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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea’s recent barrage of missile launches were the simulated use of its tactical battlefield nuclear weapons to “hit and wipe out” potential South Korean and U.S. targets, state media reported Monday, as its leader Kim Jong Un signaled he would conduct more provocative tests.
The North’s statement, released on the 77th birthday of its ruling Workers’ Party, is seen as an attempt to burnish Kim’s image as a strong leader at home amid pandemic-related hardships as he’s defiantly pushing to enlarge his weapons arsenal to wrest greater concessions from its rivals in future negotiations.
“Through seven times of launching drills of the tactical nuclear operation units, the actual war capabilities … of the nuclear combat forces ready to hit and wipe out the set objects at any location and any time were displayed to the full,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said.
KCNA said the missile tests were in response to recent naval drills between U.S. and South Korean forces, which involved the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan for the first time in five years.
Viewing the drills as a military threat, North Korea decided to stage “the simulation of an actual war” to check and improve its war deterrence and send a warning to its enemies, KCNA said.
North Korea considers U.S.-South Korean military drills as an invasion rehearsal, though the allies have steadfastly said they are defensive in nature. Since the May inauguration of a conservative government in Seoul, the U.S. and South Korean militaries have been expanding their exercises, posing a greater security threat to Kim.
The launches — all supervised by Kim — included a nuclear-capable ballistic missile launched under a reservoir in the northeast; other ballistic missiles designed to launch nuclear strikes on South Korean airfields, ports and command facilities; and a new-type ground-to-ground ballistic missile that flew over Japan, KCNA reported. It said North Korea also flew 150 warplanes for separate live-firing and other drills in the country’s first-ever such training.
Cheong Seong-Chang at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea said the missile launches marked the first time for North Korea to perform drills involving army units tasked with the operation of tactical nuclear weapons.
The North’s public launch of a missile from under an inland reservoir was also the first of its kind, though it has previously test-launched missiles from a submarine.
Kim Dong-yub, a professor at Seoul’s University of North Korean Studies, said North Korea likely aims to diversify launch sites to make it difficult for its enemies to detect its missile liftoffs in advance and conduct preemptive strikes.
KCNA said when the weapon launched from the reservoir was flying above the sea target, North Korean authorities confirmed the reliability of the explosion of the missile’s warhead, apparently a dummy one, at the set altitude.
Kim, the professor, said the missile’s estimated 600-kilometer (370-mile) flight indicated the launch could be a test of exploding a nuclear weapon above South Korea’s southeastern port city of Busan, where the Reagan previously docked. He said the missile tested appeared to be a new version of North Korea’s highly maneuverable KN-23 missile, which was modeled on Russia’s Iskander missile.
North Korea described the missile that flew over Japan as a new-type intermediate-range weapon that traveled 4,500 kilometers (2,800 miles). Some foreign experts earlier said the missile was likely North Korea’s existing nuclear-capable Hwasong-12 missile, which can reach the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam. But Kim, the professor, said the missile tested recently appeared to be an improved version of the Hwasong-12 with a faraway target like Alaska or Hawaii.
North Korea released a slew of photos on the launches. One of them showed Kim and his wife Ri Sol Ju, both wearing ochre field jackets, frowning while covering their ears. Some observers say the image indicated Ri’s elevated political standing because it was likely the first time for her to observe a weapons launch with her husband.
Worries about North Korea’s nuclear program deepened in recent months as the country adopted a new law authorizing the preemptive use of its bombs in certain cases and took reported steps to deploy tactical nuclear weapons along its frontline border with South Korea. This year, North Korea carried out more than 40 missile launches.
Some experts say Kim Jong Un would eventually aim to use his advanced nuclear arsenal to win a U.S. recognition of North Korea as a legitimate nuclear state, which Kim sees as essential in getting crippling U.N. sanctions on his country lifted.
Kim Jong Un said the recent launches were “an obvious warning” to Seoul and Washington, informing them of North Korea’s nuclear attack capabilities. Kim repeated that he has no intentions of resuming the stalled disarmament diplomacy with the United States now, according to KCNA.
“The U.S. and the South Korean regime’s steady, intentional and irresponsible acts of escalating the tension will only invite our greater reaction, and we are always and strictly watching the situation crisis,” Kim was quoted as saying.
Kim also expressed conviction that the nuclear combat forces of his military would maintain “their strongest nuclear response posture and further strengthen it in every way” to perform their duties of defending the North’s dignity and sovereign rights.
South Korean officials recently said North Korea maintains readiness to perform its first nuclear test in five years. Some experts say the nuclear test would be related to an effort to build warheads to be mounted on short-range missiles targeting South Korea.
“North Korea has multiple motivations for publishing a high-profile missile story now,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. “Kim Jong Un’s public appearance after a month-long absence provides a patriotic headline to mark the founding anniversary of the ruling Workers’ Party.”
“Pyongyang has been concerned about military exercises by the U.S., South Korea and Japan, so to strengthen its self-proclaimed deterrent, it is making explicit the nuclear threat behind its recent missile launches. The KCNA report may also be a harbinger of a forthcoming nuclear test for the kind of tactical warhead that would arm the units Kim visited in the field,” Easley said.
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said some of the aircraft and vessels had crossed the sensitive median line in the Taiwan Strait that separates the island from the Chinese mainland.
“Our military has broadcast warnings, deployed combat air patrol and naval vessels and activated land-based missile systems in response to the situation,” said the ministry.
By 5 p.m. in Taiwan, 14 vessels and 20 planes operated by the Chinese military had been detected around the Strait, according to a statement from the ministry. Of the 20 aircraft, 14 crossed the median line, it added.
The Chinese military has not yet issued a statement on the purpose of Saturday’s exercises.
The news follows a series of military drills that China has carried out around Taiwan since Thursday after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s controversial visit to the self-governing democratic island earlier this week.
The Chinese Communist Party views Taiwan as its territory, despite never having controlled it, and has long vowed to “reunify” the island with the Chinese mainland — by force if necessary.
Pelosi ignored its furious opposition to her visit by landing in Taipei on Tuesday evening as part of a larger Asia tour that wrapped up Friday with a last stop in Japan.
But the full ramifications of her visit are only now emerging, with China ramping up military exercises in the skies and waters around Taiwan and halting cooperation with the US on various issues.
On Friday, 68 Chinese warplanes were reported in the Taiwan Strait, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry. Of those, 49 entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone — a buffer of airspace commonly referred to as an ADIZ. That was just a few planes short of the record set last year when 56 Chinese warplanes entered the ADIZ on the same day.
Nineteen of the warplanes on Friday also crossed the median line dividing the Taiwan Strait, the ministry said.
On Thursday, China launched 11 ballistic missiles — some of which flew over the island of Taiwan and landed in Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone, prompting Tokyo to lodge a formal complaint with Beijing. That was the first time China had sent missiles over the island.
