Aren't there still pieces of debris from that Chinese anti-satellite test a while back?

Yeah. Most of there are still there, 800 km up, and are likely to be there until somebody cleans up the mess.

Any true deep space combat would likely be years of boredom, interspersed with microseconds of terror.

In this case, I do.

That would only work if they could prove the documents were indeed forgeries....

For some reason, Wilde vs Queensberry comes to mind here.

Go ahead. Make my day. Sue on that basis. Let me make some popcorn.

While the goal of the bill may seem reasonable,

This is the Arizona Republican Party we are talking about here. Of course the goals of this Bill are not reasonable.

You're not going to use the last guy turning the heat off in the evening as the time to start your black ops raid.

Now, I suspect that this was collateral damage Ii.e., not the intended target). However, have you ever hear of cryptographic traffic analysis ? (The British used it to deduce German sub movements before they could reliably decrypt the Enigma.) Did you know that people look at things like pizza deliveries to certain offices as signs of impending military moves ? I bet those same people would love to also have the thermostat setting changes for those offices.

There are obvious commercial analogs. For example, if there are rumors of a possible merger of between company X and either Y or Z, you might be able to make a good deal of money if you knew whether Y or Z's financial people were working late.

Keep in mind that China has a recorded history of what, something between 11,000 and 17,000 years?

Say what ? The Qin Shi Huang Emperor "buried the scholars and burned the books" in 213 BCE so the history of anything much before his reign is exceedingly fragmentary. The oldest extant Chinese writings are the Oracle "bones", which date from no earlier than 1500 BCE. Even Sima Qian started his history with the Yellow Emperor (~ 2600 BC), the first ruler he considered as probably historical.

So, two thousand years ? Yes. Three, four thousand ? Maybe. Ten thousand ? No way.

I deal with Chinese companies on a regular basis, and can assure you that they are innovating like mad. China is following the same classic development arc, which goes something like copy, steal, make, innovate, that the Japanese did ~ 50 years ago.

If you travel to China, this is old news.

Yes, some businesses are beginning to require wiped travel laptops for entering the US. I have to say that I do not know anyone personally who has had laptop issues at the US border (although I know that there are some people who are on some sort of list and have them frequently). The assumption is, if you go to China, you will probably be hacked, and it's not going to happen at Customs.

By the way, in my experience Chinese firms are incredibly paranoid about this, much more so than US firms. I suspect that paranoia has some justification.