Plug-and-Play.

A Stalin-like purge.

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1. A team of Chinese military scientists and defense industry engineers have developed a microwave source for drones that is more powerful than anything available worldwide, according to a new paper. This technological breakthrough, they claim, has the potential to alter the balance of military power permanently. This kind of electronic warfare is usually one-sided. But the new technology can help the little guys pack a punch, according to the researchers. Professor Li Jianbing and his team at the PLA Strategic Support Force Information Engineering University have not said the exact size and weight of their new microwave weapon but do say that it has been custom-made to fit snugly on to all kinds of drones. “It will ‘plug and play’,” said their peer-reviewed paper in the High Power Laser and Particle Beams journal, published on November 24. (Source: scmp.com)

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2. Something is rotten in the imperial court of Chairman Xi Jinping. While the world is distracted by war in the Middle East and Ukraine, a Stalin-like purge is sweeping through China’s ultra-secretive political system, with profound implications for the global economy and even the prospects for peace in the region. The signals emanating from Beijing are unmistakable, even as China’s security services have ramped up repression to totalitarian levels, making it almost impossible to know what is really happening inside the country…Since his reign began in 2012, Xi Jinping’s endless purges have removed millions of officials — from top-ranked Communist Party “tigers” down to lowly bureaucratic “flies,” to use Xi’s evocative terminology. What’s different today is that the officials being neutralized are not members of hostile political factions but loyalists from the inner ring of Xi’s own clique, leading to serious questions over the regime’s stability. (Source: politico.eu)

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