SOFREP Daily Brief – 12-14-2015

• China remains the biggest threat to the United States

  Singapore said it would allow the US to deploy a spy plane out of its territory to monitor Chinese activities in the South China sea. The move, which angered the Chinese, comes at a time of heightened tensions in the area over China’s building of artificial islands in disputed places. It is a reminder that while Washington’s thinking, bandwidth and resources, including military, seem continually consumed by the crisis and threats emanating from the Middle East, the more serious long-term challenge for US national security interests remains the management of its relationship with China. – BBC

• Did China bury nuclear waste in the deserts of Sudan?

  According to the former director of the Sudan Atomic Energy Commission in Sudan, Mohamed Siddig, 60 containers have been brought to Sudan together with construction materials and machinery for the building of the Merowe Dam (Hamdab Dam) in the Northern part of Sudan. He did not mention the exact year of the import and the date the nuclear waste was disposed. China worked on the dam between 2004 and 2009. – Dabanga Sudan

• 17 Crazy facts about Saudi Arabia

  The Saudi Arabia-led oil cartel, OPEC, decided to maintain production last Friday, but remained divided over its production ceiling and failed to reach an agreement. And that could mean dark times ahead for about half of the cartel’s members. But Saudi Arabia is also looking at its own set of problems, as budget pressures continue to worsen and rumors of internal political divisions continue to proliferate. – Business Insider

• America losing the electromagnetic warfare race

  The future of warfare seems like it’ll be an unrecognizable place, more akin to something from science fiction. Jazz-playing robots are being used as precursors to empathetic machines that will aid soldiers on the battlefield. “Vampire” drones will fly into warzones and sublimate into a gas in sunlight. And both the U.S. and China have developed laser weapons that can shoot down small, fast-moving targets. But a report by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) details how the race to become the world leader in electromagnetic warfare (EW) is being lost by the U.S. – IFL Science

• You heard it first on SOFREP…DHS SIGINT birds deployed over California

  Federal investigators looking into the San Bernardino massacre deployed a spy plane overhead after the attacks in an apparent attempt to find additional suspects, Daily Mail Online can reveal. The Department of Homeland Security is said to have put up the single engine craft over the California city and ordered it to make repeated circles overhead. The craft would likely have been equipped with ‘Dirtbox’ technology which can scan tens of thousands of phones in one go to identify suspects. The report adds to the intrigue about whether or not there were accomplices in the San Bernardino attacks, which took place last Wednesday and were the worst terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. – Daily Mail

[Featured image: Nightman1965/Shutterstock]