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Comment by mtw | Hacker News Reader

I find it interesting that this ex-NSA operative casually explains her job was probing China computer systems and then assessing what data can be stolen from China. But then publicly the USA point fingers at Huawei or Chinese government from doing the same.

Same also UAE vs the USA. If the NSA is doing it, why wouldn't any Middle East country be able to hack other citizens/companies/governments? Sounds like a band of thieves bad-mouthing other thieves

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> I find it interesting that this ex-NSA operative casually explains her job was probing China computer systems and then assessing what data can be stolen from China

Yes, that's literally what a signals intelligence service is about.

> But then publicly the USA point fingers at Huawei or Chinese government from doing the same.

Uh, yeah, countries have always done espionage and punished espionage committed against them, and, particularly, vilified entities that are overtly something other than an intelligence service that are caught acting as an agent of hostile intelligence services.

> If the NSA is doing it, why wouldn't any Middle East country be able to hack other citizens/companies/governments?

They are clearly able to do it.

I think a clear difference is the US generally does not spy with the purpose of giving US corporations insider secrets to enable US corps to copy directly their foreign competitors.

Uh, they totally did. To French companies, to Brazilian companies, and passed it on for advantage in negotiations and contract bidding:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-bra... https://sputniknews.com/politics/201506301024010800/

Nothing in either article you linked says anything about passing information to US companies.

Those are bad examples they gave, but the point is still valid.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/29/wikileaks_docs_show...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-security-snowden-germany/...

neither of these suggest they passed information to US companies

The U.S. used to do this historically to European companies for sure, mostly in the 18/19th centuries[1]. Now it doesn't need to do it anymore, so it's on a high horse, because another country it's in a position the US was 200 years ago?

1 - https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/06/we-were-pirates-too

loling at the steady retreat to "it happened 200 years ago"

This is standard Chinese apologia, "The US et. al. did it literally 200 years ago so it's fine that China does it now".

I can't wait to see this line of thinking applied to ethnic cleansing.

The US did it 200 years ago because it needed to do so, in order to kick start its own industry. China is in exactly the same situation now, so why should they have it any harder? Japan did it in the 80s etc. It's a cycle countries on path to developed each go through

P.S. Are you seriously comparing ethnic cleansing to IP theft?

many americans found it profitable to own slaves 200 years ago, that doesn't mean chinese people should

Again, you are comparing owning slaves to IP theft? Not everything that was done 200 years ago is automatically somehow more immoral today than it was then. IP theft would be one of these things.

i'm using your reasoning to reach an obviously false conclusion, in order to demonstrate that your reasoning is faulty and ill-considered. i am arguing about principles, and you are arguing special pleading.

No, you're arguing as if every single act one can perform is the same, morally speaking. You're reaching 'an obviously false conclusion', because you start with a reasoning that I don't hold. I don't think every action is morally equivalent, yet that's the premise you use in order to attack my argument.

Or you know, the game theory is different when you're already the dominant power. There when you use intelligence apparatus for economic espionage, you tend to use it to keep other nations down rather than giving it to your companies.

I read both of your links, and neither one offers any support for your claim.

It is true though.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/820758.stm

I can't find a link for it but during Clinton's presidency in the 90s he setup a government office to disseminate NSA collected economic intelligence to private US businesses.

Edit: here's another example. https://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/15/world/emerging-role-for-t...

Neither of those links says that US intelligence agencies passed information to US companies, either.

The first link says that US intelligence exposed bribes made by European companies. That seems good. The second link says that US intelligence gave US government trade negotiators useful info on foreign government negotiators. Seems valid.

> Neither of those links says that US intelligence agencies passed information to US companies, either.

From the first link: "But a report published by the European Parliament in February alleges that Echelon twice helped US companies gain a commercial advantage over European firms."

Echelon = US intelligence.

Some other quotes that support my comments.

"two alleged instances of US snooping in the 1990s, which he says followed the newly-elected Clinton administration's policy of "aggressive advocacy" for US firms bidding for foreign contracts."

Go and read Secret Power. After the conclusion of the cold war and before the war on terror US intelligence didn't have incredibly clear deliverables and the US had just come off a recession. Supporting the US in the global marketplace did become a priority for both the CIA and NSA, driven by Clinton.

And yes, exposing bribes is good. But exposing bribes for personal profit? That's more debatable.

It does, if you read it properly, but even assuming it doesn't for a second, the U.S. used to do this historically to European companies for sure, mostly in the 18/19th centuries[1]. Now it doesn't need to do it anymore, but China does because it is in the same position the US was 200 years ago, doing vert similar things and you somehow feel morally superior?

1 - https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/06/we-were-pirates-too

Read “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” sometime.

Why wouldn't they do that?

I don't buy that for a second.

An honest question: if a foreign country had sufficient evidence that U.S. intelligence services committed signals espionage against them / stole state secrets / stole IP, then would U.S. media (mainstream or alternative) be allowed to report on the incident? Would U.S. media report on incident even if they are allowed?

https://www.google.com/search?q=belgacom+hacking

True, it was GCHQ not NSA, but it's similar enough.

The US media reported on Snowden extensively, so: probably?

" be allowed to report on the incident?"

Yes.

Other nations would be reporting it generally, so it'd be absurd to suppress public information.

