attempted coup and launched an attack on law enforcement the judicial system and what he sees as hostile left wing media. bolivia's interim government has filed a criminal complaint against ex-president they were morale is accusing him of sedition and terrorism what alice has been calling on his supporters to maintain a blockade which is cause food and fuel shortages in the city of la. in colombia colombia labor unions and student leaders have called people back out onto the streets to protest after at least 3 people were killed in thursday's demonstrations more than $250000.00 people marched in the capital bogota and other cities to show growing discontent with president event to cause government it's accounting the cost is next looking at the potential future of warfare. the prime minister. should introduce the critic on the ferry. and in this country the

greatest place on the project to project is delayed by how much. would drama the brick sit on al-jazeera. to. allow him sammy's day than this is counting the cost of al-jazeera the weekly look at the world of business and economics this week private military contractors as russia uses mercenaries in conflicts from syria to libya and china stepped up efforts to protect its workers overseas what's the future of. what's a few $100000000000.00 here and there around care isn't worth 2 trillion dollars it is the saudi state owned oil company relevant. google and apple are muscling in on computer gaming with their own platforms what does that mean for the multi-billion dollar gaming ecosystem. increasingly

nations are deploying private security contractors to troubled and remote parts of the world beyond the scope of democratic accountability and operating beyond and around international law they're proving to be useful agents of the plough missy and proxy wars but there have been some well publicized failures in 2007 blackwater contractors killed 17 unarmed iraqis and injured 24 others blackwater went on to change its name to account of me and continues to provide services to the pentagon around the world also in iraq the pentagon hired cac i priming our technology to run the infamous abu ghraib prison the logistics company is alleged to have told military police to soften up prisoners for interrogate. nation and it's estimated the u.s. government lost as much as $60000000000.00 to fraud by contractors right now the industry is estimated to be worth up to $249000000000.00 many nations are deploying

most in areas to reshape battlefields russia has used the wagner group in ukraine libya and syria as nicolas hoc reports exclusively from the central african republic russia's training government forces at the request of the president nick was given unprecedented access to their military trainers and durango south of the capital bangui. a staged attack on the grounds of an abandoned palace deep in the central african republic. these are master russian fighters somewhere in ukraine others in syria or chechnya they're training an army that has lost control of the country after armed groups took over part of this mineral rich nation the size of france vladimir not his real name says discipline is one of the problems sectarian violence fueled by militia groups has divided muslims and christians. the russians are training men who once fought each other to unite under

a government so far too weak to secure its own borders. the special advisor to the country's president was this patch by moscow after president ouattara called putin for help. i'm here is to avoid a blood she'd so i've traveled the country and meet with the various rebel leaders to get them around the table but in july 2 10183 russian journalists were killed in the central african republic they claimed these russian in structures are in fact mercenaries working for a private security company called back in or which has close ties to the kremlin the journalists accuse them of profiting from the country's mineral. denies these claims. about what wagner this is just an urban legend these are russian reservists nothing more. wherever they are 30 years after the fall of the soviet union the russians are stepping back in the heart of africa in october african heads of state gathered in sochi during the event russian security firms like wagner's patriot are

shields attempted to learn new business opportunities of the. over 5 he's mutual trains between russia and various african countries more than doubles to exceed $20000000000.00 whether that is a lot of. great numbers but i cannot see great i do not think it's enough to be a way it did ladies and gentlemen $7700000000.00 of that comes from trade with egypt which is about 40 percent of the total at the request of president twitterer the security council approved imports of russian weapons last december now they're providing both arms and training the instruction is happening in russian and the soldiers have been trained to understand the russian language. a good time when the west in notably friends the former colonial power and the united states are retreating with more weapons in structures on the way this may be just the

beginning of russian expansion into africa nicholas hawk for counting the cost to baringo the central african republic. well joining me now via skype from washington d.c. is dr sean mcfate he's a professor at georgetown university and the author of the new rules of war let's start if we can with shady groups like the wagner group do we know the any level of confidence just who runs it and how close it is to the russian president so ratner who is run and mostly by the charity which is the russian military intelligence organization and its founders and its popular share are russia and russia tops and russians are connections to moscow but the most of their group comes from all over the russian speaking world they're mostly associated with russian foreign policy but russia uses them where they want to for plausible deniability as they sell them

