Al Mayadeen | October 18, 2026
The United Arab Emirates has reportedly agreed to resume funding selected forces in southern Yemen fighting the Yemeni Armed Forces, while Saudi Arabia has agreed to provide air cover for those forces, according to sources in Yemen.
The reported arrangement signals a possible thaw in relations between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi after months of disagreement over the scope of each other’s political influence in Yemen.
The renewed coordination comes as the Yemeni Armed Forces continues to make gains and Saudi Arabia faces repeated drone and missile attacks targeting its territory, airports, and energy infrastructure.
Gulf rivals reconsider their positions
Southern forces, particularly the Giant Brigades, were previously trained and funded by the UAE and are considered among the more effective formations in the fragmented coalition opposing the YAF. Abu Dhabi withdrew its involvement in Yemen in January, cutting off financial support to forces it had backed, following pressure from Saudi Arabia.
The reported agreement suggests that advances by the YAF are prompting rival Gulf powers to reconsider their differences. However, neither Saudi Arabia nor the UAE has responded to a recent demand by southern separatists for an independence referendum that would restore the borders in place between 1967 and 1990, when Yemen was divided into two states.
The Southern Transitional Council (STC) has also yet to agree to deploy its forces beyond the boundaries of the former South Yemen. Saudi approval of a referendum could potentially remove that restriction, although no such agreement has been announced.
Attacks on Aden intensify pressure
The Aden government announced a counteroffensive last week aimed at retaking Sanaa. The campaign achieved limited gains around Majzar near Marib and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, but was met with a sizeable retaliation by Sanaa’s forces.
On Friday, two missiles struck Aden airport; Information Minister Moammar Al-Eryani said the missiles landed about 500 meters from the Yemenia Airways aircraft and roughly 100 meters from the runway’s midpoint. No casualties were reported.
The attack followed a strike on a presidential palace in Aden that killed at least five people and wounded 16, further underscoring the risks facing the Gulf-backed south.
Relations between the STC and Riyadh remain strained. STC leader Aidarous al-Zubaidi fled to Abu Dhabi in January after an unsuccessful attempt by the council to assert control across southern Yemen and announce a referendum on independence within two years.
Saudi Arabia subsequently bombed UAE arms shipments intended for STC forces. Abu Dhabi then announced its withdrawal from Yemen, while the Saudi-backed government said it would seek to prosecute Zubaidi for treason.
Egypt and UK face decisions over military support
Regional involvement is also expanding beyond the Gulf rivals. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has called for an emergency parliamentary session to authorize possible military action to “defend” Saudi Arabia if requested, while emphasizing that Egypt would not undertake offensive operations.
Sanaa’s Parliament Speaker Yahya Ali al-Ra’i warned Egypt against a potential involvement in the Saudi military aggression against Yemen, urging Cairo not to allow itself to be drawn into a confrontation that serves Riyadh’s policies.
In an urgent letter to Egyptian Parliament Speaker Hisham Badawi, al-Ra’i expressed serious concern that developments could lead to Egyptian military participation alongside Saudi Arabia, stressing that such a move would contradict Egypt’s historical role in defending Arab causes.
In the UK, discussions continue over a Saudi request for additional military assistance. London has deployed an RAF Voyager aerial refueling aircraft, but some Arab officials are pressing for further support.
The prospect of deeper British involvement raises legal concerns. In 2019, the UK Court of Appeal ruled that the government had acted unlawfully in granting arms export licenses during the previous Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen in 2015–2016. The Campaign Against Arms Trade argued that officials had failed to properly assess potential violations of international humanitarian law, prompting revisions to export licensing procedures.
Sanaa’s resistance against Saudi aggression followed a brutal, years-long siege that caused one of the worst famines in modern history. The Ansar Allah government has made clear that their fight against Saudi Arabia will not cease so long as Riyadh continues to escalate it even further.
