google developing that company’s orbital compute project, or engineers who have done the numbers for fun — you find the same answer: This isn’t going to make a big dent until we have much cheaper rockets and the ability to produce high-powered satellites at low cost, en masse.

Musk’s answer to this is easy to predict: Starship, SpaceX’s huge new rocket, is expected to make its 13th test flight as soon as July 16. If Musk’s team can get that vehicle to the point where it flies again and again, the data center business case could close.

But even if the company successfully recovers both stages of the rocket on this test flight, operational reusable flight will still likely be years away, and space data center launches will likely take a back seat to SpaceX’s commitments to NASA and to building out its own Starlink network.

SpaceX also conceded during its IPO road show that Starship may not be fully reusable in the near-term and will need to throw each of its second stages during each launch, which would put a kibosh on economical space data centers.

That’s why Musk’s rejoinder — “We start flying them next year” — falls a bit flat. There’s no doubt that SpaceX could launch a satellite equipped for high-speed data processing next year, but the big question is when it will be able to launch and manufacture them at scale. And that’s likely a question for the 2030s.

Thankfully for OpenAI, the conference ended before Apple filed its blockbuster lawsuit accusing key OpenAI device designers and engineers of stealing trade secrets when they left Apple. And for those of you wondering, OpenAI’s booth at the event was popular while Anthropic didn’t have much of a presence. Five themes dominated the conference:

1. Researchers get practical. Researchers at ICML were focused on practical questions like how to lower the costs of running and training large language models. That’s a shift from the mood of those who attended the Neural Information Processing Systems conference held seven months ago, where some researchers called for a total overhaul of the field. Up-and-coming AI labs like Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence and Jerry Tworek’s Core Automation, which back then had promised to upend the architecture underlying today’s most popular AI products, haven’t released anything publicly yet.

Instead, multiple papers presented at ICML involved improving quantization, a technique that makes models cheaper and faster by storing their weights, or “settings,” less precisely, and key-value caching, which helps a model remember information from prior calculations it made so it doesn’t need to repeat the work. Both of those methods lower the costs of running models, which is becoming increasingly important as the size of models grows, as measured by how many parameters they have. (Clearly, OpenAI and SpaceXAI are taking advantage of such research, as we’ve recently reported.)

2. Is continual learning overrated? At the end of last year, continual learning, the idea that AI models should continue to learn even after they’re trained, was all the rage. Though many researchers still highlight the promise of continual learning, they’re also quick to admit that today’s models are clearly good enough that businesses and developers will fork over billions of dollars to OpenAI and Anthropic to use them. As one Thinking Machines Lab researcher at ICML told me: “Continual learning is like a luxury—it would be good to have but labs are clearly doing well enough without it.”

Meanwhile, OpenAI researcher Noam Brown said in a panel discussion that he’s still “scaling-pilled,” meaning that he believes that simply scaling up the amount of compute and data that existing models are trained on will continue leading to big gains in model performance. Brown added that reaching a point where AI is good enough to conduct AI research could help to take AI development the rest of the way.

3. The promise of diffusion language models. Even if researchers weren’t as enthusiastic about new architectures and approaches like continual learning as in the past, one new type of model that still seemed to hold their interest was diffusion language models, which appeared in a number of papers.

In contrast with autoregressive language models, which writes responses from left to right and underlies today’s most popular products like ChatGPT and Claude, diffusion language models work by giving a complete answer that looks messy and seemingly random, and then repeatedly refine it into a final response.

Diffusion has traditionally been used in image generation models but more recently has been applied to language-generating AI by startups like Inception Labs. One of its biggest advantages is that it’s much faster than autoregressive language models, especially in the case of generating longer responses.

Because diffusion is so different from autoregressive models, though, it’s unlikely that the big labs will upend their current methods of developing models in favor of it—and, again, they seem to be doing economically well enough without it. But if diffusion language models become significantly better, faster or cheaper than autoregressive ones, all bets are off.

4. “Unlearning” is just as important as learning. Lots of papers at ICML focused on the concept of “unlearning,” which is teaching a model how to forget information. Unlearning is important in cases where a model should “forget” information it was trained on because, for instance, that data contains sensitive or personal information or because there is newer, more updated information it should use instead.

However, unlearning is difficult because models don’t store their training data like a cell in an Excel spreadsheet that you can delete. Instead, that data is spread out across billions of weights, or the “settings” that control how a model responds. That means that it’s difficult to delete one piece of information without affecting lots of other parts of the model. Plus, researchers already have enough problems with “catastrophic forgetting,” a tendency of models to forget all old information when they’re trained on new data.

