Three news stories summarized & contextualized by analytic journalist Colin Wright.

Note: Happy New Year!

A cat video highlighted a big year for lasers in space

Summary: The final months of 2023 were big for laser-based space communication technologies, and a successful demonstration on December 11 featured an ultra-high-definition video of a cat that was sent from a spacecraft that’s en route to an astroid down to a receiving station in Southern California, the video delivered at the record speed of 267 megabits per second.

Context: The 15-second video clip featured a NASA Jet Propulsion Lab-based cat named Taters chasing a red dot produced by a store-bought laser toy, and this transmission rate represents a huge upgrade, the new technologies capable of rates 10- to 100-times greater than existing tech; this is important because NASA’s space-based communications setup is straining under the weight of all the in-orbit and deeper-space assets the US and its allies have launched in recent decades, and this should help lessen that strain, but also because it should allow for higher-resolution and snappier streaming of images and video and other data to and from space.

—Ars Technica

One Sentence News is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

China's military purge deepens

Summary: An anti-corruption campaign within China’s defense apparatus has been expanded to encompass new facets of the country’s military, most recently sparking a purge of higher-ups in the Chinese Rocket Force.

Context: Nine generals and three defense technology officials were booted from an influential Chinese Communist Party advisory body in late-December, most of them from the Rocket Force, which manages the country’s various missile programs and which is in the process of modernizing as part of a larger effort to make the Chinese military a dominant global (rather than just regional) force by 2050; some analysts are seeing this as another component of Chinese leader Xi’s purge of political opponents, as well, suggesting this and similar, recent purges might indicate weakness on Xi’s part, while others note that it might be related to the Chinese government’s recent efforts to make nice with the US government, especially in regards to the two country’s activities in the South China Sea.

—Axios

Russia launches fresh drone strikes on Ukraine after promising retaliation for Belgorod attack

Summary: In a series of apparent tit-for-tat attacks, Russia launched a wave of suicide drones against Ukrainian targets on Saturday night, following an attack on the Russian city Belgorod earlier in the day, which was ostensibly Ukraine’s response to an earlier, possibly record-settingly large missile and drone attack by Russia against major Ukrainian cities earlier over the weekend.

Context: The attack on Belgorod is notable, in part, because successful attacks on Russian cities have been sparse up to this point, and dozens of people were reportedly killed in that attack, alongside more than 100 injured; that said, this back and forth launching-of-things style of warfare seems to be picking up as both sides find themselves locked into fairly static positions on the ground, and as both sides have started to invest more effort in asymmetric, economy-harming and terror-stoking approaches, like bombing supply lines and shooting sacrificial drones at each others’ civilian centers.

—The Associated Press

The total human population surpassed 8 billion in 2023, but population growth-rates are down in most wealthy countries, and the US has a growth-rate of about half the global average, growing by only 75 million people last year.

—Axios

40%

Approximate portion of total US electricity that was produced by renewable sources like solar and wind in 2023.

That’s according to new data from the US Energy Information Agency, and though there are still some post-October numbers that need to be crunched, it’s looking like renewables (in aggregate) have bypassed coal in the country, and that solar in particular is growing just silly fast, with wind a bit more slowly and natural gas (not a renewable) representing the only truly booming fossil fuel-based source of electricity generation last year.

—Ars Technica

Trust Click

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit onesentencenews.substack.com