The Yemeni Armed Forces forces have remained firm in their resistance under the banner of a military equation: blockade for blockade and escalation for escalation.
Mucho ha llovido en la prestigiosa Universidad de Brown (Estados Unidos) desde que su catedrático Roberto Serrano denunciase en este diario en junio un fraude masivo con inteligencia artificial (IA) en uno de sus exámenes, sin que el decanato reaccionase. La noticia fue replicada por los principales medios ―hasta la revista Nature le pidió un artículo―, Serrano ha recibido “cientos” de cartas de apoyo y la persona que estaba al frente del Comité del Código Académico ha sido cesada. Pero lo que más conmueve al eminente economista español es que cree que sus alumnos han aprendido la lección.
© CreativaImages (GETTY IMAGES)
Truman Dickerson
At 9 p.m. on a recent Friday night, Max Harding had just returned from a barefoot run in the woods.
The eccentric 20-year-old Californian was back in a large barn in rural Pennsylvania — still barefoot — alternatively working on his startup and asking me about the point of life.
Though not an especially adept programmer, Harding possesses a more adroit, perhaps unteachable skill that has never been more valuable in the current landscape of founder culture.
"Max captures the attention of the camera, keeps us center stage," said his cofounder, Skyler Ji, who added that Harding's role includes "spreading our philosophy" while he runs the operation behind the scenes.
"Max brings some of the grander things," Ji told me. The pair's startup, Hivemind Research, aims to build "digital brains" in the form of social media.
Harding and Ji were among 66 mostly young, mostly imaginative startup founders taking part in a two-week "incubator" workshop called Launchpad.
The novel event was hosted by Stan, the company behind a moderately successful platform for independent creators to advertise and sell their services. At the last meetup Stan organized, startup founders jet-skied the East River at golden hour.
At the incubator event, the entirety of which was filmed for use in a reality show that Stan plans to release sometime soon (though it is uploading Instagram clips daily), magnetic personalities were among the most valuable commodities.
Max Harding
Stan cofounder Vitalii Dodonov told me that the 30 participating teams were chosen from a pool of 700 applicants, primarily for their existing social media followings and their ability to grow them.
"It's not the building that gets you to revenue, it's the distribution," he said of today's startup culture.
Of the many metrics competing teams were required to meet daily (10 sales calls, for example), social media videos were among the most heavily weighted.
Everywhere I looked, people were talking about their companies into phones attached to tripods. Their products ran the gamut of usefulness — ranging from an AI facial scanner that tracks acne to an AI app that connects parents with babysitters.
Truman Dickerson
Dodonov and John Hu, Stan's other cofounder, were trailed at all times by multi-person film crews, who glared should you emit an ill-timed sound while the cameras rolled. (The Velcro rip of my messenger bag earned me some leers.)
Even outfits were choreographed. On the advice of the camera crews, Hu wore a "cream" colored getup while Dodonov donned a "charcoal" number to emphasize what was described to me as the "yin and yang" paradigm between the two.
I spent about 16 cumulative hours at the event over two days earlier this month, at Stan's invitation. I ate meals with the founders, did a 7:30 a.m. cold plunge in the on-site lake alongside a Danish guy selling an AI to-do list, and commiserated with the startup founders who routinely pulled all-nighters to hit their metrics.
Truman Dickerson
Here's what I learned from the experience.
The event was billed as a sort of reality-TV-style game show-slash-incubator in the vein of hits like "Love Island" and "Squid Game."
As in those shows, founder teams at Launchpad were subject to firepit eliminations, discreet alliances, and competitive drama under the ever-watchful lenses of dozens of expensive cameras.
Except instead of a bunch of promiscuous co-eds doing risque challenges on a tropical island somewhere, contestants at Launchpad were mostly tech geeks with an unhealthy number of hours notched building software on their MacBooks.
"There's no sex," laughed Jacob Snarr, a 24-year-old from Philadelphia. "Nobody here is thinking about that."
