[snakeoil]

While Trump is trying to convince his minions that he will make America great again (I thought it was still great now) China is quietly moving toward being the number one power in the world.

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A team of Chinese researchers say they have completed the first long-distance quantum secure direct communication, a critical step toward sending messages that are truly safe from eavesdropping.

The information traveled 2.7 kilometers along a quantum channel, the team said in a paper that was peer-reviewed by China’s Science Bulletin journal and placed online Oct. 22.

Here’s why that matters: The feat, if verified, marks a critical step forward in the pursuit of communication that does not require end-to-end encryption and cannot be secretly intercepted by a third party.

Today’s best encryption standards are nearly impossible to crack, but “nearly secure” is not “secure.” With enough computing power, they can be broken, just as Alan Turing’s Automatic Computing Engine penetrated Nazi Germany’s Enigma ciphers. But quantum secure direct communication doesn’t rely on codes that can be cracked, but rather on something far more secure: the laws of physics.

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China is quickly growing into the world’s most extensive commercial empire. By way of comparison, after World War II, the Marshall Plan provided the equivalent of $800 billion in reconstruction funds to Europe (if calculated as a percentage of today’s GDP). In the decades after the war the United States was also the world’s largest trading nation, and its largest bilateral lender to others.

Now it’s China’s turn. The scale and scope of the Belt and Road initiative is staggering. Estimates vary, but over $300 billion have already been spent, and China plans to spend $1 trillion more in the next decade or so. According to the CIA, 92 countries counted China as their largest exports or imports partner in 2015, far more than the United States at 57. What’s most astounding is the speed with which China achieved this. While the country was the world’s largest recipient of World Bank and Asian Development Bank loans in the 1980s and 90s, in recent years, China alone loaned more to developing countries than did the World Bank.

Unlike the United States and Europe, China uses aid, trade, and foreign direct investment strategically to build goodwill, expand its political sway, and secure the natural resources it needs to grow. Belt and Road is the most impressive example of this. It is an umbrella initiative of current and future infrastructure projects. In the next decades, China plans to build a thick web of infrastructure around Asia and, through similar initiatives, around the world.

http://www.defenseone.com/threats/2017/ ... arch_china" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

China is outfitting its manmade island outposts in the South China Sea with warplane hangars and weapons, the Pentagon said Tuesday in its annual assessment of Beijing’s military.

Once finished, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force intends to base three regiments of warplanes there, says the report, which was “generated” on May 15 and released to the public today.

“Although its land reclamation and artificial islands do not strengthen China’s territorial claims as a legal matter or create any new territorial sea entitlements, China will be able to use its reclaimed features as persistent civil-military bases to enhance its presence in the South China Sea and improve China’s ability to control the features and nearby maritime space,” the report says.

Last year’s edition of the China-power report noted Beijing had completed its reclamation work on the islands. Think tanks and news organizations have previously reported the missile deployments and hangar construction, however this is the first time they have appeared in the Pentagon’s annual China report.

[johnforbes]

America did used to be a great country, but it went into steep decline during the Obama years.

Proof of that was in the U-6 unemployment over 9 percent, the 94 million out of the labor force, the 44 million on food stamps, the 12 million illegals demanding their "rights," the lack of mandatory E-Verify, etc.

Citing Trump's "minions" is just an unsubtle way of suggesting they are blind followers. In that regard, what could one say of Obama's blind followers who saw in him racial solidarity -- a person who, as he said, didn't look like the "presidents on the money"? In other words, supported him for racial reasons.