After a nine-year tenure, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation following a collapse in support. Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has dominated the polls for months, driven by his commitment to “commonsense” economic reforms, and he’s widely expected to become Canada’s next head of government after the next federal election. In American terms, he’s more Ron DeSantis than Donald Trump, best demonstrated in a viral interview where he calmly chomps on an apple as he destroys a hostile reporter.

Canadian politics aren’t exactly known for their excitement, but the Trudeau years sure created some drama. After a century of friendship, a progressive Canada has diverged from the U.S. both economically and culturally. This all seems alien to most Americans.

Back in his stand-up comedy days, Jon Stewart related a conversation with a Canadian fan. “What do Americans really think about Canada?” a woman asked. Stewart replied, “We don’t.” And for the past century, there wasn’t much need to.

When Americans considered their northern neighbor, they saw a slightly more British and polite version of ourselves. As a child, my grandparents would drive me from their home in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., to spend a day in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. Sure, the traffic signs looked odd and the currency was more colorful, but the cities looked about the same on both sides of the International Bridge.

That perspective is no longer the reality thanks to Trudeau’s increasing antagonism toward both America and her ideals. His primary victim, of course, was Canada herself.

Let’s start with economics. Between 2009 and 2019, America’s GDP grew by 27%, while Canada’s expanded by 25%. Par for the course. Since then, however, America’s economy has grown by 11%, while Canada’s has only grown by 6%. And over the course of Trudeau’s tenure, his country’s national debt increased about 180%.

According to the IMF, Canada’s per capita income has fallen to about 70% of America’s, compared to 80% just five years ago. That makes Canada now the economic equivalent of Alabama, the fourth-poorest state in the union. Meanwhile, the Great White North’s unemployment rate has risen to 6.8%, a figure that has steadily grown over the past 18 months. For the U.S., it’s just 4.2%.

This economic divergence is all the more startling, given the $2 billion in trade that crosses our common border daily, along with 400,000 people, and that 90% of all Canadians live within 100 miles of the U.S. border. A citizen’s financial life today is very different depending on which side of the International Bridge they live. (And if you’re going to cross it, a gallon of gas is about a dollar cheaper in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.)

The cultural divergence is hard to measure but even harder not to notice. The reign of Justin dramatically shifted Canada to the left, just as his father Pierre’s did a generation earlier.

Trudeau fils harshly punished dissent against Canada’s restrictive COVID-19 mandates, jailing pastors and even freezing the bank accounts of its critics. He also tried to criminalize any “communication that expresses detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.”

In 2021, Trudeau’s Liberal government pushed a scandalous claim that a mass grave of 215 children was discovered beside a religious residential school for First Nations students. The result was a mob-fueled pogrom in which 112 Canadian churches were vandalized or burned down. Years after the fact, no evidence has been found of the supposed graves, yet Trudeau hasn’t backed down from the allegation.

Canada also has distanced itself from American foreign policy, embracing a more passive role with both China and Israel. It did align more or less with Biden’s environmental agenda, soft-on-crime policies, passion for gun control and ethical failures. But those aren’t selling with voters in either country.

President-elect Trump responded to Trudeau’s hostility with threats, which sounded less like intended outcomes than opening offers for negotiation. Trump proposed a 25% tariff on all Canadian goods and repeatedly joked about the Great White North becoming our 51st state. But this is the same Trump who, in his first term, worked closely with Canada and Mexico to replace NAFTA with the USMCA, an agreement that benefitted all three nations.

As Trudeau stumbled off the stage, Poilievre promised to respond to any tariffs by fighting “fire with fire,” while at the same time pushing to increase Canadian exports to the U.S. Both nations will benefit from constructive economic engagement, a fact the two new leaders will be eager to accept.

Trump and Poilievre also agree on stronger border controls to fight illegal immigration, drug trafficking and terrorism. While Trump shouts “America first,” Poilievre responds with “Canada first.”

A robust military is also promised by both leaders, where the need for close collaboration is obvious. Gone are the days of a military focused more on gender inclusivity than readiness, especially given the threats posed by China and Russia.

