Politics
The Year in News 2016
The Year in News 2016
As an election year, 2016 was unequivocally political in nature.
It seemed like Donald Trump, Wikileaks, and so-called “fake news” dominated headlines throughout the year, regardless of what was going on in the world.
But how did the news cycle actually break down from a quantitative perspective?
For the second year in a row, we look to Echelon Insights for their infographic that analyzes the year’s news based on data from over two billion tweets.
Trumping the Conversation
While it is certainly no surprise that Donald Trump dominated the majority of political conversations, the actual numbers help to provide more clarity to this claim.
Trump consistently accounted for about 40-60% of the share of candidate mentions for the majority of the year leading up to the election, even during the primaries. Most of the time, this was roughly double that of Hillary Clinton’s share of mentions.
After November 8th, Trump mentions skyrocketed to make up nearly 80% of all candidate mentions.
Even though many of these mentions were of the negative variety, Trump proved that all publicity is good publicity. Trump’s statements got non-stop media coverage and social engagement, giving the Trump campaign a name recognition and mind share advantage. And ultimately, despite several controversial statements, this allowed his key messages to get relayed to the electorate where they were needed.
WikiLeaked
Hillary Clinton and the DNC also received no shortage of bad press – and these ended up being the two most-talked about “scandals” of the year by Twitter users in the U.S.
Here are the top 10 political controversies, and their number of mentions in 2016:
- WikiLeaks/Hacking: 33,083,038
- Clinton’s Emails: 21,123,778
- Deplorables: 5,989,433
- Electoral College: 5,330,993
- Trump Tapes: 5,212,502
- Voter Fraud: 4,789,013
- Abedin/Weiner: 3,758,636
- Fake News: 3,358,189
- Steve Bannon: 3,108,580
- Trump’s Taxes: 2,688,991
The original DNC leak from WikiLeaks in late-July prompted the resignation of DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz over allegations of the DNC undermining the Bernie Sanders campaign.
Meanwhile, the 50,000 emails from John Podesta were made available to the public in smaller tranches in October and November. The end result of this smart release strategy was that WikiLeaks and the hacks stayed in the news throughout the year, making it the top political controversy story (in terms of U.S. tweets) in 2016.
War
Visualized: Top 15 Global Tank Fleets
Heavily armed and armored, the modern tank is a versatile and mobile weapons platform, and a critical piece of contemporary warfare.
The Top 15 Global Tank Fleets
This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.
Heavily armed and armored, the modern tank is a versatile and mobile weapons platform, and a critical piece of contemporary warfare.
This visualization shows the top 15 global tank fleets, using data from the 2024 Military Balance report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
Let’s take an in-depth look at the top three fleets:
1. United States
As the world’s pre-eminent military power, it’s perhaps no surprise that the United States also has the largest tank fleet, by a wide margin.
In total, they have just over 45,000 armored fighting vehicles in operation, along with 2,640 main battle tanks (MBTs), and 12,800 vehicles in storage, of which 2,000 are main battle tanks.
Category | Vehicles | Global rank |
---|---|---|
Main battle tanks | 2,640 | 4 |
Armored reconnaissance | 1,745 | 1 |
Infantry fighting vehicles | 3,262 | 3 |
Armored personnel carriers | 10,644 | 1 |
Amphibious assault vehicles | 1,401 | 1 |
Armored utility vehicles | 28,445 | 1 |
Storage | 12,800 | 1 |
Total | 60,937 | 1 |
The U.S. is internalizing the lessons from the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, where Western-supplied anti-tank weapons and massed Ukrainian artillery have been cutting Russian tanks to pieces. As a result, the U.S. recently canceled an upgrade of the M1 Abrams in favor of a more ambitious upgrade.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is nervously eyeing a more confident China and a potential clash over Taiwan, where air and naval forces will be critical. However, a recent war game showed that Taiwanese mechanized ground forces, kitted out with American-made tanks and armored fighting vehicles, were critical in keeping the island autonomous.
2. Russia
According to Oryx, a Dutch open-source intelligence defense website, at time of writing, Russia has lost almost 2,800 main battle tanks since invading Ukraine. Considering that in the 2022 edition of the Military Balance, Russia was estimated to have 2,927 MBTs in operation, those are some hefty losses.
Russia has been able to maintain about 2,000 MBTs in the field, in part, by increasing domestic production. Many defense plants have been taken over by state-owned Rostec and now operate around the clock. Russia is also now spending a full third of their budget on defense, equivalent to about 7.5% of GDP.
At the same time, they’ve also been drawing down their Soviet-era stockpiles, which are modernized before being sent to the front. Just how long they can keep this up is an open question; their stockpiles are large, but not limitless. Here is what their storage levels look like:
Category | 2023 | 2024 | YOY change |
---|---|---|---|
Main battle tanks | 5,000 | 4,000 | -20.0% |
Armored reconnaissance | 1,000 | 100 | -90.0% |
Infantry fighting vehicles | 4,000 | 2,800 | -30.0% |
Armored personnel carriers | 6,000 | 2,300 | -61.7% |
Total | 16,000 | 9,200 | -42.5% |
3. China
China holds the third overall spot and top place globally for the number of main battle tanks in operation. Untypically, the People’s Liberation Army has no armored vehicles in storage, which perhaps isn’t surprising when you consider that China has been rapidly modernizing its military and that stockpiles usually contain older models.
China also has one of the world’s largest fleets of armored fighting vehicles, second only to the United States. Breaking down that headline number, we can also see that they have the largest number of light tanks, wheeled guns, and infantry fighting vehicles.
Category | Vehicles | Global rank |
---|---|---|
Main battle tanks | 4,700 | 1 |
Light tanks | 1,330 | 1 |
Wheeled guns | 1,250 | 1 |
Infantry fighting vehicles | 8,200 | 1 |
Armored personnel carriers | 3,604 | 5 |
Airborne combat vehicles | 180 | 2 |
Amphibious assault vehicles | 990 | 2 |
Total | 20,254 | 3 |
This is equipment that would be integral if China were to make an attempt to reunify Taiwan with the mainland by force, where lightly armored mechanized units need to move with speed to occupy the island before Western allies can enter the fray. It’s worth noting that China also has one of the world’s largest fleets of amphibious assault vehicles.
End of the Tank?
Many commentators at the outset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, were quick to predict the end of the tank, however, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the tank’s demise are greatly exaggerated.
With the U.S. and China both developing remote and autonomous armored vehicles, tanks could be quite different in the future, but there is nothing else that matches them for firepower, mobility, and survivability on the modern battlefield today.
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