Welcome to the latest issue of Diplomat Brief. This week we take a deep look at the proliferation of illicit drones in Southeast Asia, check in on the China-North Korea relationship, and much more. |
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 | | | Drones have become synonymous with modern-day warfare. Recent conflict theaters in Russia-Ukraine, Myanmar, Sudan, parts of the Sahel, and the Middle East have witnessed the heavy use of drones, and the Russia-Ukraine war in particular has been a crucible of innovation in this regard.
Southeast Asia has not been immune to the use of drones, which have been used widely in conflicts such as the 2017 Marawi siege, the Myanmar conflict since 2021, and the Thailand-Cambodia border conflict last year.
Beyond their use in conflict, the region has seen a steady increase in the illicit use of drones primarily involving commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) consumer drones. Understanding the current trends of illicit drone use will be critical to developing targetted countermeasures. | Find out more |
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| Videos |  |
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| | Our YouTube channel, The Diplomat explains major topics and trends in the Asia-Pacific in video form. According to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime – or UNODC – seizures of methamphetamine in Southeast Asia hit a new record of 349 tons in 2025, up from 236 tons the year before. Where are all the drugs coming from? And can the illegal industry be stopped? That’s what we explore in our latest video. | |
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 | | | In “Our Hearts Burned for Home: Uyghur Militants in Syria’s Civil War” journalist Emily Feng explores how a few thousand Uyghurs from Xinjiang ended up on the front lines of Syria’s civil war.
When you buy any book through our Bookshop.org shop, a portion of the proceeds comes back to The Diplomat. | |
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| Behind the News |  |
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| | A little over two years ago, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, or AKD as he is popularly known, was elected Sri Lanka’s president. His victory was an unambiguous vote for change. That doesn’t mean everything has changed.
AKD’s government “made a sensible decision to accept and continue most of the economic policies and programs [his predecessor Ranil] Wickremesinghe introduced,” Professor Soosaipillai I. Keethaponcalan told The Diplomat recently. | |
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| | On October 15, China and North Korea held a formal ribbon-cutting ceremony for the New Yalu River Bridge, which dramatically expands road connectivity across their shared border. The bridge itself, however, is far from “new” – construction was completed in 2014, but North Korea never built up connecting infrastructure on its side. The bridge’s official opening now, 12 years later, tells us a lot about the revival in China-North Korea relations, as well as Pyongyang’s confidence in its ability to handle the social implications of increased contact with the outside world. In an interesting parallel, North Korea just opened a new road bridge with its other ally, Russia, in September. | |
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| | In recent weeks, New Delhi and other Indian cities have witnessed massive anti-government demonstrations and flash protests demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, over allegations of manipulating voter rolls to benefit the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). To prevent students and youth from gathering, the BJP government has used intimidation and force. This has included not just police but individuals in civilian clothes, seemingly associated with the Sangh Parivar, a family of Hindutva-espousing organizations, whom the police don’t appear interested in stopping from assaulting protesters. | |
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| | Indonesia’s equities market has been plunged into crisis after the global index provider MSCI this week proposed the country’s removal from its global stock indexes. In a surprise statement on October 16, MSCI said that it had launched “a consultation on a proposal to reclassify the MSCI Indonesia Indexes from Emerging Market to Standalone Market status” The proposal is more serious than MSCI’s earlier threat to downgrade Indonesia to “frontier market” status, due to transparency concerns in its stock market, including “persistent opacity in shareholding structures and suspected coordinated trading behavior.” The news prompted the Jakarta Composite Index to drop by 11.6 percent, the largest single-day loss since 1998, with losses continuing when markets opened on Monday. Given MSCI’s role as the primary benchmark for institutional investors, a downgrading of Indonesia to “standalone” status would likely trigger billions of dollars of capital outflows. | |
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| | U.S. President Donald Trump hasn’t yet made it to Central Asia, but this past weekend his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, did. With his core aim attending a C5+1 foreign ministers gathering in Samarkand, Rubio reportedly led an unusually large business delegation – its numbers ballooned from 100 to 300 in various official statements. Rubio might be dodging a number of international crises by jetting off to Uzbekistan, but who could blame him, really? He, and the Trump administration, were guaranteed a warm welcome and no uncomfortable questions. | |
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| Podcasts |  |
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| | In the latest episode of Beyond the Indus, host Tushar Shetty sits down with Dr. Anas Alhajji, managing partner at Energy Outlook Advisors and former chief economist of NGP Energy Capital Management, to discuss how the Hormuz crisis is reshaping global energy markets. | |
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| Visualizing APAC |  |
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| Aside from prison incursions, narcotics have also featured prominently alongside drones in cross-border smuggling and illicit sales in Southeast Asia. | |
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Welcome to my geopolitics blog site. This is a Hawaii Island news site focusing on geopolitical news, analysis, information, and commentary. I will cite a variety of sources, ranging from all sides of the political spectrum.