No doubt Trump will be a challenging personality for Poilievre to handle, but the expected Canadian PM is far more politically aligned with the president-elect than Trudeau could ever hope to be. Both nations will pursue their aims with a cautious pragmatism, finding common ground in policy while clashing in personal temperament.

A resurgent Canada will even lead to beneficial competition between the two nations. Coming from Alberta, the Texas of the north, Poilievre will likely prioritize drilling for oil and increased mining, further motivating the U.S. to do likewise. He’s also expected to greenlight energy projects to strengthen Canada’s position as a reliable energy partner for its southern neighbor.

Right now, the big question is when will a new prime minister take office? Trudeau remains a caretaker prime minister but has prorogued Parliament until March. Canadian law requires a new election by October, but the Liberal Party first needs to choose a leader. Until Poilievre actually assumes the high office, expect a lot more “51st state” memes from Team Trump.

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Linda Specht, senior advisor and U.S. lead negotiator for security agreements at the State Department, said that the two sides will have negotiations over the cost-sharing deal, called the Special Measures Agreement (SMA) from Monday through Wednesday. The Korean delegation is led by Lee Tae-woo, former consul general in Sydney.

“The delegation expects to continue working toward a common objective of a mutually acceptable agreement that advances our shared security,” she said in a statement.

The two sides have been in talks to negotiate the 12th SMA as the current six-year SMA is set to expire at the end of next year.

They launched the negotiations in April earlier than expected amid speculation that should former President Donald Trump return to the White House, he could call for a hefty increase in Seoul’s share of the cost for the upkeep of the 28,500-strong USFK in a way that could cause tension in the alliance.

Since 1991, Seoul has partially shared the cost for Korean USFK workers; the construction of military installations, such as barracks, as well as training, educational, operational and communications facilities; and other logistical support. (Yonhap)

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Police in riot gear have clashed with demonstrators calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war outside the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, DC.

Protesters, many wearing shirts that read “Cease Fire Now”, linked arms in front of the DNC building’s entrance near the Capitol on Wednesday night, where some sang: “Which side are you on?”

Officers pushed and pulled the protesters to try to remove them from the area, at one point shoving one protester down a staircase leading to the entrance. Police also used pepper spray and fired projectiles containing chemical irritants.

Demonstrator Dani Noble said people came to the DNC to peacefully call on Democratic Party leadership to support a ceasefire in Gaza.

Instead, “we were met by police pulling on folks that are disabled or have chronic illnesses, pulling people to the ground in riot gear”, Noble said.

“It is shameful the way that nonviolent protesters and members of our community were met with violence tonight. It is absolutely shameful,” he added.

Capitol Police said approximately 150 people were “illegally and violently protesting”. It said six officers were treated for injuries, ranging from cuts to being pepper sprayed and punched.

“One person has been arrested for assault on an officer,” Capitol Police said on social media.

The protest organizers rejected allegations that the demonstrators were violent.

The multi-denominational demonstration calling for a ceasefire in Gaza outside the US Capitol building in Washington, DC, on November 15, 2023 [Leah Millis/Reuters]

Police escorted legislators who were at the DNC offices at the time out of the building to safety.

Congressman Sean Casten said: “We were rescued by armed officers who did not know the protesters’ intent; they knew only that members of Congress were inside, could not leave and that protesters would not let police through.”

The demonstration was organized by three advocacy groups, and included members of IfNotNow, a group that urges US Jewish groups to end their support of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians; Jewish Voice for Peace, a group that advocates for Palestinian independence; and the Democratic Socialists of America.

Jewish Voice for Peace wrote on social media that the protesters had gathered to lay out candles for Palestinians killed during Israel’s bombardment and to call for a ceasefire.

Last week, a large number of House Democrats joined nearly all Republicans in voting to censure Representative Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, over her criticism of the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians.

Public demonstrations – both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel – have rippled around the world since October 7, when Hamas launched an attack in Israel that killed 1,200 people, and Israel began a non-stop bombardment of Gaza that has killed more than 11,300 Palestinians, about 40 percent of them children.