5. The Trump administration’s shadow looms. During an OpenAI panel discussion about safety, some ICML attendees asked OpenAI staffers how they were thinking about future model releases given the widespread cybersecurity concerns that have delayed or otherwise affected recent AI releases. (Just last week, OpenAI finally released its flagship GPT-5.6 family of models publicly after the Trump administration initially asked it to release the models in a limited fashion.)

The safety staffers weren’t shy in sharing how difficult it is to balance the benefits of having models out there which can help identify and fix vulnerabilities with the potential harms of those same models being able to exploit vulnerabilities. Dylan Scandinaro, OpenAI’s head of preparedness, said that it’s frustrating that models like Anthropic’s Fable 5 can’t answer a question as simple as “check this code for any bugs,” especially when the pace of AI development isn’t slowing down and attackers can ostensibly use open-source and other models to exploit vulnerabilities.

America’s Latest Weapon Against Iran: Sea Drones

In a U.S. combat first, three unmanned speedboats attacked an Iranian submarine and ship facility

When three American drone boats sneaked into an Iranian port and blew up a submarine and ship maintenance facility on Sunday, it marked a significant public milestone for the U.S.’s growing fleet of unmanned surface vessels.

The drone boat attacks, which were part of a broader wave of strikes, hit the port at Bandar Abbas Naval Base, according to a statement and videos released by U.S. Central Command. It was the first time American forces had employed sea drones in combat operations, the command said.

The assault offers a preview of what is to come as fighting resumes following the collapse of peace negotiations with Tehran, a senior U.S. official said. Iran and the U.S. have stepped up attacks in recent days as the two nations battle for control of the Strait of Hormuz.

The sea drone attacks underscore the growing importance of unmanned technologies that are being combat-tested by the U.S. for the first time in the Middle East. In addition to using drones to fight Iran, the Pentagon is seeking to buy unmanned systems in large numbers to deter adversaries like China and capitalize on lessons learned from the war in Ukraine.

The vessels deployed in Sunday’s attack, known as Saronic Corsairs, are 24-foot-long speedboats that can travel more than 1,000 miles and carry payloads of up to 1,000 pounds. They arrived in the Middle East in late March after the war started, according to a U.S. official.

The boats are made in Texas by Saronic, an American company co-founded by a former Navy SEAL. They cost less than $1 million apiece and are designed to carry out a range of missions, according to a company spokesperson. A Corsair was used in June to rescue the crew of an Apache helicopter that was downed off the coast of Oman.

“We are proud that our technology supported this mission and helped degrade threats to commercial shipping,” Saronic said in a statement.

The drone boat operation marks a notable milestone for Centcom chief Adm. Brad Cooper, who in 2021 started an artificial intelligence and drone task force in the Middle East. As commander of U.S. forces in the region, Cooper has vowed to supercharge innovation and deliver cutting-edge technologies to warfighters.

“The U.S. military’s first combat use of one-way attack sea drones is another example of how wartime drives rapid adoption of new capabilities,” said Cynthia Cook, an expert on naval drones at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Sea drone attacks have largely been pioneered by Ukraine, which has sought to revolutionize naval warfare in the same way unmanned aerial vehicles have transformed the skies.

Ukraine has used unmanned vessels since at least 2022, when it hit a Russian naval base. The following summer, it deployed “Sea Baby” maritime drones in a high-profile attack on a bridge connecting Russia with occupied Crimea.

More recently, it has used sea drones to take out Russian warships and commercial vessels. Ukraine says it has hit dozens of oil tankers and ferries in recent weeks.

Ukrainian forces have also mounted missiles and rockets on maritime drones to down aircraft and hit land targets. Last year, the country’s security service said it had “effectively disabled” a Russian submarine with an underwater drone—a reputed first in warfare. On Monday, a Ukrainian unit released footage that appeared to show an autonomous craft landing on a beach and then launching a land drone that shot at a Russian position.

Unmanned vessels have various limitations. Their small size can affect their range. They are susceptible to having their communications cut off by electronic warfare. And communicating with underwater drones is particularly hard.

But navies are already taking sea drones into account. Russia has moved ships further away from the combat zone to escape the threat. Meanwhile, the U.K. recently said it would build vessels designed to act as mother ships to drones instead of replacing its fleet of destroyers.

The U.S. has been using and experimenting with sea drones in waters around the world to carry out a range of missions, including conducting maritime surveillance, clearing sea mines and simulating attack swarms.