in step places like syria or ukraine or rumored to be in venezuela to do things that that's not so special forces or f.s.b. may not want to be caught doing how justified that concerns that these kinds of groups could accidentally start a war between countries you know the reports i'm referring to of russian outfits apparently attacking u.s. posts in syria. yes so in february of 2018 there was an interesting showdown in eastern syria where $500.00 mercenaries of fog her attacks an outpost that was defended by u.s. special forces but it wasn't just any special forces it was delta force rangers green berets marines and they called in the 50 choose f.f.t. apache helicopters a celebrity gunships drones and this battle lasted for hours for hours

in this in this battle the american forces killed 20250 russian mercenaries but the fact that they're you know 500 immerses went up against the u.s. has very best military and still took 4 hours to beat them back is a cause for concern it is the u.s. have to face $5000.00 mercenaries fortunately that day it didn't drag the u.s. and russian so or but here's the big fear is that if there's a could be accidental warfare or an accident will escalate in that except to powers into a nuclear war that was not until the saudi rushes that china's apparently being sucked into the game with a rope and belled initiative requiring it apparently to use private security firms to write. that's right so you know china's one about one road initiative is taking them in places of political instability a political insecurity and they're lying increasingly on private security companies

these companies are thought to be mostly there are chinese and they're trying to be an arm of the same sort of like little green men but little you know i mean that in many places but again there's always a problem of them engaging in a conflict by accident perhaps i could suck china or beijing into a war in a place like the congo or in the salan africa or the part of the middle east so this is the danger of using mercenaries or contractors that they can get and in scraps or and fight that others into a larger. conflict and sometimes some of these contractors are incentivized by profit you along gate those conflicts for money now is same the use of private security and in scandals in court cases in court rulings but ultimately how much accountability is there for private armies way and you take

into consideration for example many would argue the erik prince after all that blackwater went through he's still in the business. right so mercenary is accountability and say the mercenaries has been a problem from the start and mercenaries some would say it's the 2nd oldest profession so how do you control mercenaries and her prince is a great example so air france was a former u.s. navy seal who started blackwater which everybody remembers from baghdad if you balance out and weigh it black water kill 17 rocky's and and there was no accountability for marshals under the jail or a principle that times as you as if you're an american you don't work for america and then suddenly he leaves and now works for china in africa and he's in charge of a company called the french air services group of which china is the major shareholder he's an africa these days working on the one belt one road initiative

and he's an example of what a modern mercenary looks like now together around some of the rules in lol as we're seeing floating being created so that the transfer can take place to some of these groups that create new legal as well as moral challenges. you know we don't have a good international framework to deal with modern 1st place in fact our international law is very thin and the will to enforce it is very small so we have mercenaries for example everywhere and yet now who's going to go in and arrest all those mercenaries because member mercenaries can shoot your law enforcement that so even if you had laws on the books you still would have a problem in forcing them and examples of mercenaries that you say are floating armories you also have mercenaries trained drones into kamikazes making sort of mercenary air forces we don't have cyber mercenaries are happy back companies and

they will hack those who hack you so mercenaries are expanding a 21st century yet we don't have any sort of legal framework or norms to competently deal with this problem when you look in your crystal ball does the future look is the industry set to and the grow the industry will only grow because there's nothing to stop it and a people is russia the u.s. and china are using mercenaries everybody else will eventually to the extractive industries looking at them or more of the can pass them again to an era we're going back to the future because you know a 1000 years ago if you 1000 years ago mercenaries were how wars were fought and this introduces a lot of different problems because that's only going to have wars about states anybody who's rich enough to hire mercenaries can become a superpower so the super rich can become a super power and this will change not just warfare as we know it will change