Wednesday’s pro-ceasefire demonstration came a day after many thousands of pro-Israeli protesters gathered on the National Mall, holding placards with words like: “Let Israel finish the job”, “From the river to the sea, Israel is all you’ll see”, and calling for “no ceasefire” to take place.

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U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan will hear arguments Monday in Washington over whether Trump has gone too far with remarks such as calling prosecutors a “team of thugs” and one possible witness “a gutless pig.”

It is the biggest test yet for Chutkan, underscoring the unprecedented complexities of prosecuting the former Republican president as the judge vows not to let political considerations guide her decisions.

Ending the stream of Trump’s harsh language would make the case easier to manage. But among the difficult questions Chutkan must navigate is how any gag order might be enforced and how one could be fashioned that does not risk provoking Trump’s base and fueling his claims of political persecution as he campaigns to retake the White House in 2024.

“She has to think about the serious risk that it’s not just his words that could trigger violence, but that she could play into the conspiracy theories that Trump’s followers tend to believe in and that her act of issuing a gag order might trigger a very disturbing response,” said Catherine Ross said, a George Washington University law school professor.

“If we allow that to stop a judge from doing what is called for, that’s a big problem for rule of law. But on the other hand, if I were the judge, I would certainly be thinking about it,” she said.

Short of issuing an order, Chutkan has already suggested that inflammatory comments could force her to move up the trial, now scheduled to begin in March, to guard against tainting the jury pool. Judges can threaten gag order violators with fines or jail time, but jailing a presidential candidate could prompt serious political blowback and pose logistical hurdles.

Chutkan, who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, isn’t the first judge to confront the consequences of Trump’s speech. The judge in his civil fraud trial in New York recently imposed a limited gag order prohibiting personal attacks against court personnel following a social media post that maligned the judge’s principal clerk.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team envisions a broader order, seeking to bar Trump from making inflammatory and intimidating comments about lawyers, witnesses and others involved in the case that accuses the former president of illegally plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump’s lawyers call it a “desperate effort at censorship” that would prevent Trump from telling his side of the story while campaigning.

A complicating factor is that many of the potential witnesses in the case are themselves public figures. In the case of Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence is also running against Trump for the GOP nomination. That could open the door for Trump’s team to argue that he should be permitted to respond to public broadsides he sees on television or seek a competitive edge by denouncing a political rival for the White House.

Burt Neuborne, a longtime civil liberties lawyer who challenged gag orders on behalf of defendants and lawyers in other cases, questioned whether a formal order was necessary because witness intimidation is already a crime and the court can guard against a tainted jury by carefully questioning prospective jurors before trial. A gag order may also slow down the case because it’s likely Trump either violates it and the judge will want to punish him or Trump will challenge the order in advance, he said.

“And so in some sense, you may be playing directly into his hands by essentially creating yet another mechanism for him to try to push this until after the 2024 election because my sense is that any gag order that she issues will eventually reach the Supreme Court,” Neuborne said.

But Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney in Michigan, said she believes the judge can issue a narrow enough order that withstands legal challenges and protects both the case and Trump’s abilities to campaign.

“Especially in this case, where Donald Trump has made it apparent that he will say all kinds of outrageous and vitriolic things about the parties, about the judge, about witnesses unless she acts,” said McQuade, a University of Michigan Law School professor. “So in some ways, she has, I think, a responsibility to act here.”

There is some limited precedent for restricting the speech of political candidates who are criminal defendants.

In one case, a federal appeals court in 1987 lifted a gag order on U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Sr., a Tennessee Democrat charged in a fraud case. Ford, who was ultimately acquitted, claimed the case brought under Republican President Ronald Reagan’s administration was racially and politically motivated.

Ford’s gag order prohibited him from even sharing his opinion of or discussing the facts of the case. The court noted that Ford would soon be up for reelection and said the gag order would unfairly prevent him from responding to attacks from his political opponents and block his constituents from hearing the “views of their congressman on this issue of undoubted public importance.”