A range of established defense companies–including BAE Systems and Naval Group—and a host of startups—from Anduril to Kraken Technology—are rushing out new unmanned vessels with ever-greater ranges and explosive power.

Saronic was established in 2022 by Dino Mavrookas—who spent more than a decade in the Navy’s elite SEAL commando unit—along with co-founders Rob Lehman, Vibhav Altekar and Doug Lambert.

Saronic set out to develop autonomous vessels with the goal of growing U.S. shipbuilding capacity and “redefine maritime superiority” using autonomy, Mavrookas said in a podcast interview last year.

Saronic has risen fast in the defense-tech industry and is backed by prominent investors, including Joe Lonsdale’s 8VC, Caffeinated Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. Earlier this year, the company said it had raised $1.75 billion at a $9.25 billion valuation.

Washington’s demand signal could do for the technology what early defence contracts did for silicon

Three of the scientific breakthroughs foundational to quantum computing were born in American labs. The transistor, the transmon superconducting qubit and Shor’s algorithm (which factors large numbers in polynomial time) were all products of US research. But achieving research breakthroughs is not the same as building industrial capacity. If America does not prioritise creating a market and securing the supply chain, it is fated to license quantum technology back at considerable risk to national security. 

This has happened before. After America invented the transistor, it watched semiconductor manufacturing migrate to Asia, ceding the most strategic supply chain on Earth. Quantum technology carries the same structural risk. 

That is why those of us who have spent years arguing that Washington was underpricing quantum technology celebrated the release of two executive orders signed by President Donald Trump earlier this year. 

The first recognises quantum technologies as the “transformational capabilit[y]” that will “drive American innovation”. The second recognises that the nation’s defences must be strengthened against the threat to sensitive encryption-hardened systems. This carries a message the private sector cannot ignore. US adversaries have been harvesting encrypted data in the expectation of decrypting it once a large enough quantum computer exists.

What both orders should do is ignite a national effort to build a quantum computer capable of catalysing scientific discovery across materials science, drug discovery, finance, logistics and more. Today’s machines are still too small and too error-prone to deliver on quantum computing’s promise to solve problems beyond the reach of the largest supercomputer. Designs may diverge — ions, atoms, photons or superconducting circuits — but the goal is the same: a fault-tolerant, utility-scale quantum computer capable of useful work at commercial scale. 

Private capital has already made its call. A number of quantum companies have reached the public markets at valuations that would have looked fanciful a few years ago. Alongside incumbents like Google, Microsoft and IBM, there are now entrants such as IonQ and Quantinuum.

But what capital has lacked so far is a demand signal. A guaranteed buyer at a national laboratory will do for quantum what early defence and space contracts once did for silicon. The first executive orders instruct the Department of Energy to become an early purchaser of scientifically relevant quantum computers. It also directs the Department of Commerce to weigh advance market commitments.

The focus on domestic supply chains recognises how public dollars can crowd in private investment. The Department of Commerce has already signed letters of intent to put $2bn into nine quantum companies in exchange for minority, non-controlling equity stakes. This has now been extended across some 15 companies in semiconductors, critical minerals and defence.

Quantum leadership will turn on patient capital, manufacturing built on home soil, a trained workforce and allied alignment. No single country controls the “full stack” necessary for producing quantum-enabled technologies at scale, including cryogenic cooling systems, the rare earths that are inputs for qubits and fabrication capacity for wafers. Creating an allied tech-trade order anchored by American chips, like the Pax Silica initiative, clarifies the vision of domestic production while excluding Beijing from key supply chains.

Washington has signalled co-operation and credibility. If fault-tolerant, utility-scale quantum computers can be built, bought and manufactured within an allied supply chain then America will keep the industry it invented.

Netanyahu opponent leads polls ahead of Israeli elections

Former military chief Gadi Eisenkot has overtaken prime minister as country sets October date for vote

Israel’s centrist former military chief Gadi Eisenkot has overtaken Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in several opinion polls as Israel announced that it has set a date for general elections in October.

Parliament is set to dissolve on Friday after formally selecting October 27 as election day, the latest date mandated by law — bringing a close to what was by many measures the most tumultuous four-year term for any government in Israeli history.

It came as Eisenkot’s newly founded party Yashar (“Straight”) has over the past week pipped Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party as the largest potential faction in the next parliament, or Knesset, in an unexpected bounce over the divisive long-serving premier.

The latest poll from public broadcaster Kan showed Yashar inching ahead of Likud by one seat — 24 to 23 — in Israel’s 120-seat parliament, echoing a similar survey by Channel 13 aired last week.

