06/03/2026

FRIDAY | MAR 6, 2026

17

BIZ & FINANCE

BEIJING: China has told its largest oil refiners to suspend exports of diesel and petrol, Bloomberg News reported yesterday, citing unidentified sources, as the war in the Middle East risks an energy supply crunch. China is a net importer of oil and is one of several major Asian economies that depend on the vital Strait of Hormuz for energy. Traffic through the strait is currently blocked. The Middle East was the source of 57% of China’s direct seaborne crude imports in 2025, according to analytics firm Kpler. Officials from China’s top economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission, met refinery representatives “and verbally called for a temporary suspension of refined product shipments that would begin immediately”, Bloomberg said yesterday, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter. “The refiners were asked to stop signing new contracts and to negotiate the cancellation of already-agreed shipments,“ it said. A spokesmann for China’s Foreign Ministry denied knowledge of the suspension when asked about it at a regular news conference. – AFP suspend petrol, diesel exports MUMBAI: The Reserve Bank of India appears to be stepping up support for the government bond market amid surging oil prices, with data showing that an investor category that includes the central bank posted its largest single-session purchase in five years. The category, which comprises insurance companies, pension funds, corporates and the RBI, bought bonds worth 202.85 billion rupees (RM8.71 billion) on Wednesday, the highest for this segment since February 2021. These investors had already bought 184 billion rupees of bonds on Friday and Monday, clearing house data showed. Bankers said that big purchases by this category are often seen as a sign of RBI activity in the secondary market. The surge in purchases suggests the central bank may be intervening in the market to limit upward pressure on bond yields stemming from higher crude oil prices, which has kindled inflation concerns. India’s bond market was already grappling with excess supply for much of this year prior to the rally in oil prices, leaving sentiment fragile. Higher government bond yields can ripple through the broader economy by raising borrowing costs for states and companies. The 10-year bond yield is down 3 basis points at 6.64% yesterday and is also lower than levels seen before the conflict broke out over the weekend. – Reuters Indian central bank ramps up support to shield bonds China tells refiners to

AI use in Iran conflict raises moral and legal questions

AFP has confirmed the building was located in close proximity to two sites controlled by the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Asaro highlighted reports about the strike that indicated the school had been clearly separate from the adjacent military site for at least a decade. If a mistake was made, he said, it was far from obvious what caused it. “They didn’t distinguish it from the military base as they should have, (but) who is they?” he asked – human or machine? If AI was used for the attack, he said the question was: “How old is the data?”, and was this a “database error”? Or was the targeting accurate, “but (had) just fallen short”? he asked “There are all sorts of ways for things to fail.” Another perhaps more frightening possibility, he said, would be that “the system actually reached some conclusion that ... the school was a threat”. That would in turn raise a bigger question of what the reasoning system was behind that conclusion. “You have to really worry about how it is making these decisions,” Asaro said. – AFP

Speaking on the sidelines of discussions at the United Nations in Geneva, Asaro said a crucial part of the debate revolved around the selection of targets, and fears that meaningful human control could be lost. While the “sales pitch” for using AI in warfare is typically that “these things are highly accurate and make fewer mistakes than humans”, he stressed that “we don’t actually know how these systems work”. He pointed to how the AI runs on opaque classified systems, providing little insight into how they function and how the reach their conclusions. There is no “easy way of evaluating the output of these systems” or determining what went wrong when mistakes are made, Asaro said. “If something does go wrong, then who’s responsible,” he asked. “How do you define this legally, where are the moral lines?” He pointed to the case of the school in the city of Minab that was hit on Saturday, killing more than 150 people, according to Iran. Tehran has blamed the United States and Israel but neither has confirmed the attack, and AFP has been unable to independently verify the toll or visit the site.

“You can rapidly produce long lists of targets much faster than humans can do it, by automating that process,” said the associate professor of media studies at The New School in New York, who also serves as vice-chairman of the Stop Killer Robots campaign. But then “the ethical and legal question is: to what degree are those humans actually reviewing the specific targets that have been listed, verifying their legality and their value militarily before authorising?”. “The desire (with) all those systems is to be able to make decisions and move faster than your enemy,” he said, adding though that the question arises: “Are you actually still in control of what’s happening?” Discussions have been running for a decade around a possible future treaty regulating automated weapons use. Countries are due to decide later this year whether to launch full-on treaty negotiations. But while there is no current specific treaty on AI and autonomous weapons, that does not mean these systems are operating in a legal vacuum: existing international law applies.

o Human control of war machinery could be slipping, says expert

GENEVA: Suspected widespread use of AI to select targets and launch attacks on Iran raises many questions, and fears that human control of war machinery could be slipping, a leading expert said on Wednesday. The United States and Israel have carried out thousands of strikes across Iran since launching their offensive, including one that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday on the first day of the war. Peter Asaro, an expert on artificial intelligence and robotics, told AFP it appeared likely the two countries had used AI to identify targets in Iran, pointing to what seemed to be a very short planning phase and large number of targets. But while AI can speed things up, it also raises a host of moral and legal questions, he said. SINGAPORE: Oil prices surged more than 3% yesterday, extending a rally as the escalating US-Israeli war with Iran raised fears of prolonged disruptions to vital Middle East oil and gas supplies. Brent crude advanced US$2.44, or 3%, to US$83.84 per barrel by 0722 GMT (3.22pm in Malaysia), a fifth session of gains. US West Texas Intermediate crude rose US$2.44, or 3.27%, to US$77.10. Crude oil markets remained on edge as they face ongoing risks to supply following the attacks in the Middle East, with concerns centred on trade flows through the Strait of Hormuz, ANZ analysts said in a note. Iran launched a wave of missiles at Israel early yesterday, sending millions of residents into bomb shelters as the conflict entered its sixth day and just hours after moves to halt the US attacks were blocked in Washington. On Wednesday, a US submarine sank an Iranian warship off Sri Lanka, killing at least 80 people, and Nato air defences destroyed an Iranian ballistic missile fired towards Turkiye. Iranian forces have struck oil tankers in or near the Strait of Hormuz. Explosions were reported near a tanker off Kuwait, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations. The escalation came as the powerful son of Iran’s slain supreme leader emerged as a frontrunner to succeed him, suggesting Tehran was not about to buckle to pressure five days after the United States and Israel launched a military campaign that has killed hundreds and convulsed global markets. Iraq, the second-largest crude

Oil leaps 3% on supply concerns as Mideast war widens

Fire and smoke rise in the Fujairah oil industry zone, caused by debris after interception of a drone by air defences, in United Arab Emirates. – REUTERSPIC

Hundreds of other vessels remained outside Hormuz unable to reach ports, shipping data showed. The waterway is a key artery for around a fifth of the world’s oil and LNG supply. China’s government has asked companies to suspend signing new contracts to export refined fuel and to try to cancel shipments already committed, industry and trade sources said yesterday. – Reuters

bullish expectations for oil prices as a quick resolution to this war seemed unlikely. At least 200 ships, including oil and liquefied natural gas tankers as well as cargo ships, remained at anchor in open waters off the coast of major Gulf producers including Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, according to Reuters estimates based on ship-tracking data from the MarineTraffic platform.

producer in the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, has cut output by nearly 1.5 million barrels a day for lack of storage and an export route, officials told Reuters. Qatar, the biggest liquefied natural gas producer in the Gulf, declared force majeure on gas exports on Wednesday, with sources saying a return to normal production volumes may take at least a month. Two oil traders said they held