One of my frustrations the past year is how many people have been shocked that enough Russians buy Putin's propaganda and believe in the war. We want so badly to imagine every citizen in an autocracy is a dissident struggling to break free. But autocracy requires complicity. I think some people outside feel bad — feel that it's somehow dehumanizing, to acknowledge that citizens of an autocracy support the state. It's easier to imagine everyone there a "good" person, in silent revolt against Putin. Or Xi.

My review of @mariaressa's book, HOW TO STAND UP TO A DICTATOR — is out! This was a poignant and deeply meaningful read. Ressa: "You live your way into it because the sum of all your choices brings you to that point." For @TheTLS: the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-m… Part memoir / part toolkit to fight autocracy, Ressa devotes a section of the book to her time as CNN correspondent. I grew up watching her. She was a rare female Asian face on American television, and she paved the way for many others — including me — to follow in her footsteps.

Not a Russia expert. But I’m a pretty good threat-to-democracy expert. ➡️ A peace settlement only suspends a war, not stops one, with no promise 🇷🇺 won’t hit 🇺🇦 in five, ten years. That’s bad for democracy; it paves the way for siege mentality candidates. We know where that goes. Also: A peace settlement now and the uncertainty 🇷🇺 might not avenge itself a few years down the line impacts: 1) rebuilding, 2) foreign investment (who wants to invest in 🇺🇦’s east that might get torn up again). It is in the 🇪🇺’s interest for 🇺🇦 to reach its full potential.

Certain China watchers lambasted the lab leak theory as absurd, attacking those in our community who entertained it as conspiracy theorists, and jumbled that with fomenting anti-Asian hate. Two years later, based on old school forensics of CCP documents: propublica.org/article/senate… I say this as someone who stayed away from the lab leak theory but think people are scared of calling this out. Given the trolls some in the China expert community unleashed on their peers, I would hope for apologies. But that would require too much of a climb down for some egos.

🇪🇺 Here's my accountability question for every European government about these Chinese outpost police stations: Why did it take media and a small NGO (@SafeguardDefend) to uncover this? How is it that your intelligence services have not been all over this? bbc.com/news/world-eur… Spain, Italy, UK — where the hell is your government? Taxpayers pay you to do this stuff. Instead, one NGO had to alert European states that they have satellite Chinese police stations on their territory. Asleep at the wheel is an understatement.

More notes from Taiwan! "As long as this regime stays in power, I think it’s the responsibility of every single Taiwanese, and really the international community, to make sure that war does not break out across the strait," said @Enoch_TW. "We can’t control what an authoritarian regime does," said @Enoch_TW. "As long as Xi Jinping is in power, we need to be prepared for the worst."

With @kuantingvision of @NextGenTaiwan, who gets this question a lot: "Will China invade Taiwan?" And of course, the answer is — what do you mean by an invasion? "Does a cyber attack constitute an invasion? Does bribing our officials?" he asked in return. "China is Taiwan's imminent threat," said @kuantingvision. But "it's not about Taiwan and Taiwan only... There are a lot of strategic ambiguities around the region." What is Japan thinking? Australia? South Korea?

This is Hsu Chiao-hsin, a rising star of Taiwan's KMT opposition. So much of video interviews hit the cutting room floor, I thought I'd share my notes with people I talked to in Taiwan. Hsu is an advocate of mandatory military service for women along with men. Is it possible to trade with a country that wants to invade you? "We must reinforce our national security and hold our ground in terms of our sovereignty. On the other hand, we have to support our people’s financial prosperity," answered Hsu.

Pelosi is the first female US Speaker of the House and Tsai is Taiwan’s first female president. As these two women meet at one of the frontlines of the global fight for democracy against authoritarianism (this is a Tsai view of her foreign policy, not mine). Pelosi and Taiwan’s President Tsai just greeted each other seconds ago.

Pelosi’s plane has just landed in Taipei. 🇹🇼🇺🇸 Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu greets Pelosi as she disembarks.