In the Kan poll, Eisenkot led Netanyahu by 41 per cent to 37 per cent among respondents when asked who would be better suited to serve as prime minister.

Yet analysts caution that Eisenkot’s path to form the next coalition government is not yet clear, with the combined slate of anti-Netanyahu Jewish opposition parties still running a few seats short of attaining a 61-seat majority in the Knesset.

Eisenkot has steadily gained support over the past few months, since a high-profile merger in late April between former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid.

Their combined new centrist party, called “Together”, has dropped to between 15 and 18 seats in recent polls. The rest of the opposition factions range across the political spectrum, from hardline nationalists to leftists who support peace with the Palestinians.

Several opposition leaders have ruled out joining forces with Arab-Israeli political parties, which, according to polls, are set to hold about 10 additional seats, complicating Eisenkot’s potential path to forming a government.

The current ruling coalition, made up of the Likud and several far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties, is badly trailing the opposition in the polls.

Analysts expect that Netanyahu, short of winning the election outright, would probably seek to deny his political adversaries a clear path to forming a coalition of their own.

In the Knesset’s remaining days, Netanyahu’s ruling coalition is attempting to pass a handful of controversial laws, including those aimed at shoring up exemptions from military conscription for his ultra-Orthodox allies.

Eisenkot has made supporting mandatory army service, which is compulsory for most Jewish Israelis at the age of 18, a main plank in his electoral campaign.

“On October 27, it will be the victory of those who serve, the Zionists, those who work, that sacrificed and continue to sacrifice for our country. Israel must win, and it will win!” Eisenkot wrote on social media platform X on Sunday.

Netanyahu’s coalition triggered months of nationwide street protests throughout most of 2023 after embarking on a controversial bid to overhaul the country’s judiciary.

Hamas’s October 7 attack from Gaza that same year was widely deemed the worst security failure in the nation’s history and the bloodiest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust, triggering Israel’s devastating military campaign in Gaza.

Since then, the country has been fighting several wars across multiple fronts in the Middle East, including in Iran, Lebanon and Yemen.

Nevertheless, Netanyahu’s senior ministers and allies in the media portrayed the fact that the government is set to serve out its full term — the first time for any government in more than three decades — as an achievement in itself.

“Ultimately, contrary to everything people said, this Knesset is completing its full term. We passed nine budgets and hundreds of good laws for the citizens of the state of Israel,” said Likud lawmaker Ofir Katz, the coalition’s chair.

“Four years in Israel is like 40 years in the desert,” quipped Nadav Shtrauchler, a political strategist who has worked with Netanyahu in the past.

Eisenkot’s own personal sacrifices are well known to most Israelis. His son Gal was killed while fighting in Gaza in December 2023, in addition to two nephews who also died in combat against Hamas.

Eisenkot was at the time serving as a minister in Netanyahu’s wartime cabinet, which remains to date his only senior post in government.

He later fell out with the veteran premier over wartime strategy, including over what he saw as the prime minister’s attempts to undermine deals to halt the fighting in return for the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

Netanyahu and his allies in the rightwing media have attempted to paint Eisenkot as soft on Israel’s enemies.

What both Netanyahu’s allies and opponents agree on, for now, is that anything can happen in the 100 days until election day.

While opposition officials are in private cautiously optimistic about their chances, most analysts caution that Netanyahu should never be written off.

Netanyahu “knows how to overcome, so long as the candle is burning. Things could still happen [before election day],” Shtrauchler said. “I know a lot of people that bet against him. And they usually lose.”

Aditya Birla Renewables takes on Shell’s renewable assets in India as energy major continues to refocus on oil and gas

Shell is selling its Indian wind and solar business for $1.8bn as it continues to retrench from renewables and refocus on its most profitable areas under chief executive Wael Sawan. 

The FTSE 100 company announced on Monday the sale of Sprng Energy to Aditya Birla Renewables, part of the Mumbai-headquartered Aditya Birla conglomerate spanning energy to cement. 

Machteld de Haan, Shell’s president of downstream, renewables and energy solutions, said the company was “high-grading” its electricity portfolio and building a more competitive business.

Sprng Energy owns 3.3 gigawatts-peak of operating solar and wind farms and 1.7GWp of contracted projects, making it a major player in India’s growing renewables market, although not the largest. 

The sale comes as Shell is also reportedly preparing to sell off offshore wind farm projects around the world. 

