Boston Dynamics has also produced other types of robots that can perform tricks like backflips. Boston Dynamics robots were employed by various teams in the DARPA Robotics Challenge in 2015, and were an inspiration for “Metalhead,” an episode of the show “Black Mirror.” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos appeared with a Boston Dynamics robot at the company’s MARS conference last year.
Boston Dynamics unveiled the original Handle in 2017. Whereas the original had two robotic arms that could grasp objects, the new one can move objects with just one arm.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, sold Boston Dynamics to SoftBank in 2017. Google is still actively working with robots, according to a report that emerged this week.
The BRI — Beijing’s signature foreign policy program — is the superpower’s attempt to stretch its economic power across the globe through the construction of maritime and overland transportation links across Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe. But critics see it as a means to benefit China’s military, increase opportunities for Chinese companies and help Beijing gain political leverage.
Under the trillion-dollar endeavor, Chinese state-owned entities flush with cash offer participating countries cheap loans and credit to build large-scale projects such as ports and railways. These arrangements are usually negotiated government-to-government with below-market interest rates but many nations are growing wary over their debt loads.
China’s massive Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure program has long been viewed as a platform to project Chinese power across the globe, despite official assertions to the contrary. New findings from the New York Times have now reinforced that argument, giving more weight to the idea that the investment plan may not purely be the economic project that Beijing insists.
Last week, the Times said it had reviewed a confidential plan about China’s military projects in Pakistan under the Belt and Road. According to the proposal, a special economic zone under the BRI’s China-Pakistan Economic Corridor will be created to produce fighter jets while navigation systems and other military hardware will be jointly built at factories in Pakistan. That reveals how the world’s second-largest economy “is for the first time explicitly tying a Belt and Road proposal to its military ambitions,” the Times said.
In response, Lijian Zhao, deputy chief of mission at the Chinese embassy in Islamabad, took to Twitter to protest the newspaper’s claims. He called the Times’ report “Western propaganda” and emphasized that the bilateral economic corridor was purely economic in nature.
For politics watchers, however, the Times’ story strengthens deep-rooted suspicions of the BRI as a tool for the People’s Liberation Army, China’s armed forces.
Monday marks the inauguration of a 35-year concession agreement between Abu Dhabi Ports and China Ocean Shipping Company (Cosco) Shipping Ports. The deal will allow Cosco to operate and develop a new container terminal in Khalifa Port to support trade flows expected from China’s 60-country-wide infrastructure project.
The belt and road initiative is a vast project designed to link China with much of Asia, Europe the Middle East and Africa, and to increase Beijing’s political and trade influence globally.
The port, which is situated halfway between Abu Dhabi and Dubai, now serves over 25 shipping lines and has links to 70 international destinations. Al Shamisi said that makes it a “strategic location” for trade, not only within the United Arab Emirates and the Middle East, but the wider ecosystem.
“It’s huge … We are not serving the Middle East per se, but we are serving the North Africa Indian subcontinent and we are transitioning point to all of these destinations,” said Al Shamisi.
“Having such infrastructure where the biggest ships can enter and use Khalifa Port as a hub, it will serve the one belt one road, and it’s actually the heart of the one belt one road,” he added.