international politics too what does this tell us about the future of war that how is that going to change. well it's a great question and warfare as we know it's going to completely change so when most people in the last think about warfare i think about world war 2 and they think about the future as world where it's you had better technology but the future is not going to look like it works you had better technology as a national alliance thinking warfare is going to become a lot more sneaky in the future those with money whether it be all of guards or multinational corporations or rich states they can wage war for any reason they want like these mercenaries mercenaries allowed to you know they give you good possible deniability so they can create the fog of war so i think we're going to see more of it sneakier and much more diverse around the globe all right thanks so much fair analysis on that. thank you. in the end

it wasn't the blockbuster it was made out to be sad the state owned oil giant aramco isn't worth 2 trillion u.s. dollars there's plenty of blame to spread around for such misplaced exuberance a guarantee of $75000000000.00 in dividend every year for the next 5 years wasn't enough to attract international investors they couldn't stomach the crown prince mohammed bin the son lands ambitious valuation but it was a price put together by investment bankers desperate to cash in on the biggest initial public offering of the year so now the plan is only to sell shares to saudi nationals and investors from the gulf region the value could be as high as $1.00 trillion dollars but as a ram co becomes a public company its promise to deliver massive dividend may put it at odds with opec which is trying to boost the price of crude you may think the 2 are not incompatible but they are opec wants to cut production around counties to sell more

oil to pay diffident let's pick through some of the issues of race with professor coma luciana from the graduate institute of international development studies in geneva where he runs the executive master program in oil and gas leadership well there's a lot of issues to pick through here 1st of all who's to blame for so badly getting this wrong well it's always difficult to estimate the reaction of america so far on this. initially it was announced by the crown prince for us it. has not been that he did. but it's a. bit of a really shall we say wild over estimate then compared to what the markets willing to pay the gaps quite big yes they've got a bit. more say there in the international. experience lead. evaluation as always been see that excessive. it is certain

to be said it does being very brutal on the fires of the ground or is to announce. at the very beginning without any. analysis of the market. what you think the national investors have been reluctant. well there are actually nurses i think also have been very luck that. you're on because really the saudi government as means to encourage. both offering. return errors as they have done and also putting pressure on that thing then that the national duty to do such as share seems. to spike to going public gets very much state owned company does that put it at odds with opec possibly yes we have all the opec got bodies that are also. partially

ferrous the 'd old and the russian companies and nowadays that are not in office just as important for opec to any of the men but they're also companies also have. shares floating on the stock market so it's something that can be managed but certainly the investors know that the property is not of your profit like. about floating around is this a move towards transparency and accountability for the company for the nation or is that going too far possibly saw but. certainly we know today much more about saudi aramco that we used to so there has been a. degree of openness and transparency but you know whether this will be enough to attract more investors it is not clear the the basic public may think investor public is not. strong enough

to pressure around for him to substantiate. and how relevant is that in the world that's trying to move away from hydrocarbons in a world where wealth funds are trying to sell off their stocks well yes we'll find . many. divesting from. states ready. but there are plenty of or there investors. or there are objective in their investment. decisions so. i think although confident are. they being way certainly not. the. gone companies they're committing weight now the question is what was proposed that . was not on a par with major international oil companies just shale or b.p. or x.

on all of these are paying dividends which are there as we hire them what was proposed by. are good to get your thoughts on this thanks so much professor thank you. alfabet better known the world over as google is using its cloud computing might to muscle into the lucrative video gaming industry where it's been dominated by microsoft's x. park sony's play station and nintendo it should come as no surprise the entertainment industry's worth $135000000000.00 and by 2025 could be worth $300000000000.00 google stadia platform will be streamed from the cloud and does away with expensive consols apple will introduce its arcade service 2 of the existing giants of the industry in not taking the challenge lightly microsoft and sony surprised many with

a partnership to develop their own clouds aleutian it's estimated more than 2 and a half 1000000000 people play computer games every year and e-sports enjoy an audience of 458000000 a year so what does this mean for traditional game developers and i'm delighted to say we have on one hand the cofounder of no code studios code is behind bafta winning science for all trigger observation stories on told our light so what the state of the arcade mean for your industry armor or seen war more services nobody move to the clouds and so it's not surprising that were to see a. platform just been streamed directly from the quote is that going to change the way companies like you do business i guess for for us we would just look at it as the canal the potential platform is another thing you that you could potentially.