Sawan took over as chief executive in January 2023 and set about trying to boost shareholder returns and cut costs. The company’s net debt has climbed from $45.7bn at the end of last year to $52.6bn at the end of the first quarter of this year, suggesting he is willing to finance shareholder payouts through borrowing.

In 2024, Shell said it would cut emissions more slowly than had been planned under Sawan’s predecessor Ben van Beurden, part of a wider refocusing on fossil fuels in the sector as oil and gas prices rose and companies came under pressure to match the shareholder returns of their US peers.

Shell has had a large power trading business for decades and in 2019 set out plans to become one of the largest power companies in the world as it eyed the shift towards electric cars.  

Those ambitions appear to have been dialled back, however, and in 2023 Shell ended a shortlived foray into Britain’s household electricity supply market.

At a capital markets day last year, Sawan told investors that while power was an important part of the company’s business, Shell planned to prioritise assets through which its trading teams could make money, rather than the typically lower infrastructure-type returns offered by large wind and solar farms.

“This means we will prioritise investments in flexible generation, such as gas-fired power plants, large-scale batteries and digital technologies,” he said. 

“These are critical for our trading teams to manage risk and capture value in a system which is expected to be more unpredictable as the share of supply from renewables grows.”

Kumar Mangalam Birla, Aditya Birla Group’s chair, said the deal would help it “participate meaningfully in one of the largest energy transformations underway anywhere in the world”.

Aditya Birla Renewables said in December it had a portfolio of about 4.3 gigawatts of renewables across 10 states. It sold a minority stake that month to BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners.

India is rapidly developing wind and solar power because of a combination of government policy, rich solar resources, and low-cost Chinese solar panels, although it is also trying to build up its own manufacturing.

The deal with Shell is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to complete at the end of this year.

Project to build capacity on UAE’s east coast represents a major shift after US-Iran war

DP World is planning to build a new port and a container terminal on the United Arab Emirates’ east coast that would reduce Dubai’s dependence on its flagship Jebel Ali hub and bypass the Strait of Hormuz.

The Dubai-based port operator is in talks to develop a brand new multipurpose port in the coastal area of Fujairah and a new terminal at the existing harbour in the same emirate, people familiar with the matter said.

Over the past two decades, DP World has become one of the UAE’s most internationally prolific entities, building a ports and logistics empire across the globe, but Jebel Ali remains the group’s and its owner Dubai’s crown jewel.

Shifting some of the port’s capacity outside Dubai marks a seismic change for the emirate, which has established itself as a global trade and finance hub partly off the back of Jebel Ali’s growth.

But DP World’s plans align with a broader UAE government initiative to attempt to bulletproof its economy against future hostilities with Iran by reducing its dependence on the strait, where shipping has been disrupted by Iranian drones and missile strikes since the US-Israeli attack.

The new project would deepen DP World’s presence on the Gulf of Oman, allowing containers to enter and leave the country without having to pass through the strait, before moving them on trucks overland to Dubai, Abu Dhabi and neighbouring Gulf countries.

Since the war began at the end of February, Iran has fired nearly 3,000 drones or missiles at the UAE — more than any other country. Early on in the conflict, a fire erupted at Jebel Ali, which authorities attributed to falling debris after a missile interception.

The Iran war marked another difficult chapter for the group, which had just weeks before the conflict erupted removed its longstanding group chair and chief executive, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, from his position over his ties to child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Activity at Jebel Ali, the region’s largest container port, fell between 90 and 95 per cent after Iran closed the strait in response to US-Israeli attacks, galvanising the port operator to seek out alternatives to the waterway, the people said.

DP World was now discussing a term sheet with government officials, with the new project’s structure and financing yet to be finalised, the people said. The new port could be completed as soon as within a year and a half, a senior company official said.

DP World declined to confirm details of any east coast projects but said that “there are plans in the works around diversification to get through this disruption”.

Gulf officials said the move eastward did not mean Jebel Ali would be fully replaced. Built and expanded over decades, the hub consists of a vast economic free-zone, warehouses alongside heavy industry facilities.

“Jebel Ali will continue to be Jebel Ali,” a senior official at the company told the FT. “It will never be downsized.”

DP World would initially invest hundreds of millions of dollars to develop the new facilities but that could rise over time depending on how much additional capacity was required, the people said.

“We do have our own plan, and we’ve been very active in terms of looking at the eastern coast as far as DP World is concerned,” the senior official said. “It’s defensive in case things go wrong,” he said.

