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In focus
- Eileen C. Ang on when the plan is not planning
- Fallout, the Meta-Manus deal edition
- Why Taiwan and South Korea need to cut fossil fuel dependence to remain AI hardware powerhouses
Hello reader,
On a scale of free spirit to control freak, how much of a planner are you?
I place myself somewhere in the middle: I need to prep so I’m not aimless, but I always leave room for life to happen. However, no matter how hard you plan, you can never get ahead of force majeure – literally a “superior force,” it refers to an event that’s impossible to anticipate.
When you’re at a beach on a gloriously sunny day, you expect calm waves lapping the shoreline, not a tsunami that will wash everything away, living or not. Or put another way: Man plans, God laughs.
Image credit: Ulla
Take Meta’s acquisition of Manus, for example. The deal between Facebook’s parent and the China-founded AI startup was sealed four months ago. Sure, Chinese regulators were still reviewing the US$2 billion agreement. But since it involves a US-based tech giant and was completed via a Singapore-registered entity after Manus moved its headquarters to the city-state in late 2025, it should have be fine.
Still, Beijing decided a late-stage intervention was necessary to stop what it reportedly called a “conspiratorial” attempt to take from its technology base, and the done deal was ordered undone.
It was so unprecedented that not even predictive AI could have foreseen China would flex its muscles that way.
Another instance of force majeure ruining the best-laid plans is the Strait of Hormuz crisis, which was triggered by the US-Israel-Iran conflict. While you could reasonably expect that Iran would use its advantage and close a valuable shipping chokepoint, it was harder to predict how this disruption would be managed and what the world would do about an increasingly unwinnable war.
Shutting down the route, where 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passes through, was bound to cause chaos of all kinds. Taiwan and South Korea, the world’s top producers of semiconductors and memory chips, are feeling the heat, especially since they have increased gas imports over the years.
If the costly havoc wreaked by war isn’t enough to convince them that it is time to wean off fossil fuels and switch to renewables, then the prospect of losing out to competitors with more resilient power sources should. After all, nothing talks as loud as money does.
Eileen C. Ang, co-managing editor
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