Chinese Hackers Target Universities in Pursuit of Maritime Military Secrets
wsj.com
wsj.com
I believe this is a tragic mistake that will be looked on with regret in 20-30 years (or maybe less), but it is what it is.
Because the thing about capitalism, is that its acolytes will happily sell the rope that they will be hanged with. To meet Wall Street's next quarterly expectations for rope sales, of course.
Companies want to do business with China, because there is money to be made, and their owners don't give a care about free speech or religion of people on the other side of the world.
And this is a good thing. It means that there's a lot of wealthy, influential people, who would really hate for there to be a war between two superpowers, despite the best efforts of nationalists.
PS. Countries spy on eachother all the time. If you think the US does not steal military secrets from its friends, and enemies, I've got a bridge to sell you.
There are other mechanisms for combating Chinese wrongdoings
So what's your alternative?
We should probably raise the bar as to what constitutes an enemy if we want to remain on our moral high horse, because otherwise we're hypocrites. Just my two cents.
When others talk about protecting themselves _from you_, yes, that's uncomfortable. But saying "we get so appalled and shocked" kind of points at a straw-man "we" here. That's not "us" in every case. It might just be those reactionaries over here or there. It also points at the shock of diving into a culture as the US did in the middle east: Wow, it's diverse, not just one opinion--shocking. That's how education happens.
Raising the bar as to what constitutes an enemy carries a very clear risk, too: Underestimating your enemy. People know a lot about that nowadays.
However I think we can develop our cultural vocabulary here. There's an opportunity for that and it's very clear when discussions about "enemy" and how it's awkward even arise.
do they? or are you talking about Americans getting appalled and shocked by people calling for their deaths? There is a significant difference.
In the same reasoning, you could argue that EU should consider US as an enemy, since there is plenty of evidence on US spying on EU.
So please explain why it's not OK for China to spy on US, but it's ok for US to spy on EU.
You mean China is doing something similar to that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Concerns
"In 1999, Enercon, a German company and leading manufacturer of wind energy equipment, developed a breakthrough generator for wind turbines. After applying for a US patent, it had learned that Kenetech, an American rival, had submitted an almost identical patent application shortly before. By the statement of a former NSA employee, it was later discovered that the NSA had secretly intercepted and monitored Enercon's data communications and conference calls and passed information regarding the new generator to Kenetech"
Please tell me the difference again...
Ultimately, US foreign policy follows its citizen’s best interests. And, ignoring our occasional knee jerk reactions, most of our citizens are happy when we avoid war, expand individual rights and freedoms, increase trade, and maintain global stability.
China may not work out as expected, though. Who knows. I doubt anyone in the 70s believed that technology would advance far enough to allow an oppressive government to effectively control billions of people. Or, maybe the Chinese people are happy enough with their recently gained wealth that they accept being oppressed.
There is no rule against posting a paywalled article on HN when there is a workaround. FWIW I had posted an outline link in the comment on that posting.
This is clearly an extreme position, but how extreme do you think it will be in 5 years?
Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers from which they dare not dismount.
To begin with, even if US is to completely ban the entire trade with China, it will be just a prick to an elephant...
Surely, the rest of the world will eagerly buy iToys, and stuff like cheap clothing – China is safe in that scenario. Not so much for US, biggest US exports to China are unsellable anywhere else. Surely, soybeans can be sold as animal feed, but it will saturate the market few times over.
Xi’s base of power is also not as stable as it seems. There’s grumbling within the party about him over reaching and the slowing economy is giving his opponents ammunition. If things continue on the current path, you may start to see open opposition to Xi’s policies, which will lead to questions about Xi’s leadership.
IMO they'll place their bets on regional hot spots and boundary-keeping, while continuing to turn their economic partners into colonial-style resources. A tight game but one with a lot of potential for easy wins for China that can close some important geopolitical gaps. I think 10-20 years is a possibility for open conflict around boundaries, but in 5 years, no way. It's a cliche but I really think they are much too wise for that. Maybe it comes from wallet-feels but it looks like wisdom. To be Chinese right now, and an advocate for war, also means advocating for your own restricted rights to be restricted even further. The smart money is on China looking for economic safety and potential rebounds.
In that time period the US must absolutely continue to 1) diversify in all areas from society and culture to technology theory, 2) rebuild important partnerships that have recently been sabotaged and 3) leverage its renewed cultural signage as political influence within China.
The US has the qualitative advantage in education and technology and we can easily keep that edge sharp enough to cause massive fears within our enemy before conflict ever breaks out.
The west also desperately needs open cultural dialogue-technology (basically: a new vocabulary) regarding nuclear exchange and its meaning and potential. I remember watching an "educated" person expressing nuclear war fears on a C-SPAN broadcast panel in October of 2008 and that prediction was censored by C-SPAN after the recording of the show was posted online. It was just gone. This is unacceptable, both the instant leap to "nuclear war" dialogue after a big financial event, and the censorship. Such black and white extremes clearly illustrate a lack of refinement and education on the topic, and this is nearly endemic in its small but significant way. Embrace the fear, wrap it in more educated terms that put problems and solutions in a more realistic perspective, and move past it.
What makes it an "enemy" of the US?
We used to cut these countries off and isolate them, now we do business with them while they steal our tech and manipulate our population. Now it looks like we have a vehemently anti-western authoritarian superpower in the making.
I say let them keep trying, with some security tweaks here and there as needed/justified. But redouble our connections with academia. We need to harness massive growth in the face of such a conservative opponent, not more excuses to slow things down and stabilize around security so soon.
side-note - completed a graduate program @ MIT
What sort of signal in the noise would tell us that it is indeed time to slow things down and stabilize around security?
Or their espionage _and_ replication skills, given the tech and human gap, are good enough to make up for it. Which, based on the domestic defense tech we are seeing from China, is not yet even close to proven.
It's not a time to be cocky. But we must continue to leverage our comparatively open processes. That was a key lesson of the cold war.
Also in this arena it strikes me that western cyber forces are fortunate indeed that their potential adversaries have a famously centralized governing style. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that we already had some hilariously complete records of that sort from our own expeditions.
You can't be serious. "Make private information public" is an absurd reaction to what is a clearly offensive operation.
The US was able to use their lead in computers to design stealth aircraft based on Soviet mathematics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petr_Ufimtsev
[1] https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/6367/did-russia-have...