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Comment by Johnny555 | Hacker News Reader

An OPSEC violation has once again made a case for why using TikTok should be a punishable offense in the military,

It's not clear why TikTok is singled out here, this could just has easily been posted to Facebook or Instagram or one of the other myriad of social media platforms, or pushed automatically to someone's open photo album in the cloud.

If OPSEC is important, don't let people bring their personal camera phones (or smart glasses or camera enabled watch or whatever other personal surveillance people choose to carry) near whatever you're trying to protect.

View on HN

>It's not clear why TikTok is singled out here, this could just has easily been posted to Facebook or Instagram or one of the other myriad of social media platforms, or pushed automatically to someone's open photo album in the cloud.

There's an additional layer here that's often ignored: that specific piece of information that leaked is the same regardless of what platform it was released on, but if it was released on a foreign government controlled platform, that government might start monitoring aspects of data being collected by TikTok that aren't being posted for the user or look at historical data if it's being collected. More detailed location data, who their friends are, where they typically go, and so on. Not all of that additional data is probably going to be available to them on Facebook, just the video. The information in the video may be more valuable when it's incorporated with a series of other data points that may be attainable from TikTok for that now closely monitored account.

Sharing this information to begin with isn't good but it's even worse if you're now potentially leaking additional data unknowingly. Maybe the guy who recorded that begins taking photos at some specific base, maybe their TikTok friends include some coworkers that include some videos in on a boat in the South China Sea... it's possible to start linking more information together that could be valuable to an adversary.

I agree it's not necessarily the same, but also think that it's bad to have any social media in a top secret context.

That said, it's pretty obvious the bias the source has:

- "and posted it to the Chinese government-affiliated platform."

- "social media platform tied to America’s top adversary"

The problem here is people sharing stuff publicly which they are obviously not supposed to. The rest is just theater, even if technically somewhat worse. If you solve the root problem, the variation that makes it slightly worse this time is solved at the same time.

Even if they don't share, it is a piece of spyware they have on their phone, called Google Android.

I believe PLA uses its assets within Google, and other American dotcoms to the fullest extend, and they already pulled every info they can through their Android Store accounts on them.

Even a running meme of spy agency, the Saudi Army intel wing managed to have their men operate within Google for years. Imagine now what Chinese could.

Yes. Don't allow smartphones around top secret facilities? That seems a sane precaution. Or require them be vetted.

Even if they carry them off duty only, it's a crapton of useful intel info that can be harvested from more or less open data.

Yes. So it people tagging pictures or leaving reviews on Yelp. Is your suggestion that off-duty people during their personal time should not use social media for purely personal ends with personal info, as long as it's for things that are not already to not be done while working with security clearance?

Otherwise, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

Given that fitbits and their ilk have exposed the specific locations and layouts of airbases, perhaps they should be a bit more careful with what technology they use, even in their offtime.

Checking them in at a locker at the edge of base is probably sufficient, at least for an airbase. It's not like you can actually hide those in the days ubiquitous satellite imagery, right? For some other types of facilities, maybe check them in off-site somewhere before you transport people in (because otherwise how secret can it be if you can just follow someone's car?).

Letting people transmit GPS coordinates while walking around a military facility though? Yeah, maybe that's not a good idea.

Not that.

For example you can easily guess everything about ones family members, his work schedule, browsing history, ruffle his personal email/facebook — stuff that often gets mixed with work correspondence, financials, home location, other gadgets, other people in his first circle — people often meet with other servicemen off duty.

A lot in other words.

Once upon a time (7-8 years ago), they would issue govt-vetted smartphones to even subcontractors. Wonder how that culture changed....

> the Saudi Army intel wing managed to have their men operate within Google for years.

Do you have a source for this? I spent a while searching, but I couldn't find anything that would corroborate your claim

This is the case that I can recall, it was at Twitter: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/technology/twitter-saudi-...

As a non-american, it's always interesting to see the point of view of the major military power. Why is China "America's top adversary"?

Aside from the OPSEC issue, which is understandable, why does the author - and I guess it's a widespread view - considers China as America's utmost adversary? Can't there exist two rich and prosperous countries? Why does the author uses such jingoist terms? How should other countries consider America, then?

Everyone is an expert on the Internet, this is some guy's opinion, not a statement of official US government policy.

Also makes it sound more dramatic, especially with the Air Force General "looking impressed" hot take. The fact of the matter is that it would be a bigger problem if a top secret aircraft was sitting outside exposed to the sky in full daylight in the first place, where Gen. Kelly's and presumably everyone else's surveillance satellites could count the rivets on the thing.

You know they do have to fly these things for real testing. Only so much can be simulated with computers and wind tunnels. It's not a matter if it's exposed, it's a matter of when and where it's exposed. Security through obscurity is very much still a legitimate thing for a lot of aspects.

We're not quite to a point yet where you have continuous ultra high resolution satellite imagery of the ground where you could feasibly record these things and eventually find them. Chances are you just don't have the data unless you know all the places to look. In the not too far off future it might be a bit more difficult. We're getting closer to that point for sure given export controls on AI software used in geospatial imagery analysis:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/01/06/2019-27...

Part of this I suspect is geared at stifling an adversary from utilizing lower resolution imagery data to identify targets of interest to point higher resolution imagery or other sensors and agents at to collect intel.

Well, there's a slight difference between "flying these things for real testing" and being carted around on a flatbed where yahoos with a smartphones are around to take videos and post them.

