Zhou Shen
Documentaries on Wuhan battling Covid-19
China launches second carrier rocket at sea
Compared to the first launch, developers have further optimized and streamlined its sea launch capabilities by deploying a new launch vessel and putting a new coastal spaceport into operation, laying a solid foundation for more frequent and regular sea missions in the future.
The launch mission from sea successfully sent a group of nine commercial remote sensing satellites, all belonging to the Jilin-1 03 family, into the 535-kilometer Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO).
Oracle has won a deal
Oracle has reportedly won a deal to manage TikTok’s US cloud operations. Oracle had been rumored to be part of the bidding process to acquire TikTok, but The Wall Street Journal reports that the company has been selected as a “trusted tech partner” instead. This is different from an outright sale, and appears to suggest Oracle will be helping run TikTok’s US operations with its own cloud technologies.
If Trump agrees to this, Tik Tok is poised to explode much bigger and it will open the door to more Chinese companies operating in the West. My guess is “not likely”.
- Hawley calls for US to reject Oracle’s TikTok deal. The deal is currently awaiting a recommendation from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), but it has received praise from Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who chairs the committee. In an open letter to Mnuchin, Hawley calls on the secretary to take a more skeptical look at the proposal.
- Rubio has sent a letter to the Trump Administration urging it to reject the proposed Oracle-TikTok deal, which would leave TikTok as an independent, US-based company, because ByteDance, TikTok’s parent, will retain a majority stake.
- Ted Cruz has joined Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley and others in opposing the deal, penning his own letter claiming that any deal that doesn’t 100% address national security concerns should be rejected.
Race for the Superconducting Quantum Computing Cloud
China’s independently developed 6-qubit superconducting quantum computing cloud platform online. Based on its self-developed quantum computer “Wuyuan 悟源”, equipped with a 6-qubit superconducting quantum chip Quafu KF C6-130, the fidelity, coherence time and other technical indicators have reached the international advanced level.
09-02-20
Toronto-based Xanadu announced the release of the world’s first publicly available photonic quantum computing platform. Applicants can access 8, 12, and soon 24 qubit machines over the cloud.
Jilin-1 failed launch
The launch of the “Jilin-1 吉林一号 ” high-division 02C satellite by a Qizhou-1A carrier rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre was abnormal and the mission was lost. The specific causes are being further investigated and analysed.
Dolphins in the Gulf of Aden
Caucasus 2020
China will fight if:
China must be a country that dares to fight, but the fight must be morally justifiable, which is, China is not a country that bullies the small, but it has no option but to go to war.
第一，对方是现状打破者，事实要确凿无疑。
第二，对方是复杂局势中的挑衅者，我方是被挑衅者，事实也要非常清楚。
第三，我方在开战前为挽救局势做了艰苦的外交和政治努力，要让国际社会有目共睹。
第四，战争的第一枪是对方开的，而不是我方开的，国际社会对此是清楚的。
第五，极端形势下，如果我方要开第一枪，需要事先发最后通牒，堂堂正正地开启正义战争。
Covid-19 vaccines developed by Sinopharm
The two new inactivated coronavirus vaccines developed by Sinopharm, a state-owned pharmaceutical firm, have been used on an emergency basis, and hundreds of thousands of people have been vaccinated, with no apparent adverse reactions and no one infected; among them, tens of thousands of people who went overseas to high-risk countries and regions after receiving the vaccine have so far achieved zero infection.