Asian Powers Set Their Strategic Sights on Europe | For Putin, the EU Is a Bigger Threat Than NATO, and more

It is the EU, not NATO, that presents the real existential threat to the Kremlin. That’s because Ukraine’s membership in and integration into the EU could deliver a fatal blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his regime by turning Ukraine into what Russia most fears: a political, economic, and sociocultural alternative to Russia itself. Although Putin’s popularity among Russians remains high, the Kremlin could very well worry that Russian citizens may begin to see the benefits of EU membership across the border and desire an alternative future for their country.
That would explain why Putin began his long war against Ukraine in 2014. At that time, Ukraine was militarily neutral and was not actively seeking to join NATO. (It had previously expressed interest in membership in 2008.) But Kyiv was about to sign an association agreement with the EU that the Kremlin’s interference in Ukrainian politics could not prevent.

TikTok Pushed Young German Voters Toward Far-Right Party  (David Gilert, Wired)
TikTok helped promote Germany’s far-right extremist political party to young voters ahead of last month’s EU elections, even when they were searching the app for other political parties or politicians, according to a new report shared exclusively with WIRED.
The report was written by researchers from the nonprofit organization AI Forensics and Interface, a European think tank specializing in information technology. Researchers found that in a quarter of cases, young users in Germany searching on the app for specific political parties and their politicians in the weeks leading up to the vote on June 5 were instead given suggestions for other parties. In the majority of these cases, they were given suggestions linked to Alternative for Germany (AfD), Germany’s leading far-right party.
It is already well documented that the AfD has successfully leveraged TikTok to spread extremism and disinformation to a younger audience, but the new research suggests that the far-right group, which was labeled “extremist” by a German court earlier this year, was aided by the TikTok algorithm itself.

Could China’s Navy Avoid U.S.-Style Fleet Aging Issues?  (James Holmes, National Interest)
During a Q&A session, an Indian Navy student suggested that China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA Navy) could maintain fleet readiness by rapidly replacing or demoting aging ships instead of facing the maintenance issues typical of older vessels.