February 27, 2026

2027 PREVIEW? How China is masking drone flights in potential Taiwan rehearsal.

A large Chinese military drone has conducted regular flights over the South China Sea in recent months while transmitting false transponder signals that made it appear to be other aircraft, including a sanctioned Belarusian cargo plane and a British Typhoon fighter jet.

Military attaches and security analysts scrutinising the operations say the flights represent a step-change in China’s grey-zone tactics in the contested South China Sea and appear to be testing possible decoy capabilities in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Since August, at least 23 flights have been logged under the call sign YILO4200, a known long-endurance Chinese military drone, but the aircraft transmitted registration numbers of other aircraft, according to Reuters analysis of data from flight-tracking website Flightradar24.

The flight paths often head east from the Chinese province of Hainan towards the Philippines, near the disputed Paracel Islands, and down Vietnam’s coast, the flight analysis showed.

Here’s the reference (although there are countless versions of it, going back several years) from the headline: Why does 2027 Keep Coming up About the Chinese Military? “From the Davidson Window to other prognostications, the window of greatest possibility for war with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is generally seen as opening in 2027.”

Posted at 9:40 am by Stephen Green

#JOURNALISM:

Posted at 9:16 am by Glenn Reynolds

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: A Pox on Everyone Who Keeps Hillary Clinton in the News. “It’s the Republicans who are foisting her upon us now, however and it’s all in another futile attempt to ‘get’ the Clintons. As I’ve written often, nailing the Clintons for anything is the Great White Whale for many conservatives. And as I have written even more often: it ain’t gonna happen. When Mr. and Mrs. C were first subpoenaed over the Epstein stuff last summer, I reminded everyone that they’ve been through this before and are very good at never getting any comeuppance.”

Posted at 9:09 am by Stephen Green

#JOURNALISM:

Posted at 8:47 am by Glenn Reynolds

REPORT FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Legendary Lower Broadway honky tonk owner says property taxes could ruin Nashville. “There seems to be no bottom to the despair caused by Nashville’s historic property tax increase. The one-two punch of soaring property values and a 26% tax hike is putting businesses — and some homeowners — on the ropes. Now, the Tennessee General Assembly is considering whether to step in.”

Nashville needs adult supervision.

Posted at 8:33 am by Glenn Reynolds

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE:

Posted at 7:48 am by Glenn Reynolds

DEMOCRACY DIES IN GASLIGHTING:

 

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

SHARIA-FREE AMERICA CAUCUS GROWS: Three more House GOPers have joined the newly organized Sharia-Free America Caucus whose purpose is to stop, reverse and forever defeat the forces seeking the Islamization of this country.

 

Posted at 7:37 am by Mark Tapscott

CYBERSECURITY: New AirSnitch attack breaks Wi-Fi encryption in homes, offices, and enterprises.

The hardware manufacturers face yet another challenge: The client isolation mechanisms vary from maker to maker. With no industry-wide standard, these one-off solutions are splintered and may not receive the concerted security attention that formal protocols are given.

So how bad is AirSnitch, really?

With a basic understanding of AirSnitch, the next step is to put it into historical context and assess how big a threat it poses in the real world. In some respects, it resembles the 2007 PTW attack (named for its creators Andrei Pyshkin, Erik Tews, and Ralf-Philipp Weinmann) that completely and immediately broke WEP, leaving Wi-Fi users everywhere with no means to protect themselves against nearby adversaries. For now, client isolation is similarly defeated—almost completely and overnight—with no immediate remedy available.

At the same time, the bar for waging WEP attacks was significantly lower, since it was available to anyone within range of an AP. AirSnitch, by contrast, requires that the attacker already have some sort of access to the Wi-Fi network. For many people, that may mean steering clear of public Wi-Fi networks altogether.

If the network is properly secured—meaning it’s protected by a strong password that’s known only to authorized users — AirSnitch may not be of much value to an attacker. The nuance here is that even if an attacker doesn’t have access to a specific SSID, they may still use AirSnitch if they have access to other SSIDs or BSSIDs that use the same AP or other connecting infrastructure.

What a mess.

I keep my home network as protected as possible — which might not be enough — and quit using anybody else’s WiFi years ago, and just rely on 5G and tethering when needed.

Posted at 7:36 am by Stephen Green

INFILTRATION:

Posted at 7:19 am by Glenn Reynolds

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

POISONING THE MINDS OF BOTH OF THEIR VIEWERS:

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

February 26, 2026

SPIRITUAL SIDE OF AI/ADDICTION ISSUE: Consider the implications if algorithmic-induced addiction is as deeply serious a problem as is depicted in current litigation, and it can be combined with Artificial Intelligence:

“Artificial intelligence dramatically lowers the cost of deception while algorithmic platforms dramatically amplify its reach. Together they form a compounding loop: manipulation becomes cheaper, distribution becomes frictionless, and correction becomes nearly impossible. A lie crosses a continent before the truth has tied its shoes — and now the lie is written, targeted, and delivered by software that never sleeps,” writes Col. (Ret) Bob Maginnis in The Washington Stand.

But there are even more aspects of this dilemma:

“In my book ‘The New AI Cold War,’ I argue that the defining contest of this century is not merely geopolitical — it is civilizational. The conflict pits liberty-centered systems grounded in human dignity against authoritarian systems that weaponize information and treat citizens as programmable inputs.

“China’s social credit infrastructure and Russia’s disinformation apparatus are the most visible expressions of this model. But the temptation to centralize control through technology is not exclusive to tyrants. Free societies face a parallel seduction: the idol of efficiency, dressed in the language of innovation.”

This is an important piece that merits serious and thoughtful reading.

 

Posted at 9:54 pm by Mark Tapscott

OPEN THREAD: You know what to do.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds