Thousands of people went online on Tuesday night to monitor a flight carrying the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan. Flight tracking website Flightradar24 said more than 708,000 people followed the airplane’s course making it the “most tracked live flight of all time”. FlightRadar were forced to create a waiting room to ensure that the website would not crash due to the increase in online traffic. Meanwhile millions of people watched livestreams of the event on Weibo, the popular Chinese social media platform. Why did Nancy Pelosi’s flight generate so much attention? Firstly, she...