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Matthew Loh

Award-winning journalist with experience in breaking news and investigative reporting.

I cover defense at Business Insider's Singapore bureau, with a focus on the emerging technology and tactics of Ukraine's rapidly evolving war. My aim is to help the everyday reader understand more about the realities of war and global conflict, and how they may affect us at home one day.

Featured Articles

Explore a featured selection of my published work below.

Business Insider •

Longform Feature: Ukraine's civilians are keeping their best drone units in the fight — with their own cash

Every few weeks, Ukrainian bridal shop owner Ilia scrapes together a donation — usually no more than $7.

"If I had any doubts about how my money is being used, I wouldn't give it," said the grizzled 33-year-old, who is exempt from military service because he is blind in one eye.

Much of that money goes to the Sternenko Foundation, a prominent volunteer...
Business Insider •

Longform Feature: Finding Dora

Months ago, Ahmet Tozal took out three credit card loans and withdrew his life savings to make a fortune off crypto.

The 44-year-old Turkish garment worker, who lived in Istanbul at the time, said he'd been goaded by a new friend who contacted him via a random WhatsApp message in 2023.

The woman claimed she'd messaged him accidentally, but was friendly and seemed interested in Turkey, Tozal said. She told him she was a wealthy businesswoman who would soon be visiting his country on holiday.

T...
Business Insider •

Longform Feature: Death on the Savage Mountain

In the darkness, they rose. More than 150 men and women advanced warily through the ice, grasping lines that had been anchored into the mountainside just hours before.Some had waited months for this ascent. They had a small window: Winds had finally calmed on the morning of July 26, giving teams their first chance to summit K2, the King of Mountains, in the Pakistani-administered area of the Kashmir.A storm would hit the mountain on the 28th, they were told. It was now, or next year.In the vangu...
Business Insider •

Investigative: Satellite photos show how Russia is building up 5 of its secret nuclear bases

Recent satellite images reviewed by Business Insider show extensive construction of secret facilities, shrouded in fences and defended by covered guardposts, in recent years at sites associated with Russia's nuclear facilities.

The images, captured by US satellite imaging company Planet Labs, were taken in May and June. Leading analysts who study Russia's nuclear forces told BI that the photos show new structures, roadworks, and modifications, with some sites undergoing rapid expansion.

These...
Business Insider •

Inside Ukraine's race to crank out unjammable, fiber-optic drones that can break through Russia's electronic warfare

Drones radically changed the Ukraine war. Soldiers then learned to fight back with electronic warfare. It's been a cat-and-mouse game since, and now, the fight is evolving once again.

This time, a new breed of drones is the catalyst.

George, an Eastern European drone pilot with Ukraine's International Legion, vividly recalls the first time he deployed one of these drones.

It was last fall, and he had just received intelligence that five Russians were positioned in a cellar in the village of H...
Business Insider •

How nets from a Danish fishing village found their way into Ukraine's modern war

Carl Futtrup is no military man. The 53-year-old gardener spends most days on mowers and tractors, tending to fields in a town on the western edge of Copenhagen, Denmark.

But Futtrup, like many Europeans, has kept a close eye on Ukraine since Russia's invasion in 2022 and donated gear to the front lines.

Before Christmas last year, he caught wind of an unusual request from Ukrainians in the trenches. They needed nets — thick ones strong enough to stop the munition-laden drones that have become...
Business Insider •

Inside Asia's top military summit, where the world's generals and defense ministers meet at the glitzy Shangri-La Hotel

When I arrived early on a Friday morning, the world's men and women of war were already collecting their keycards.

For 22 years, the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore has hosted what's become Asia's biggest defense summit, which ran this year from May 30 to June 1. The Shangri-La Dialogue is an annual mass gathering of military leaders, with generals and ministers from 47 countries flooding into the 792-room hotel this year.