Presumably, if it actually requires some level of security clearance, either it should have been covered for transport, or the yahoos with smartphones should have been cleared of the area to at least reduce the chance of something silly like this.

Not a whole lot you can do if you need to fly it and it's going to be in or around public areas, nor much you can do about satellite imagery, but that doesn't mean ignore all opsec.

It might be a fake or a plant, with the "leaked video" a disinformation tactic.

exactly. contractors or not gotta checkin there phones before entering places where anything top secret may be. if this was real heads would roll you would expect.

Because of this chart: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_militar...

And because China (as far as I know?) is the only country threatening to invade a US ally (Taiwan).

Oh! Duh. North Korea would be on that list too.

China routine threatens US allies with military, even nuclear action.

If the US military did not consider China a potential adversary it is not doing its job.

Threatening nuclear attack on Japan

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202107/1228036.shtml

Border standoff with India

https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1192872.shtml

Threatening Australia with nukes

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202109/1234460.shtml

To be fair, I deployed on US Navy ships twice. It is better to think of it as fking with eachother. We tail them for a week or two, they tail us. Russians fly an aircraft over us, we do it over them. I think it is more about showing off than actually threatening. Media only presents this when Russians or Chinese approach us, but not the other way around.

It's literally tribal territorial rattling. All social animals "play fight" to determine who's stronger and thus "entitled" to the best resources.

Your link claiming China is threatening a nuclear attack on Japan doesn't even mention nuclear weapons, directly or indirectly.

China has a "no first use" policy on it's nuclear weapons, and therefore has publicly committed not to use nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear state like Japan. (The US, in contrast, has a policy of allowing first-use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states.) For details on China's policy, you can see e.g.: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25751654.2018.1...

I purposefully used the Global Times (CCP state run news source) for all those links - it is interesting reading what they directly want the world to read.

Anyway the original message was much more colorful. This video from Chinese military channel https://youtu.be/7vKf5SXnsHA

Yes they pulled it after 2 million views. The Japanese exception to no first use message was delivered pretty clearly though.

When was the last time PBS or NPR called for expanding nuclear capabilities 10x? In China it was last year.

https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1187766.shtml

CCPs no-first-use is just window dressing on the MAD status quo of the world. Perhaps it makes them think they look moral? Their cavalier way of discussing it is disgusting.

yeh lol "no first use" as they cut up and sell the body parts of anyone who disagrees with their ideology.

IIRC it's the US allies who do that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamal_Khashoggi

It is worth asking if China is being practical or paranoid when it comes to shoring up its nuclear arsenal. As an American, I see the US as a democracy with a penchant for electing an unstable leader of the armed forces with a severe personality disorder who casually talks about using nuclear weapons.

Seems like a practical move to make sure they have solid rocket motors and warheads not in storage. That guarantees MAD regardless of who the US elects, thus all generals on both sides will truthfully say any nuclear confrontation is unwinnable.

I can't speak for the author or to popular anti-China narratives in the U.S., but from a traditional geopolitical perspective China poses a threat because of territorial claims independent of Taiwan, most importantly its claims over the South China Sea. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spratly_Islands_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_disputes_in_the_So... Those claims pose a grave threat directly to global shipping and to regional fishing and mining rights, and indirectly to the largely peaceful maritime waters status quo globally.

Over the past decade China has also been making increasingly brazen land grabs along and near the Indian border. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_border_dispute and, most recently, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/05/07/china-bhutan-border-vil... Relative to the South China Sea that's slightly less of a concern geopolitically (ignoring the potential for another full blown war between India and China), but does evidence China's actual (not simply rhetorical) aggression.

Finally, North Korea is a protected state of China. The only reason North Korea has nuclear weapons is because China prevents military and, to a lesser degree, economic retaliation. China permitting North Korea to develop and possess nuclear weapons is a violation of China's role as a nuclear super power, especially in light of the proliferation risk North Korea poses. By contrast, the U.S. killed Taiwan's nuclear program the moment it was discovered, and strongly opposed both the Israeli and Pakistani programs up until they were already an accomplished fact. (Note that the U.S. had far more leverage with Taiwan--it could threaten to retract its defense umbrella, which would have passively permitted immediate Chinese invasion--whereas with Israel and Pakistan the only viable options would have required direct retaliation.)

Foreign policy and military analysts in the U.S. and, I would assume, China understand that the global economic tussle between the U.S. and China are distinct from the geopolitical security issues. (Strongly related, of course, but the calculus nonetheless significantly different.) The masses and certain political factions in each country don't tend to draw such distinctions, though.

But is China really threating the US directly in anyway through military confrontation? Taiwan, China sea matters are localised to the close neighborhood of China.

Does the US desire peaceful coexistence with China or not? Reading some of the hawkish, cold war style jingoism coming out of US media makes one wonder?

Anyone who cares about democracy in their own part of the world should be paying attention to what happens in China. Unlike the 20th century fascist and communist dictatorships (including Chinese communism of that era), China today is neither self-destructive nor economically unsound.

China is a state that seems to be more or less incompatible with liberal democracies and has a lot of power.

That is the main struggle

The US supports all kinds of non-democratic groups when it benefits them, though. Most likely the reason is just that they don't want to lose any power to China.

How is China incompatible with liberal democracies? internally of course, the authoritarian politics are incompatible.

But in international relations, they’ve traded been trading with liberal democracies for decades. So what’s the incompatibility?

