Thursday NatSec Roundup

To unpathed waters, undreamed shores.

• If you haven’t read Paul Musgrave’s history of the Gorbachev Pizza Hut ad, please do so now. Gorbachev himself is not pleased...
• Check out Uri Friedman on how the bromance between Kim Jong Eun and Donald Trump soured. I still think that the North Koreans will make a push to get something from Trump in the next year, but we’ll see.
• Looks like China is delaying its carrier plans. Economic problems and technical difficulties with the Type 002 ship (a large scale CATOBAR carrier, but with conventional propulsion), have apparently pushed plans to build a pair of nuclear supercarriers back just a bit. It also looks as if Liaoning (the first carrier, originally built in Ukraine) will be upgraded to full combat capability.
• In context of Mike Bloomberg’s defense of Xi Jinping, Xavier Marquez has deep thoughts on what makes a dictator.
• Trump’s revisions to the small arms export rules are every kind of bad that you would imagine them to be.
• No, Japan will not be adding catapults and an angled deck to its Izumo class carriers. Read the story for a fun look into how misinformation travels rapidly on the internet.