DP World’s plans underline how the Iran war has forced governments and companies in the region to reconsider infrastructure and economic corridors developed on the premise that there would be uninterrupted passage through the strait. 

Before the war traffic through the strait amounted to about 135 vessels per day, but has barely risen above 40 daily transits since the waterway was briefly declared open again after the US and Iran signed an interim ceasefire.

The tenuous state of the diplomatic process has been underlined by an escalation of tit-for-tat strikes and Iranian attacks on shipping in the narrow waterway over the past week. The latest hostilities have once again caused traffic to fall to a trickle. 

Jebel Ali’s port, which handled 15.6mn 20ft containers last year, played a central role in establishing Dubai as a global logistics and re-export hub, particularly between China and Africa. But its location means it is dependent on the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman.

“The impact on Jebel Ali is likely going to be significant and permanent,” said Lars Jensen, chief executive of the consultancy Vespucci Maritime.

Moody’s, the rating agency, said it estimated that DP World’s overall earnings would fall from $6.6bn in 2025 to about $5.9bn this year as a result of the conflict.

Since the beginning of the war, the company has already leaned on the country’s east coast facilities, diverting cargo shipments from Jebel Ali to the Fujairah and nearby Khor Fakkan ports, which are heavily congested as a result of the crisis. 

The new plans come as Sharjah-based Gulftainer pursues its own expansion at nearby Khor Fakkan, a major container terminal also located on the UAE east coast. The company earlier this month announced a $2bn investment plan to increase capacity at Khor Fakkan.

Fujairah, one of seven emirates that make up the UAE, already plays a strategic role in the UAE’s energy infrastructure, with Abu Dhabi exporting some of its crude through there with plans to raise volumes to bypass Hormuz.

Operating out of a Tokyo high-rise, a military intelligence unit finds the high-tech equipment that Russia needs to wage war.

Soon after troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Western leaders expelled hundreds of Russian spies from their capitals and blacklisted companies with ties to the Kremlin.

The coordinated effort was intended to make it harder for the Kremlin to collect intelligence and buy equipment like microchips, transmitters and the machinery used to make weapons.

Since then, officials say, dozens of those banished spies have turned up in an unexpected place: Japan.

The country’s weak espionage laws and flourishing high-tech industry have made it a crucial piece of the Russian war effort. Ninety percent of Russian missiles and drones contain Japanese components, according to Ukrainian government estimates.

At the heart of the operation in Tokyo is a secretive Russian military intelligence unit known as the 20th Directorate, whose role has never been publicly disclosed. Posing as diplomats or businesspeople, its officers work to buy or steal battlefield technology and smuggle it into Russia, according to current and former officials at five Western intelligence agencies.

The man overseeing the 20th Directorate’s operation in Tokyo maintains a cover identity as an employee of the Russian state airline Aeroflot, according to current officials from four of those intelligence agencies. He plays a crucial role in supplying Russia’s war machine.

The toll of this effort is clear in the nightly attacks on Ukrainian cities and in the slog of the battlefield. Four years into a war that has killed hundreds of thousands and wiped whole cities off the map, Russia persists in part, officials say, because of its continued access to technologies like those it acquires from Japan.

After a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile destroyed a residential tower block in Kyiv and killed at least 24 people in May, investigators sifted through the debris. They found that the missile had been guided by Japanese components that have been widely banned from export to Russia, according to a Ukrainian assessment.

Using confidential government documents, corporate records and interviews with dozens of intelligence and government officials across three continents, The New York Times began piecing together how the 20th Directorate operates and the crucial role the Tokyo station plays in supporting the war that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is waging on Ukraine. Most of the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose intelligence publicly.

Ukrainian officials have presented Japan with evidence that its technology is being used in Russian attacks, according to documents and interviews. But the Japanese government, despite vocal support for Ukraine, has been slow to act.

Japan has long been known as a spy paradise, in part because of post-World War II constraints, designed by the war’s victors, that keep the country’s intelligence services weak. Japan does not even have a foreign intelligence agency. Officials say that they recognize the espionage threat and are working to remove decades-old restrictions on intelligence gathering.

“We have a sense of crisis about this situation,” said Akihisa Shiozaki, a lawmaker in the governing Liberal Democratic Party and a former lawyer who prosecuted industrial espionage cases.

The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to detailed questions about espionage but said that the government had worked with Western allies to ban the export of military-related items to Russia.

“Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is an outrageous act that shakes the very foundations of the international order,” the ministry said in an written statement.

Nevertheless, Russian spies appear to be operating right under the noses of the Japanese authorities.

