The "BD family" scandal is catastrophe for Chinese Communist Party operatives in the US. It exposed how they operated nearly at will during the former "Happy Time".The complacency may be ending, if the media can be persuaded to take notice, but the CCP is far from beaten.
The rollup of the CIA network in China, the loss of the OPM data should have warned the media something evil was loose. But the then-dominant narrative was the Global World, so the signal was filtered out.
The "2nd Happy Time" known among German submarine commanders as the "American Shooting Season" was the informal name for the Operation Paukenschlag ... as defense measures were weak and disorganized and the U-boats were able to inflict massive damage with little risk.
"Well, your toe bone connected to your foot bone
Your foot bone connected to your heel bone
Your heel bone connected to your ankle bone
Your ankle bone connected to your leg bone ..."
Dem unintended lockdown consequences.
You cannot draw a definite boundary around a sufficiently complex system. It will always be interacting in ways politicians fail to anticipate.
One of the biggest challenges in crafting strategy is deciding where you are going to stop; determining the limit of your advance. One of the apparent lessons the progressive project got from 2016 is resolve to drive as deep as possible if they ever seized power again.
Plans include expanding SCOTUS, mass citizenship to illegal aliens, a socialized medicine option, abolish 'fossil fuels' maybe ditching the electoral college. They'll make sure the populist rebellion is really dead by shooting, evisceration, burning and ploughing it with salt.
But this creates a planning weakness for the progressives because their stop line is determined by their desires, not by their strategic capabilities. One wonders to what extent their assessments are driven by multisource intelligence as opposed to wishful thinking.
Through most of history the night before battle or some great doom has ranked among the most stressful of the participant's lives. They endure it because there's nowhere to go, no way to evade judgment, no way to start time again except forward.
Armies have historically tried to convince their troops of the certitude of victory to keep up morale. But they must never allow their propaganda to go too far lest it undermine group trust and credibility which is the foundation of morale.
If sufficient trust exists morale can be maintained even without the certitude in victory, in fact it can survive even in the face of probable annihilation, as was the case of the Chosin Reservoir.
Many who met Ye believed he was the grandson of a famous Chinese military leader; people in his hometown say he comes from a family of boatmen. Many believed he had access to untold wealth; now, it appears his empire was built on a mountain of debt.
"Last year, as American authorities closed in on Mr. Ye’s company, the first call made by one of his emissaries in custody was to Mr. Biden’s brother."