Holy shit did not see that coming. Was sure it was some hackers out looking to sell info on dark web. Chinese government gives it a whole different motivation.
The US has essentially on omnipotent traditional military force that can either engage or assure mutual destruction of any opponent on the earth. Nobody can compete successfully. But humans are crafty, and come up with ways to defeat irresistible force.
As we've seen predicted for 20+ years and demonstrated in the public space for 10, our nation's weakest link is that election system and political finance system, particularly for legislators. The checks and balances that are supposed to prevent egregious behavior are broken (see what happened to most US Attorneys since 2016, the impeachment circus, and 100 other things at the state/local level).
Building dossiers on Americans are a great, obvious way to wield this power and to target and enable espionage/influence activity. Recall that the federal agency that keeps records on background checks was breached a couple of years ago. So now you have a hostile nation state that knows everyone, and all of their background data, with security clearances. You can cross-walk that with Equifax information, health insurance breaches (Recall that Blue Cross was also breached), etc and do all sorts of interesting things.
How many times in the past two years have our boats crashed into one another? The F35 program is a complete failure. When we ran Hormuzi wargames, a rag-tag group that fought through guerilla warfare won until our Navy cried and made the other side "fight fair." In the past 80 years the only win we can claim is the Gulf War. This is seriously overstating our military capabilities.
My inclination is that China would be perfectly capable of doing so, but that they have more effective jobs programs than the States.
No the idea that either China or America would "win" a war with each other is naive at best
I'm not saying that, I'm that the entirety of the US military is incompetent and pumped too full of cash (despite its many failures) that's it's ridiculous to act like no one can compete.
> The US and allies
I know we like to take our satellite states for granted, but that day will come to an end and it seems likely that taking real action against China could be the catalyst.
The war in Iraq hasn't really gone well, has it?
The US won a war in Afghanistan and two in Iraq. Now, the occupations afterwards? Different story.
Wargames are designed to teach lessons. Example: https://time.com/5772665/uboat-wargames
That exercise happened in 2002, after the USS Cole bombing in 2000 ashore with a similar attack. How many warships were sunk by speedboats in the last 18 years?
Omnipotent and "assure mutual destruction" are contradictory if you think about it. MAD ( mutually assured destruction ) resulted from a lack of omnipotence. If one was omnipotent, one wouldn't require MAD.
> As we've seen predicted for 20+ years and demonstrated in the public space for 10...
Who is "we"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management...
If you have a list of federal employees + a list of people's credit histories you can do things like spot people who have security clearances but no credit history.
Jenna McLaughlin did a great piece on how breaches like this are making it almost impossible for intelligence agents to operate under traditional cover:
https://news.yahoo.com/shattered-inside-the-secret-battle-to...
The days of creating a SSN, issuing it a passport + an entry in OPM as a "cultural attaché" at some embassy are waning fast, if not gone already.
Maybe it was to guard against generating useful metadata that could be later breached? Very interesting.
They’re very particular about this; particular meaning polygraphs and agents talking to your family members. I know because I almost took a job like this (and know a number of people who have) but the pay and location were crap.
How much do you think legislative aides are scrutinized? Political party staff who aren't on the government payroll?
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/03/who-built-the-id-theft-s...
Makes all the people talking about suing Equifax for subjecting them to identity theft look pretty silly.
>"The FBI has about a thousand investigations involving China's attempted theft of U.S.-based technology in all 56 of our field offices and spanning just about every industry and sector," Wray said.
>John Brown, FBI Assistant Director for the Counterintelligence Division, said the bureau has already made 19 arrests this fiscal year alone on charges of Chinese economic espionage.
>In comparison, the FBI made 24 arrests all last fiscal year, and only 15, five years earlier, in 2014.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/fbi-is-investigating-more-than...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management...
It would be easy to know who to bribe if you know who works in government, and which one has debt. As part of security clearance check, if you have substantial debt you're not suppose to be able to get a clearance...but I'm sure there are some who get exempt.
The evidence for why is sealed unless there's a trial. There's never going to be a trial, because those guys aren't going to show up to their court date.
It's entirely possible that this has been fabricated for political purposes... It's not like the only people who could disprove the lie (the accused) have any interest in disproving it.
E.g. APT17: https://intrusiontruth.wordpress.com/2019/07/25/encore-apt17...
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management... I gather that only hearsay was provided to the public, no credible evidence.