An increasing desire and capability to export their illiberal practices abroad. For example, using their weight to prevent the Dalai Lama from speaking at foreign universities. It’s naive to think that an even more powerful China wouldn’t continue to suppress free speech abroad as much as it does at home.

How is what China does to the Dalai Lama any worse than what the US does to Julian Assange? Isn't it equally naive to assume that an even more powerful USA wouldn't continue to summarily execute people abroad as much as it already does?

I think you have a decent comparison, but debate about what the CIA did in the US is widely reported in the US while. There is no free press in China. Pressure to stop China will only come externally, whereas pressure to stop US can come from within and external.

Also China is continuing to carry out a genocide that is unparalleled in this century.

Lets be real, America has allowed the use of capitalism to enslave entire generations of people and they are clueless to the fact about it. In fact many praise it and go deeper into debt so they can rock the newest iPhone 13, only 36 months of payments spread out. I can handle that!

In the US a Genocide has been underway for decades. The cost of healthcare will break people. A trip to the doctor can easily wipe out life savings, what little there is for most people. Considering more than half the US population lives paycheck to paycheck to nearly paycheck to paycheck lifestyles, its easy to see how Most Americans are nothing more than slaves that go to work and back home in a endless cycle. That is not freedom. And sure they can quit, and live out in the streets if they wanted. Its a shit life.

Americans are so caught up in thinking the government is the bad guy here. No the real bad guy is the companies like Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Exxon, Verizon, ATT, Capital one, Chase, any CC company, plus the many Pharma companies. The list can go on and on.

With no protection for allowing people to get into 10-20k+ worth of CC debt at 22-28% APR, People will always be slaves.

Honestly its easy to see the USA as a Cancer. I dont blame China for wanting to break away from the ideals of the western world. Now they have made a lot of bad choices. But at the same time the USA is largely responsible for keeping the middle east a 3rd world society.

Americans enjoy living in a bubble, They love to think they are free. They are not free!

I'm an American, and I'm just as much of a slave to the system as the rest of you. The system is so rigged that any true free speech is easily spun around. Just look at all the crazy trump supporters, Slaves not only to unchecked capitalism but to also propaganda labeled as factful free speech.

You are delusional to suggest the legitimate problems with American capitalism are anything close to genocide.

Nothing justifies it when the US does evil. The important difference is that as a society, in the US we have remarkable capacity for self-criticism and the power to loudly rebuke our government. We're far from perfect, but we can at least acknowledge the atrocities committed in our names, and hopefully account for them and try not to commit them again. The same is not true in Chinese society. Currently, it is only external pressure that keeps them in check. There won't be internal resistance to the Chinese governments expansionist behavior, because it simply would not be tolerated. The PRC will even use its power to silence criticism from abroad, much less tolerate it at home.

Again, we're not perfect, but we hear about almost every drone strike that harms civilians, or the abuses our prisoners of war face in Guantanamo bay. Does anyone in China rebuke the government for stealing land from neighboring countries[1] and building on it?

[1]: https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/05/07/china-bhutan-border-vil...

> How is what China does to the Dalai Lama any worse than what the US does to Julian Assange?

Among other things, we're allowed to discuss what the US has done with Julian Assange on this here US-based website without much fear of a dawn raid by the FBI over it.

Communists don't have a great reputation for peace.

I wonder why the bad things the US does internationally never get blamed on capitalism, yet when people write or vent about China it's always about these darn Communists. Are these after-effects of the red scare?

China is an authoritarian dictatorship with their own flavour of communism I guess. Blaming everything they do on commmunism as a whole is very uninformed.

I believe this has to do with any system where the government has too much control. Communism appears to me like a system that promotes the government’s freedoms over an individual.

Have there ever been peaceful communists who ran a country?

Add that to the tankies I've met personally and their beliefs, and yeah, communism sucks.

How many times has Cuba invaded the U.S.?

Being too busy repressing their own people to invade anyone is hardly an achievement indicative of peace.

Have there ever been peaceful capitalists who ran a country?

Don't get me wrong, I can't really stand uber-authoritarian Communism. But I don't see how communist/marxist theory is bad as a whole. Would certainly help erase a lot of issues we have on our earth. Unfortunately, people at the top always start to misuse their power to stay there. But that's also the case in capitalist America, so then again, why is communism such a problem for many americans?

This probably explains the well-known confrontational postion of the US vis-à-vis Saudia Arabia and Bahrain and so on.

> Taiwan, China sea matters are localised to the close neighborhood of China

We don't have a defense treaty with Taiwan so it's not like we'd have to intervene to the degree we would if Egypt decided they wanted to have a go at Israel or something, but we've had a standing agreement since the 1970s to arm them as the situation dictates, so we're not entirely detached from it.

No but any credible claim that the US has to defending interests in SEA / East Asia would evaporate once that happened. China understands this. If Taiwan goes, then that's it for the US's Asia strategy.

(Not who you responded to)

Jingoism is definitely present and infuriatingly becoming more financially viable for media companies pitching towards those parts of the populous, but it is important to recognize that that is the minority. Anecdotally, most people in my area, a college town in a republican state, are apathetic by means of being unaffected and uninformed. Even the chinese and korean people I've spoken with pretty frequently don't seem to particularly care or be informed. It is kind of weird, because it freaks me out and I follow it very closely; worrying about ww3.

Opposition to Xi Jinping in the executive branch is widespread, that is also definitely true. I think our hawks and their wolf warriors have created a feedback loop.