Also on Thursday, two Chinese drones flew near Japan’s Okinawa prefecture, prompting Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force to scramble fighter jets in response.
The drills are scheduled to last until Sunday local time in Beijing, according to Chinese state media.
Diplomatic fallout
The deteriorating situation in the Taiwan Strait has caused a diplomatic storm, with China lashing out against countries that have criticized its exercises and some regional powers calling for de-escalation.
Tensions ran high at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting of foreign ministers in Cambodia this week, where members had originally expected to discuss three main topics: the Myanmar crisis, the South China Sea, and the war in Ukraine.
But Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan added “a fourth hot stone … which has led to heated discussions about cross-strait relations,” said Cambodia’s Foreign Minister Prak Sokhonn at a Saturday news conference in Phnom Penh.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken both attended the ASEAN meeting; on Thursday, Wang decried Pelosi’s visit as demonstrating the “bankruptcy” of US politics and credibility, calling it “manic, irresponsible and highly irrational behavior.”
A day later, after Beijing fired its missiles over Taiwan, Blinken said China had “chosen to overreact and use Speaker Pelosi’s visit as a pretext to increase provocative military activity in and around the Taiwan Strait.”
On Saturday, Sokhonn described the meeting as lively, saying he had to call all ministers to speak in a calm, dignified, polite, civilized and diplomatic manner.
“There were strong arguments, but in our opinion, it’s much better that we exchange words than less friendly means,” he said.
Japan and other G7 economies have urged China to halt its military drills and maintain the status quo in the region.
Beijing has not heeded those calls. Instead, it has responded by canceling future phone calls between Chinese and US defense leaders and annual naval meetings between the two countries. It has also canceled planned meetings between Chinese and Japanese officials.
China has also summoned the ambassadors of the US, Japan and various European countries.
On Friday, China’s Foreign Ministry announced a raft of countermeasures against the US, including sanctions against Pelosi and her immediate family.
China also suspended bilateral climate talks and shelved cooperation on issues including the repatriation of illegal immigrants and the investigation of transnational crimes and drug operations.
“We should not hold hostage cooperation on matters of global concern because of differences between our two countries,” Blinken told reporters on Saturday, speaking in Manila, the capital of the Philippines.
China’s decision to suspend climate talks “could have lasting consequences for the future of the region, the future of our planet,” and would punish the developing world rather than the US, he added.
Taiwan’s defence ministry has accused Chinese aircraft and ships of carrying out simulation attack exercises on its main island on Saturday. Several batches of Chinese aircraft and ships were detected in the Taiwan Strait, some of which crossed the median line, an unofficial buffer separating the two sides, according to the ministry. Taiwan’s army used patrolling naval ships and put shore-based missiles on stand-by in response.
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A Taiwan official who was in charge of various missile production projects was found dead on Saturday morning in a hotel room in Southern Taiwan, according to the official Central News Agency. Ou Yang Li-hsing, deputy head of the military-owned National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, was 57. The cause of his death is unknown, CNA reported.
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The US, Australian and Japanese foreign ministers have urged China to immediately cease military exercises around Taiwan. In a joint statement after meeting in Phnom Penh on the margins of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations foreign ministers’ gathering, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the foreign ministers of Australia and Japan, Penny Wong and Hayashi Yoshimasa, “expressed their concern about the People’s Republic of China’s recent actions that gravely affect international peace and stability, including the use of large-scale military exercises”. They also “condemned the PRC’s launch of ballistic missiles, five of which the Japanese government reported landed in its exclusive economic zones, raising tension and destabilising the region”.
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Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, said Chinese military drills near Taiwan, were a threat to regional security. Beijing announced four days of drills that are expected to finish on Sunday. The drills are a “serious problem that impacts our national security and the safety of our citizens,” Kishida told reporters, speaking after a meeting with the US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, in Tokyo on Friday.
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North Korea has denounced Nancy Pelosi as “the worst destroyer of international peace and stability”, after the US House speaker expressed her commitment during a visit to South Korea to achieving the North’s denuclearisation. It also condemned her trip to Taiwan.
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The US special envoy on climate change John Kerry said China’s decision to suspend bilateral talks on climate change with the US does not punish Washington, “it punishes the world”. “No country should withhold progress on existential transnational issues because of bilateral differences,” said the former US secretary of state, who is currently the Biden administration’s top climate diplomat. US national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, also told reporters that China’s decision to halt cooperation in a number of critical areas was “fundamentally irresponsible”.
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In response to Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, Beijing on Friday cancelled efforts to keep communication channels open between Chinese and US military commanders.
Christopher Twomey, a security scholar at the US Naval Postgraduate School in California, told Reuters the severing of the communication links was worrying, coming at what he believed was the beginning of a new Taiwan crisis.
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“That is precisely the time you would want to have more opportunities to talk to the other side … Losing those channels greatly reduces the ability of the two sides to de-conflict military forces as various exercises and operations continue.”
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As Chinese warships, fighter jets and drones manoeuvre around Taiwan, at least four powerful US vessels, including the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli and the guided missile cruiser USS Antietam are east of Taiwan, Reuters has confirmed.
Bonnie Glaser, a Washington-based security analyst with the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said, more broadly, prospects were “extremely low for holding talks on risk reduction measures or stability”. Over time, she said she expected the specific talks called off this week would resume but “right now, China has to signal toughness and resolve”.
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Chinese officials had not responded to calls from senior Pentagon officials this week but that was seen as China showing displeasure over Pelosi’s trip rather than the severing of the channel between senior defence officials, including US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Austin pushed for improved communication between the rival forces when he met Chinese Defence Minister General Wei Fenghe on the sidelines of Shangri-la Dialogue security meeting in Singapore in June.
Both Asian and Western diplomats said US military chiefs had been pushing for more frequent theatre-level command talks for some time, given China’s growing deployments across Asia, where the US navy has traditionally been the dominant power.
The Pentagon said on Friday that China was overreacting and the US was still open to building crisis communication mechanisms.
n
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The deputy head of Taiwan defence ministry’s research and development unit has been found dead in a hotel in Pingtung, southern Taiwan, according to the official Central News Agency.
Ou Yang Li-hsing, deputy head of the military-owned National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, was 57. The cause of his death is unknown, CNA reported.
The military-owned body is working to more than double its yearly missile production capacity to close to 500 this year, as the island boosts its combat power amid what it sees as China’s growing military threat, according to Reuters.
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Taiwan’s defence ministry has said that some Chinese aircraft and ships carried out simulation attack exercises towards the main Taiwan Island on Saturday, Reuters senior correspondent in Taipei Yimou Lee has tweeted.
Several batches of Chinese aircraft and ships were detected in the Taiwan Strait on Saturday morning, some of which crossed the median line, they report.
