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Comment by iliketosleep | Hacker News Reader

Of course espionage will continue and international rivals will resort to dirty tactics, this is a given. The only question is whose side you're on. I am surprised when US citizens or people of nations aligned with the US are critical of the US defending itself against foreign espionage.

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> Of course espionage will continue and international rivals will resort to dirty tactics, this is a given.

Those dirty foreigners and their dirty tactics. If only they could keep it all clean and above board like our good old fashioned home grown espionage.

There is playing the great game and taking the piss China is taking the piss.

You assume the intent is to defend itself against espionage, not as a tactic as part of a tradewar.

If the US is truly concerned about espionage, why is some Chinese electronics manufacturing for US export okay, while others are not?

All of these things are interlinked and the tradewar is absolutely part of it.

Certain types of technology will make espionage easier for China on US citizens than the other way around. They are just battling over rules of war.

Nations don't have friends only interests.

Shoring up the US economy is in everyone's interest up to a certain point ofcourse everyone is exposed to US debt- but when the US starts imposing tariffs to keep out other countries expect criticism.

> people of nations aligned with the US are critical of the US defending itself

As an european, I properly couldn't care less about US defending itself, there is no higher moral ground compared to say China (Russia is a special case). We know about all the dirty unlawful watching, how we are considered less than american citizens in many ways etc.

I mean we all get why you guys do it, it just has the same moral ground as Chinese doing it

I got a pretty good laugh out of you saying Russia is a special case (special because you're European). Different moral ground when it's a direct military threat in your own backyard.

Unlike most/all countries in Europe, the US has truly global security interests. As the sole superpower it is in long-term security / defense partnerships all over the world, including in Asia, which pertains directly to the China situation. As the most prominent example, the world's third largest economy - Japan - has no real ability to defend itself from China in a conflict and depends almost entirely on the US for military security (including the US nuclear umbrella).

Are the Europeans going to all rush to Asia to defend Japan and or South Korea in a conflict? No. They're not going to lift a finger to do anything (protest at the UN perhaps), and more realistically can't do anything even if they wanted to. So should the US abandon Japan re defense, pretend we have no security interest there at all? I don't think so.

So no, it's not just the same as China doing it. That's merely the perspective of a European with only regional (the Russian special case) security concerns.

North Korea and South Korea are also not on the same moral ground.

And Europe does have interests in that area

The US do a pretty bad job of being world police and have a bad habit of invading countries, changing the regime, then leaving the country to rot into anarchy.

Yes the US defends its allies, don't you think that China defends its allies too? The real test of a nation is how it treats nations for which it has a grievance with.

> don't you think that China defends its allies too?

This made me curious: what nations could be considered allies of China? North Korea, possibly maybe?

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