> Reading some of the hawkish, cold war style jingoism coming out of US media makes one wonder?

Yes, and the same can be said from Chinese state media...

The "close neighborhood of China" would significantly grow and envelope unwilling countries if unscrutinized.

> Taiwan, China sea matters are localised to the close neighborhood of China.

Or the close neighborhood of the Philippines, a major US ally with a mutual defense pact. Or Taiwan, a major US ally and trading partner. Or Vietnam, a growing trading partner. There are ongoing disputes between and among those groups.

A huge amount of shipping goes through the South China Sea, including most oil for S. Korea, Japan and the US West Coast. Meanwhile, goods bound for Europe and the Suez from those places also go through there. Something like 10% of the worlds shipping. Letting China just call "dibs" on international waters and set up a chokehold would be weird to allow.

I don't think anyone is urging war with China. But stopping their advance in it's tracks.

Meanwhile, China has been aggressively expanding its influence worldwide, in South America, Africa and Afghanistan.

> Meanwhile, China has been aggressively expanding its influence worldwide, in South America, Africa and Afghanistan.

In contrast to the U.S.? When other countries did this in the past and present, it was ok, but not for China? The U.S. can invade and occupy countries on the other side of the world, but it's aggressive for China to occupy an unoccupied island off its own coast?

I'm not thrilled with China's behavior, but the U.S. needs to stand down until they can act from the high moral ground. They have a lot of work to do to rebuild a working compass. Until then, nobody can trust their navigation.

> The U.S. can invade and occupy countries on the other side of the world, but it's aggressive for China to occupy an unoccupied island off its own coast?

Invading countries with a diplomatic alliance like NATO behind you is as close to "okay" as you can get. A small country got beat up, but there was no risk of WWIII. And there was an attempt to install a democracy in place of a dictatorship and get out.

China claiming the territory owned by their neighbors is about slowly stealing land (and sea) and making them part of China. It's completely different.

But really, the US's moral high ground is a distraction. This thread is about whether China is taking actions that could be a threat to the United States.

> China claiming the territory owned by their neighbors is about slowly stealing land (and sea) and making them part of China. It's completely different.

Tell that to Puerto Rico or Guam.

Yes, the United States did that in the past. It did it by fighting a war with Spain. That's why I would also agree with someone who said the US was a threat to Spain 120 years ago.

Or did you miss:

>> But really, the US's moral high ground is a distraction. This thread is about whether China is taking actions that could be a threat to the United States.

> This thread is about whether China is taking actions that could be a threat to the United States.

This thread is about the U.S. producing a war plane. Somehow China is threatening the U.S. just by knowing about a weapon produced by the U.S.? China is the threat?

Whatever, if not thread, the posts you are responding to were about that. There are many posts that deal with the plane. This is focusing on China/US relations, as an offshoot conversation.

> China permitting North Korea to develop and possess nuclear weapons is a violation of China's role as a nuclear super power,

The same could be said about the US vis-a-vis Israel.

Or France.

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/us-secret-assistanc...

> China permitting North Korea to develop and possess nuclear weapons is a violation of China's role as a nuclear super power,

While this is true, the US had a hand in helping the DPRK obtain the necessary tools to do so way back in 1994:

In 1994, President Bill Clinton agreed to a deal with North Korea aimed at curbing their desire to develop a nuclear weapon, an agreement which the networks at the time hailed as a sign that “the Cold War is really over.”

Under the 1994 framework, which North Korea eventually violated, the U.S. helped the rogue regime build a new nuclear reactor that would not be capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium in exchange for international access to its nuclear facilities, although the United States caved and the inspections would not start for several years.

Crucial inspections are being delayed five years while the rest of the deal is implemented. American officials say the delay is a small price to pay for getting North Korea to shut down its entire nuclear program

But Kim Jung Il’s regime gets to keep what intelligence experts believe it already has, at least one bomb. And it does not have to permit inspection to nuclear waste sites for 5 years.

The very framework designed to prevent the DPRK from obtaining a nuclear weapon actually laid the groundwork for them to not only obtain nuclear technology, but to fast track their program to produce even more nukes.

> Those claims pose a grave threat directly to global shipping and to regional fishing and mining rights, and indirectly to the largely peaceful maritime waters status quo globally.

European here, so this may be caused by selective reporting in different regions of the world, but here news is equally often about US military presence in the South China Sea. Looking at a globe and seeing the distance between US homeland and the South China Sea, I wonder who gave the US a mandate for military manoeuvers near the coast of another country? And how this makes China the aggressor?

Another European here, but with a different perspective: never seen any mainstream news suggesting US Navy is posing a threat to the Philippines, Vietnam, Japan or Taiwan (or even China). It seems the narative is mostly the same as in the US. Do you have examples of news reporting otherwise ?

Yes the bias is obviously also pro US, anti China, but that has been true since forever. It was the same at the beginning of the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions of the US, for example.

Nevertheless the facts themselves also tend to get reported, e.g.:

https://www.wienerzeitung.at/nachrichten/politik/welt/206683...

https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Deutsche-Fregatte-wird-auf-...

Despite the name and what the CCP wants, the South China Sea is not Chinese. The US maneuvers to keep it international waters, so do we Europeans.

The US has every tight to sail however it wants in international waters, so do the Chinese.

If Chinese sent aircraft carriers 20 miles of Los Angeles, I'm pretty sure USA would react very harsh.