#TAIWAN DEFENCE MINISTRY: SOME OF THE CHINESE AIRCRAFT AND SHIPS CARRIED OUT SIMULATION ATTACK EXERCISES TOWARDS THE MAIN TAIWAN ISLAND ON SAT
— Yimou Lee (@YimouLee) August 6, 2022
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Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing live coverage of the Taiwan crisis. Here’s a summary of the latest developments as it passes 10.30am in Taipei.
The US, Australian and Japanese foreign ministers have urged China to immediately cease military exercises around Taiwan. In a joint statement after meeting in Phnom Penh on the margins of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations foreign ministers’ gathering, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the foreign ministers of Australia and Japan, Penny Wong and Hayashi Yoshimasa, “expressed their concern about the People’s Republic of China’s recent actions that gravely affect international peace and stability, including the use of large-scale military exercises”. They also “condemned the PRC’s launch of ballistic missiles, five of which the Japanese government reported landed in its exclusive economic zones, raising tension and destabilising the region”.
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The Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, walked out of a plenary session in Cambodia just as Japan’s top diplomat, Yoshimasa Hayashi, spokeon Friday. Wang called a rare news conference late on Friday, where he accused the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, of spreading misinformation. He called Nancy Pelosi’s trip a “contemptible farce” and stressed China’s military response to it was “firm, forceful and appropriate”.
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The US special envoy on climate change John Kerry said China’s decision to suspend bilateral talks on climate change with the US does not punish Washington, “it punishes the world”. “No country should withhold progress on existential transnational issues because of bilateral differences,” said the former US secretary of state, who is currently the Biden administration’s top climate diplomat. US national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, also told reporters that China’s decision to halt cooperation in a number of critical areas was “fundamentally irresponsible”.
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Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, said Chinese military drills near Taiwan, were a threat to regional security. Beijing announced four days of drills that are expected to finish on Sunday. The drills are a “serious problem that impacts our national security and the safety of our citizens,” Kishida told reporters, speaking after a meeting with the US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, in Tokyo on Friday.
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Taiwan’s defence ministry said on Friday the island’s military had dispatched aircraft and ships and deployed land-based missile systems to monitor ships and aircraft that briefly crossed the Taiwan strait median line.On Thursday, China fired multiple missiles into waters surrounding Taiwan. The defence ministry later said the missiles were high in the atmosphere and posed no threat. It gave no details of their flight paths, citing intelligence concerns. Taiwan also said it scrambled jets on Friday to warn away 49 Chinese aircraft in its air defence zone, according to Reuters. All 49 Chinese aircraft crossed the Taiwan strait median line, the ministry said in a statement.
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North Korea has denounced Nancy Pelosi as “the worst destroyer of international peace and stability”, after the US House speaker expressed her commitment during a visit to South Korea to achieving the North’s denuclearisation.
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China has “historically been a victim of foreign aggression”, its foreign ministry spokesperson said. In a series of tweets on Friday, Hua Chunying said: “China had historically been a victim of foreign aggression. Today, the US still grossly interferes in China’s internal affairs and attempts to undermine China’s sovereignty and security from time to time.”
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Key events
Summary
Here’s a summary of the latest developments as it passes 2pm in Taipei.
Taiwan’s defence ministry has accused Chinese aircraft and ships of carrying out simulation attack exercises on its main island on Saturday. Several batches of Chinese aircraft and ships were detected in the Taiwan Strait, some of which crossed the median line, an unofficial buffer separating the two sides, according to the ministry. Taiwan’s army used patrolling naval ships and put shore-based missiles on stand-by in response.
A Taiwan official who was in charge of various missile production projects was found dead on Saturday morning in a hotel room in Southern Taiwan, according to the official Central News Agency. Ou Yang Li-hsing, deputy head of the military-owned National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, was 57. The cause of his death is unknown, CNA reported.
The US, Australian and Japanese foreign ministers have urged China to immediately cease military exercises around Taiwan. In a joint statement after meeting in Phnom Penh on the margins of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations foreign ministers’ gathering, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the foreign ministers of Australia and Japan, Penny Wong and Hayashi Yoshimasa, “expressed their concern about the People’s Republic of China’s recent actions that gravely affect international peace and stability, including the use of large-scale military exercises”. They also “condemned the PRC’s launch of ballistic missiles, five of which the Japanese government reported landed in its exclusive economic zones, raising tension and destabilising the region”.
Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, said Chinese military drills near Taiwan, were a threat to regional security. Beijing announced four days of drills that are expected to finish on Sunday. The drills are a “serious problem that impacts our national security and the safety of our citizens,” Kishida told reporters, speaking after a meeting with the US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, in Tokyo on Friday.
North Korea has denounced Nancy Pelosi as “the worst destroyer of international peace and stability”, after the US House speaker expressed her commitment during a visit to South Korea to achieving the North’s denuclearisation. It also condemned her trip to Taiwan.
The US special envoy on climate change John Kerry said China’s decision to suspend bilateral talks on climate change with the US does not punish Washington, “it punishes the world”. “No country should withhold progress on existential transnational issues because of bilateral differences,” said the former US secretary of state, who is currently the Biden administration’s top climate diplomat. US national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, also told reporters that China’s decision to halt cooperation in a number of critical areas was “fundamentally irresponsible”.
In response to Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, Beijing on Friday cancelled efforts to keep communication channels open between Chinese and US military commanders.
It’s feared that this raises the risk of an accidental escalation in tensions. Reuters has published some analysis on this:
Christopher Twomey, a security scholar at the US Naval Postgraduate School in California, told Reuters the severing of the communication links was worrying, coming at what he believed was the beginning of a new Taiwan crisis.
“That is precisely the time you would want to have more opportunities to talk to the other side … Losing those channels greatly reduces the ability of the two sides to de-conflict military forces as various exercises and operations continue.”
As Chinese warships, fighter jets and drones manoeuvre around Taiwan, at least four powerful US vessels, including the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli and the guided missile cruiser USS Antietam are east of Taiwan, Reuters has confirmed.
Bonnie Glaser, a Washington-based security analyst with the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said, more broadly, prospects were “extremely low for holding talks on risk reduction measures or stability”. Over time, she said she expected the specific talks called off this week would resume but “right now, China has to signal toughness and resolve”.
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Chinese officials had not responded to calls from senior Pentagon officials this week but that was seen as China showing displeasure over Pelosi’s trip rather than the severing of the channel between senior defence officials, including US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Austin pushed for improved communication between the rival forces when he met Chinese Defence Minister General Wei Fenghe on the sidelines of Shangri-la Dialogue security meeting in Singapore in June.
Both Asian and Western diplomats said US military chiefs had been pushing for more frequent theatre-level command talks for some time, given China’s growing deployments across Asia, where the US navy has traditionally been the dominant power.
The Pentagon said on Friday that China was overreacting and the US was still open to building crisis communication mechanisms.
Taiwan official leading missile production found dead in hotel
The deputy head of Taiwan defence ministry’s research and development unit has been found dead in a hotel in Pingtung, southern Taiwan, according to the official Central News Agency.
