In Western highly-educated social elite upper-middle class society, many people live in fear of getting “canceled” for something wrong they said on Internet 5 years ago. But for an authoritarian dictator’s subordinates, having embarrassing compromising material about themselves (“kompromat”) can ironically be a valuable, even necessary, asset for them to survive in the dictator’s regime, as a dictator sees a subordinate’s embarrassing “kompromat” as a political insurance policy to ensure that the subordinate will forever be meek and submissive, and not

One of most important adages in the East Asian communist revolutionary movement in 20th century is, "Who are our friends? Who are our enemies? That is the most important question of the revolution." One important and implicit corollary of this quote is that, in a revolutionary

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framework, this consideration actually applies to both revolutionaries overthrowing a regime, and to the incumbent government regime, that is, developing an accurate intelligence picture of who are friends and who are enemies is of utmost importance to both revolutionaries and

When an undercover revolutionary operative is captured by the counterintelligence or police forces of the governing regime, the most critical hours are the first few days or so after capture, since that's when his (or her) comrades would still be residing in their temporary safe- houses of which the imprisoned operative knows of the addresses and locations. If the operative breaks down under interrogation, even the most brutal interrogation, during these golden critical hours, and discloses secrets, then he can put his revolutionary comrades in severe

1/ Before Xi Jinping took power 10 years ago, corruption in China's military occurred on such a massive scale, it would have made Fat Leonard look like a priest. Interest and motivation of many Chinese military officers >10 years ago primarily revolved around making $. Their mode 2/ of operations generally went along lines of: siphon off $ from military contracts and/or use military property and resources to conduct profitable commercial side businesses (which were pervasive back then, but historical background of that deserves its own discussion), use $

1/ In studying history of Chinese Civil War of 1927-50 and probing how Nationalists were forced into exile on Taiwan, some historians have observed that whereas Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists actually behaved with restraint, communists did not behave with restraint. Whatever 2/ Nationalists thought were simply too crazy to do, communists did them—to win. Some historians have also observed that revolutions that topple autocratic regimes occur whenever that autocratic regime showed shred of self-restraint as weakness. Late Qing imperial dynasty became

1/ Stereotyping South Vietnamese generals as complete buffons (including Lam Quang Thi, who is not a complete buffoon and wrote two erudite works on Vietnam War in postwar exile in US) remains common among US and Western historians in 21st century, but the reality is far more

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2/ complicated and nuanced. South Vietnamese generals, like Nationalist Chinese generals in Civil War, were spread broadly on a spectrum of competency, from grossly incompetent to highly competent. Battle of Xuan Loc, last major battle in South Vietnam before its final collapse

1/ In handling history, there is a tight rope to walk in accurately carrying out an objective and forensic examination of historical figures, without using positive adjectives to describe them. This is the crux of distinguishing between a historical figure's moral value from

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2/ their technical competence. Many people have fallen into the trap of attributing to a historical figure a favorable judgment on basis of their technical competence, despite the deeply problematic nature of their moral value. Many people have also fallen into the trap of wholly

1/ The general practice of communist intelligence during and after Civil War, was to not trust their own intelligence operatives who ended up captured alive by Nationalist counter-intelligence. Why was this? In historical experience, >90% of communist intelligence operatives who

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2/ were captured by Nationalists in Civil War, ended up defecting to Nationalists (similarly, >90% of Nationalist intelligence operatives who were captured by communists, ended up defecting to communists). Thus, communist intelligence was aware that capture of their operatives

1/ Stephen Kotkin, biographer of Stalin, reportedly will subtitle his upcoming third and final volume in his Stalin trilogy “the Mao eclipse”. In popular historical consciousness (especially Western), Sino-Soviet split of 1960s was fundamentally due to Mao Zedong’s insistence on 2/ continuing to uphold Stalin’s legacy in communist world clashing with Khrushchev’s ideological revisionism. But was this actually Mao Zedong’s fundamental motivation for instigating Sino-Soviet split, or was it more of (or just an) excuse? Fundamentally, Mao Zedong resented

1/ One of most pervasive misconceptions about early Red China (among both Western and Asian observers) was that capitalism ended immediately with establishment of Red China in 1949. This was false, as Red China's initial plan was to have capitalism for another 10-30 years before 2/ gradual transition to socialism then communism. This was why capitalists in major port-industrial cities such as Shanghai and Tianjin were not immediately persecuted after communist takeover in 1949, and even foreign entities such as UK still held naively optimistic hopes that

1/ A central question from Chinese Civil War of 1927-50 remains, why did communists win and Nationalists lose militarily? In other words, what made communist army and intelligence more skillful and disciplined than Nationalist army and intelligence, in that bitter contest where 2/ supreme political leaderships of both communists and Nationalists were determined to win? Fundamentally, the answer may have to do with a social equivalent of Darwinian evolution by natural selection, and its interplay with respective statuses of communists and Nationalists

