PRESS REVIEW – Wednesday, July 2: Russia is ramping up AI disinformation abroad, but also at home, where it's using bots to justify high utility rate hikes. In the US, President Donald Trump is reigniting fears of a global trade war amid tensions with Japan. Also in Japan, "proxy quitter" companies help workers avoid an awkward conversation with their bosses. Finally, the current heatwave is igniting fierce pro- and anti-AC debates in France. Is "AC guilt" justified?
Russia's ongoing disinformation efforts are intensifying. Tech magazine Wired says the Kremlin is using free AI tools to fuel "pro-Russian narratives" in many countries overseas, but most notably in Ukraine. This comes in the form of not only videos and pictures, but also QR codes and fake media pages. What's new is the intensity and sophistication of the fakes. The paper cites a report saying that between September 2024 and May 2025, the amount of content "has increased dramatically" and is being viewed by millions of people around the world. But Russia's disinformation efforts aren't just international. Russian independent paper The Moscow Times reports that the Kremlin has launched an online bot campaign inside Russia to justify the country's "biggest utility rate hikes in years". More than 10,000 bot comments were analysed and many of them defended the hikes, framing them as beneficial or simply routine. Some even claimed that wages in Russia are also increasing.
Moving to the US, Trump is reigniting fears of a global trade war. This time, the US president is pushing Japan to agree to a trade deal by July 9. The Financial Times reports that Trump is threatening to raise tariffs on Japan again, this time by 30 to 35 percent. Japan Today reports that Trump used the argument that Japan is not importing enough American rice, in a post on Truth Social. The paper says that Trump "singled out Japan in a way he rarely does online". The Wall Street Journal is analysing the divide by looking at the car industry. The American paper cites people familiar with the matter who say that Americans might demand "a cap on the number of vehicles exported by Japan" into the US. But Japanese officials are standing their ground, refusing any deal that preserves Trump's 25 percent auto tariff. The paper says that Trump used the rice argument, despite Japan's imports worth "hundreds of thousands of tons of US rice annually". The Japan Times's headline asks the question: "Is the shine coming off the US-Japan 'Golden Age'?" The paper says that as recently as January, Trump described the relationship between the two countries as "a friendship like few others", but not even half a year later, cracks are appearing. The trade talks have stalled, and a distance has opened between the US and Japan on what’s happening in the Middle East.
Staying in Japan, the rigid hierarchies of Japanese companies are pushing people to find innovative ways out. The Washington Post reports that if you're avoiding your boss, "in Japan, you can hire someone to quit your job for you". The article talks about "proxy quitter" companies, whose agents "quit on behalf of clients" who want to avoid the awkward conversation. People use the service because they've been harassed at work, for instance, or if they weren't allowed to express their concerns freely, due to the strict work culture in the country.
Finally, Europe's scorching heatwave is igniting a divisive debate in France, and it's all about air conditioning. A "pro-AC" column in right-wing paper Le Figaro notes that more and more French people are thinking of investing in an air conditioner, not without a "certain amount of guilt". Le Figaro asks, however: "Is this guilt really justified?". Left-wing paper Libération asks what the alternatives are and quotes experts who say that adopting energy-consuming AC is a sign of bad adaptation to climate change. And the heated debate isn't just in newspaper columns. "Team air conditioning" versus "team open window" is very much present in the office, writes French newspaper Les Echos. The financial daily says that each person has a different perception of temperature, depending on their sex, health or other factors. And body regulation depends on all of those factors. As a result, adjusting the air conditioning can generate high tensions, particularly in open plan offices.
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