Ou Yang Li-hsing, deputy head of the military-owned National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, was 57. The cause of his death is unknown, CNA reported.
Ou Yang, who was in charge of various missile production projects, had been on a business trip to Pingtung.
The military-owned body is working to more than double its yearly missile production capacity to close to 500 this year, as the island boosts its combat power amid what it sees as China’s growing military threat, according to Reuters.
Agence France-Presse is reporting some more lines from North Korea’s comments on Pelosi’s trip to Asia.
She visited Seoul and the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone, or Joint Security Area between the two Koreas, earlier this week. Pelosi and her South Korean counterpart, National Assembly Speaker Kim Jin-pyo, called for “strong and extended deterrence against North Korea”, and vowed to support efforts by Washington and Seoul to achieve Pyongyang’s denuclearisation.
The North on Saturday denounced Pelosi for her discussions with Kim and her visit to the JSA and Taiwan, reports AFP:
On top of the deterrence talks, Pelosi “made her appearance even in the joint security area of Panmunjom, utterly betraying the vision of the hostile policy of the current US administration towards the DPRK,” said Jo Yong Sam, an official at North Korea’s foreign ministry, using the North’s official name.
“The US is just adding fuel to the fire,” Jo added in a statement carried by Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency. China is the North’s key ally and trade partner, and Pyongyang also lashed out at Pelosi over her visit to Taiwan.
“Pelosi, the worst destroyer of international peace and stability… incurred the wrath of the Chinese people for her recent junket to Taiwan,” the foreign ministry’s Jo said in the statement.
“The US will have to pay dearly for all the sources of trouble spawned by her wherever she went.”
The rebuke from the North comes about a week after Kim Jong Un said his country was “ready to mobilise” its nuclear deterrent in any future military conflict with the US and Seoul.
North Korea has conducted a record-breaking blitz of weapons tests so far this year, including firing an intercontinental ballistic missile at full range for the first time since 2017.
Some further detail from Taiwan’s defence ministry on what it describes here as a “possible simulated attack”.
Taiwan’s army broadcast a warning, deployed air reconnaissance patrol forces and ships to monitor while putting shore-based missiles on stand-by.
Multiple PLA craft were detected around Taiwan Strait, some have crossed the median line. Possible simulated attack against HVA. #ROCArmedForces have utilized alert broadcast, aircraft in CAP, patrolling naval vessels, and land-based missile systems in response to this situation.
— 國防部 Ministry of National Defense, R.O.C. 🇹🇼 (@MoNDefense) August 6, 2022
Multiple PLA craft were detected around Taiwan Strait, some have crossed the median line. Possible simulated attack against HVA. #ROCArmedForces have utilized alert broadcast, aircraft in CAP, patrolling naval vessels, and land-based missile systems in response to this situation.
— 國防部 Ministry of National Defense, R.O.C. 🇹🇼 (@MoNDefense) August 6, 2022
Chinese aircraft and ships carried out simulation attack exercises
Taiwan’s defence ministry has said that some Chinese aircraft and ships carried out simulation attack exercises towards the main Taiwan Island on Saturday, Reuters senior correspondent in Taipei Yimou Lee has tweeted.
Several batches of Chinese aircraft and ships were detected in the Taiwan Strait on Saturday morning, some of which crossed the median line, they report.
#TAIWAN DEFENCE MINISTRY: SOME OF THE CHINESE AIRCRAFT AND SHIPS CARRIED OUT SIMULATION ATTACK EXERCISES TOWARDS THE MAIN TAIWAN ISLAND ON SAT
#TAIWAN DEFENCE MINISTRY: SOME OF THE CHINESE AIRCRAFT AND SHIPS CARRIED OUT SIMULATION ATTACK EXERCISES TOWARDS THE MAIN TAIWAN ISLAND ON SAT
— Yimou Lee (@YimouLee) August 6, 2022
Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly has also urged China to halt its military actions in the air and seas around Taiwan.
“Canada is deeply concerned by the missiles launched by the People’s Republic of China towards Taiwan and into Japan’s exclusive economic zone. This action threatens regional stability and security,” she said in a statement on Twitter.
Canada is deeply concerned by the missiles launched by the People’s Republic of China towards Taiwan and into Japan’s exclusive economic zone. This action threatens regional stability and security. We strongly urge the PRC to halt its coercive military and economic actions.
Canada is deeply concerned by the missiles launched by the People’s Republic of China towards Taiwan and into Japan’s exclusive economic zone. This action threatens regional stability and security. We strongly urge the PRC to halt its coercive military and economic actions.
— Mélanie Joly (@melaniejoly) August 5, 2022
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with the new Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos Jr this morning in Malacañang palace in Manila.
Blinken reportedly said that relations between their two countries were extraordinary, founded in friendship, and said Washington was committed to their joint defence pact.
Marcos Jr said the current geopolitical context showed the importance of such ties. Marcos Jr also said he did not think Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan had raised the intensity of conflict in the region. “It just demonstrated it, how the intensity of that conflict has been,” he said, according to reports by GMA News Online.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken now in Malacañang for his meeting with President Bongbong Marcos Jr. 📸: MPC POOL @gmanews @gmanewsbreaking pic.twitter.com/njxmYumEjF
The chair of this week’s Association of Southeast Asian Nations meetings said on Saturday that discussions among foreign ministers over Taiwan tensions had been lively and included some strong arguments, but it was better disputes were handled with words, reports Reuters.
Prak Sokhonn, Cambodia’s foreign minister, said he told a meeting of foreign ministers they must have calm, dignified, polite, and civilised discussions.
“The most important thing is that we continue to talk to each other,” he told a news conference.
Earlier this week, foreign ministers from ASEAN called for “maximum restraint” regarding the Taiwan Strait, warning the situation could lead to “serious confrontation, open conflicts and unpredictable consequences among major powers.”
Summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s continuing live coverage of the Taiwan crisis. Here’s a summary of the latest developments as it passes 10.30am in Taipei.
The US, Australian and Japanese foreign ministers have urged China to immediately cease military exercises around Taiwan. In a joint statement after meeting in Phnom Penh on the margins of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations foreign ministers’ gathering, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the foreign ministers of Australia and Japan, Penny Wong and Hayashi Yoshimasa, “expressed their concern about the People’s Republic of China’s recent actions that gravely affect international peace and stability, including the use of large-scale military exercises”. They also “condemned the PRC’s launch of ballistic missiles, five of which the Japanese government reported landed in its exclusive economic zones, raising tension and destabilising the region”.
The Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, walked out of a plenary session in Cambodia just as Japan’s top diplomat, Yoshimasa Hayashi, spokeon Friday. Wang called a rare news conference late on Friday, where he accused the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, of spreading misinformation. He called Nancy Pelosi’s trip a “contemptible farce” and stressed China’s military response to it was “firm, forceful and appropriate”.