Another appeals court in 2000 upheld a gag order challenged by then-Louisiana Insurance Commissioner Jim Brown in a fraud case, noting the order allowed assertions of innocence and other general statements about the case.

The court, however, also noted that the judge briefly lifted the gag order to avoid interfering with Brown’s reelection campaign, saying that the “urgency of a campaign, which may well require that a candidate, for the benefit of the electorate as well as himself, have absolute freedom to discuss his qualifications, has passed.”

Chutkan herself has experience with gag orders.

In 2018, she imposed an order restricting the comments of lawyers in the case of Maria Butina, a Russian gun activist who pleaded guilty to working in America as a secret agent for Moscow. The order followed prosecutors’ admission that they had wrongly accused Butina of trading sex for access as well as public comments by her lawyer that Chutkan said had “crossed the line.”

The next year, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson imposed a gag order on Trump ally Roger Stone in his obstruction and witness tampering case after he posted a photo of a judge with what appeared to be crosshairs of a gun. Though she warned she could jail him if he violated the order, she instead barred him from using social media months later after he again publicly disparaged the case against him.

But that order was in direct response to a specific action, said Bruce Rogow, Stone’s attorney in that case. He said he was dubious that Trump’s attacks, “while in very poor taste,” posed the kind of danger to merit a gag order.

“Trump’s talk may be déclassé, but the First Amendment defends his right to present his distorted view of the world up to the point that he presents a true threat to people or the administration of justice. Not easy to measure,” Rogow wrote in an email. “Like obscenity, one knows it when you see it.”

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At the same time, however, the meeting also symbolizes the start of a complex journey for the two countries to define to what extent Seoul’s role will be in U.S. nuclear planning and execution.

According to the presidential office, South Korea’s First Deputy Director of National Security Kim Tae-hyo and U.S. National Security Coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell co-chaired the meeting at Seoul’s presidential office. The meeting was held behind closed doors.

“The consultative body should respond seamlessly to the escalating North Korean nuclear and missile threats through the enhanced execution of deterrence,” President Yoon Suk Yeol said while talking to the officials at the beginning of the meeting.

“Just as President (Joe) Biden warned in April that a nuclear attack by North Korea would result in the end of their regime, we must strengthen the execution of deterrence through a nuclear-based South Korea-U.S. alliance to prevent North Korea from daring to use nuclear weapons.”

The NCG is the outcome of the Washington Declaration, which was announced by Yoon and Biden during the Korean president’s state visit to the U.S. in April.

The declaration is aimed at reaffirming the U.S.’ extended deterrence to counter North Korea’s escalating nuclear and missile threats. The NCG focuses on implementing that extended deterrence by giving Seoul more insight and an increased presence in U.S. nuclear planning and execution in response to worst-case scenarios involving an attack by the North.

The North has escalated its provocations since the Washington Declaration was announced. North Korea launched an intercontinental ballistic missile last week when Yoon was attending the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Lithuania to draw the attention of European nations to Pyongyang’s nuclear threats. And on Monday, the North warned that efforts to increase extended deterrence would only push it further away from the negotiating table.

Against this backdrop, Yoon said the inaugural NCG meeting will be “a crucial starting point for the two countries to establish a robust and effective deterrence.”

“Through an upgraded South Korea-U.S. alliance that embraces a nuclear-centered paradigm, substantive efforts will be made to block the nuclear and missile threats posed by North Korea in a fundamental way,” Yoon said during a Cabinet meeting at his office.

President Yoon Suk Yeol shakes hands with U.S. National Security Council Coordinator for Indo-Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell during the inaugural meeting of the South Korea-U.S. Nuclear Consultative Group at the presidential office in Yongsan District, Seoul, Tuesday. Courtesy of the presidential office

‘Complex journey’

Although the NCG kicked off to flesh out the nuances of the consultative group and provide a security assurance that South Korea can rely on, experts said there are differences that Seoul and Washington need to resolve.