There, the war chiefs of five continents spent three days in elaborate, c...
Business Insider •

The nuclear weapons era is making a comeback, and experts say we're all not paying attention

In 2022, Congress formed the Strategic Posture Commission — a bipartisan team of 12 experts hand-picked to advise the US on what to do with its nuclear weapons.These are rare. The only other time Congress created such a group was in 2008.But China was a new concern. Western intelligence says Beijing has since 2020 launched a sudden expansion of its nuclear stockpile, amassing launchers and warheads without explanation.
Alarm bells were ringing in Washington. The Cold Wa...
Business Insider •

Ukraine's front-line fighters and dronemakers are trying to crowdfund their way to Russia's defeat through cheap strikes

With $1 million, Oleksandr Chernyavskiy says he can change the war for him and his comrades.The enlisted soldier is assigned to a drone prototyping unit with Ukraine's 241st Territorial Defense Brigade — a battle-hardened formation of reservists deployed along the eastern and northern fronts. His unit supplies 11 battalions with new drone designs, mostly cobbled together from commercial parts and Soviet arms. It also makes other weapons, too.For $80,000, he says his team can completely build a 1...
Business Insider •

Longform Feature: Inside Malaysia's rush to be Asia's Silicon Valley

Kean Wei Wong's hands snapped from the wheel as we hit the highway in the midday rain.His sedan, a Malaysian-made Proton S70, kept cruising on its own, flowing with the traffic snaking into Kuala Lumpur.The bespectacled 28-year-old, a former insurance salesman, was taking me for a spin to show me what he and two college friends were selling: a plug-and-play dashcam that uses AI to drive your family car.Their company is Kommu, one of the 4,000 Malaysian startups the federal government hopes will...
Business Insider •

Inside the chaos in Seoul after South Korea's president sprang 6 hours of martial law on his people

South Korea's president, Yoon Suk-yeol, shocked the nation on Tuesday evening by declaring martial law.The measure, voted down unanimously by parliament hours later, plunged Seoul into a night of confusion.The National Assembly building became the epicenter of the early morning's dramatic events, as lawmakers raced to reverse Yoon's decision, military forces tried to enforce martial law, and thousands of residents arrived in protest.Just before dawn, Yoon rescinded his declaration of martial law...
Business Insider •

One year on, the Middle East is spiraling deeper into violence

On the early morning of October 7, 2023, air-raid sirens began blaring in Israel, warning its citizens that an attack was in progress.Hamas, a militant group much of the West has designated a terrorist organization, launched a highly coordinated strike that the Israel Defense Forces would later say killed about 1,200 people.One year after the massacre, the Middle East has only plunged deeper into violence and seems on the brink of a broader war.Paths to de-escalation, largely facilitated by the...
Business Insider •

China's coast guard is looking even more like its '2nd navy,' with 'Monster' ships, a destroyer-level vessel, and a rumored drone carrier

In May, military experts spied a peculiar, half-built vessel sitting among warships at a Shanghai dockyard.Satellite images showed it had the shape and size of a Type-052D, an advanced guided-missile destroyer in China's navy.But this ship was missing key features, such as a vertical launch system for missiles and its "Dragon's Eye" radar, a standard system for Chinese warships. Its main gun was also smaller than usual.One detail stood out above all: the paint job. Chinese navy ships are gray, a...
Business Insider •

American fast-food giants are going big on a China wager, betting they can get the country's new middle class to love them back

There's a common phrase in urban China that's embedded in the fabric of Kentucky Fried Chicken: "Crazy Thursday."Coined as a promotion six years ago, Crazy Thursday promised heavy discounts every week, like 15 wings for $2.82 or a four-piece meal for $4.20.It's become a national phenomenon in China, partly because it's at the heart of one of the country's most viral internet memes, where people write melodramatic stories that end with a sudden twist — a request for 50 yuan, or $7, to buy a Crazy...
Business Insider •

It's been 3 days since Modi won, and we're already seeing what it's costing him

As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi assembles his next government, the calculus clearly differs from his past 10 years in power.Small political factions allied with his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, have become vital to his hold on India's leadership. Tuesday's election result showed that Modi wouldn't have secured a simple majority in parliament had they not joined his cause.It's a humbling moment for the BJP, which, in the past two elections, easily achieved a simple majority without t...
Business Insider •

An Army veteran spent 2 years looking for his missing son in the desert. Now, he's running for Congress.

Every fortnight or so, David Robinson starts his YouTube livestream, upbeat and all smiles."When the lights and camera turn off, I will be here," he rumbles in one of his intros. The Arizona desert appears on the screen. "When the interests and conversations fade, I will be here."A 53-year-old Army veteran with a clean-shaven head and thick-rimmed glasses, Robinson speaks for up to several hours at a time about the search for his young adult son, Daniel. Each video typically receives less than 4...
Business Insider •

A UPenn student started a YouTube channel. In weeks, her face was stolen on China's social media.