Wouldn’t that be 230 miles, or are there distinct international agreements that put China’s territorial borders eleven times closer their shores than other countries with a coastline?

China's land border with Vietnam terminates at the shore of this sea, so of course in that area the "territorial waters" don't extend so far. It's the same as e.g. Canadian waters located right next to USA. In addition, China and Philippines are separated by about 400 miles at their closest points, so that would curtail a 230 mile perimeter for at least one of those nations.

International waters are 24 Nautical miles Exclusive economic zone is 200 Nautical miles

So it would be ok (in theory) to have a warship 25 miles off the coast provided it wasn't fishing or drilling for oil

The Russians did/do this all the time, although mostly on the East Coast. There wasn't any reaction until they started moving missiles to Cuba though...

To cite Kennedy: “Are those Russians crazy? Putting missiles in Cuba is the same as if we put our missiles in Turkey”.

“But Mr. President, we already have our missiles in Turkey”.

Nowadays those missiles are much closer to Moscow than ever before.

The illegal land grabs in the South China Sea make China the aggressor.

The US navy presence is a reaction to that, and very welcome by almost all of the states on the coast except China, given that without the promise of US opposition, they would all rapidly become members of the Greater Chinese Coprosperity Sphere like Hong Kong and Macao did.

My understanding is that when it comes the US maneuvers in international waters of the South China Sea, the purpose is actually defensive. Part of international maritime law determining the owner of waterways includes considerations for actual control of areas.

By navigating international waters against China's wishes, the US is demonstrating to the international community that China does not control access to those waters. This prevents China from making claims that those waters should no longer be international and instead be China's.

So this isn't the US going off to provoke China (or if you still wish to see it so, at least not for no reason). This is the US exercising rights granted by international treaties in order to prevent China from making effectively false claims to those waters under those same treaties.

Is it purely a coincidence that it's right around the time the US is losing hegemony in that part of the world to China? How would the US react if China sent ships to secure the waters between the US and Mexico.

https://www.theweek.in/news/world/2021/09/14/china-most-adva...

Imagine if China had military base the US: https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/nintchdb...

Likely we’d find it amusing, as China is mostly incapable of projecting force outside of its immediate region and I shudder to think about the condition of their coastal navy after a cross pacific journey.

That said, I believe your point is valid, but the comparison breaks down once you look at the nuance of the situation. If Mexico feels they can get a better deal by partnering with China to do joint fleet ops in the Gulf of Mexico then I’d say the US has done a very poor job of treating its neighbors correctly, and that needs to be reevaluated. It’s the same answer I have for China - Theyre doing a poor job of being a good neighbor to others in the region.

A more direct answer is that the US is doing the job on behalf of its traditional allies in the region who have claims over parts of the South China Sea which helps to maintain US soft power in the region.

> here news is equally often about US military presence in the South China Sea.

You're misreading your news. The US is doing miliary manuvers in international waters specifically to asser that they are not near the coast of China and are free travel for all. Meanwhile, the Chinese are claiming islands that are no theirs (or building islands out of the sea floor) and putting military installations on those islands. They then claim that as part of China, and trying to assert more ownership of the ocean because of that. The US doing maneuvers near them is a statement that those claims are not recognized.

The British recently did the same thing in waters near Crimea to deny Russia's ownership.

China wants war, just look how close they put their country to our military bases.

The US has defense agreements with at the very least Taiwan and the Philippines and more distantly Japan. Allowing China to claim the South China Sea would seriously hamper the US' ability to meet the obligations in those treaties. Not to mention that ensuring products produced in that area are able to be shipped through the South China Sea is absolutely essential as is evidenced by the effects of the current chip shortage. If access to TSMC products was suddenly cut off by China it would cause massive issues across the world and especially so in the US.

> By contrast, the U.S. killed Taiwan's nuclear program the moment it was discovered

Why don't they start with their own?

They signed a treaty stating they would not develop nuclear weapons. I'm pretty sure it was a very awkward conversation.

I am under the impression you are not familiar with the HAN culture? It doesn't allow for sharing or 2nd place, it's a winner take all and destroy everyone else. The China of today is determined to rule the world and I mean the entire world.

Military power is roughly equivalent to GDP. Is there any other country that can come close to matching the power of a Chinese economy on war footing?

And other countries, especially those with any sort of rivalry that could turn into a war should be wary of the USA.

China is America's enemy because they are achieving rival status and America can't just walk all over China like they do most South and Central American countries, its allies, etc. The bad stuff China does is just frosting on top for the narrative.

They are allies because they have common enermies.

War and ideaology is mans worst attributes and will only lead to the cultures downfall.

That is why humans are stuck in a cycle of repeating mistakes from the past. Blinded by there own ego. In a constant battle of picking sides, where winners reinforce positions, rewrite history and loosers are always waiting to take the crown back at the slightest slip up. Like that will be the final staw, like they will be last king to end all kings.

Unfortunately for the US, China has used its own tactics against it. through the greed of capitalism it has lost grip of its influence and let its competitive advantage be exported.

When push comes to shove, i would rather be taking a blue pill for virility then then eating a tiger penis. The US detains only the illegals in there own countries, while China simply invades, moves in and purifies. The US gives lethal injections, while China sends you to concentration camps then sells your body parts highest bidder.

The lesser of two evils in this case is clearly the country with more diversity and acceptance for other points of view. No way a black person would ever be considered pure enough to lead China. China out-racists the US on every measure, as it does in systemic corruption.