For South Korea, the goal of the NCG is institutionalizing its presence in Washington’s planning and operation of nuclear assets in the process of executing extended deterrence. The Yoon administration has been saying that the NCG allows Seoul to take part in the planning of U.S. nuclear operations, which is similar to NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group (NPG).

On the other hand, the Biden administration describes the NCG as a vehicle giving South Korea greater insight into U.S. nuclear planning and execution, showing differences the two sides have on the matter.

“For the Biden administration, which has been making efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the reference to the term ‘nuclear’ in the NCG comes as a big concession,” said Go Myong-hyun, a senior researcher at the Asian Institute for Policy Studies.

“While South Korea is seeking to evolve the NCG into something close to the NPG, the pace of these talks could be slower than what Seoul expects … Given that, the NCG is likely to be upgraded in a step-by-step growth curve, not a linear one, with each escalation occurring in response to provocations by North Korea.”

Lee Seong-hyon, a senior fellow at the George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations, also said the first NCG meeting illustrates just how seriously the two allies regard this issue, but at the same time signals the beginning of a complex journey.

“This initial step represents the beginning of a complex journey, where the details and terminology, such as the interpretation of ‘joint planning,’ will require thorough clarification,” Lee said. “Although the term is used by the Yoon administration, it is not in the Biden administration’s lexicon.”

Lee said Washington wants to assure South Korea of its security by providing an opportunity for them to observe U.S. nuclear operations, but South Korea seeks to be more than just an observer, saying a tabletop exercise might not meet the expectations of South Koreans

“Ultimately, the extent to which NCG caters to South Korea’s nuclear aspirations will be determined, in part, by the U.S. perception of South Korea’s status as an ally,” Lee said.

“This pertains not only to managing the North Korean threat but also to considering South Korea’s potential broader role in the Indo-Pacific region.”

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Crippled by international sanctions, the Kim Jong-un regime, which has refused to abandon its nuclear ambitions, has turned to digital crimes, or stealing cryptocurrencies ― an act feared to help fund the development of its weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

“The threat posed by North Korea’s cyber activities, especially its cryptocurrency thefts, is very real and very serious. The money North Korea has stolen, which is now in the billions of dollars, is a pure revenue stream that can finance North Korea’s most destabilizing activities,” said Nick Carlsen, a blockchain analyst at TRM Labs and a former FBI analyst.

“Their nuclear, missile and even intelligence operations now benefit from the resources these crimes generate for them.”

Alex O’Neill, the co-founder of the Belfer Center’s North Korea Cyber Working Group, also said North Korea boasts significant capabilities in cyberspace, especially for generating illicit revenue.

“North Korean threat actors are not as sophisticated as some other state actors, but the resources they devote to cybercrime and the experience they’ve amassed over the last decade have helped them develop into an increasingly formidable threat,” he said.

From left are Go Myong-hyun, a senior fellow of the Asan Institute for 
Policy Studies, Nick Carlsen, a blockchain analyst at TRM Labs, and 
Alex O'Neill, co-founder of the Belfer Center's North Korea Cyber Working Group.

“Aside from the breaches and financial losses themselves, the international community is concerned that North Korean cybercrime blunts the effects of the sanctions regime and provides a major new cash stream for Pyongyang. It is particularly alarming that some of the proceeds seem to support North Korea’s WMD programs.”

According to blockchain data analysis firm Chainalysis, North Korea stole $1.75 billion (2.2 trillion won) worth of cryptocurrency between 2017 and 2020 and chalked up some 800 billion won last year alone, including a single operation in which it stole $620 million in bitcoin, according to the South Korean National Intelligence Service. The amount represents a staggering haul, compared with the country’s real gross domestic product (GDP) of $27.4 billion in 2020. In 2021, its economy also retreated 0.1 percent from a year earlier, according to Statistics Korea.

However, Go Myong-Hyun, a senior fellow of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, believes that Pyongyang’s cyber capabilities are not as sophisticated as before, adding that a shift in cyber-raid targets has led its cyber capabilities astray.

