The War Office decreased greatly in importance after the First World War, a fact illustrated by the drastic reductions of its staff numbers during the inter-war period. Its responsibilities and funding were also reduced. During 1936, the government of Stanley Baldwin appointed a Minister for Co-ordination of Defence, who was not part of the War Office. When Winston Churchill became Prime Minister during 1940, he bypassed the War Office altogether and appointed himself Minister of Defence (though there was, curiously, no ministry of defence until 1947). Clement Attlee continued this arrangement when he came to power during 1945 but appointed a separate Minister of Defence for the first time during 1947. During 1964, the present form of the Ministry of Defence was established, unifying the War Office, Admiralty, and Air Ministry.
An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build such a connection or interface is called an API specification. A computer system that meets this standard is said to implement or expose an API. The term API may refer either to the specification or to the implementation.
In contrast to a user interface, which connects a computer to a person, an application programming interface connects computers or pieces of software to each other. It is not intended to be used directly by a person (the end user) other than a computer programmer who is incorporating it into software. An API is often made up of different parts which act as tools or services that are available to the programmer. A program or a programmer that uses one of these parts is said to call that portion of the API. The calls that make up the API are also known as subroutines, methods, requests, or endpoints. An API specification defines these calls, meaning that it explains how to use or implement them.
One purpose of APIs is to hide the internal details of how a system works, exposing only those parts a programmer will find useful and keeping them consistent even if the internal details later change. An API may be custom-built for a particular pair of systems, or it may be a shared standard allowing interoperability among many systems.
"The West should really have worried about China decades ago. Now it's already a bit too late, because the West has built its strong system in China and to simply cut it off, it will hurt deeply. That's why China is very arrogant."
Ai Weiwei has never minced his words about China. "It is a police state," he says.
First, the U.S. is — rightly — no longer willing to accept China’s unfair trade restrictions on importing of U.S. goods and its stealing of the intellectual property of U.S. firms — something the U.S. tolerated for many years before China became a technology powerhouse.
And second, now that China is a technology powerhouse — and technological products all have both economic and military applications, unlike the toys, T-shirts and tennis shoes that used to dominate China-U.S. trade — the two sides are struggling to figure out what to buy and sell from and to each other, without damaging their national security. The ripping sound you hear is the sound of two giant economies starting to decouple ⇒ possibility that the integration of global innovation ecosystems will collapse as a result of mutual efforts by the United States and China to exclude one another.
And now that tear is moving to people. Since June 11, the State Department has been restricting visas for Chinese graduate students studying in sensitive fields — like aviation, robotics and advanced manufacturing — to one year, instead of five years. There has also been a crackdown on Chinese investments in anything close to American infrastructure or military-related industries.
Many of those who do go abroad now prefer Canada and Australia over America. The U.S. will pay a price for that over time.
This decoupling is not all Idiot-in-Chief’s fault — not by a long shot. China’s president, Xi Jinping, also overplayed his hand, taking over islands in the South China Sea, announcing plans to invest massive amounts so China can dominate critical technologies of the 21st century, and worse, tightening Communist Party rule over Hong Kong and horrendously sending Muslims in Western China to “re-education” camps. He’s also resisting pressures to reduce China’s most abusive trade practices.
The country benefited tremendously from the globalization system that the U.S. and its allies built since World War II, but Beijing has often been grudging about making any sacrifices to maintain it.