1/ Deng Yingchao, wife of premier Zhou Enlai, is probably most important woman in history of Red China, yet appropriately for her outsized shadowy role in actual practice, she is barely known among Western observers. Behind her ostensibly friendly face and warm demeanor, which

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2/ gave her audience reassuring comfort and won for her pervasive liking from her Party colleagues and comrades (unlike Jiang Qing, wife of chairman Mao Zedong), laid a steely and ruthless personality who was uncompromisingly committed to communist revolution, and was involved in

1/ Why did Mao Zedong launch Cultural Revolution? This basic textbook historical question remains surprisingly misunderstood by many Western and Asian observers alike. In Western popular caricature of Cultural Revolution, it was fundamentally ideological. But ideological nature

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2/ of Cultural Revolution was a matter of appearance and consequence, and not of fundamental motivation. To call Cultural Revolution a fundamentally ideological phenomenon, as many Western and Asian observers believe, is to confuse cause and effect, motivation and consequence.

1/ Did chairman Mao Zedong ever consider designating his wife Jiang Qing as future successor as chairwoman? Answer is no, but his reason was rooted in his analysis of his wife’s personality. He tried to make clear to his wife his view that her political ambition exceeded her

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2/ shrewdness or political ability. That opinion, from objective perspective of historical analysis, is true, but it’s not clear if his wife had the self-awareness to understand what he was trying to tell her. Mao Zedong noted that Jiang Qing had the political ambition of Wu

1/ Currently, Google, Amazon, and Meta/Facebook are all designing their own semiconductor chips. It's entirely conceivable that by 2060, biotech and medical diagnostics firms, specifically genetic sequencing companies, may do same. Imagine that by 2060, every consumer in US will 2/ have a USB key-sized genetic sequencer at home, into which they can put any bodily fluid specimen (such as saliva). That personal genetic sequencer will sequence DNA and/or RNA in patient specimen to help diagnose disease states, such as infection. But raw genetic sequencing

1/ In early decades of Red China, Liu Shaoqi became national President and represented Red China on international diplomatic visits as such until Cultural Revolution, when he was deposed and ultimately left to rot in his own excrement in a dark jail cell in a provincial town. Mao

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2/ Zedong, who launched Cultural Revolution to incite rebellious mobs to depose official institutional Party state bureaucrats and cadres including Liu Shaoqi, was central to story of Liu Shaoqi's dramatic fall in Cultural Revolution, but that story has already been told ad

1/ Zeng Guofan became most powerful Han Chinese official in Manchu-ruled imperial Qing Chinese Empire, once his well-disciplined and combat-hardened Xiang (Hunan provincial) Army proved indispensable to Manchu imperial court in fending off forces of Taiping Rebellion, one of most

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2/ costly armed conflicts in 19th century world history. However, as a Han Chinese official working for a Manchu imperial court, he had to tread carefully and consciously restrain his own power, lest his Manchu imperial overlords become paranoid about their own security and purge

1/ Yom Kippur War in 1973 created a perception that US needed greater investment in national defense industrial innovation, which in turn persuaded George Soros to invest in Lockheed. But interesting and ironically, Israeli difficulties in Yom Kippur War of 1937 versus forces of 2/ Egypt and Syria were fundamentally attributable more to strategic, intelligence, doctrinal, and tactical miscalculations on part of Israeli forces, particularly in lead-up to and in early days of Yom Kippur War of 1973, than supposed technological sophistication of Soviet

1/ Lin Biao led communist army to victory in Civil War over thousands of miles from frozen hinterlands of Manchuria (northeast China) to sweltering malaria-infested jungles of southwestern China. Later, as Mao Zedong's most faithful adherent and designated successor in Cultural

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2/ Revolution, he and his family plotted a coup against Mao Zedong, and upon ostensible failure of that coup attempt, attempted to fled to Soviet Union but met untimely end en route in Mongolia. What does fate of Lin Biao teach us about how Party approaches historical questions

1/ Really interesting recent newsletter that has dug up saga of Lt. Gen. Yu Chengwan, a Nationalist war hero of 2nd Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45, who after Civil War met a grisly end caught in middle of a cross-fire between Hong Kong police and gangsters sent to abduct his wife

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2/ for ransom. Whether the killing of Lt. Gen. Yu Chengwan was merely accident of Hong Kong gang warfare, or has a more intentional origin within the machinations of Nationalist intelligence and state security organs on Taiwan, is up to anybody's guess. It's also interesting that

1/ To understand Red China’s view of technology, it’s valuable to take note of communist assessment of Qian Xuesen’s legacy. Communist propaganda extolls Qian Xuesen as a “strategic scientist”—a technologist who had not only raw technical expertise, but also a broad vision of how

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2/ technology and technological development programs can be harnessed to advance military and strategic objectives. “Strategic” refers to that broader, more generalist fusion of raw technological talent with the military and strategic contexts in which technological development