“Until 2016, North Korean hacking groups had launched cyberattacks against high-security governments or defense companies, raising speculation the country’s cyber capabilities may have reached a significant level. However, since then, it has hacked cryptocurrency exchanges or banks to gain financial profits (in not-so-advanced ways),” Go said.

Before a group of North Korean hackers known as Lazarus carried out an $81-million cyber heist of the Bangladesh central bank in 2016, they sent spear phishing emails to employees of the bank and gained access to the bank’s network before using the SWIFT message network to try to withdraw up to $1 billion from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York ― a method seen as an old-fashioned trick in the digital age, according to Go.

“Taking a closer look, its modus operandi is not a highly developed technology, but a phishing campaign,” Go said, adding that as two hot keywords ― North Korea and cryptocurrency ― are involved, the issue is drawing more attention.

Despite admitting the gravity of North Korea’s increasing cryptocurrency heists, experts were skeptical whether the North Korean regime is walking away with a large chunk of money taken from the illicit activities.

“North Korean actors have inflicted billions of dollars of losses on victims around the world, but only a fraction of each heist actually reaches the Kim regime’s coffers. The high transaction costs of converting stolen cryptocurrency into fiat money, not to mention declining asset prices, mean the ultimate recipients end up with only a portion of the amount initially taken from victims,” O’Neill said, adding that driving up those transaction costs is “key to countering North Korea’s cybercriminal statecraft.”

Carlsen echoed O’Neill’s view. “There is no doubt North Korea is behind a large proportion of crypto thefts. The only questions remaining are the exact amounts stolen, and how much of the stolen crypto North Korea is able to be converted into usable traditional currencies,” he said.

“If anything, the scale of these thefts and their importance to the North Korean regime are hard to overstate. Cybercrime generally, and crypto thefts, in particular, are now a key element in the North Korean government’s economic strategy.”

In that respect, North Korea may find itself in a dilemma over transactions, according to Go.

“To ultimately convert digital currency into funds that can be readily used is another requirement for North Korea, but it would not be easy because some exchanges with abundant liquidity may be under tight surveillance,” Go said.

“In addition, cryptocurrency transactions are recorded on a blockchain, so crypto hacks can be traced, meaning that it cannot be a risk-free asset for (cash-strapped) North Korea.”

For those reasons, Go said that it is excessive to believe that the entirety of North Korea’s crypto loot went into its weapons programs amid last year’s sharply increased missile tests.

Actually, Anne Neuberger, the U.S. deputy national security adviser, said last August that about a third of stolen cryptocurrencies were used to fund North Korea’s missile program.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un oversees a military drill carried out to check and 
assess the war deterrent and nuclear counterattack capability of the country, 
in this undated photo released Oct. 10 by the North's official Korean 
Central News Agency. EPA-Yonhap

Currently, the rapid drop in crypto’s value, compounded by the bankruptcies of crypto exchanges, including the world’s second-largest crypto exchange FTX, may deal a blow to North Korea, which is believed to have lost millions of dollars to the crypto crash, the experts noted.

“The ‘crypto winter’ is certainly bad news for North Korea. As firms like Chainalysis and TRM Labs have reported, some of North Korea’s stolen virtual assets have shed more than two-thirds of their value over the last few months,” O’Neill said.

Carlsen added, “Declining crypto prices have probably caused quite a few headaches in Pyongyang. What was worth hundreds of millions earlier this year, for example, the proceeds of the Axie/Ronin Bridge hack, are now worth quite a bit less. On paper, this might look bad for North Korea’s hacking teams and their bottom lines.”

North Korea stole more than $620 million in cryptocurrency from the online video game Axie Infinity’s Ronin network last March.

“Instability in the crypto industry is also causing North Koreans other headaches. For example, RenBTC ― perhaps North Korea’s favorite ERC-20 token ― was destroyed in the aftermath of the FTX collapse,” Carlsen said.

However, the pundits did not expect the general downturn in the crypto market to decrease Pyongyang’s appetite for obtaining cryptocurrency seriously.

