Peter Langan

Good explanation of nihilist philosophy

My latest How China Built Iran's Surveillance State — and America Broke It The Failures of China’s Surveillance Architecture in Iran China provided the Islamic Republic regime with an unparalleled surveillance architecture. In fact, Huawei-supplied internet kill switch project estimated between $700 million and $1 billion neared completion at a fortified data center outside Tehran, was engineered to give the IRGC the capacity to sever Iran’s global connectivity. It has also been documented that China’s police training programs for Iranian security personnel served simultaneously as vehicles for exporting Beijing’s stability-maintenance doctrine and as commercial opportunities for Chinese surveillance firms. But the January 2026 uprising tested everything the IRGC and Beijing had assembled together. zinebriboua.com/p/how-china-bu…

Two courageous people are on trial in Hong Kong. Lee Cheuk-yan - a labor organizer and union leader. Chow Hang-tung - a human rights lawyer. Their crime: refusing to let history disappear.

New FOIAs by @USRTK show US virologists proposed putting furin cleavage sites into viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 (Covid) AFTER the pandemic began. There's still no gov oversight of privately funded work on pathogens that aren't select agents.

Pinocchio award of the week.

Diversity in China? Wang Yi must be joking. Here is what “diversity” in China actually looks like—according to a lecture by Ai Yuejin, professor of China’s military academy

China Took His City. And Now His Father. nytimes.com/2026/02/27/pod… An interview with Sebastien Lai, whose father, Jimmy Lai, was arrested over his participation in the 2019 protests in Hong Kong.

Jimmy Lai, the SCMP, and the anaconda fccj.or.jp/number-1-shimb…

"The sentence imposed on him should not be remembered as an act of strength, but as a confession of weakness. Because if Jimmy Lai is remembered — if his name is spoken, his case defended, his courage honored — then a prison cell cannot contain his legacy. But if Jimmy Lai is forgotten, Hong Kong could be finished as a symbol of hope for future democracy in China. The regime will write its sentence. History will write the verdict." Read more from @robertsirico on @FoxNews: foxnews.com/opinion/jimmy-… #freejimmylai #freehongkong

The Admiral Who Gets China I like this American admiral @MikeStudeman . His take on intelligence is about the best I’ve heard in a long time. youtu.be/VNvJg9Ccjn0?si… What stood out: 1.He actually understands how CCP politics works. Studeman’s deductive logic on CCP politics is sound. Too often I hear “China experts” in academia and think tanks recite tidbits and claim insights, but miss the internal logic of CCP decision-making—how incentives, fear, loyalty, and institution interests drive outcomes. 2.He has the right definition of intelligence in 2026. Not a fetish for classified reporting. An all-source system: open source + commercial data + exquisite collection, fused fast. And crucially: intelligence that translates into action—including sharing actionable threat insights with U.S. companies. In a world where the frontier lives in the private sector, pretending “business isn’t our lane” is self-disarmament. 3.He doesn’t mistake deterrence for strategy. Yes, deterring a Taiwan invasion matters. But deterrence alone can still lose the peace. If the U.S. treats Chinese threats only as a Taiwan-only contingency, it misses Beijing’s main play: expanding political power short of war—shaping standards, supply chains, market access, and capturing elites. You can “win” the Strait and still wake up to a world where the rules—and dependencies—quietly flipped. Actually, I liked him so much that I just bought his book as a gift for my son—he wants to serve. a.co/d/0bIkhpaf

Here’s a link to the docket: courtlistener.com/docket/6488269…

The hypocrisy is breathtaking. Wang Yi talking about “strengthening global human rights governance” is like an arsonist hosting a fire safety seminar. A government that censors the internet, disappears critics, bulldozes civil society, and calls mass surveillance “harmony” has the audacity to preach morality to the world? Please.

This is a superb primer for people wanting to understand the CCP. Dikötter’s capacity for compression and clarity is unparalleled.

Sam Coopers investigations into China's interference operations in Canada are producing results. His life is being threatened because of it Coopers reports on China's activities in Canada are must reads. The CCP uses the same playbook in the UK, US, Australia etc.

There is a Uyghur proverb that translates into English as: “In the absence of the lion, the monkey claims to be the king of the mountain.” Xi Jinping appears to have embraced this very logic—casting himself as a King of the mountain sitting on emperor throne in a perceived vacuum created by hesitation, distraction, and silence from others. This posture is plainly visible in the behavior of Wang Yi, whose open and coercive threats toward Japan at the Munich Security Conference signal not confidence, but opportunism. When restraint is mistaken for weakness, pretenders grow bold—and that is precisely the danger this proverb warns against. Stop day dreaming

HKFP Monitor: This week, we examine how Hong Kong’s highly coordinated response to media mogul Jimmy Lai’s 20-year jail term signals how far it has come in quashing opposition voices. We also look at how candidates in the “patriots only” Legislative Council elections last December splurged on campaign expenses – from hotel brunches to photoshoots. In full: hongkongfp.com/newsletters/hk…

Editorial board aside, plenty more praise for the Jimmy Lai sentencing in SCMP's opinion section. For a round-up of how the rest of the local media handled it, tune into HKFP Monitor tomorrow. Sign up: hongkongfp.com/newsletter/

Menacherry et al in 2015 and 2016 "SARS-like WIV1-CoV" Should Have Been an Obvious Clue SARS-CoV-2 Came from Wuhan Lab Fauci, Andersen, et al should have publicly asked Dr Ralph Baric to release the code of his virus to examine with that of SARS-CoV-2 sequenced at Fudan University by Professor Yong-Zhen Zhang on January 6, 2020. Menachery VD, Yount BL Jr, Debbink K, Agnihothram S, Gralinski LE, Plante JA, Graham RL, Scobey T, Ge XY, Donaldson EF, Randell SH, Lanzavecchia A, Marasco WA, Shi ZL, Baric RS. A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence. Nat Med. 2015 Dec;21(12):1508-13. doi: 10.1038/nm.3985. Epub 2015 Nov 9. Erratum in: Nat Med. 2016 Apr;22(4):446. doi: 10.1038/nm0416-446d. Erratum in: Nat Med. 2020 Jul;26(7):1146. doi: 10.1038/s41591-020-0924-2. PMID: 26552008; PMCID: PMC4797993. Menachery VD, Yount BL Jr, Sims AC, Debbink K, Agnihothram SS, Gralinski LE, Graham RL, Scobey T, Plante JA, Royal SR, Swanstrom J, Sheahan TP, Pickles RJ, Corti D, Randell SH, Lanzavecchia A, Marasco WA, Baric RS. SARS-like WIV1-CoV poised for human emergence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016 Mar 15;113(11):3048-53. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1517719113. Epub 2016 Mar 14. PMID: 26976607; PMCID: PMC4801244.

Six years ago today--one day after funding-agency heads Fauci, Collins, and Farrar commission scientists to write a paper falsely claiming no lab-origin scenario is plausible--one of the scientists, K.G. Andersen, privately tells the others lab origin "is in fact highly likely."