Links for 02-21-2013

• America's New Mandarins - The Daily Beast - "Passing the tests and becoming a "scholar official" was a ticket to a very good, very secure life.  And there is something to like about a system like this . . . especially if you happen to be good at exams.   Of course, once you gave the imperial bureaucracy a lot of power, and made entrance into said bureaucracy conditional on passing a tough exam, what you have is . . . a country run by people who think that being good at exams is the most important thing on earth.  Sound familiar?"
• U.S. Ups Ante for Spying on Firms: China, Others Are Threatened With Penalties - WSJ.com - "The White House threatened China and other countries with trade and diplomatic action over corporate espionage as it cataloged more than a dozen cases of cyberattacks and commercial thefts at some of the U.S.'s biggest companies."
• The Obama Campaign's Technology Is a Force Multiplier - NYTimes.com
• Inside Team Romney’s whale of an IT meltdown | Ars Technica - A lot of detail about where the Romney data effort broke down.