TheEndOfZeitenwende . . . by quanticle: (:title Summary: The End of Zeitenwende :) (:mathjax:) On February 27, 2022, in light of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz proclaimed a ''Zeitenwende'', or turning point. According to Scholz, Germany would no longer be a passive economic power in the heart of Europe, but it would rather play a more active geopolitical role, remilitarizing, and supporting European security as part of NATO and the European Union. To bring this about, Scholz outlined five policy priorities: # Support Ukraine in its fight against Russia # End dependence on Russian energy supplies while continuing to pursue climate goals # End the policy of accommodation for authoritarian states
ABriefTechnicalHistoryOfPLANNuclearSubmarines . . . by quanticle: [[https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cmsi-maritime-reports/30/ | Original Article]] [[https://wiki.quanticle.net/Main/ABriefTechnicalHistoryOfPLANNuclearSubmarinesOutline | My Outline]] Submarines are an important component of any navy. They possess the ability to pass undetected, gathering information and carrying out attacks, forcing adversaries to commit disproportionate numbers of ships and aircraft to tracking and neutralizing them. This makes them a key component of sea denial strategies. Even a small force of submarines can make it vastly more complex for an adversary navy to transport troops, launch attacks or impose a blockade. Nuclear submarines amplify these advantages. With powerplants capable of generating virtually limitless amounts of energy, nuclear submarines can circle the globe without having to come up for air. This level of endurance significantly expands tactical options, allowing the submarine to exert its influence even in regions far away from its home nation's coastline. For a ballistic missile submarine, the advantages of nuclear power are even more pronounced. Nuclear propulsion allows ballistic missile submarines to patrol without surfacing, giving nations an ability to launch or respond to nuclear attack with systems that are virtually undetectable until they choose to fire their missiles. Ballistic missile submarines are an essential part of the "nuclear triad", providing the assured retaliation against any pre-emptive nuclear attack.
NormalizationOfCensorshipEvidenceFromChina . . . by quanticle: (:title Normalization of Censorship: Evidence From China :) (:markdown:) Conventional wisdom holds that censorship on the Internet is a somewhat futile endeavor. As John Gilmore put it, "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." More concretely, we have the Streisand Effect, where Barbara Streisand attempted to remove photos of her house from the Internet, and, in the process of doing so, only drew more attention to them. Because of this, most political scientists hold that authoritarian regimes censor as little as possible, limiting their censorship to information directly threatening to the government and information encouraging collective action, which could turn into anti-government protests. Censoring more than that is thought to lead to backlash, as ordinary Internet users would encounter censorship in their everyday usage, and seeing the heavy hand of the state on a day-to-day basis, encourages rebellion. Yet anecdotal evidence from China indicates otherwise. Casual browsing of Chinese social media indicates that the Chinese government censors far more than the minimum necessary to suppress anti-government and collective action information. Is this perception actually true? And, if so, how does the Chinese government get away with censoring so much without engendering a backlash? These are the questions the author of "[Normalization of Censorship: Evidence From China](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3835217)" ([my outline](https://wiki.quanticle.net/Main/NormalizationOfCensorshipEvidenceFromChina)) set out to answer. First, he sought a quantitative answer to the question of whether China censors more than absolutely necessary. Conventional wisdom holds that the Internet behind the Great Firewall is relatively freewheeling, so long as one stays away from criticizing the government or encouraging collective protests. Turning to the [WeChatScope database](https://academic.oup.com/joc/article-abstract/70/6/842/5913142) of censored articles, the author demonstrates that this isn't the case. Using a supervised machine learning process, he classified the articles in the database into political and non-political categories. In order to avoid undercounting political stories, the author applied the categories sequentially, with the political categories going first. Furthermore, he explicitly excluded anything having to do with the government or politics from the classification rubrics for the non-political categories. Finally, because the WeChatScope database covers censored articles posted to newsfeeds of politically-focused accounts, the author felt that, if anything, the dataset would be biased in the opposite direction — towards showing that the central government was mostly censoring politics and protest. As he expected, the author found that the Chinese government was censoring far more just politics and protest. Of the 15872 censored articles that WeChatScope collected from March 2018 to May 2020, only about 40% were related to politics and collective action. The remaining 60% were "harmless" articles, having mostly to do with entertainment or business. Even when he extended the definition of "politics" to include business and the economy, he found that approximately 43% of articles were non-political, still a substantial minority. The idea that you can get away with saying whatever you want on the Chinese Internet, so long as you stay away from criticizing the government, appears to be a myth.