Really great infographics from @BeijingToBrit on the position each potential UK PM has on China. Rishi Sunak is "best described as realpolitik." For Liz Truss, @BeijingToBrit says the potential PM "holds the most hawkish view in Cabinet."

Elon Musk has a Tesla factory in China and he wants to sell more cars there, as many China observers note. What happens if Beijing leans on him about say, a Uyghur or Hong Kong activist account? Or about Chinese disinformation bots leveraging this platform? If Elon Musk thinks because he's the world's richest man that he can tell China to piss off if Beijing ever starts leaning on him about Twitter, he'll find out how efficiently the Chinese state can gobble up that Tesla Shanghai factory, taking with it as much IP as it can.

What did I witness last night?! Late-stage capitalism or the next digital frontier? ⬇️ At Berlin’s KRAFTWERK #NFT live minting party — from @brtmoments and @cryptovenetians. The collective unveiling of new art as a special event definitely beats a solo laptop minting experience. Live NFT minting in Berlin:

We checked out the places Bitcoin miners landed after China's clampdown on crypto — from America to Kazakhstan. The mass migration of hardware was a sight to behold. For @VICENews @motherboard. Clip where I count the 💰 ASICs ⬇️ below. Full episode 📺: .@bitdigital_btbt moved 30,000 ASICs out of 🇨🇳 to 🇺🇸 where "there's rule of law, there's transparency on decision making... I'm hopeful that the FCC and other stakeholders [will] have a very thoughtful conversation about regulation and not stamp out innovation," says @SamirTabar.

Good morning from Europe, where China Radio International (Chinese state media) — in Poland — in Polish — has a frontpage with no refugees, no war, but a headline reading: "If America really cares about Ukrainians, it should provide peace, not weapons." Further down the frontpage of Chinese state media's website in Polish, Beijing wants the people of Poland to know that "Polish dairy products are increasingly welcomed by Chinese consumers." There is no other mention of Ukraine beyond the slam against the US.

🇷🇺's Lavrov says that Putin would not refuse to meet Zelensky but it depends. ➡️ Russia first demanded talks in Minsk, rejected 🇺🇦's proposal to meet in Istanbul. Now open in theory to a Putin-Zelensky meeting, implicit there is they are equal heads of state. Quite the climbdown. On the downside: 🇷🇺's Lavrov continues the messaging that this is all about the 🇺🇸 meddling, ignoring 🇺🇦's ability as a sovereign country to have its own agency. Russian message aligns with the same thing we're seeing 🇨🇳 say. No country has any agency, every country is a tool.

The prevailing belief from experts the last few weeks is that Putin wouldn't try something like this. Not a criticism of expertise but it's a reminder that rational people analyzing things do not take into account enough the possibility that some autocrats are crazy. I see the same approach to analyzing Xi Jinping. There is an assumption he is rational, this is why he wouldn't do X or Y. But what if hubris, being surrounded by yes men, and power make men nuts? Not enough credence is given to this possibility in foreign policy.

Chinese Olympian Eileen Gu says she's happy Peng Shuai is "out there doing her thing again." Except Peng literally announced the opposite: her retirement — and did so likely under duress. Gu has sought to avoid politics, but her comments align with Beijing's.

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1490922195534573568

Eileen Gu is an amazing athlete who won gold with that amazing left double 1620. She also towed the Party line on Peng Shuai. In many ways we should not expect such young athletes to comment on human rights. But an 18-year-old knows what a rape accusation is and Gu gaslit Peng.

My piece: Is it time to consider a word other than "authoritarian" to describe China? "Fascism: a surveillance state with a strongman invoking racism, nationalism and traditional family values at home, while building up a military for expansion abroad." washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/… The state has also become fixated on machismo, another fascist obsession. It bans what it considers “effeminate” behavior. It exhorts men and women to procreate — focusing on Han Chinese, while doing the opposite with ethnic minorities like Uyghurs.