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Comment by azinman2 | Hacker News Reader

Yet somehow Russian / China are hacking the US left and right. If the NSA is so good, then at some point dont they have the responsibility to actively defend?

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You are hearing those hacking news essentially from the same mouths calling Snowden a traitor and denying that we are under massive surveillance net, which only get worse over time. I do believe that scale of those hacks and their impact is greatly exaggerated to justify further power creep.

But are they really though?

Could well be a threat there but I want actual evidence when the threat bogeyman is invoked in the name of more power. I believed the WMD lie. I hope I have learned from that.

If we believe the NSA then your question is exactly the right one to ask and has some obvious implications.

I think this might interest you:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

So pretty much all of US's wars in Iraq has been based on lies.

I think you mean US, UK, Spain, Australia, Poland war's. Also, the war would have happened with or without her testimony so I'm not sure your point holds.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-National_Force_%E2%80%...

Buying Facebook ads and making fake accounts is not "hacking".

Gaining unauthorized access to the DNC's and RNC's email systems and Podesta's Gmail account is "hacking."

From the article, attacking is much cheaper than defense. If they were splitting their budget evenly between the two you wouldnl still hear about the US being hacked constantly.

Even if they were 100% successful in stopping hackers we would still hear about the US being hacked constantly. It's propaganda.

>China are hacking the US left and right

Can you proof that or is that maybe something the CIA or the Pentagon would say?

One potential example is the seeded Supermicro chipsets that bloomberg ran a big piece on, though that's still somewhat up in the air as far as I know. Generally though it's quite hard to tell what's real.

There is absolutely no proof for that. No one found that chip.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-supermicro-chips/super-mi...

And:

Apple, Amazon and U.S. and U.K. officials have all said they have no knowledge of any hardware attacks via Super Micro

For one, they have been hacking biomedical companies to steal COVID-19 research and a few were caught red-handed [1]. Also, see Equifax indictments.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53493028

That is not left and right, and look at that interesting detail from you article:

Why is China accused of supporting them?

Prosecutors said the men at times acted in their own self-interest - including one occasion when they demanded a ransom from a company in exchange for not releasing its private information - but at other times "were stealing information of obvious interest" to the Chinese government.

According to the indictment, the hackers "worked with, were assisted by, and operated with the acquiescence of" the MSS.

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