The US special envoy on climate change John Kerry said China’s decision to suspend bilateral talks on climate change with the US does not punish Washington, “it punishes the world”. “No country should withhold progress on existential transnational issues because of bilateral differences,” said the former US secretary of state, who is currently the Biden administration’s top climate diplomat. US national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, also told reporters that China’s decision to halt cooperation in a number of critical areas was “fundamentally irresponsible”.
Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, said Chinese military drills near Taiwan, were a threat to regional security. Beijing announced four days of drills that are expected to finish on Sunday. The drills are a “serious problem that impacts our national security and the safety of our citizens,” Kishida told reporters, speaking after a meeting with the US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, in Tokyo on Friday.
Taiwan’s defence ministry said on Friday the island’s military had dispatched aircraft and ships and deployed land-based missile systems to monitor ships and aircraft that briefly crossed the Taiwan strait median line.On Thursday, China fired multiple missiles into waters surrounding Taiwan. The defence ministry later said the missiles were high in the atmosphere and posed no threat. It gave no details of their flight paths, citing intelligence concerns. Taiwan also said it scrambled jets on Friday to warn away 49 Chinese aircraft in its air defence zone, according to Reuters. All 49 Chinese aircraft crossed the Taiwan strait median line, the ministry said in a statement.
North Korea has denounced Nancy Pelosi as “the worst destroyer of international peace and stability”, after the US House speaker expressed her commitment during a visit to South Korea to achieving the North’s denuclearisation.
China has “historically been a victim of foreign aggression”, its foreign ministry spokesperson said. In a series of tweets on Friday, Hua Chunying said: “China had historically been a victim of foreign aggression. Today, the US still grossly interferes in China’s internal affairs and attempts to undermine China’s sovereignty and security from time to time.”
As one of President Vladimir Putin’s staunchest defendersreferred on Russian state media to Britain’s support of Ukraine’s defense against Russia, the rhetoric escalated when Dmitry Kiselyov spoke of a hypothetical nuclear attack on the “British Isles” that would result in Ireland and Britain getting wiped out.
“Another option is to plunge Britain to the depths of the sea using Russia’s unmanned underwater vehicle Poseidon,” Kiselyov, the Russian propagandist and “News of the Week” anchor, said on Rossiya-1. “Such a barrage alone carries extreme doses of radiation.”
Kiselyov, who falsely said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had threatened Russia with a nuclear attack over the war in Ukraine, explained that the drone’s warhead, with a yield up to 100 million tons, would create a gigantic tsunami along the coastline, despite there being no evidence to support these assertions.
Kiselyov, a man described by international media as “Putin’s mouthpiece,” concluded that a strike of that magnitude would “turn whatever might be left of [Britain and Ireland] into a radioactive desert unfit for anything for a long time.”
While he never directly mentions Ireland, a 45-second video simulation during the segment, which has been viewed about 2 million times since Sunday, shows a map in which Ireland and Britain no longer exist.
And another nuclear threat to the UK from Russian state TV’s Dmitry Kiselyov:
He says his country’s Poseidon nuclear underwater drone could cause a tsunami that would “plunge the British Isles into the depths of the sea” and turn them into a “radioactive desert” (with subs) pic.twitter.com/usElgqHeIG
— Francis Scarr (@francis_scarr) May 1, 2022
The Russian video simulation of the hypothetical nuclear attack, which was reported by the BBC’s Francis Scarr on Sunday, was met with deep skepticism and criticism from Irish lawmakers, including Prime Minister Micheál Martin. Martin, who described the mock-up of the Russian nuclear attack to Irish national broadcaster RTE as being “very sinister, intimidatory-type tactics,” called for Russia to apologize on Tuesday for “whoever instigated this.”
“It reflects a mind-set that is worrying and not in touch with reality,” Martin said.
Martin did not immediately respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment Tuesday.
Johnson has continued hispublic support for Ukraine in the days since the video simulation aired in Russia. On Tuesday, Johnson’s address to Ukraine’s legislature via video link struck an optimistic tone on the war effort. “Ukraine will win, Ukraine will be free,” he said. The British prime minister, who became the first head of government to address the Ukrainian parliament since the Russian invasion, announced about $375 million in new military aid, including heavy drones to lift supplies to Ukrainian forces, electronic warfare equipment and thousands of night-vision devices.
First Mariupol evacuees reach safer city
Critics have questioned the timing of Johnson’s speech, days before local elections in the U.K., as well as the government’s humanitarian efforts to help with Ukraine’s historic refugee crisis. The British government has faced blowback for admitting 27,000 Ukrainian refugees — a small fraction of the 5.3 million who have left Ukraine as of April 27, according to the United Nations. Unlike many other European countries, the United Kingdom has not waived visa restrictions for Ukrainians fleeing war.
Kiselyov claimed Sunday that the video simulation of the nuclear attack was in response to comments made last week by British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who said Britain would “keep going further and faster to push Russia out of the whole of Ukraine.”
“It actually seems like they’re raving on the British Isles,” the Russian propagandist said. “Why threaten never-ending Russia with nuclear weapons when you’re on an island which is, you know, is so small?”
Kiselyov said one RS-28 Sarmat, a super-heavy, thermonuclear-armed intercontinental-range ballistic missile dubbed by NATO as “Satan 2,” would be “sufficient to sink it once and for all.”
Russia’s ‘Satan 2’ missile changes little for U.S., scholars say
“Everything’s been calculated already,” Kiselyov said, without providing evidence.
It’s Sunday night in Russia which means that state TV’s Dmitry Kiselyov is talking about Russia using its nukes
This time, with the help of a terrifying cartoon, he claims that “one Sarmat missile is enough to sink the British Isles” (with subs) pic.twitter.com/NqbQfkm6rX
— Francis Scarr (@francis_scarr) May 1, 2022
That’s when he turned his attention to the prospect of an underwater drone that travels at a depth of 1 km (0.62 miles) and a speed of up to 200 kilometers an hour (about 124 mph). The Russian state media anchor said the explosion would result in a tsunami wave up to 500 meters high, or roughly 1,640 feet.
“There’s no way of stopping this underwater drone,” he said as the video simulation showed a missile heading toward the coastline.
As the clips spread in recent days, Irish officials, including European Parliament member Billy Kelleher, have expressed their “absolute disgust at these threats to Ireland.”
“There is no free speech in #Russia so these statements are being made with Putin’s approval,” he tweeted Monday. “Time to tell Russian Government that this wild language is simply unacceptable to us.”
Other experts, such as John Everard, a former U.K. ambassador to Belarus, have minimized Russia’s ability to wipe out Ireland and Britain with one weapon.
“I would urge everybody just to keep calm. By all means, if you feel strongly about it, make your things clear to the Russians. But can we please remember this is just a television mock-up,” Everard said to RTE. “The Russians do not have this weapon. I’ll say that again, they do not have this weapon.”
