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CIA Warns China Might Be Planning Cyber Attack
malibucreek writes "The Los Angeles Times is reporting that the CIA is warning of possible cyber-terrorism against U.S. and Taiwanese computer systems by the Chinese Army. Or, China could just launch a massive denial-of-service attack by sending billions of "GET HERBAL VIAGRA" e-mails from the .cn TLD." The article has a reasonable amount of information
and is probably worth a read if you're curious about what could be a real big
deal in the future.
How do you think people in the US would respond to a national firewall to protect from outside attacks? Would people view it has a means to control the internet content? Or a valid and necessary element in our nation?
My personal choice would be to have a national firewall, even though it could be used against us, or limit our privacy. But at least we could completely shut off our internet access if another country decided to attach us.
Are they somehow going to stop all the other southeast Asian, African, and South American countries from spamming while they do this? If so, it might actually lighten our load. If not...I fail to see anything unusual here
What is your Slash Rating?
That American Hackers = #1! Go America! If Americans can hack alien spaceships with Mac laptops, then China should be no threat at all!
China could just launch a massive denial-of-service attack by sending billions of "GET HERBAL VIAGRA" e-mails from the .cn TLD."
.cn TLD (as well as pretty much any other domain known to originate from China), who is the massive DDoS going to affect?
Since many mail administrators have simply blocked anything coming from the
I think for this to be effective, not only would Chinese administrators have to smarten up and close off their mail servers, but they would have to prove it to the rest of the world... that could take years.
If China invaded Tiawan, where would we get our VIA SIS etc AMD mobo's from???? That would be a huge disruption in PC supplies, and, to the vendors delight, higher prices, thicker margins.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Great! Now we can be prepared!
:)
sheesh
Also, there is evidence that certain Germans may covet Krakow. Be on the alert.
One if by land, two if by sea!
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
months accross the top, days on the side...
$10 a square, the bet - when will china simply be cut off the internet and all chinese traffic blocked by all of the major routers?
my guess is sooner than later. china already blocks the internet from itself, maybe its time for us to do if for them... although that herbal viagra really did work!!
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
[BLOCKQUOTE]"The People's Liberation Army does not yet have the capability to carry out its intended goal of disrupting Taiwanese military and civilian infrastructures or U.S. military logistics using computer virus attacks," said the CIA's report, which was included in a broader national security assessment that authorities distributed to intelligence officials. [/BLOCKQUOTE] What, they don't have a text editor and a book Visual Basic? Could it be that Microsoft's monopolistic pricing schemes has saved democracy?
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
Lately I've been having thoughts regarding the internet as a whole. General nostalgia about times when the internet was free, and good, and exciting.
:[
I worry that the Internet is doomed to irrevicably loose what made it so good (for me). Popup ads, spam, trolls, lamers in the doom-like of the season, and the concept of 'cyberwar' fill me with despair over how misguided most of humanity is. I fear that what is probably the best invention of my lifetime will be tarnished by greed, selfishness, and stupidity.
Guess this is how Environmentalists feel...
Confidential?
We are in trouble if the best way we know to keep things confidential is to give them to a major newspaper.
the CIA want to keep there jobs and they want more funds so they come up with warning after warning after warning. How come the US has so many enemies all of a sudden?
Now why would the CIA warn China about an attack that they are planning? What is this world coming to?
Such discussion is a red herring to get more government funding as well as to push for even more laws - like we don't have enough already.
Never underestimate the extent the government will go...for example it's widely suspected the anthrax attacks last year was a government test gone awry; or perhaps more sinister, such as a way to get lots of extra funding and laws passed fast with little resistance - most everyone I've spoken with who has truly read the Patriot Act is appalled at the total disregard of the U.S. Constitution and basic human rights.
Bottom line is don't believe all you read - but then most here already know that...for the biggest threats to our security are from within...another reason the U.S. government should NOT develop mini-nukes (a misnomer to say the least!) for it's likely they will be used against us at some point...technology is a double-edged sword and thus we should not rely solely on it to solve our problems.
Ok, I really rambled on here, but anyways one must be careful what they believe...for the U.S. propaganda machine is running full-tilt these days to stuff our minds full of garbage and lies...it's happened before and is happening now!
What do you think the networks will do when a nation's government proves to spew this kind of noise all over the world? China could get on everybody's hit list by doing something like that. In that regard, it seems somehow counterproductive.
I'm not saying it's impossible, a sufficiently short-sighted government (say, one that calls itself the "Peoples' Liberation Army" and expects people to believe it after mashing students with tanks) might attempt it.
But in light of the possible consequences, it seems somehow e-suicidal.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Giant Spam Attack: and we would notice it precisely how?
That's like threatening to pour a glass of water on someone's head, while they are taking a shower.
I already GET 15,000 different INCREASE YOUR MANHOOD and HELLO FUTURE MILLIONAIRE emails, like another 5000 from China are even going to make a dent.
-Styopa
Where can you get a regional list like this?
If the Communist Chinese think their cyberattack will cripple our military, I think they're going to find out that might not exactly work.
The reason is simple: US military systems are NOT connected to the commercial Internet. Given that we have devoted a lot of resources to monitor and safeguard our military communications, the Chinese won't dent much of our military communications unless they deliberately drop a nuclear bomb against our military command centers (and even that won't quite work because we have contingency plans thanks to Looking Glass and NEACAP planes).