No communist has ever lived in its final utopia. Just as no captialist ever has. Or ever will. After a certain point, every culture that defines itself on war will fade.

And thats that.

Agree with "rival status".

Two belligerents wrestling over which currency the world economy will use.

The history of humanity in a nutshell.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

It's because China is on its way to take the top spot economically while also being powerful enough militarily so that it cannot be touched by the US. The US is trying its best to drag out #1 for as long as possible because much of the US' influence depends on it.

Just need to ask yourself who costs the wealthy the most income if they stop playing ball. At one point it was the Middle East with oil supply cutoffs. Now it’s China with supply chain manipulation and market competition.

> Why is China "America's top adversary"?

Because, leaving the US aside, China spends more on it's military than the next five largest countries combined (3/5 of which are US allies).

Meanwhile, China seems to be aggressively staking claims in the South China Sea (which is important for the US and it's Asian allies) and there's a perpetual risk of war over Taiwan. China is also growing it's influence in places like Africa and Afghanistan, as well as using Belt and Road money to intermesh themselves anywhere you can.

Maybe "rival" or "top potential adversary" would be a better phrase. But the idea is that there is a western block and a Chinese block (and a Russian block) exerting power on the world, and that's zero sum. It's not violent, but the competition is still there.

> How should other countries consider America, then?

Whatever else you think of America, with it gone or taking a step back from world affairs, there's a power vacuum that China and Russia will fill. At worst, they should think of it as the lesser evil. I would go further than that and call America good, but that seems offtopic at this point.

Right, the narrative could alternatively read “America’s top trade partner” just as well.

Vaguely looks like an X44. It is not a classified program.

Edit: not X47

It's mounted to the trailer in an inverted position. Whatever it is, it looks nothing like an X-47.

Yeah already stuff like contact information can be highly informative.

I think we need to arrange for an age in which great powers learn a lot about each other through internet services, similarly to how we had to arrange to satellite imagery becoming available of each other.

The slant I picked up on is that Chinese authorities operating TikTok is the problem because the president can’t just dial Zuck and say “take that shit down immediately or else”. But in general I agree and find the slant annoying. I do think there is some discussion point buried in here about whether or not it’s strategic for the US to build dependencies on foreign software services… but… not sure if it’s a productive one at the moment. It is really kinda orthogonal to OPSEC.

Getting pictures deleted from the internet is not a thing. Doesn't matter if you are the president or Zuck.

Precisely, if Mark Zuckerberg could delete pictures from the internet the photo of him wearing sunscreen[1] would never have been allowed to spawn so many memes.

1. https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2021-04/27/2...

He was pretty effective at taking down the Hunter Biden stories right before the election.

You’re missing the point. The GP was commenting on their impression of the slant the article was taking (and I agree with their point there). They were not suggesting the article’s slant was correct, in fact they specifically stated that they disliked the way the article was slanted.

Maybe they could have been more explicit in the way they worded their reply. But I think given the question they were responding to and the typical audience of this forum, it should have been obvious to most people that the GP wasn’t trying to imply pictures can be deleted from the internet. Or at least obvious to anyone that read the OPs question and the source article.

I would assume that once a photo hits any social media, the Chinese and other adversaries (and allies) have already scraped it.

> I would assume that once a photo hits any social media, the Chinese and other adversaries (and allies) have already scraped it.

Don't all the social media companies make it hard to scrape their sites, especially in bulk? It's definitely impossible to contain something once it's all over a bunch of blogs like this, but it might be possible to contain some things if caught early enough.

There's also the private message angle: something shared through PM on a US social network may be able to be contained to the US, while anything shared on a foreign network may be able to be accessed by a foreign intelligence service, regardless of sharing settings.

Don't all the social media companies make it hard to scrape their sites, especially in bulk

When you can throw unlimited developers and real humans at it, it's not so hard to scrape. I'd be willing to bet money that there are Chinese affiliated agents (possibly based in the USA or other countries) in every military related Facebook group.

Additionally, there's corporate tools that can do this. We use one at work that monitors mention of our brand names etc so that our customer care can reply. It's called Sprinklr. It does all the major platforms.

In fact there's dozens of tools just like it. I'm not sure whether they're scraping the platforms or get legitimate access. But whichever it is, it's dozens of companies to infiltrate and get a link into their feeds. Trivial for a nation state actor.

Facebook makes it difficult, but this where the question of "who's your adversary?" comes in. It's one thing to have to change user agent away from curl and rate limit, but when you're a nation-state and can afford to pay teams of people to do nothing else but collect information on your adversaries (in this case, the US military), having an actual person (so the traffic looks organic - because it is) who's full time job it is to just refresh that one Facebook group (never mind actually automating it), paying for a US Visa, a house, an ISP, all of their food needs. Against that level of advarsary (never mind trying to get your spies hired at Facebook as senior engineers), what sort of countermeasures do you imagine is possible by Facebook?

Additionally, how much efffort does Facebook spend on this, given the abundance of bots, Cambridge Analytica data debacle, etc.

Like, FB is the largest information platform in the world. Even if they are 99% successful at removing these kinds of content, that 1% is gonna fuel a lot of stories like this.

Every large US social media site has employees who are Chinese intelligence assets.

Make sense. Probably Tik-Tok (etc) has employees who are US intelligence assets too, safe to assume seems like.

Now I wonder if every large US social media company also has employees who are intelligence assets of US agencies. I'm not going to say 'safe to assume', theoretically America likes to think of itself as having that kind of domestic secret policing, but I wonder.