While black holes might always be black, they do occasionally emit some intense bursts of light from just outside their event horizon. Previously, what exactly caused these flares had been a mystery to science.
That mystery was solved recently by a team of researchers that used a series of supercomputers to model the details of black holes’ magnetic fields in far more detail than any previous effort. The simulations point to the breaking and remaking of super-strong magnetic fields as the source of the super-bright flares.
Scientists have known that black holes have powerful magnetic fields surrounding them for some time. Typically these are just one part of a complex dance of forces, material, and other phenomena that exist around a black hole.
That complex dance has been notoriously hard to model, even with advanced supercomputers, so trying to understand the details of what is happening around a black hole has proven exceptionally difficult.
Stronger computers can handle difficult computer problems, and, thanks to Moore’s law, that is exactly what humanity has now.
Dr. Bart Ripperda, co-lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow at the Flatiron Institute and Princeton University, and his colleagues utilized three separate supercomputing clusters to produce the most detailed image of the physics going on outside a black hole event horizon.
Magnetic fields unsurprisingly played a major role in those physics. But more importantly, they played a critical role in developing flares. Specifically, flares formed when magnetic fields broke apart then rejoined back together.
The magnetic energy unleashed by these processes supercharges photons in the surrounding medium, and some of those photons get ejected straight into the black hole’s event horizon, while others get ejected out into space in the form of flares.
Simulated black hole with magnetic field lines in green. (B. Ripperda et al., AJL, 2022)
Simulations showed the breaking and making of magnetic field connections that were invisible at previously available resolutions. Ripperda and his colleagues’ image had 1,000 times the resolution of any previously available black hole simulation.
The most accurate simulations in the world can’t make up for an incorrect model, so previous simulations ignored basic features of black hole interactions.
With high resolution came greater understanding. The new simulations accurately modeled how the magnetic field process around the event horizon works.
First, the material collected in the accretion disk migrates towards the black hole’s ‘poles’. Migrating charged material like that is sure to affect magnetic field lines, which attempt to move with it.
Part of that movement process causes some of the magnetic field lines to break and potentially reconnect with a different field line. In some cases, a pocket of material is formed that is insulated from other external forces, but is eventually shot out towards the black hole itself or the rest of the Universe. This is where flares come from.
All those processes are difficult to simulate, even on a cluster of supercomputers. However, most simulations are built to fit the existing data the best.
Collecting data to test these simulations is still a long way off. But you can be sure that someone, somewhere, is already working on it.
This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.
A volunteer crew (from left to right) of Pietro Di Tillio, Dragos Michael Popescu, Jared Broddrick and Patrick Ridgley have embarked on a simulated journey to Mars inside a ground-based habitat at NASA. (NASA)
Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
HOUSTON — Four volunteer crew members have embarked on a simulated journey to Mars inside a ground-based habitat at NASA to study the isolation and confinement of exploration missions.
The simulated journey to Mars’ moon Phobos began on Friday at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and will last for 45 days.
The volunteer crew, which includes Jared Broddrick, Pietro Di Tillio, Dragos Michael Popescu and Patrick Ridgley, entered a structure called the Human Exploration Research Analog, or HERA, which is “designed to serve as an analog for the rigors of real space exploration missions,” NASA said in a statement.
In a video posted to NASA’s Johnson Space Center Twitter account, the four men were seen entering the HERA structure before the hatch was officially closed and will not be opened until March 14.
New year, new crew! 🧑🚀
HERA’s new 4-person crew just entered their new home for the next 45 days. They’re simulating a trip to Mars to help NASA study isolation & confinement in exploration scenarios. The hatch is officially closed. Their mission has begun! pic.twitter.com/k6kF17ELca
— NASA’s Johnson Space Center (@NASA_Johnson) January 29, 2022
While inside the HERA structure, the men will experience up to five minutes of delayed communication with the rest of the world, the agency said. The goal, according to NASA, is to help train the crew and NASA coordinators to practice communicating under these circumstances while ensuring a smooth operation.
“In this HERA campaign, we’re learning more about how teams function in an autonomous environment where they have limited contact with Earth,” said Brandon Vessey, research operations and integration element scientist for NASA’s Human Research Program.
“What we learn will inform how future exploration missions beyond low-Earth orbit are performed. This will help ensure that our astronaut crews can work effectively through challenges unique to long-duration spaceflight, including communication delays,” Vessey said.
This is the second of four “Campaign 6” missions conducted by HERA to facilitate research into the “behavioral and team performance of longer duration missions,” NASA’s website says. The final mission as part of the campaign is scheduled for Sept. 12.
To qualify for the missions, individuals must be healthy nonsmokers between the ages of 30 and 55. Applicants to be part of the HERA crew submit their resumes to Johnson Space Center’s Test Subject Screening group and must pass a physical and psychological test to be selected.
The Human Research Program is set to perform 15 studies throughout the missions to collect data that will help NASA land the first woman and first person of color on the moon, a plan known as “Artemis.” The goal is to establish the first long-term presence on the moon, which will help inform the agency as it prepares to send the first astronauts to Mars, according to NASA.
The simulated journey to Mars’ moon Phobos began on Friday at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and will last for 45 days.
The volunteer crew, which includes Jared Broddrick, Pietro Di Tillio, Dragos Michael Popescu and Patrick Ridgley, entered a structure called the Human Exploration Research Analog, or HERA, which is “designed to serve as an analog for the rigors of real space exploration missions,” NASA said in a statement.
While inside the HERA structure, the men will experience up to five minutes of delayed communication with the rest of the world, the agency said. The goal, according to NASA, is to help train the crew and NASA coordinators to practice communicating under these circumstances while ensuring a smooth operation.
“In this HERA campaign, we’re learning more about how teams function in an autonomous environment where they have limited contact with Earth,” said Brandon Vessey, research operations and integration element scientist for NASA’s Human Research Program, or HRP.
“What we learn will inform how future exploration missions beyond low-Earth orbit are performed. This will help ensure that our astronaut crews can work effectively through challenges unique to long-duration spaceflight, including communication delays,” Vessey said.
This is the second of four “Campaign 6” missions conducted by HERA to facilitate research into the “behavioral and team performance of longer duration missions,” NASA’s website says. The final mission as part of the campaign is scheduled for Sept. 12, 2022.
To qualify for the missions, individuals must be healthy non-smokers between the ages of 30 and 55. Applicants to be part of the HERA crew submit their resumes to Johnson Space Center’s Test Subject Screening group and must pass a physical and psychological test to be selected.
HRP is set to perform 15 studies throughout the missions to collect data that will help NASA land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, a plan known as “Artemis.” The goal is to establish the first long-term presence on the Moon, which will help inform the agency as it prepares to send the first astronauts to Mars, according to NASA.
Join gaming leaders, alongside GamesBeat and Facebook Gaming, for their 2nd Annual GamesBeat & Facebook Gaming Summit | GamesBeat: Into the Metaverse 2 this upcoming January 25-27, 2022. Learn more about the event.