Aeroflot’s office in Tokyo is a 10-minute walk from the headquarters of the National Police Agency, which investigates espionage. Western intelligence officials say that it is there, in the airline office, on the 22nd floor, that the 20th Directorate’s man in Tokyo runs his deadly operation.

His name is Maksim Vladimirovich Filchenkov.

A Spy Arrives in Tokyo

Russia was in dire need of high-tech components when Mr. Filchenkov, 49, took up his post in Tokyo in February 2024. The war in Ukraine was shifting from World War I-style artillery battles to drone warfare, and the Ukrainians were gaining a technological edge.

To stay in the fight, Russia needed to augment its conventional might with new technology. China could help, but for the military’s most advanced weaponry, there was no replacement for the high-tech gear, machine tools and other components that many companies were suddenly prohibited from selling to Russia.

Enter Mr. Filchenkov, a veteran officer with Russia’s military intelligence agency, the G.R.U. With one tour in Japan under his belt, intelligence officials said, he had the expertise to find the necessary gear and move it to Russia.

Mr. Filchenkov began developing relationships with logistics companies that ship goods from Japan to Russia, according to business records and interviews. Western officials have warned Japan that relationships like these help G.R.U. officers buy sensitive technology under false pretenses and send it to Russia, sometimes using bogus shipping records.

This, current and former intelligence officials say, is where the 20th Directorate excels. While the unit’s history is unclear, the officials said that it predated the war in Ukraine. Since that fight began, they said, it has been central to the Kremlin’s effort to obtain military technology.

G.R.U. spies have used Aeroflot jobs as cover since the Soviet era as they hunted for Western technology.

The entrance to Aeroflot’s Tokyo office looks like a prison door, with a narrow slit of window and a doorbell. A middle-aged woman with straw-colored hair and a Russian Orthodox cross around her neck answered the door earlier this year. She appeared surprised to have visitors.

Mr. Filchenkov, the woman said, was not there. She could not say when he would return.

Aeroflot is not specifically blacklisted by Japan, but it has effectively been grounded because it cannot obtain necessary parts and services there.

Aeroflot’s official partners, however, remain active.

One of them, Proco Air, advertises itself as a “bridge between Japan and Russia.” Proco rents cargo space on airlines that fly to countries where Aeroflot operates, like Sri Lanka or Uzbekistan. Aeroflot picks up the cargo there and flies it to Russia. There is nothing illegal or even unusual about this. Plenty of goods are still allowed to flow to Russia, and partnerships like this allow that to happen.

Western intelligence officials say such arrangements are also essential to the 20th Directorate’s operations.

Japan is the world’s largest exporter of the sensitive dual-use technology that the Kremlin is seeking, shipping records show. Smugglers do not need to get that equipment to Russia directly; they just need to get it somewhere that’s willing to sell to Russia.

The largest destination for Japan’s sensitive technology, for example, is Vietnam, which in turn is the largest exporter of sensitive technology to Russia.

Proco Air sits in Tokyo’s industrial port neighborhood, a 20-minute drive from Aeroflot’s office. Mr. Filchenkov was not there, either, but the company’s owner, Takehiko Miki, and his wife were willing to talk.

Mr. Miki, who is Japanese, said he met Mr. Filchenkov around 2018, but did not begin working with him in earnest until Mr. Filchenkov returned to Tokyo six years later. Mr. Miki’s wife described their Russian business partner as an unsmiling man who only showed the “business side” of his face.

Last year, Mr. Miki contacted an associate based in China whom Mr. Filchenkov had introduced him to, according to two people with direct knowledge of the episode. Mr. Miki specifically asked for help shipping items that he acknowledged were prohibited from being sent to Russia, the people said.

In the interview and follow-up communications, Mr. Miki denied knowing that Mr. Filchenkov had ties to Russian intelligence. He also strongly denied ever seeking help transporting prohibited items to Russia. Proco Air ships only authorized goods, he said, “mostly medical equipment and a few cosmetics.”

As proof, he asked his wife to fetch a copy of a recent air bill. Before handing it over, Mr. Miki tried to black out the names of the companies involved with a pen.

The document backed up Mr. Miki’s assertion. They showed a March 12 shipment of medical equipment to Russia, via Sri Lanka.

But the redaction did not work, and the document showed that Mr. Miki was doing business with a company with ties to the Kremlin. The document clearly identified the recipient as R-Pharm, a Moscow pharmaceutical company.

