PDB Afternoon Bulletin | March 27th, 2025: Israel Eliminates Hezbollah Chief & US Blacklists 50 Chinese Tech Firms In Major Crackdown
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It's Thursday, the 27th of March. Welcome to the PDB Afternoon Bulletin. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. First, Israel is upping the pressure on Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, launching another series of overnight strikes that killed a senior commander of the terror group's elite Radwan force, as well as a group of weapons smugglers.

Later in the show, the Trump administration is tightening the screws on Beijing, adding 50 Chinese tech firms to the U.S. export blacklist in an effort to restrict the Chinese Communist Party's access to advanced American technology

including artificial intelligence. But first, today's afternoon spotlight. Tensions continue to flare between Israel and Lebanon as leaders in Jerusalem press forward in their campaign to degrade Hezbollah's operations and foil the terror group's attempts to rearm. The latest strikes came overnight on Thursday, with the IDF confirming they took out a senior battalion commander in Hezbollah's elite Radwan force in a drone strike in the Tyre district of southern Lebanon.

The commander was one of the highest-ranking members of Hezbollah killed in Israeli operations since a ceasefire took hold last November. That ceasefire is now barely holding together. That's all according to our report from the Times of Israel.

Officials with the IDF said the militant leader was involved in directing numerous attacks on Israel and IDF troops during the war last year, and in recent months, quote, continued to engage in advancing terror attacks on the Israeli home front. The military added that they will continue to, quote, operate in order to remove any threat posed to the state of Israel, end quote.

Separately, in another strike on Thursday morning, Israeli forces took out three Hezbollah operatives who were identified as they were transferring weapons in southern Lebanon near the Latani River. The targeted operations followed airstrikes on Sunday and Monday that also took out key members of the terror group, including the commander of the anti-tank unit in Hezbollah's southern front.

As we discussed earlier this week on the PDB, fighting significantly escalated between Israel and Hezbollah over the weekend after militants launched a rocket barrage into Israel on Saturday. Israel responded with two waves of airstrikes in southern Lebanon that targeted dozens of Hezbollah positions, including weapons depots, command hubs, launch pads, and infrastructure nodes.

The strikes killed, reportedly, at least seven Hezbollah militants and marked the most serious flare-up with the terror group since last year's U.S.-brokered ceasefire began to unravel. As a reminder, the terms of the truce, which ended more than a year of hostilities, including two months of full-scale war, required Hezbollah to withdraw its fighters and weapons north of the Litani River .

The Lebanese armed forces were to boost deployments in the area alongside UN peacekeeping forces, though they've struggled to reassert control in the south where Hezbollah remains deeply entrenched. In exchange, Israel was to withdraw completely from southern Lebanon by the end of January, but that deadline was subsequently extended to February 18th due to Hezbollah's repeated violation of the ceasefire terms.

While most of their forces have since returned across the border, Israel still maintains control over five positions in southern Lebanon, citing the Lebanese army's failure to adequately secure the area and the ongoing threat posed by Hezbollah.

Just last month, for example, the IDF uncovered a scheme involving Iran's Quds Force which was attempting to smuggle suitcases full of cash to Hezbollah militants in order to help the group rearm. While that plot was thwarted, Israeli airstrikes have continued with Jerusalem insisting they're aimed at preventing Hezbollah from rebuilding its arsenal,

While there's no indication yet that Israel plans to return to a full offensive against the Iranian-backed militants, the renewed fighting this week is putting what remains of the fragile ceasefire to the test, and that's putting it mildly. Alright, coming up next, the Trump administration adds 50 Chinese tech firms to the U.S. export blacklist. That's all in an effort to restrict Beijing's access to advanced American technology, including artificial intelligence.

I'll have those details when we come back.

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Welcome back to the Afternoon Bulletin. The Trump administration on Tuesday further clamped down on Beijing by blacklisting more than 50 Chinese tech firms. That's all in an effort to restrict the regime's access to advanced American computing and artificial intelligence technology. In total, 80 entities worldwide were added to the Commerce Department's so-called entity list in its first major move on export controls since President Trump's return to office.

The designations handed down by the Bureau of Industry and Security bar American companies from doing business with the listed firms without special government approval. Officials said the move was driven by mounting concerns over China's rapid advances in exascale computing and artificial intelligence, specifically in areas with clear military applications.

Seven of the newly sanctioned companies were flagged for quantum computing development. Another 27 were accused of funneling U.S. origin technologies into Beijing's military modernization pipeline. Among those named were six subsidiaries of InSpur Group, that's a major cloud computing and data player previously targeted by the Biden administration back in 2023.

Two other firms were hit for supplying components to Huawei and its chip-making affiliate, HiSilicon, both of which are already deeply entrenched on the US sanctions list. Commerce Under Secretary Jeffrey Kessler characterized the blacklist as part of a broader crackdown on the networks that often involve shell companies and foreign proxies that China allegedly uses to quietly acquire sensitive dual-use technologies.

Kessler said the designations are clear. The Trump administration will not allow U.S. innovation to be repurposed for, quote, high-performance computing, hypersonic missiles, military aircraft training, and unmanned aerial vehicles.

Beijing, of course, wasted little time in firing back. China's foreign ministry condemned the sanctions as a blatant overreach, accusing Washington of "generalizing national security" to strangle China's tech ambitions, according to Reuters.

The move adds another layer to an already tense US-China relationship, and as we've been tracking here on the PDB, the Trump administration has dialed up tariffs on Chinese imports and signaled a much more aggressive posture toward trade and national security risks stemming from Beijing. In some ways, this latest round of restrictions echoes the Biden-era strategy of small yard, high fence, targeting select high-risk technologies while avoiding a full economic decoupling.

But the Trump team appears poised to widen that fence line. Now this comes at a time when Chinese AI companies like DeepSeek are beginning to gain serious momentum. Their open-source, low-cost models are rapidly spreading across China's tech ecosystem, putting pressure on American rivals still operating on expensive, closed platforms.

Officials in Washington have hinted that enforcement will only get tougher. Investigations into alleged smuggling of restricted chips, especially those manufactured by NVIDIA and advanced micro-devices, are already underway.

Taken together, the sweeping blacklist underscores Washington's growing resolve to retain its technological edge, particularly in sectors where innovation now moves hand-in-hand with national defense. And that, my friends, is the PDB Afternoon Bulletin for Thursday, 27th of March. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me at pdbatthefirsttv.com. And if it's Thursday, which I have it on good authority that it is,

That means the PDB production machine is whirring away. Can we say whirring away? I don't know. I just did. And they're busy putting together the latest episode of our award-winning weekend show, the PDB Situation Report. Honestly, well, we haven't won any awards, but I think we can all agree it's just a matter of time.

As always, new episodes of The Situation Report hit the airwaves every Friday evening at 10 p.m. and can also be found on our YouTube channel, which you can find at President's Daily Brief, and podcast platforms everywhere. I'm Mike Baker, and I'll be back tomorrow. Until then, stay informed, stay safe, stay cool.

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