sail so games on. in terms of the way that we specifically make games some of these developments in there might not have a huge impact to begin with because the types of games that we are going to develop in him i have 23 year. cycles so we're usually can the look in. you know yes we are looking forward to seeing what would be sort of. pretty future is actually going to be going to be going sometimes in specially for us we are primarily just kind of making good content that content can be delivered to lots of different formats so you for example we can develop play games for p.c. for p s 4 for x. box and then hopefully that should be able to get in a ported over to google stadia so in the meantime we can still produce games similar minus the meat at 4 but. because it means that there's another potential

that we could potentially sell or seams on so more business maybe for people like you when they hurt the business models though talking of business of playstation intend. well i think the one that one of the biggest benefits is that you've got you've got the added competition because i know that if i actually got more competition from other players who for years google for the come in and then just means that. i think it will always come to. rush the content who's got the best content on their platform. and then veritas actually can it good for developers because it then means that you know you may see better exclusivity deals for for different developers or for different games and you whether that sony or whether it's microsoft or google or apple kind of trying to

can to pay for the exclusive content and i think ultimately gamers they may not mind so much for. which platform they actually use but they they want to play the games that they want to play and so a lot of it will be driven by the content on each platform is this still room for stop. tops in the market today to take on some of the big players yeah i mean the one thing that we should discovered as well is that you know for us. we're not we compete with like the biggest games out there you know we should being true to yourself we are actually your doing. games that we know that you know certainly have a place in the industry i mean it's a huge industry and when you look at the types of platform you. like a huge mobile game insect so you've got a huge console game in say to a p.c. sector it's not just about half in like you're huge 100 or $5000.00 there are

games there so the so much space in the industry for smaller players to actually co-exist and you know and to some extent yes you're always competes in against any other game but there's going to be a huge audience some people want to play you different styles of games so we just be true to yourself and say well this is the type of game that we know that we can create we know that we're good at. a track record so. and that's the thing is once you start to get once you start to develop your niche once you actually start to get good at what you do then there will be an audience for you you know we had a lot of really great support from our publisher great great reviews from journalists so that we know that she can the world working on the production for the next game that they will we will have a couple of interest from a very very beginning so we don't have to necessarily compete with the kind of the big boys but having said that you know there's because there's so much room for

maneuver and the industry then gathers there's certainly a very kind of fast moving industry so yes smaller companies can come up the you know it's going to be tough to compete with the the the big studios or you already have a huge established kind of fund base but the great thing about the industry people come up with new ideas all the time the technology is improving you look at what's going to happen in v.a.r. over the next of 5 to 10 years and it's a really exciting. speaks what about e-sports what potential do you see and what do we learn 'd from the fortnight competition in your thoughts going to start to mature over the next few years it's going to get even bigger you know the the adoption rate for people going into e-sports. i think is going to be massive all

right thanks so much. thank you. and that's our show for this week to remember you can get in touch with us via twitter use the hash tag a.j.c. to see when you do or drop us an e-mail counting the cost around 0 dot net is our address and there's more for you online and out to syria dot com slash. take you straight to our page which has individual reports links and entire episodes for you to catch up on. that's it for this edition of counting the cost i'm sam is a dan from the whole team thanks for joining us news and al-jazeera is next. stranded 8 long years on the su is canal. creating their own community and the economy there was you know president bush used to go when he would al-jazeera world tells the tale of 14 cargo vessels accidentally caught up in the arab israeli conflict it was quite a surprise to find myself in russia in the middle of

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nothing happens and we don't leave. this is al-jazeera. elephant oh when i'm kemal santa maria this is the news hour from al-jazeera massive crowds gathering again in chile to protest against the government for a 2nd month. and these pictures from al-jazeera camera in colombia more protests and ball the tower over the public proposed reforms to the tax and pension system. there's also a rare positive news out of yemen the u.n. .