Epic Games showed off the realism of Unreal Engine 5 with The Matrix Awakens demo amid a huge computer-generated city.
It looked phenomenal, with a completely CG actress Carrie-Ann Moss and a version of actor Keanu Reeves that’s indistinguishable from a computer creation or the real thing. The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience was shown at The Game Awards, and it’s a preview of The Matrix Resurrections film debuting on December 22.
It’s also a pretty good sign that Epic Games is serious about building its own metaverse, or enabling the customers of its game engine to build their version of the metaverse, the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, like in novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One.
One of the coolest parts of the demo is that Epic Games’ team spent the better part of the past year creating a virtual city that looks like a real city. And Epic Games is going to give that city away for free (with The Matrix parts removed) to the developers who use Unreal Engine 5. The city is 4.138 kilometers wide and 4.968 kilometers long, slightly larger than the size of downtown Los Angeles.
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Above: This is not a picture. It’s a simulation in Unreal Engine 5.
Image Credit: Epic Games
Kim Libreri, chief technology officer at Epic Games, said in an interview with GamesBeat that the idea was to show people a glimpse of the future of interactive entertainment and storytelling that is possible with Unreal Engine 5.
“We built a whole city for this, as we’ve been working on new techniques, new streaming, new world management systems that allow you to build a whole city,” Libreri said. “All this exists in the engine.”
The simulation of the city — the 35,000 walking pedestrians who look like real people — just keeps functioning in a procedural way as you move the camera through the 3D space. There is a freeway chase scene where you can shoot the tires out of Agent Smith cars chasing you.
“We’re giving away that city without Neo and Trinity,” Libreri said. “It’s a full, living, playable city. If anybody wants to do a racing game in that city, they will be able to use all the blueprints, all the gameplay logic, all the AI, all the destructible cars. When you see the cars exploring, that’s not us adding explosions, where we animate it by hand. It’s all procedurally exploding because when a car gets impacted, it gets deformed, it will shatter its glass. This is all procedural. So what we wanted to really lean into this concept of The Matrix is about the simulated universe. It’s all simulation.”
The demo
Above: The older Keanu Reeves looks real here, but all of this is simulated in Unreal Engine 5.
Image Credit: Epic Games
The eight-minute demo shows the first scene from the original movie starting with a young Thomas “Neo” Anderson (Reeves) with his face lying on a desk. It looks like video from the movie, but it is entirely computer-generated, as Epic’s team painstakingly re-created that scene. It shifts to the “bullet time” video from the original movie, and the older Reeves of today walks into the scene. And then we shift to a scene of Morpheus, young Neo, and the modern Reeves. Again, this scene if entirely animated, but I thought it was video of the real actors.
It goes on like this, showing action scenes in a city, but it’s all animated. The actors joke that it was thrown in to have something sexy for the marketing people. There were plenty of times I did a double-take and thought I was seeing reality, only to have Libreri say it was animated. As Moss says in the video, faces and bodies change as easily as we change clothes.
“Everybody loves games. Everybody loves movies. Some of it is live-action. Some of it is computer generated,” Libreri said. “Everybody is looking at the teaser and debating what’s real or not.”
Libreri proceeded to show the polygons behind the scenes to show what was real or not, like the opening scene.
“When Neo opens his eye, that’s Unreal,” he said.
And it runs on consoles, not a supercomputer. The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience is now available to download for free on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
The Matrix crew
Above: A gameplay scene in the demo.
Image Credit: Epic Games
This boundary-pushing technical demo is an original concept set within the world of Warner Bros’ The Matrix. Written and cinematically directed by Lana Wachowski, it features Reeves and Moss reprising their roles as Neo and Trinity and — in a reality-flipping twist — also playing themselves.
The project reunited many of the crew that worked on the seminal The Matrix trilogy, including James McTeigue, Kym Barrett, John Gaeta, Libreri, Jerome Platteaux, George Borshukov, and Michael F Gay, in collaboration with teams across both Epic Games and partners, such as SideFX, Evil Eye Pictures, The Coalition, WetaFX (formerly Weta Digital), and many others.
Wachowski, Libreri, and Gaeta have been friends since the days of the original trilogy of The Matrix.
“When I told them I was making another Matrix film, they suggested I come and play in the Epic sandbox,” said Wachowski, in a statement. “And holy shit, what a sandbox it is! I imagine the first company to build an actual Matrix — a fully immersive, persistent world — will be a game company and Epic is certainly paving the way there. It’s mind-boggling how far games have come in twenty years.”
He added, “Keanu, Carrie, and I had a blast making this demo. The Epic sandbox is pretty special because they love experimenting and dreaming big. Whatever the future of cinematic storytelling, Epic will play no small part in its evolution.”
Building the demo
Above: A real Keanu Reeves walks into a simulated scene.
Image Credit: Epic Games
While the movie doesn’t use Unreal Engine 5, there is a small scene (with a dojo) in the film that was built with the engine.
With Wachowski and many of the original crew on board, the team set out to create a demo with Unreal Engine 5 that’s nothing short of spectacular: an experience that merges art forms in exciting new ways. The demo starts out with a cinematic that features exceptionally realistic digital humans, before morphing into a fast-paced interactive experience of car chases and third-person shooter action.
All of this takes place in a huge, bustling, and explorable open-world city that — like the simulated world of The Matrix — is incredibly rich and complex, Epic said. Sixteen kilometers square, photoreal, and quickly traversable, it’s populated with realistic inhabitants and traffic. Many of the characters are built with Epic’s MetaHuman tool, which creates characters with real human faces.
The experience is a tangible demonstration that UE5 offers all the components you need to build immersive, ultra-high-fidelity environments. And that’s Epic’s sales pitch.
A realistic simulated city
Above: There are 7,000 simulated buildings in the Unreal Engine 5 demo.
Image Credit: Epic Games
The city is inspired by parts of San Francisco, New York, and Chicago, but it isn’t an exact copy of anything. It has global illumination (like the sun shining down and casting shadows) and ray tracing for reflections and shadows.
Asked how hard it was to build the city, Libreri said, ‘It took us a while to get our heads into it. But it’s pretty sustainable. And we’re actually going to put out tutorials for all customers. How do you use side effects today to do procedural layout? How do you bring stuff in the engine?”
Despite the city’s complexity, a relatively small core team was able to create the experience thanks to a set of procedural tools including SideFX’s Houdini. Procedural rules define how the world is generated: from the size of the roads and the height of the buildings, all the way down to the amount of debris on the sidewalks, Epic said.
Using this workflow, you can modify the input rules and the whole city will change, redefined by those new instructions. For small teams looking to build open worlds, that is incredibly powerful, Epic said. It means you can regenerate the entire city, right up until the last day of delivery, and continue to adjust and improve it. This opens up so many creative possibilities — and proves that any team can make a triple-A-game-quality open world in UE5, irrespective of size, Epic said.
