Image is a ball-and-stick model of a molecule of CL-20, alternatively known as hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane, taken from Wikipedia.
Much of this preamble is taken from this article.
CL-20 is the most deadly non-nuclear explosive that humanity has yet discovered, capable of generating detonation velocities and pressures higher than other military explosives like TNT, RDX, and HMX. If you have a more powerful explosive, you can make your missiles travel further and/or make them smaller. It also helps the creation of nuclear missiles, as to start the nuclear chain reaction, you need a powerful shockwave to get all the atoms in there to mingle. The problem is that it's a little too explosive, making it exceedingly difficult to not only manufacture, but transport. I mean, America can hardly transport some chemicals across the country without poisoning entire towns. Thus, it isn't really used in many known military applications.
In 1994, in China, Professor Yu Yongzhong synthesized the first CL-20 compound in his laboratory. America came along and said 'Actually, we did it first, in 1987.' The US team said that despite it being such a powerful explosive, the cost of making and testing it was too high, and the collapse of the Soviet Union meant that there wasn't really much interest in that kind of weapons arms race anymore. Production therefore fell to the wayside, while China kept at it, investing in its production and testing.
China has recently found a way to synthesize it to make it five times as shock-resistant. This shock resistance is essentially measured by dropping an object onto it and measuring the height you need to drop it from to make it explode. The previous record was 13 cm / 5 inches, whereas now it is 68 cm, or about 27 inches. US military experts already fear that China has designed its weaponry to use CL-20 and thus this will give them an advantage in missile technology.
(Also, fun fact, CL-20 is called that because it was developed in the China Lake facility in California.)
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.
This week's first update is here in the comments.
This week's second update is here in the comments.
This week's third update is here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have decent analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the warzone.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist (but still quite reactionary in terms of gender and sexuality and race, so beware). If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Another big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia's army.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week's discussion post.
Recently watched some Marxist guy who insisted that geopolitics is a pseudo-science (something to do with how geography shapes politics). So whenever people here and elsewhere say "geopolitical" or similar they're probably using the wrong word. Anybody got any thoughts on this?
I mean it literally does though? Like this conflict literally is informed by geopolitics, for example if there were a mountain range on the border between Russia and Ukraine the threat of NATO would be way less and the invasion would be more dubious, the reason why people think that Putin might just add the 4 oblasts and not really want to go further is because the Dniper would make for a good border. That doesn't even go into how resources themselves shape the politics of a country.
Marxism is to a large extent the science of how material conditions affect reality as experienced and created by humans. Geography seems pretty god damn important in doing that for nations I'd say.
this youtube guy is in denial of pretty much all post marx sociology and historiography. a marxist denying the importance of geography is like an economist saying inflation is just in the mind. i don't think even a liberal utopian would make claims like that.
I don't think the point was to claim that geography has no influence on politics, but that the discipline is a bunch of crackpot theories that are untrue or at least without evidence and something about essentializing (sea powers are flaky but flexible, land empires are stubborn, that sort of crap). But idk, he was just complaining about this as an aside really, just a few sentences.
as opposed to what
Physicists have to deal with cranks who think gravity and electrons aren't real all the way to the point where people are actually murdered in the streets out of a misplaced entitlement for fame and glory. That is not because physicists should be beyond questioning. They have their idiosyncracies and pursue dead ends of their own, same as every other type of scientific inquiry.
What you should be skeptical of are simplified narratives. And especially when people dismiss entire periods of thought, or, worse, entire disciplines. Because the implicit understanding there is that you don't really need to read them. 'Geopolitics' isn't a thing that is made in the geopolitics factories. It's a type of analysis and a point of view that forms a portion of historical, sociological, archeological, political, and so on research. Of course there are bad theses. Especially in think tanks and within popular discourse. But you know what else underpins a bad thesis? Big egos. I've seen people storm off classes for the dumbest shit because of some completely innocuous statement violated a 'principle' of theirs.
Edward Gibbon's thesis that the Roman Empire fell because it lost masculine virtu and embraced Christianity is one of the most hilariously wrong things of all time. It used to be taken seriously. And yet you wouldn't condemn historians to the same grave of history as astrologians.
Geopolitics is only bad if you're completely map-brained and see international relations as colorful geometric shapes interacting with each other on a flat map, ignoring class conflict and the role of transnational corporations.
I’m not sure how someone could make sense of the Sino Soviet split (likely the biggest death blow to the Soviet Union) without talking about the geopolitical situation.
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Sounds pedantic and dumb. Geography and proximity are material conditions.
Are there a lot of "geopolitics" commenters that are full of shit and have crackpot or idealist worldviews? Definitely. Just like there are economists and philosophers with terrible views and ideologies as well. Doesn't mean there's nothing of value from the entire discipline