I feel it's pretty safe to assume. All a US agency needs to gain an "asset" in a tech company is find an employee with the right blend of patriotism and trust in the intelligence agencies.

They might not have full-time undercover spies, but they almost certainly have assets.

I mean Google/Alphabet has an entire division whose job is essentially to be an adjunct of the US State Department. Searching for job postings requiring security clearances at any BigCo always yields some interesting data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jigsaw_(company)

The TikTok app may have camera access and location access. It could capture images and send them to China when it detects its on a military base without the user even knowing. It’s so annoying to see “what about X” comments on every story with almost no thought put into the response.

You nailed it

Did you watch the video? Someone is clearly recording this object intentionally. The camera pans and zooms to follow the truck. Whether this is secretly being sent to China via TikTok is somewhat irrelevant if an individual is breaking protocol by intentionally taking video on their smartphone.

I was responding to the comment asking why TikTok should be banned vs. other social media.

Yes. I was agreeing with the parent comment that the social media platform is irrelevant. Presumably, video taken of secret military hardware is not ok in any circumstance. It's the smartphone, the attached camera, and the individual that is at fault.

I suppose then that it is OK for foreign governments to ban FB, Insta, etc? After all, we all know what lengths the US via NSA will go to.

It is and it's stupid that Americans insist on their companies running with unfettered access to every country like it's some unalienable right

I think so, yeah. After all, I want it banned here too :p

Yes, of course it's ok. The role of a government is to do what is in the best interest of its citizens. If there is a possible threat from a foreign adversary, the government should deal with it.

There's a difference between the government banning an app from a country entirely, and banning anyone in their military from using an app or even a smart phone or anything with a camera, especially inside a military base!

in China they don't just ban apps they ban military from even driving a Tesla.

While Tiktok is technically slightly worse, focusing on that rather than the gaping real problem of publicly posting top secret info is missing the forest for the trees.

Solve the problem of people posting this to social media and it won't matter if the company is US owned and operated or foreign owned and operated because neither will have anything to work with.

I think you're missing the forest for the trees. Publicly posting confidential information is definitely bad. Bringing a device that can covertly collect information for adversaries is even worse.

> I think you're missing the forest for the trees. Publicly posting confidential information is definitely bad. Bringing a device that can covertly collect enemies for adversaries is even worse.

If you aren't posting top secret data, you also aren't sharing it with enemies on accident.

How certain are you that TikTok only gathers data of any kind when you, the user, ask it to?

Pretty sure iOS security policy mitigates this unless they are Zero-daying something.

Who is disputing that you shouldn't share secret information on social networks? TikTok's ties still changes the potential impact of this breach. That's relevant information that gives context to the basic facts of the case that we usually call "the news".

I don't think you're understanding what the person you're replying to is saying.

If the app is made by an adversary, you don't need to post it publicly for there to be a problem. The app has the ability to send it directly without you even knowing.

By "Solve the problem of people posting this to social media" I mean the more general "you shouldn't be accessing apps that are security problems while in a secure area, which I covered in a separate thread on this article.

In that respect, whether it's TikTok or any other social media makes little difference. If it's use of apps like that is prohibited, then it's either not a problem or it's a personnel following policy problem.

That said, if people really think TikTok is a problem they should be worried about some other app that's ties are far less known that might get far less public scrutiny and do far more. By the time we're nitpicking which specific social media platform is the worst to have posted to in this case, we're so far down the path of problematic behavior that we're in absurdist territory. The fact that someone's walking around with the equivalent of a video camera taking movies of what appears to be top secret material is the problem, and whether they put it up on TikTok or YouTube, or sell to the Washington Post or to RT is just bikeshedding mostly irrelevant details.

The solution to this all is probably along the lines of "don't allow smartphones in secure areas" or only allow smartphones that have been vetted by security.

Ok sure, I don't think people are disagreeing with that, it's just not what anyone else was talking about so you seemed to be missing the point.

There’s no requirement for you to actively post data to break opsec - often it happens behind the scenes. See the fitbit/airbase incident.

Sure. I was a little less clear in this thread than I was in the other. I'm more making a case for a more sane policy on what apps people can run, or even devices they can have, to make it so this is not a problem that's normally possible. Whether the info is shared with China or the U.K. isn't really a distinction worth making if it never should have been shared with either, period (and let's not act like the U.K. wouldn't want to know just as much, we do with out own allies as shown through some of our exposed wiretapping programs).

Responding to your other comment: the app has access to your camera. Nothing is stopping it from using your camera, without your knowledge, and then uploading what it captures while a user browses their TikTok feed.

> Nothing is stopping it from using your camera, without your knowledge

The app needs to be open and in the foreground for it to take photos. On Android at least.

Then don't allow people to keep smartphones while in secure areas?

My point is, the problem is posting to social media, or using a device that's insecure. There's plenty of apps that a user could be tricked into installed that are much worse than TikTok and that will have much less public scrutiny.

That TikTok is affiliated with the China in some way is a red herring. There's no reason to solve the problem of TikTok if you solve the general problem of people using unapproved applications (which all social media would obviously be unapproved in secure areas) or insecure devices.

Otherwise what you'll find is that Facebook as some Cambridge Analytica type situation going on, and some Chinese shell company ends up using it to get special access and details, and the same thing as this happens through Facebook and China has special additional info and "TikTok fix" helped solve exactly nothing.

