Tag: military
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Indonesia’s Sunken Submarine
A few years ago, I created a piece about the missing Argentine submarine ARA San Juan. For those that do not remember, back in 2017, the Argentine Navy Type 1700 submarine ARA San Juan disappeared on a voyage from Ushuaia to Mar del Plata. At the time, people thought it may have sunk over the…
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Americans Retreat, Turks Invade, Syrians Return, Kurds Die
I did not have a lot of time to cover this story last week. So let us try to get into it a little bit today. The New York Times published this morning an article about what is next for Syria, titling the online version 4 Big Questions About Syria’s Future. So I went with…
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The Retreat from Ilovaisk
Five years ago, I covered the Russian invasion of Ukraine a little tiny bit. Five years on and Russia has formally annexed Crimea and Russian “patriotic volunteers” continue to destabilise the Donbass. About two weeks ago, this article from the BBC caught my eye as it recounted the story of Ukraine’s deadliest day in the conflict.…
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Burden Sharing in NATO
Late last week we heard a lot about contributions to NATO. Except, that was not true. Because the idea of spending 2% of GDP on NATO is actually about a NATO member spending 2% of its GDP on its military. And within that 2%, at least 20% must be spent on hardware or R&D. There…
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Where Syria Struck with Chemical Weapons
Friday night the US, UK, and France struck targets in Syria that play a role in the chemical weapons programme of the Bashir al-Assad regime. This is despite “eliminating” his chemical weapons several years ago. And so not surprisingly the media this past weekend covered Syria and the airstrikes. This print piece from the New…
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The Russian Threat
A few days ago a former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned with a nerve agent, e.g. VX, in Salisbury, England. Over a decade ago, another former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, died in London after being poisoned with polonium, a highly radioactive substance produced inside nuclear reactors, placed inside his tea. Russia’s spies are…
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Undersea Mining
Today’s piece isn’t strictly about data visualisation. Instead it’s a nice article from the BBC that explores the nascent industry of undersea mining. What caught my interest was the story of Soviet submarine K-129, which sank mysteriously in the middle of the Pacific. But that isn’t even half the story, so if you are interested…
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All Your Base Are Belong to Internets
Over the weekend news broke that since November, plans for military bases around the world were available to anyone and everyone on the internets. How? Why? Well, it turns out that soldiers using wearable tech to track their rides or cycling routes had forgotten to disable that feature whilst on military installations. And so when…