With Hacking, the United States Needs to Stop Playing the Victim | Hacker News Reader

With Hacking, the United States Needs to Stop Playing the Victim

nytimes.com

15 pointsarkadiyt14 comments

If you talk to any security expert they will tell you just how much harder being blue team is than red. The situation really is one sided. Everything is hackable especially given essentially unlimited resources and the blessing of a government.

The United States doesn’t seem to be playing victim to me. It’s just that the hacks are publicized. Sure, we are offensive as well, just as every first world country is. But we’re also a big target without much enforced secrecy (comparatively.)

The concepts proposed by the NYT have some pretty bad implications. A national cyberdefense where all the traffic is being examined? Do they really see nothing wrong with that? Not that I really think it would work, anyways.

People in security and “cyber” positions know and acknowledge everything the NYT is calling on them to. The fact that politicians sit on TV and play the blame game really isn’t indicative of the playing field. It’s pretty much their job to make the optics look good, not represent the truth.

> It’s pretty much their job to make the optics look good, not represent the truth.

That's until we don't do our work, electing those politicians whose job is to resolve our political requests.

I think developed countries, but US in particular, are more vulnerable to cyber attacks than developing countries (with possible exception of China). Many of the developing countries still have manual processes and controls in place, given how unreliable electricity and internet are in those places. So a large scale cyber attack while causing severe damage, would be unlikely to bring a developing country to its knees.

I couldn't say the same of the US. Simple ransomwares have stopped entire hospital systems and cities from functioning. Imagine what a large scale attack could do.

The US is in fact attempting to move power grids away from digital tech and more to analog/manual controls for precisely this reason [1].

[1]: https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-wants-to-isolate-power-grid...

> The United States is, of course, engaged in the same type of operations at an even grander scale. We are active participants in an ambient cyberconflict that rages, largely unseen and unacknowledged, across the digital globe. This is a struggle that we can’t avoid, and there is no need to play the victim.

The author does not do "self-censorship". You get the impression that others apply self-censorship and some may not even realize this whole thing.

The NYT seems to have become overtly anti-American.

It's this weird alt left death spiral into self loathing. NYTimes victim blaming America, in doing so victimizes itself. Strange.

Have you two read the article?

The idea that the USA is some kind of neutral benevolent superpower with a mere passing interest in the affairs of international cyber espionage and has no quarrel with such is laughable. NYT simply wants to point it out to those who think self criticism is blasphemy.

But a critical view of NYT and its direction is certainly worth exploring.

”The idea that the USA is some kind of neutral benevolent superpower with a mere passing interest in the affairs of international cyber espionage and has no quarrel with such is laughable.”

Except that literally nobody has this idea or is even pretending to have it.

We have to express an idea here, otherwise what is being objected to in the NYT? What exactly is the NYT attacking, demeaning, in your view?

I don't see anything anti-American about this article at all. What are you referring to?

This is an opinion piece written by a previously high-ranking CIA official advocating for increased defense spending in light of recent high profile hacks.

Slightly related, but this happened once in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918

so..a great firewall of america?

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