CNBC reports: "The U.S. relationship with China is 'probably as poor as' it was before the Nixon administration opened up ties more than four decades ago, former Fed governor Kevin Warsh told CNBC on Thursday. 'We're at the risk of a real cold war' between the world's two biggest economic superpowers, said Warsh, who had been on President Donald Trump's short list for Fed chairman before Jerome Powell was chosen. 'The last 30 years we've been living and breathing globalization as if it's an inevitable force.' Warsh was using the term 'cold war' to mean an economic standoff, not the decades-long "mutually assured destruction" nuclear stalemate between the U.S. and Russia that began to thaw in the detente period that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. 'We are probably on the precipice of a brand new relationship with the Chinese,' Warsh said in a 'Squawk Box' interview. 'Could we be at the beginning of a 10- or 20-year cold war? That has huge implications for the economy.'"

Bloomberg reports: "In 2015, Amazon.com Inc. began quietly evaluating a startup called Elemental Technologies, a potential acquisition to help with a major expansion of its streaming video service, known today as Amazon Prime Video. Based in Portland, Ore., Elemental made software for compressing massive video files and formatting them for different devices. Its technology had helped stream the Olympic Games online, communicate with the International Space Station, and funnel drone footage to the Central Intelligence Agency. Elemental's national security contracts weren't the main reason for the proposed acquisition, but they fit nicely with Amazon's government businesses, such as the highly secure cloud that Amazon Web Services (AWS) was building for the CIA. To help with due diligence, AWS, which was overseeing the prospective acquisition, hired a third-party company to scrutinize Elemental's security, according to one person familiar with the process."

The New York Times reports: "The mysterious Chinese oil company known as CEFC China raised eyebrows wherever it went. Its executives hinted at deep connections within Beijing's halls of power as well as with China's powerful military. Then, last year, prosecutors in the United States arrested one of its top executives, accusing him of bribery in an effort to secure oil rights in Chad and Uganda. Now, they say, he also explored businesses beyond oil: brokering arms deals in other countries and looking for ways to dodge American sanctions on Iran. In a filing on Tuesday in a federal court in New York, prosecutors said that the executive, a former Hong Kong city official and ophthalmologist named Patrick Ho, had discussed using the company's connections to help sell weapons to Chad, Qatar and Libya. The prosecutors also accused Mr. Ho of exploring whether CEFC could serve as a middleman for an Iranian company to gain access to funds from a Chinese bank under international sanctions."