Bringing up that TikTok is associated with China in the article is useful in showing people some of the ramifications of the problem. Focusing on that as the problem leads people to think banning TikTok is the answer, when it clearly is not, since it doesn't go nearly far enough in combating the problem.

On a base with top secret information, I'm amazed there would be private phones in operation there. The government may be pretty stupid about some things, but they absolutely know the 1000+ threat vectors within modern mobile phones.

Been an issue for a while

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracki...

The permissions of the app are one thing, whether the app does it is another. In theory what you say would be possible, yes, but does the TikTok app have a feature which allows remote enabling of the camera, i.e. without user interaction? The code is public and can be decompiled. TikTok is not in charge of application distribution either, Google is, so if they add such a feature, people might notice.

Modern apps are obfuscated and use certificate pinning to avoid network traffic introspection. It's really not simple to decompile an app into something understandable.

https://github.com/shroudedcode/apk-mitm

Removes certificate pinning from apk files for mitm inspection.

It's as annoying to see all these unfounded comments like yours making China some sort of omniscient bogeyman.

I'm not making China out to be an omniscient bogeyman. The U.S. has used companies to gain access to secure systems in other countries. It's just a reality that ANY country can do this. To deny that is to either be a shill, or woefully ignorant.

This is a problem with propietary software in general. You can't be sure about what it does at all times. It's not a China specific issue.

TikTok is singled out here because it was where it was shared. The author would likely also agree to other social media use being banned in the military.

>If OPSEC is important, don't let people bring their personal camera phones (or smart glasses or camera enabled watch or whatever other personal surveillance people choose to carry) near whatever you're trying to protect.

100%

> The author would likely also agree to other social media use being banned in the military.

Yet the author demands that people should be punished for merely using TikTok, not all social media, even if its use doesn't compromise OPSEC in any way.

Use of TikTok should be punishable, of course, but for reasons of good taste, not OPSEC reasons. ;)

Do they anywhere? My neighbor works at a government facility for building and repairing … machines and he surrenders his phone every morning. Something smells weird here, but I suppose not everywhere has perfect security all the time. I just wouldn’t want to be the person that proved that.

There's also no indication from this article that the video came from a service member. You can hear other heavy equipment vehicles in the background and the truck driver is definitely not driving anything owned by the military so also likely a contractor. Angry old man FB vibes from that article

The whole thing makes no sense either. If it was some top secret shit, it wouldn't be carried uncovered in the open like that. I'm sure chinese satellites are probably filming all military bases 24/7 already and probably have much higher resolution view of whatever that truck was carrying.

It might be a fake or a prop aircraft, with the "leaked video" a disinformation tactic.

It's not clear why TikTok is singled out here…

Completely unbased in facts, I know nothing factual, but… as a hypothesis…

The government whose laws govern a media sharing service could certainly say "All content generated in this list of geofenced areas must be flagged to the legal observing authority XYZ, even if geotags are not a part of the ultimately published content."

Country A would probably care a bit less about services governed by their own laws. Even if such a secret law existed it wouldn't be used against them.

Whereas Country A might care more about services in adversarial Country B where it can be used to turn an intractable search problem into a targeted search.

Yeah, I am not sure why cameras are even allowed in this area. It doesn't make any sense. It is common in companies with sensitive information to ban the use of snapchat glasses and google glass in their offices.

That's something that has always amazed me. Even visiting an embassy you are not allowed to have any kind of electronics, and in secret/confidential operations you can take your personal phone?

Most likely, that's already the case. This seems like a classic violation of non-electronics/photography zone.

Yeah the video is available on Twitter where it’s still up. It’s just an additional opportunity to blame TikTok.

This seems short-sighted to me. In my fiction, in 10-20-30yrs we'll all have eye implants ala Black Mirror and we'll be so dependent on them that telling people they have to turn them off will be untenable.

Anytime I see "no photography" signs I can't help but think "living in the past". For example the immigration line in nearly every Airport says "no photos" and yet everyone in line is on their portable camera, um, I mean smartphone. It's like the people that wrote the sign are stuck in the 1970s and haven't bothered to look up at what people around them are actually doing.

It's the same in museums, sometimes there's an area "no photography allowed" and you can see them trying and utterly failing to enforce what is effectively unenforcable. If there are only a few patrons and they have a guard in every room they might stop 80%. But on a crowded day I doubt they catch 30%. It's ridiculous to see them try.

In museums it's usually the flash photography they have the main issue with. For the bleaching effect to paintings and disruption to other visitors.

Maybe they can wrap their super-top-secret object in say, a blanket or a tarp...

Unless it's cropped, it was shot in landscape so probably not TikTok

It might be a fake or a plant, with the "leaked video" a misnformation tactic. The whole thing a planned ploy. Like a FOUND FOOTAGE Hollywood film,

You're totally right, but for whatever reason the culture of clout-chasing is especially bad on military TikTok. It's bad. Real bad.

> If OPSEC is important, give people secure phones for shitposting to auditable on-prem private social.

FTFY. Don’t understand why militaries don’t.

Strava famously outlined hidden military bases.

Because the US Tech industry wants to shore up its protectionism.

Remember when Zuckerberg wanted the Trump admin to ban TikTok completely?

It's crazy that the EU follows suit for so much of this stuff (against Huawei, etc.) and then end up with no industry at all with all the high-paying jobs in the US.

China panic >> Common Sense or effective policy.

TikTok was singled out because this is an article about a video that was posted to TikTok. Weird thing to get confused about.

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