“Even at depressed prices, crypto is still extraordinarily lucrative for North Korea. A few dozen skilled hackers can earn as much as tens of thousands of construction laborers in Russia, or coal miners inside North Korea and their brokers in China. North Korea may reassign some crypto theft specialists to other forms of cybercrime, but crypto theft will continue to be a key focus for North Korea,” Carlsen said.

With North Korea’s unprecedented cyberspace successes at generating revenue for its nuclear ambitions, South Korea, the United States and the international community are scrambling to find ways to stop it.

“As South Korea has the incentive to stop North Korea’s digital crimes from helping the development of its WMD and solid cyber capabilities, it is South Korea that would be the most like-minded country to the U.S. in dealing together with the North Korean cybercrime issue,” Go said.

“In addition, the South Korean government is also required to closely monitor local crypto exchanges that were robbed by North Korean hackers,” he said.

O’Neill said both countries should proactively target the online services and over-the-counter (OTC) brokers that facilitate North Korea’s cybercrimes, based on U.S. authorities’ actions last year against cryptocurrency mixers.

“As the U.S. and South Korea deepen their cooperation on this issue in bilateral and multilateral settings, one priority should be developing a more robust approach to regulating the cryptocurrency ecosystem, which remains far too hospitable to fraudsters and criminals. Another priority should be building other countries’ capacities to fight North Korean cybercrime and improving the flow of information between law enforcement agencies worldwide,” he said.

O’Neill also said the international community should also be concerned about the transferability of North Korea’s cybercrime statecraft.

“The model North Korea has pioneered, in which state-sponsored cyber actors generate illicit funds to support the regime’s malign activities, undoubtedly appeals to other rogue states and has the potential to undermine conventional sanctions. The United States, South Korea and like-minded states should develop plans for mitigating other countries’ likely embrace of state-directed cybercrime,” he said.

Noting that crypto-related crimes happen fast and traditional investigative response times are inadequate, Carlsen said, “Perhaps more important is the deepening cooperation between industry, and especially cryptocurrency exchanges, with law enforcement investigators.”

He added, “Exchanges are where the crypto rubber meets the real financial world’s roads ― exchanges are where crypto is exchanged for real-world currencies. Even though many exchanges are not required by law to help the governments investigating and trying to intercept the crypto stolen by North Korea, many are voluntarily cooperating proactively. This is wise. These exchanges are not only doing the right thing, they are also protecting themselves. They are all targets for the North Koreans too, after all.”

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Democrats have already won control of the Senate, securing 50 seats with a runoff in Georgia next month that could give President Joe Biden’s party an additional seat. The GOP came into the election needing to gain a net of just five seats for House control.

Nearly a week after the midterm elections, Republicans were closing in on the majority, giving conservatives leverage to blunt Biden’s agenda and spur a flurry of investigations. But a slim numerical advantage will pose immediate challenges for GOP leaders and complicate the party’s ability to govern.

The full scope of the party’s majority may not be clear for several more days — or weeks — as votes in competitive races are still being counted. Still, the party was on track to achieve 218 with seats in California and other states still too early to call.

Even barely achieving 218, though, means Republicans will likely have the narrowest majority of the 21st century. It could rival 2001, when Republicans had just a nine-seat majority, 221-212 with two independents. That’s far short of the sweeping victory Republicans predicted going into this year’s midterm elections, when the party hoped to reset the agenda on Capitol Hill by capitalizing on economic challenges and Biden’s lagging popularity.

Instead, Democrats were able to largely blunt an expected big GOP election, holding on to moderate, suburban districts from Virginia to Minnesota and Kansas. The results could complicate House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s plans to become speaker as some conservative members have questioned whether to back him or have imposed conditions for their support.

The narrow margins have upended Republican politics and prompted finger-pointing about what went wrong. Some in the GOP have blamed Donald Trump for the worse-than-expected outcome. The former president, who is expected to announce a third White House bid on Tuesday, lifted candidates during this year’s primaries who struggled to win during the general election.

