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02 Feb 2025 — 5 min read

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Yesterday, February 1, the Trump administration announced new tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China, set to take effect on February 4. The tariffs impose a 25% tax on goods from Canada and Mexico and a 10% tax on Chinese imports. These measures are designed to push consumers toward buying domestic products while increasing the cost for these countries to export goods to the U.S., thereby limiting their economic growth.

Tariffs are a powerful economic tool used to make foreign imports less competitive and to protect domestic industries. While other nations may retaliate, the U.S.’s position as the worlds largest economy and buyer of goods gives it unmatched leverage in trade. When tariffs are imposed, it raises the cost of exporting to the U.S., forcing these countries to either absorb the costs by reducing their profits or pass them on to consumers, lowering demand.
Countries facing tariffs struggle to find alternative buyers of the same scale, making it harder to grow their economies. By making trade with the U.S. more expensive, tariffs restrict the growth of foreign economies while keeping more production and economic activity within the U.S.

Economics & Markets:

Geopolitics & Military Activity:

Yesterday, February 1, 2025, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), in coordination with the Somali government, conducted airstrikes in northern Somalia’s Golis Mountains in Puntland, targeting ISIS leadership. The strikes eliminated Abdiqadir Mumin, the leader of ISIS-Somalia, and Mohamed Hassan Afrah, a key attack planner responsible for suicide bombings and assassinations. Several other ISIS operatives were also killed.

The militants had been using cave hideouts in the mountains to avoid detection, storing weapons and explosives while planning future attacks. The airstrikes were carried out using MQ-9 Reaper drones and F-15E fighter jets, targeting both the caves and vehicles transporting ISIS supplies. Among the destroyed assets were Toyota Hilux trucks and modified technical vehicles used by the militants for movement and logistics.

Environment & Weather:

Recent heavy rainfall has caused severe flooding in Korbous, Tunisia, and surrounding areas. The floods have damaged infrastructure, submerged roads, and swept away vehicles. In Sousse, floodwaters rushed through streets, overwhelming drainage systems and causing injuries. Monastir also experienced torrential rains, leading to road closures and damage to homes and businesses. These events have strained emergency response efforts and disrupted daily life, highlighting the growing risk of extreme weather in the region.

While Tunisia is dealing with severe flooding, Earth Intelligence is tracking a global trend of rising flood disasters. Across the world, countries are experiencing severe flooding events, with some regions seeing record-breaking rainfall. Although seasonal weather patterns contribute, the primary driver behind these extreme floods is rising global temperatures, which are intensifying Earth’s water cycle.
The water cycle is the continuous movement of water through evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and runoff. Higher temperatures cause increased evaporation from oceans, lakes, and soil, putting more moisture into the atmosphere. This leads to heavier and more frequent rainfall, overwhelming drainage systems and increasing flood risks.

Space:

Yesterday, February 1, 2025, SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The mission, called Starlink Group 11-4, carried 22 Starlink V2 Mini satellites into low Earth orbit. This launch is part of SpaceX’s ongoing effort to expand its Starlink internet network, which provides high-speed internet access worldwide.

The 22 V2 Mini satellites on board are the latest generation of Starlink satellites, designed to improve internet performance and coverage. These updated satellites come with enhanced technology to boost network capacity, reduce latency, and improve reliability. Compared to earlier models, the V2 Minis have larger antennas, better data throughput, and more efficient communication systems. With each new launch, SpaceX strengthens its satellite-based internet service, bringing faster and more stable connectivity to users around the globe.

Science & Technology:

Alibaba has introduced Qwen 2.5-Max, a new AI model that it claims surpasses top competitors like DeepSeek-V3, OpenAI’s GPT-4o, and Meta’s Llama-3.1-405B in key areas such as code generation, natural language understanding, and problem-solving. While Qwen 2.5-Max itself is proprietary (closed-source), Alibaba has open-sourced over 100 smaller models, ranging from 0.5 billion to 72 billion parameters, allowing businesses and developers to integrate AI into their applications.
As competition between AI companies intensifies, the real shift isn’t just in the market—it’s in the sheer power of these AI models. Every company is pushing to make AI more intelligent, more efficient, and more capable, not just to compete, but to attract attention and adoption. The result is AI that is rapidly exceeding human-level performance in a growing number of domains.
Administrative work, information management, cybersecurity, marketing, finance, data analytics, autonomous vehicles, and military strikes can already be handled by AI with minimal human oversight. As AI continues evolving, many traditional computer-based jobs will become fully automated, not just improving efficiency but fundamentally reshaping the workforce.

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