As for the city in The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience, it’s a living, breathing environment that never stops. Because the systems that drive its actors are part of a global simulation that is evaluated continuously, the activity that takes place in the city is far more consistent and believable. Block after block, it ticks with photorealistic AI-driven characters and vehicles — whether you’re looking at them or not, Epic said.
This isn’t opens the door to a completely new way of storytelling, Epic said. The high-fidelity simulation capabilities of UE5 are enabling an entirely new process: cinematic creation through simulation.
Many of the action scenes in the demo originated with crew members driving cars around the city to capture exciting shots. The team was able to use the simulated universe to author cinematic content, like live-action moviemakers scouting a city to find the best streets to tell their story — but without the physical constraints of the real world.
Above: Crossing the uncanny valley?
Image Credit: Epic Games
Where the sample project Valley of the Ancient gave a glimpse at some of the new technology available in UE5, The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience goes a step further: It’s an interactive experience running in real time that you can download on your Xbox Series X/S or PlayStation 5 today.
The demo features the performance and likeness of Reeves and Moss as realistic digital humans. To achieve this, Epic’s 3Lateral team captured high-fidelity 3D scans of the actor’s faces and 4D captures of their performances in their Novi Sad studio.
The open-world city environment includes hero character IO, who was the launch character for MetaHuman Creator, as well as thousands of MetaHuman agents, demonstrating exciting new possibilities for high-fidelity in-game characters at scale, Epic said.
AI systems drive the characters and vehicles, while procedural systems built using Houdini generate the city. Unreal Engine 5’s World Partition system makes the development of the vast environment more manageable.
The movement of vehicles, character clothing, and the destruction of buildings are all simulated in-engine using Unreal Engine’s Chaos physics system. During the chase experience, because the car crashes are simulated in real time with Chaos, the same crash will never occur twice. It’s unique at every run, Epic said.
The technical demo also puts previously showcased UE5 features Nanite and Lumen through their paces. In a dense, open-world city environment, UE5’s virtualized micropolygon geometry system comes into its own.
The city comprises seven million instanced assets, made up of millions of polygons each. There are seven thousand buildings made of thousands of modular pieces, 45,073 parked cars (of which 38,146 are drivable), over 260 km of roads, 512 km of sidewalk, 1,248 intersections, 27,848 lamp posts, and 12,422 manholes. Nanite intelligently streams and processes those billions of polygons, rendering everything at film quality, super fast, Epic said.
Above: Agent Smiths in a car chase in the Unreal Engine 5 demo.
Image Credit: Epic Games
Unreal Engine 5’s fully dynamic global illumination system Lumen leverages real-time ray tracing to deliver incredibly realistic lighting and reflections throughout the interactive parts of the demo. Real-time ray tracing is also used for the cinematic element to generate the beautiful, realistic soft shadows of the characters, Epic said.
Temporal Super Resolution, UE5’s next-gen upsampling algorithm, keeps up with vast amounts of geometric detail to create sharper, more stable images than before, outputting high-resolution images at a low processing cost. That brings more geometric detail, better lighting, and richer effects at higher resolutions.
Epic said the ability to take these technologies and build vast open worlds presents thrilling possibilities as we enter the era of the metaverse. The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience offers a glimpse at what those worlds could look like. They could be highly stylized like the environments in Fortnite — or they could look almost as real as the physical world.
The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience is not a game, but this tech demo offers a vision for what the future of interactive content could be; from incredibly rich and complex cities and environments, to photoreal, visually arresting cinematic spectacles.
City details
Above: Is The Matrix real?
Image Credit: Epic Games
Here’s a recap on some details on the city:
The city surface is 15.79 km²
The city perimeter is 14.519 km long
There are 260 km of roads in the city
There are 512 km of sidewalk in the city
There are 1,248 intersections in the city
There are 45,073 parked cars, of which 38,146 are drivable and destructible
There are 17,000 simulated traffic vehicles on the road that are destructible
7,000 buildings
27,848 lamp posts on the street side only
12,422 sewer holes
Almost 10 million unique and duplicated assets were created to make the city
The entire world is lit by only the sun, sky and emissive materials on meshes. No light sources were placed for the tens of thousands of street lights and headlights. In night mode, nearly all lighting comes from the millions of emissive building windows.
35,000 simulated MetaHuman pedestrians
Average polygon count? 7,000 buildings made of thousands of assets and each asset could be up to millions of polygons so there are several billions of polygons to make up just the buildings of the city.
Asked if it’s part of a game, Libreri said, “It’s purely a technology demo just to show what our customers can expect to be able to do when they’re using Unreal Engine 5. And in fact, when we ship the engine, for real next year, this entire city with all the AI for the traffic, all the building blocks, every air conditioning unit, every little piece of that will be made available.”
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IBM claims it has taken a major step toward practical quantum computation. On Monday, the company unveiled Eagle, a 127 qubit quantum processor. IBM claims it’s the first such processor that can’t be simulated by a classical supercomputer. To make sense of what that means, the company says to simulate Eagle you would need more classical bits than there are atoms in every human being on the planet. IBM is crediting the breakthrough to a new design that puts the processor’s control components on multiple physical levels while the qubits are located on a single layer. It’s a design the company says allows for a significant increase in computing power.
One aspect of Eagle the company isn’t talking about at the moment is quantum volume. Cointed by IBM, it’s a metric that attempts to measure the performance of a quantum computer by taking a holistic view of its different parts. Not only does it take into account qubits, but also the way in which they interact with one another. The higher the quantum volume, the more capable a quantum computer is at tackling difficult problems.
IBM
“Our first 127-qubit Eagle processor is available as an exploratory system on the IBM Cloud to select members of the IBM Quantum Network,” Jerry Chow, the director of IBM’s Quantum Hardware System Development unit, told Engadget. “Exploratory systems are early access to our latest technologies and so we do not guarantee uptime or a particular level of repeatable performance, as measured by quantum volume.”
Without knowing the quantum volume of the Eagle processor, it’s hard to say exactly how it compares to what’s out there already. Last October, Honeywell claimed its System Model H1 had a quantum volume of 128 with just 10 connected qubits. For reference, earlier in the year IBM announced a 27 qubit system with a then industry-leading quantum volume of 64. Clearly, the company’s new processor is powerful, but qubits don’t tell the whole story here.
What’s also notable about Eagle is that IBM is not claiming quantum supremacy. According to the company, it’s a step toward that milestone, but the processor is not yet at the point where it can solve problems that classical computers cannot. In 2019, Google sparked controversy when it (briefly) claimed it had achieved the feat with its Sycamore system. At the time, IBM called the company’s claims “indefensible” based on the fact Google built the computer to solve one specific equation.
IBM will make Eagle available to select members of its Quantum Network starting next month.
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