Quick notes: Gwadar's future, Iran's rise...

• China in Gwadar: Indigenous residents’ fear of becoming a minority is inevitable with Gwadar’s population expected to jump more than 15-fold in coming decades. China will receive 91% of revenues until the port is returned to Pakistan in four decades’ time.



• China's AI awakening: China’s AI push calls for homegrown AI to match that developed in the West within three years, for China’s researchers to be making “major breakthroughs” by 2025, and for Chinese AI to be the envy of the world by 2030. 



• Is Iran the Mideast's new superpower? “For stopping ISIS in Afghanistan, the best alternative is the Taliban, so it is easy for Iran to support the Taliban. The Taliban hung them, ISIS people, out on trees for weeks, and no one was allowed to take them down, When Iran hit them strongly, [the ISIS fighters] moved to the east.”  That narrative is borne out by a map used by Afghanistan’s intelligence service. It shows ISIS emerging at points along Iran’s border in 2014-15, and then shifting east toward Pakistan’s border. “It’s a smart policy, to be honest,” says a Western official in Kabul.



• France wants parental permission for kids under 16 to go on Facebook: "Exploiting human psychology by feedback loops, driven by dopamine and 'social validation'."
  



• Christian Nationalism: White Evangelicals voted en masse for Roy Moore in Alabama, to no one's surprise



• India better be cautious: Uber accused of espionage, hacking and bribery in bombshell letter



• Gabriella Burnel: Promoting Sanskrit