Olga Loiek was barely awake one mid-winter morning when she read a cryptic Instagram message."Do you speak any Mandarin?" it read in English.Loiek had received similar messages in weeks prior from self-professed fans of her small YouTube channel, where she uploads self-empowerment videos to just over 15,000 subscribers.Confusingly, several of those comments also lauded her command of the Chinese language.Loiek doesn't speak Chinese at all, the 20-year-old student told Business Insider from her a...
Business Insider •

China has to figure out how to care for 400 million people over the age of 60 by 2040 — and it's off to a rocky start

January 17 was a historic day for China. After decades of styling itself as a powerhouse of unfettered growth, the country revealed that its population had declined for the first time since the 1960s.And with life expectancy rising and birthrates sinking to record lows even after ending the one-child policy in 2016, China's 1.4 billion population isn't just shrinking — it's also aging, fast.This landmark moment signifies a monumental shift in how China must chart its future. Left unchecked, an a...
Business Insider •

Inside the Seoul Halloween tragedy that left 156 people dead: Witnesses recount the chaos of not knowing what's real — and what's a Halloween stunt

Saurav Bajoria, an Indian expat living in Seoul, arrived at Itaewon at around 10 p.m on October 29. The streets were packed to the brim for Halloween festivities, but Itaewon was always popular on weekends, so Bajoria didn't think much of the crowds.Dressed in a devil's costume and cap, he began his night eating ice cream, chatting with friends, and moving between pubs and eateries along Itaewon's tight alleys."You should come join us," he texted his wife at one point, he told Insider.About an h...
Business Insider •

Hong Kong is facing its worst-ever expat exodus. Those leaving say the city is becoming no different from mainland China.

After seven years of living in Hong Kong, New York native Marty Forth finally had it. The academic arrived in the bustling city at the southern tip of China in 2015 and fell in love with its uniqueness. "It's a city with a very strong Chinese sense of place and history, yet still a very modern, progressive, clean, and safe city that's a hub for finance, travel, and innovation," he said. Forth soaked up every minute of his first four years in Hong Kong. Even when a bout of turbulent mass protests...
Business Insider •

A battle is unfolding over the world's smelliest fruit, and farmers in Malaysia say their entire livelihood is being wiped out at the worst possible time

In Southeast Asia, the durian is the undisputed king of fruit. Crack open its thorny green husk, and you'll find several yellow or red nuggets of custard-like pulp that melts in your mouth.The smell, though, is divisive. Durians are so pungent that Anthony Bourdain once said they make your breath smell like "French-kissing your dead grandmother," and food writer Richard Sterling opined that "its odor is best described as pig-s--t, turpentine, and onions, garnished with a gym sock."The fruit is s...
Business Insider •

China's millennials are shunning marriage at alarming rates, and it's creating a nationwide population crisis that Beijing can't magically fix

Last October, a Chinese Communist Party writer proposed a radical project to the people of Hunan province's Xiangyin county.He called it "operation warm the older men's beds."It seemed women in Xiangyin weren't interested in staying in their hometowns and were moving away to build new lives in nearby cities. In the villages they left behind, a host of rural bachelors were worried the world had forgotten them.Jiang Wenlai of the party-affiliated news site Red Net, felt this was a grave matter. He...
Business Insider •

Scarred by a deadly milk scandal and fearing cooking oil cut with raw sewage, China's middle class is skipping the supermarket and buying straight from the farm

When Chengdu resident Tian Hao, 45, visits his neighborhood supermarket, he stays away from the best-looking fruit and vegetables."If they are big or beautiful, they're not normal. If they have no holes or marks on them or their roots, we avoid them," he told Insider. "Sometimes, the vegetables they put on display still have pesticides and chemicals on them. It takes an experienced eye to know what you can buy there."His distrust of commercial produce, like that of millions of people in China, c...
South China Morning Post •

Rancid US$1 curry: should Singapore swallow cost of migrants’ meals?

A sour smell rises as Ibrahim Khalil, 31, opens his lunch, undoing the knots on two plastic bags.

His lunch, purchased from a catering company that provides him with three meals a day in return for S$110 (US$80) a month, is always the same. A single, thin slice of fish in a plastic bag of curry gravy. There is also a portion of watery dal, which ought to be fragrant and thick with lentils, tomatoes and onions. The centrepiece of his meal is the heap of long-grain ponni rice – nearly a whole kil...
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