R-Pharm is not under sanctions but its founder, Aleksei Repik, has been sanctioned by Australia, Britain and Canada (though not Japan) over his extensive ties to Mr. Putin. Mr. Repik has repeatedly appeared beside Mr. Putin and recounted efforts to support the war, including a May 2025 meeting in which he described mobilizing Russian businesses to “provide unprecedented support to the front.”

“I think it is now important to express on the part of all Russian businesspeople our huge thanks to our defenders of the fatherland,” Mr. Repik said last year.

Proco Air has not been charged with any wrongdoing, and Mr. Miki said that the Japanese authorities had never contacted him about his shipments. He said he had never “knowingly facilitated transportation to any sanctioned person.”

Diplomatic Warnings

Foreign governments have repeatedly warned Japan that its technology was being smuggled to Russia.

In one month alone, April 2025, Ukraine sent at least eight formal diplomatic letters to the Japanese Foreign Ministry on the topic. The messages detailed evidence of Japanese components in Russian weapons and military equipment that had been recovered from civilian attacks.

They sent roughly eight more diplomatic notes over the year, one Ukrainian official said. The letters provided lists and photos of dozens of recovered Japanese-made components including circuit boards, transmitters and semiconductors. Times reporters reviewed one of those letters, which said that Japanese components had been found in ballistic missiles.

“I hope you take this information into account when considering further restrictions against Russia, or strengthening the export control on transfers of sensitive goods and technology to third countries,” read the letter to officials at the Japanese Foreign Ministry.

Ukraine provided Japan with lists of recovered components that had been manufactured by some of Japan’s biggest companies: Nippon Electric Corporation, Panasonic, Toshiba and others. There was no evidence in those documents that the companies knowingly sold their products to Russia, as opposed to being shipped to other countries and resold.

All companies denied wrongdoing and said that they were committed to complying with Japan’s economic sanctions and trade restrictions. Nippon said the electric components that Ukraine had identified were old and had not been sold by the company in years.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said it had issued warnings to companies and industry groups about sanction evasion efforts. It has also blacklisted dozens of overseas entities it suspects of helping Russia circumvent export bans.

Western officials beyond Ukraine have warned the Japanese government about Russian intelligence efforts to procure its technology. They also provided the Japanese authorities with information about the network of companies, including Proco, that intelligence officials suspected of helping spies ship sanctioned goods to Russia, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

Though they have not acted against Mr. Filchenkov, Japanese officials have hardly been unsympathetic to Ukraine’s cause. On the day Mr. Putin launched the invasion, Japan joined the United States and European Union in imposing sanctions. It later broke with post-World War II precedent and began sending military aid like bulletproof vests and helmets to Ukraine.

Under Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, the country has embarked on an ambitious program to bolster intelligence capabilities, in part to better prevent illegal exports and thwart spies.

In January, the Tokyo police announced that they had uncovered a Russian intelligence officer who posed as a Ukrainian and tried to steal trade secrets from a Japanese worker. In the absence of espionage legislation, the police brought a case against the worker for violating competition laws. The spy had left Japan long before the charges were brought.

When Times reporters returned to the Aeroflot office a second time, Mr. Filchenkov was again not available. Messages to his Telegram and email accounts went unanswered.

On a third drop-in, the woman who answered the door agreed to call him.

The office was stuffed with large filing cabinets, each topped with a model Aeroflot jet. The venetian blinds were down. The woman appeared to be the only one there.

After a brief phone conversation in Russian, she returned. Mr. Filchenkov, she said, did not want to talk.

Yet the shares remain at less than half their 2022 peak, ​LSEG data shows, reflecting a European luxury sales slowdown in recent ​years. Its shares sank in 2023 after major supplier Rolex acquired Swiss-based retailer Bucherer, which some analysts saw as a threat to the watchmaker's relationship with ​Watches of Switzerland.

Watches of Switzerland CEO Brian Duffy responded to ​the initial approaches because he believes the stock market undervalues the company, two of ‌the ⁠sources said, with one adding that no formal offer has been made.

The third source said the company was seeking an offer of significantly more than £7.50 per share.

Watches of Switzerland said it does not ​comment on rumours ​or speculation. ⁠Rolex did not respond to a request for comment.

An upbeat outlook from the company in May was ​supported by U.S. stock market strength that , ​though ⁠higher gold prices have squeezed margins.

The UK’s largest luxury watch retailer, which was established in 2007, is due to publish full-year results on Tuesday.

A ⁠private sale ​of the business would continue this ​year's migration of UK companies from the London Stock Exchange after a flurry of foreign ​takeovers.