Number 4. Breitbart. China Adds ‘Robot Wolves’ to Military Exercises.
The Peoples’ Liberation Army (PLA) has made some progress in the last year. Their robot wolves — dog-looking mechanical critters — in new videos show assets that can climb stairs, step through challenging terrain, and carry AK style rifles. They appear much more sophisticated than previous models.
The wolves apparently operate in packs at the direction of a human controller a few yards away. The less the distance, the easier it is to defeat battlefield jamming.
No doubt PLA resources have been studying the effects of radio-controlled drones in the Ukraine.
It is unlikely that hordes of Chinese robot wolves will soon invade Honolulu or San Francisco, but this is the 21st century and Donald Trump’s foreign policy tariffs are making their mark.
The new wolfie videos are undoubtedly propaganda intended to give westerners pause when contemplating an armed confrontation. To be sure, the prospect of facing fast-moving steel wolves with machine guns would make anyone stop and think, but it seems a heavy-handed way to make an adversary fear a confrontation.
The free market being what it is, I suspect the advertisements for new Chinese war-wolves will spark sudden interest among American engineers. Where there is military innovation on the part of adversaries, lucrative Pentagon contracts will not be far behind.
Number 3. The Hill. Democrats seek to close social media gap with GOP, Trump.
Speaking of innovation, Democrats seem to have concluded that they lost the 2024 presidential election last year because they lost the social media war. Right-wing influencers on X, Instagram and YouTube were ascendant last year, with almost no funding required of the Republican National Committee.
Support for Donald Trump was organic and wide-spread, probably a reaction to the policies of the Biden years.
Democrat money was dumped into last-minute fund-raising in the weeks before the election. Huge amounts — like $1 billion raised in a short period of time — were spent by the Harris campaign on big-ticket election eve concerts which appeared to get little traction. The losing campaign still ended up $20 million in debt.
Democrat operatives now appear to have perceived the problem: They really didn’t need top-down money; what they needed was grass-roots energy.
So for the next matchup, blue political actors have determined to put the money where it will be most effective: Enlisting social media creators to influence voters. To that end, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is reportedly ready to spend $10 million on social media.
News like that tempts a blogger to salivate ever so slightly.
DCCC will organize a media “boot camp” to explain to their field operatives how to change hearts and minds to a blue way of thinking. It is not clear how the training will be conducted — my guess is digitally remote rather than in-your-face barracks, thus offering a bit of anonymity — but will deliver message content as well as communication techniques to promote the Liberal Way of Life.
With plans for over 600 social media creators to be recruited, and with $10 million on the table, I wonder how thorough their vetting process could possibly be.
I think I’ll get in line. How hard could the rhetoric be? I can rant like anyone else.
“Stop the Hitler wanna-be’s from tearing our country apart!”
“We’re fed up with octogenarian authoritarians!”
“From our rivers to our seas!”
On top of everything else Donald Trump is involved in, he has voiced plans for a return to the moon and the development of a nuclear power plant on the lunar surface. This has created some buzz on both sides of the political aisle.
Some pundits have criticized the plan because of expense and “we have our own problems on Earth to solve,” while others are foaming at the mouth for investment opportunities in the new technologies required.
CBS Mornings Plus entered the fray when hosts Vladimir Duthiers and Adriana Diaz interviewed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. They began to discuss long-term residence on the moon. Diaz wondered whether it was inevitable that the U.S. undertake colonization.
Perhaps this was an unfortunate choice of words. “Colonization,” in our current social fabric, is a dog whistle if ever there was one. The British brutally subjugated the Indian continent, among many others, and the Europeans coming west wantonly destroyed a perfectly serene Native American lifestyle in North America. Or so the narrative goes.
(Never mind that India sent millions of volunteer troops to support the Crown in both world wars, or that thousands of Native Americans volunteered for U.S. military service in both wars. Details. Who cares about details.)
On the broadcast, Scientist Tyson pointed out current U.S. policy is probably a reaction to China’s stated goals. They intend to exploit lunar resources and establish their own bases there. Some humor ensued, over contemplating how difficult it would be to live on the moon’s surface. But Duthiers got serious and brought the panel back down to earth, as it were.
“We know how the age of colonialism worked on this planet," he said. "Should we be trying to colonize [the moon]?"
“How colonialism worked out,” was no doubt a reference to the familiar argument that indigenous peoples were persecuted around the globe, a favorite objection often lodged against western powers.
After a brief pause, Tyson pointed out that the problems attending colonization in Earth’s history is that in every case, “there were people already there.”
That seemed to give the highly intelligent hosts pause, and Tyson added it is unlikely that current moon people will be displaced by new space-suited nuclear engineers.
One wonders how an astrophysicist could participate in such a conversation with a straight face — or without supreme disgust.
Fluffy, it’s time to step up and take one for the team!
Honestly, if the Facebook post by Denmark’s Aalborg Zoo had not used the term “pets” to describe dinner offerings required by their caged carnivores, this probably would not have been news. But they did, and there ensued passionately agitated discourse in cyberspace.
Pet owners are incensed that the Zoo would raise the image of tossing Baby Furry over the fence so the tigers could snatch it out of the air mid-screech. (That is not even remotely what is envisioned.)
Natural animal enthusiasts are shocked that zoo specimens might go hungry for want of a “whole carcass” dinner selection. (Zoo animals are at no risk of going hungry.)
Trying to calm the troubled waters, an ensuing Facebook post by the Zoo explained they are merely protecting the health of their exhibits. Certain wild animals, they said, are accustomed to feasting on a recent kill. This means they dig through fur, skin and bones to get to the good parts. That’s nature.
I think I’ll stop there with the detail. In a family publication you probably would sooner avoid a discussion of the nutrition benefits of offal — a word rarely heard around the dinner table — or how dietarily desirable the impolite pieces are to, say, a lion or a lynx rummaging through the warm, wet…
Well, never mind. Let’s move on.
Feeding small critters to large ones is how it’s done in Denmark and, truth be told, in most American zoos as well. Wild animals have a certain breeding, and the fact we have chosen to keep them in captivity has not made them suddenly genteel.
Chickens and rabbits are usual contributors to animal diet, and to human, for that matter. We two-legged types do not enjoy guinea pig or horse so much, but those become feasts for tigers and their ilk.
At the Aalborg Zoo, and probably every other European zoo, donated animals are humanely euthanized before being fed to the inmates.
God created this system, not us. Probably, the whole thing got warped at The Fall (see Genesis chapter 3), but this is what we have today. Lions and tigers gotta eat.
In the meantime, I think maybe working in a beef or hog slaughterhouse should be at least an elective course for middle schoolers. At a minimum, it would make some school board meetings much more entertaining.
And thanks for joining The Alligator News Roundup for Friday, August 15, 2025. Take your dog for a walk this weekend, but keep her on a leash. She is a faithful friend to you, but may be a tantalizing dinner treat for hidden eyes watching your every move.
Have a good weekend!
