The Sukhoi Su-57. Photo by Maxim Maksimov. License: CC BY-SA 3.0

Ankara has reportedly already signaled interest in Su-57 stealth jets from Sukhoi

Last week, the delivery of the Russian S-400 air defense system to the NATO country Turkey began (cf. S-400: Erdogan defies the U.S. and NATO). U.S. Defense Secretary-designate Mark Esper described Ankara’s insistence on this delivery as a "wrong and derailing".

Antennas of the American HAARP facility for ionospheric research. Image: DoD

The experiments are probably for military purposes; China is building a high-frequency facility like the American HAARP on the South China Sea

The American HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) in Alaska has always aroused suspicion. The once military, now civilian shortwave facility, with 180 transmitters and a power of 5.1 gigawatts, is used to explore how radio waves can be used to reach the ionosphere, d.h. which can study and influence electrons and ions from 60 km above the Earth’s surface. It has been suspected that HAARP, which has been operated by the University of Alaska since 2014, can be used to manipulate the weather or even people’s brains. There are numerous conspiracy theories about this. The ionosphere is of military interest because radio waves are reflected there.

A report on the control of the Internet in China and Cuba wants to refute the faith that the Internet has a democratizing and subversive effect, but is simplified in a comparative manner

Media and telecommunications are supposed to break up the clip of author’s regimes and counter their censorship. You have seen this when collaping the Eastern Block. Media should not only beat punches into the walls, so the view of the "Feigned" could go to the tempting good and leisure and leisure world, but also through snowball effects the freedom movements in their own land. Many see on the Internet, not ultimately tensioned medium of freedom of expression and the free flow of information that breaks up dominant structures in countries that want to wear behind walls. Wrong, at least in the medium term, means a report provocative, which examines the relevance in China and Cuba. But what does he want to tell us ultimately?

Really smart one gets out of the working paper "The Internet and State Control in Authoritarian regimes: China, Cuba and the Counterrevolution" The journalist Shanti Kalathil and Taylor Boas, employees of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which the study has also published. Pretty banal is the thesis that you do not know Know, how the Internet affects the policy in the long term, but that it does not openly closed companies with enrolled human rights and lack of freedom of expression. But who has said this so? The authentic states try either to reduce the use of the Internet possible, as the unpleasant re-posted the internet ban in Afghanistan, or to control it. Sure you do that, but the interesting question is, with what success? And can now be found after the internet has found in the most autoritar governed states at best for a few years long? Is the internet not only for authoritar systems, but for each system dangerous? In any case, not only commodities of democracy and freedom of expression, but also the enemies of democracy or criminals can be organized.

At least a virtual Noah’s Ark for our descendants

The world becomes poorer. Every week, in one of the gross mass extinctions, probably hundreds of species disappear irretrievably from the earth. An international group of scientists therefore proposes to build a worldwide network of databases to preserve the DNA of endangered species.

If nothing can or will be done against the destruction of the natural habitat, technology is always good to compensate for the losses. The capacity of zoological or botanical gardens is in no way sufficient to ensure the survival of endangered species, especially since their number is continuously increasing. Cheaper and more practicable would be indeed the initiative to try coordinated and worldwide, "for each endangered species to store DNA samples or frozen cells or ties containing DNA". Otherwise, as scientists say, "our descendants will be left with little more than brief descriptions in scientific publications and exhibits in museums."