Despite its underwhelming showing, the GOP will still see its power in Washington grow. Republicans will take control of House committees, giving them the ability to shape legislation and launch probes of Biden, his family and his administration.

There’s particular interest in investigating the overseas business dealings of the president’s son Hunter Biden. Some of the most conservative lawmakers have raised the prospect of impeaching Biden, though that will be much harder for the party to accomplish with a tight majority.

Any legislation that emerges from the House could face steep odds in the Senate, where the narrow Democratic majority will often be enough to derail GOP-championed legislation.

With such a slim majority in the House, there’s a potential for legislative chaos. The dynamic essentially gives an individual member enormous sway over shaping what happens in the chamber. That could lead to particularly tricky circumstances for GOP leaders as they try to win support for must-pass measures that keep the government funded or raise the debt ceiling.

The GOP’s failure to notch more gains was especially surprising because the party went into the election benefiting from congressional maps that were redrawn by Republican legislatures. History was also on Republicans’ side: The party that holds the White House had lost congressional seats during virtually every new president’s first midterm of the modern era.

In the first national election since the Jan. 6 insurrection, one Republican who was outside the Capitol on the day of the mob attack, Derrick Van Orden, won a House seat. He won a seat long held by Democrats in Wisconsin.

Republican candidates pledged on the campaign trail to cut taxes and tighten border security. GOP lawmakers also could withhold aid to Ukraine as it fights a war with Russia or use the threat of defaulting on the nation’s debt as leverage to extract cuts from social spending and entitlements — though all such pursuits will be tougher given how small the GOP majority may end up being.

As a senator and then vice president, Biden spent a career crafting legislative compromises with Republicans. But as president, he was clear about what he viewed as the threats posed by the current Republican Party.

Biden said the midterms show voters want Democrats and Republicans to find ways to cooperate and govern in a bipartisan manner, but also noted that Republicans didn’t achieve the electoral surge they’d been betting on and vowed, “I’m not going to change anything in any fundamental way.”

The president was also blunt in assessing his party’s dwindling chances, saying Monday of the House, “I think it’s going to be very close, but I don’t think we’re going to make it.”

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Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said Wednesday in a meeting with his Pakistani counterpart in China that resolving the remaining issues in the Vienna talks needs a decision on the part of Washington.

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The added restrictions on defense-related goods and services, issued by the State and Commerce departments, are due to be carried out as of December 9.

A notice in the Federal Register said developments in Cambodia were “contrary to U.S. national security and foreign policy interests.”

It added that the embargo aims to ensure that defense-related items are not available to Cambodia’s military and military intelligence services without advance review by the U.S. government.

The latest restrictions follow sanctions issued in November by the Treasury Department against two senior Cambodian military officials for corruption and come amid increasing concern about Beijing’s increasing influence.

Cambodia branded those sanctions as “politically motivated” and said it would not discuss them with Washington.

The U.S. has similar controls on exports of items that might be diverted to “military end-users” in Myanmar, China, Russia and Venezuela.

U.S. exports to Cambodia in 2019 totaled $5.6 billion, while the amount of military-related U.S. exports to Cambodia was not immediately known.

China is Cambodia’s largest investor and closest political partner, and Beijing’s support has enabled it to ignore Western concerns about its poor human and political rights records. In turn, Cambodia has generally supported Beijing’s geopolitical positions on various issues, such as its territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Also, Washington has strongly condemned the construction of new Chinese military facilities at Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base.

In recent years, Hun Sen’s government has cracked down on the political opposition, shut media outlets and forced hundreds of Cambodian politicians, human rights activists and journalists into exile.

Human rights groups have said that Phnom Penh has engaged in arbitrary arrests and other abuses, while corruption is another major concern.

The Treasury Department sanctions targeted the director-general of the defense ministry’s material and technical services department and a commander in the Royal Cambodian Navy, who, in 2020 and 2021, allegedly conspired with other Cambodian officials to inflate costs of a construction project at the Ream base and planned to use the funds for their own benefit.

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