Snarr and his cofounder, RJ McLaughlin, built a web browser game that lets friends debate their tastes and preferences, from their favorite foods to other everyday questions. The pair enlisted me as a product tester one morning, and we debated the merits of empanadas in the chilly barn.
McLaughlin and Snarr were in second place on the leaderboard when I talked to them on Saturday morning — saving them from elimination.
Rey Mendoza, who at 41 was one of the oldest founders in the competition, had already been eliminated. When I spoke with him, he was fighting for a chance at redemption. He showed me his sleep tracker for the six days. He hadn't slept more than six hours a night.
Truman Dickerson
"Here, you're just fucking building, like 24/7," Mendoza, fatigued, said reverently.
Event organizers added a number of less-intense, more fun-oriented events to the schedule, which were largely ignored by teams scrambling to upload more videos to social media.
A "Mario Kart" meetup in a room adjoining the cafeteria was attended by precisely nobody. Two TVs showed the game's start screen, while maybe a dozen people sat at tables squinting at laptops.
It's hard to imagine binge-watching some 60 sweatshirt-clad nerds drearily prompting chatbots to refine source code for yet another quirky AI startup. After all, everyone and their cousin is vibe coding their way into progressively nicher business models these days.
In 2025, a record number of business applications — about 5.7 million — were submitted by Americans, according to census data. However, the number of businesses the government estimates will be successful enough to require employees actually declined.
Those kinds of numbers mean it takes more to stand out. In our interview, Hu pointed at my phone and said I could use AI tools to start three or four businesses today — but, of course, they likely wouldn't be profitable.
That, Hu said, is where the founders' personalities are supposed to come in, together with a bit of manufactured drama and endless streams of social media content.
In the first challenge of the event, held on the first day, for example, teams were required to submit one social media video for public review around the firepit. Then, in front of everyone, Hu tore into them.
"I was very honest," he said of one particular "roast" that produced tears from the submitters. "I was like, 'Guys, would anyone ever watch this? No. The answer is no, because of the quality — you never have a shot."
The moment would certainly make for good television. It also, Hu told me, mimicked the real-life struggle inherent in starting a company in a saturated market.
"They're going through the true ups and downs of a true cofounder relationship and a startup experience," he said of the team that was subjected to his roast, who were initially so dejected they discussed "breaking up."
Overall, most of the teams I talked to said they enjoyed the ramshackle experience of trying to make a company profitable in two weeks. At the very least, it was all happening in a picturesque setting.
Truman Dickerson
Stan spared no expense to pull off the event.
It was held at a luxury, 400-acre villa two hours north of New York City that has in the past hosted retreats for high-flying companies like J.P. Morgan, whose executives, according to one staff member at the retreat at least, are keen for employees to embrace buzzwords like "team-building" and "company culture" among the illusion of rustic calm far from Manhattan.
We were in the sticks of eastern Pennsylvania — so deep in the woods, in fact, that cell service was nonexistent. There was fiber-optic internet, however, and the setting, though far-flung, could hardly be called rustic.
A squadron of golf carts staffed by the venue's seasonal workforce, many of whom were from Ireland or Australia, patrolled the grounds.
I was personally given the cellphone number of one such seasonal worker and encouraged to notify her anytime I wanted to go anywhere, at which point she would materialize with the golf cart.
Dodonov told me that Stan spent a combined $3 million renting the place for two weeks, booking camera crews, and making other necessary arrangements to host the founders, some of whom had traveled from as far away as Spain and Denmark.
For a company whose cofounder told Business Insider this year that it has an annual recurring revenue of "nearly $41 million," that's a significant sum.
"It's a very expensive experiment," Dodonov said. He said that, in his view, the return on investment is to see if "the playbook works" — the playbook being his and Hu's belief that building a successful company requires, perhaps above all, promoting yourself on social media.
"Anyone can systematically establish and build support through the power of content," Dodonov said.
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