This is the Spectator (cognitohazard warning) so take it with a giant grain of salt, but:
According to unconfirmed reports, General Zhang Youxia, China’s vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), sent a company of troops (over a hundred or more) to the government’s Yingxi Hotel in western Beijing on January 18. Their mission was to arrest Xi Jinping. A few hours before, the Chinese president – alerted by an informant – set in motion countermeasures. Troops under the command of Cao Qi, head of Xi’s Central Guards Bureau, ambushed Zhang’s soldiers. In the ensuing gunfight at Yangxi Hotel, nine guards were reportedly killed along with dozens of Zhang Youxia’s soldiers. Throughout China, military movements have been banned and troops and officers have been confined to barracks. This is the bloodiest of a blizzard of rumors that have swept the internet over the weekend. If true, this is the most dramatic military scandal since the death of Mao Zedong’s army chief Lin Biao in 1972.
This reads as fanfiction to me, but there is clearly something going on with Xi's purging of the PLA's high command. Still way too early to know what (if anything) this means, or why this was done, but the rumour mill is certainly churning. That said, I was in Shanghai for the last two weeks and the vibes were totally normal. All this activity though right on the eve of the supposed 2027 date espoused by US intelligence as the cut off point for a favorable outcome for the United States in a war around Taiwan (analysis with imo is far too optimistic for the Americans, that date should've probably been something like 2020 at best) is rather... interesting. I was always of the opinion that China would never make an overt move for Taiwan, but the world has shifted dramatically in the last few years, and the room for military maneuver is wide. Both of the other two great powers (Russia and the US) have already done large scale military operations. Will China take advantage of that space and have their own Special Military Operation, as a treat? Still so much uncertainty, but I think the portends are signalling that sooner or later they will.
How the mechanism for class mobility arose in China, and how that evolved into the deep bureaucracy of the modern Chinese state today.
This part is always so interesting to me, because on the face of it the imperial examination system is deeply egalitarian in a way no other ancient civilisation approached. The idea that it was not genes but effort and intelligence that would allow you access to a better life is astounding to see so far back. There's always been a tension between trying to co-opt that examination system for the already existing great families, but its existence at all is always so shocking to me. Mirrors a lot the Roman dominate (the late empire, post crisis of the Third Century) where governors and imperial workers could no longer be based on the patrician class because they were functionally useless, and they needed to implement a kind of meritocracy for commoners to actually run thing.
It's madman theory, right? Nixon was the pioneer of this. You play up the craziness as a neogtiating tactic. That sense of ambiguity is also what Trump outlines in his book from the 80s, and it works. I agree that Trump is largely "contained" and his ridiculous outbursts are usually channeled towards what the Blob wants anyway, but he does have his moments of true divine insanity.
Sometimes Trump is a useful pawn and his whims align with the long term strategic objectives of the Blob, sometimes he has wrecker tendencies that just cannot be reconciled with anything other than Mercator-brained map painting. The duality of America.
Diplomats from European countries, who declined to be identified because the subject is sensitive, said discussions are ongoing in capitals about how to push back against Trump. Easier options include delaying tactics, lobbying efforts among Republicans in Washington, sending allied troops to visit Greenland, and even a publicity campaign in America.
But the possibility of cutting off support for American military deployments has come up, including radical suggestions to take back control of U.S. bases, one of the diplomats said. “Discussions are ongoing on how could we put pressure and say ‘Hey, you need us, and if you do this we are going to retaliate in some way,’” the diplomat said. “But at the same time, nobody wants to speak out about this.” At the moment, Europeans are not mentally ready for the kind of escalation that such retaliation would unleash. “We have to be prepared,” the official added.
Within NATO — where any discussion of punishing the Americans remains largely out of bounds — some emphasize that doing so would be a double-edged sword. “Using bases as bargaining chips for leverage — and it can be done — would result in mutual damage,” said one NATO diplomat. “Europe would further lose security guarantees … and the U.S. would lose its most valuable forward operating platform.”
I mean given they're now openly saying they will declare war on the United States if they go for Greenland, something not even Denmark has said, yes it seems they have.
The expensive part of LLMs is the training though. Actual token output is rather efficent and quite cheap. For example, for Deepseek to generate a 200 token paragraph of text it costs about $0.000084. Image generation is also rather expensive, but most of the data centers and cost are around training models, not serving LLM output. It still might be more expensive than advertisers are willing to pay, but not crazy expensive.
Yeah this will 100% be another Andrew Jackson moment where Trump just says "with what army" to the Supreme Court ordering a stop to tariffs and Trump just ignoring. Trump was right when he said the only limit he has is his own "morality" (and Xi Jinping)
I mean regardless, the F-16 is not gonna be used by the Americans unless the entire airspace has already been cleansed of any ground and air threats. They have much more sophisticated aircraft than the F-16 if they want to deal with S-300s.
"THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA - ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday.
The eye of Sauron turns to Cuba. This was always one of the goals of the Venezuela operation. This is Rubio's endgame.
This is the Spectator (cognitohazard warning) so take it with a giant grain of salt, but:
This reads as fanfiction to me, but there is clearly something going on with Xi's purging of the PLA's high command. Still way too early to know what (if anything) this means, or why this was done, but the rumour mill is certainly churning. That said, I was in Shanghai for the last two weeks and the vibes were totally normal. All this activity though right on the eve of the supposed 2027 date espoused by US intelligence as the cut off point for a favorable outcome for the United States in a war around Taiwan (analysis with imo is far too optimistic for the Americans, that date should've probably been something like 2020 at best) is rather... interesting. I was always of the opinion that China would never make an overt move for Taiwan, but the world has shifted dramatically in the last few years, and the room for military maneuver is wide. Both of the other two great powers (Russia and the US) have already done large scale military operations. Will China take advantage of that space and have their own Special Military Operation, as a treat? Still so much uncertainty, but I think the portends are signalling that sooner or later they will.
Per https://archive.ph/yJLjx