This market is part of the Humans v Bots Battle 2024, where AI forecasters will duke it out on the most important world questions of 2024. Can you beat the bots and snag part of the 250,000 Mana (~$2.5k) prize?
Remake of https://manifold.markets/footgun/will-china-supply-arms-to-russia-in, but about 2024 instead of 2023.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-warns-china-could-arm-russia-as-ukraine-seeks-to-repel-advances-in-east-a5fd3e9e
1,000
1.00Reuters: Exclusive: Russia has secret war drones project in China, intel sources say
Summary:
Russia establishes drone factory in China, sources tells Reuters
Russian arms firm develops UAVs for use in Ukraine, they say
China-made drones have been delivered to Russia - sources, docs
Chinese government says it is not aware of such a project
Further details from article:
Russia establishes drone factory in China, sources tells Reuters
Russian arms firm develops UAVs for use in Ukraine, they say
Russia has established a weapons programme in China to develop and produce long-range attack drones for use in the war against Ukraine, according to two sources from a European intelligence agency and documents reviewed by Reuters.
IEMZ Kupol, a subsidiary of Russian state-owned weapons company Almaz-Antey, has developed and flight-tested a new drone model called Garpiya-3 (G3) in China with the help of local specialists...
Kupol told the defence ministry that it was able to produce drones including the G3 at scale at a factory in China so the weapons can be deployed in the "special military operation" in Ukraine, the term Moscow uses for the war.
China's foreign ministry told Reuters it was not aware of such a project, adding that the country had strict control measures on the export of drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
Fabian Hinz, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based defence think-tank, said the delivery of UAVs from China to Russia, if confirmed, would be a significant development.
"If you look at what China is known to have delivered so far, it was mostly dual-use goods - it was components, sub-components, that could be used in weapon systems," he told Reuters. "This is what has been reported so far. But what we haven't really seen, at least in the open source, are documented transfers of whole weapon systems."
China-made drones have been delivered to Russia - sources, docs
The G3 can travel about 2,000 km with a payload of 50 kg, according to the Kupol reports to the ministry. Samples of the G3 and some other drone models made in China have been delivered to Kupol in Russia for further testing, again with the involvement of Chinese experts, they said.
The documents don't identify the Chinese drone specialists involved in the project that it outlined and Reuters was unable to determine their identity.
Kupol has taken delivery of seven military drones made in China, including two G3s, at its headquarters in the Russian city of Izhevsk, according to the two separate documents reviewed by Reuters, which are invoices sent to Kupol in the summer by a Russian firm that the two European intelligence sources said serves as an intermediary with Chinese suppliers. The invoices, one of which requests payment in Chinese yuan, don't specify delivery dates or identify the suppliers in China.
The two intelligence sources said the delivery of the sample drones to Kupol was the first concrete evidence their agency had found of whole UAVs manufactured in China being delivered to Russia since the Ukraine war began in February 2022.
Chinese government says it is not aware of such a project
Beijing has repeatedly denied that China or Chinese companies have supplied Russia with weapons for use in Ukraine, saying the country remains neutral. In response to questions for this article, the foreign ministry told Reuters that China's position presented a contrast with other nations with "double standards on arms sales" whom it said had "added fuel to the flames >of the Ukrainian crisis".
The ministry said earlier this month that there were no international restrictions on China's trade with Russia when responding to a Reuters report that Kupol had started to produce the Garpiya-A1 long-range military drone in Russia using Chinese engines and parts.
The new documents reported here indicate state-owned Kupol has gone further by sourcing complete UAVs from China.
@ooe133 Never mind, I checked and this was wrong. Their shifts in probabilities just now were very mundane, and their decisions were not interesting.
I still think it's worth consideration that the bots overreact to government and military spokespeople hyping up various China threats.