Now, it might be 'spun' in the national interest, in a time of war or something like that.

But if the US Government stile IP from Didi, handed it over to Apple execs, then blocked Didi from doing business in the US thus giving Apple a monopoly there ... it would be news.

The US gov. plays geopolitical games, and maybe does some political interference 'for business' - but is not stealing trade secrets to hand over to arbitrary US businesses.

I think the US would steal the plans for a new 'jet engine' or weapon system however.

Also consider that for really valuable stuff, the US pays a lot of money in the private sector. US companies pay top dollar for 'top talent' which is a lot easier than stealing.

Yes. The media could report on that.The U.S. reports on all sorts of things that the elite or intelligence services would rather not have revealed.

" But then publicly the USA point fingers at Huawei or Chinese government from doing the same."

Security related espionage and industrial espionage are entirely different things.

They overlap a little bit when it relates to 'defence industry' - but the US is not actively stealing stuff from DiDi and handing it off to Apple whereas the inverse is true.

Contrary to whatever politicians publicly say, nation-state corporate espionage isn't a moral problem, it's a realpolitik trade problem. The only reason the world respects our IP system is because we signed onto a shitton of trade agreements, otherwise no one, not the Chinese, the US, or the Soviets, has any obligation not to sneak into the other country and steal everything not nailed down.

In that case, might as well root for whoever the home team is

I think the big/only difference between us and China in this regard is that the US government don't do this to Chinese companies and then take those secrets and give them to American companies.

We have a set of rules we follow and China has different rules, rules that violate ours, so we point fingers.

> I think the big/only difference between us and China in this regard is that the US government don't do this to Chinese companies and then take those secrets and give them to American companies.

How do you know this does not happen in defense-related industries?

Not OP. Also not saying it doesn't happen, but the incentive structures are different in both countries. A lot of private industry in China is defacto government owned due how business works there - You can't build a business there to scale without having ingratiated yourself to some higher ups of the party at some level. While the same thing may or may not happen in the US, we also have the option of being able to grow obscenely large without being tight knit with the government - See Facebook and a large chunk of Silicon Valley.

It's commonly touted that the purpose of forcing foreign companies to submit their IP to a Chinese owned branch as a prerequisite to conducting business in China is so the government can exfiltrate foreign IP back to China. The government isn't in the business of building out all these industries themselves - they anoint some select chosen in their cabal who profits enormously from getting the blessing of their local party members, while sending generous kickbacks their way. There's some Chinese billionaire who talks about it on YouTube - I can't recall his name off the top of my head.

Assessment of foreign military equipment/tech bought (or stolen) by the US is highly dependent on defense contractors.

There is less of an incentive for the US to steal commercial tech, but that would probably change if "our tech" fell behind "their tech."

In defense related industries, it surely does happen if it can be done. Outside of that, probably only what can be got away with by bad agents for side deals.

Um, except the US totally does do that. See for example:

Uh, they totally did. To French companies, to Brazilian companies, and passed it on for advantage in negotiations and

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-bra... https://sputniknews.com/politics/201506301024010800/

Neither article claims what you say it claims.

Someone further up in the thread posted better sources.

Which were also bullshit.

> But then publicly the USA point fingers at Huawei or Chinese government from doing the same.

The only thing remarkable about this is the mechanism: Mainstream media mouthpiecing these viewpoints. Surely, they know better. But they are obviously willing tools.

Another angle is whether you want the backdoor in your core infrastructure. So far other than the fbi cases and the trade issues, the concentration is on the 5g backend. It is not bad mouthing. It is a real worry.

Not just American. The Microsoft has to show source code I read in news has to demo it to china. But china has no choice here.

But when it happens to America, natural course of action I think.

That's the age old game though. We all know everybody is hacking and spying on everybody else. We only get mad about it when they get caught. Until then, game on.

I find it laughable when the US "attributes" an attack to a foreign power, and the media just laps it up and preaches it as gospel. In the vault-7 release on wikileaks, the NSA has a pretty nifty tool to....manipulate packets to make them look like they are coming from a different source, and insert comments in 4 foreign languages.

We are asked to believe that Russias most talented hackers, somehow are stupid enough to leave comments in Acrylic that mentions the head of the GRU. Yes, I'm sure they did that. Just like our payloads have comments attributing our code to Obama or Trump. The "stolen" emails were "downloaded" at 3x the rate of the internet connection going to the email server. It happens to match the rate of USB2, and most likely a USB stick was used to copy the emails directly from the server.

Here's a talk by Ray McGovern (ex cia), which lays the case out. Don't take his word for it. Research the facts he claims. I kind of poo-poo'd him at first. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngIKjpucQh8

Here's an article describing the NSA's "Marble Framework". Go to the vault and look at their own words from the NSA's docs: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/wikil...

Vault-7 NSA's "Marble Framework": https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/cms/page_14588467.html

> somehow are stupid enough to leave comments in Acrylic

compilation artifacts and strings in malware - very common method of researching attribution and most tools pull them as IoCs

even if you write tools to strip or null them out all it takes is a single OPSEC failure and you've leaked this info, and we see those all the time

should also be noted that the build paths was not the only attribution indicator in that case

Vault 7 had nothing to do with NSA.

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