Now, China deliberately interfering with the commercial Internet is something else, though. However, careful design of routers and careful firewall installation will likely limit any damage since the Internet doesn't really have any critical points that can bring down most of the Internet.
Of course, the way we figured it out is we went to the CIA and DOD and said,
"Are you guys planning to attack Chinese computer systems?"
"Of course."
So the thinking goes, if we're planning on how to do it, so are they. Ergo:
CHINESE MAY BE PLANNING ATTACK ON US & TIAWAN COMPUTER SYSTEMS!
Awake! Awake! Fear - Fire - Foes! Awake!
The Russians are also planning on retaliating against a major nuclear attack from the US by launching thier own massive nuclear attack.
Ain't none of it actually likely to happen.
if ($it != $onething) {$it = $another;}
Unfortunately what the administration has found is that it has opened up Pandora's box and does not know how to handle it anymore. And like you said, it has fallen back 15 years to Reaganism. The thing is, a good majority of the administration are from the Reagan era. It is much easier to lead a country back during the Cold War than it is now. When you know who your enemies are and can rally support against a common enemy, you can pretty much push anything through legistlation. In the past 6 months or so, the administration has tried to find a common enemy (first terrorists, but since that is a broad term, moved onto Usama Bin ladin, and since we can't find him, moved onto al Qaeda then Taliban, etc, etc...)
Bush has had it out for China since he first stepped into office. Remember the US spy plane incident?. And honestly, China isn't doing anything worse than what the US has been doing for years. I would say distrupting and ousting a democratically elected leader of a country is a bigger crime than DDoS that is talked about in this article.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
The chinese have a massive military, billions of people, incredibly modern technology, a space program, etc. You honestly think that if we firewall off their nation, that will stop a *planned, deliberate attack*? OK, even assuming you have a fullproof method to wall China off from the internet (and Pakistan, and Russia, and all of the 23 other countries sympathetic to China and willing to let chinese communications companies route through them..) They could just come over to the united states covertly (they have these things called "submarines") drive to some telephone switch in the middle of nevada, and install a box that recieves commands from china via satellite and injects whatever its commanders tell it to into the american communications network. Boom, they're inside the firewall. You think if america couldn't keep agents of a disorganized, wacko terrorist network from infiltrating the U.S. and obtaining pilot's licenses last year, they would be able to keep agents of a nation of 6 billion from infiltrating the U.S. and signing up for free internet accounts on AOL?
Remember the old adage: Digital security measures are always useless against someone who has physical access to the machine. Firewalls aren't much use if the hacker can physically get to a machine on the inside of the firewall..
Hey, CmdrTaco, how about a spoiler warning?
Maybe some of us wanted to be surprised when the cyber attack comes? Geez....
A) This is lame. China cant or won't do this, and the CIA is stupid for thinking they can.
B) This is all part of some plot on the part of the CIA to get more funding and/or strip away all of our remaining freedoms.
The CIA's primary role is to examine information from a wide variety of sources and attempt to categorize and where possible act to mitigate short-term and long-term threats to the security of the United States. Given that their job is akin to predicting the future, and given that even with tremendous resources, predicting the future is exceedingly difficult, the CIA will miss a lot of things that look obvious in hindsight (Al-Quaeda was planning an attack on NYC!).So the public says "shame on you, CIA, for not spotting that obvious threat!"
But then, they often catch things that you and I aren't even aware of. They actually do this on a routine basis, and often times American foreign policy is directly influenced by information the CIA has successfully collected and/or analyzed. Of course, the CIA can't go around trumpeting these successes, because it decreases the odds of them being successful in the future.
So China may or may not be planning cyber-attacks on Taiwan and/or the United States. Do you really think that you for some reason know better than the CIA what's going on in the minds of China's rulers?
The CIA has been very wrong in the past, but more often than not, they're right. Also, remember that if China doesn't launch such attacks, it's not necessarily proof that the CIA was in error. It could be that by leaking their knowledge of Chinese plans, the CIA is betting that they'll elect not to try it.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
is every citizen of china getting on line and /. ing all the .gov sites in the US
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
his adult life and who rides his bike by the CIA office where they park their convoy of matching pink 50cc scooters --I'm not kidding-- everyday on his way to work, I can tell you that spooky stories about mainland China are that. . . . spooky stories. Dime a dozen, they wrap fish with spooky China stories around here.
You want to know about a spooky country--Japan. That's a scare story that has everything to do with Taiwan. Those whacky Japanese are playing scuicide with their economy and they're going to take Taiwan with them.
DOS attacks from Mainland China are not a threat, Japan's serene implosion is a major threat to the global economy. DOS attacks, not scarry, Yen at 200, very very scarry.
Remember then Chinese hacker push in early May of last year? It was to coincide with May Day and in protest over the whole U.S. Spy Plane Hainan Island debacle the month before that.
;-P ). I guess honker is hacker in Chinese. It was a toolbox of scripts and methodologies.
Some MS boxen got "f**k USA government f**k poizonbox" pasted all over their IIS roots. Not much beyond that, and I think some American hackers returned the favor. A little miniature patriotic hacker war.
Out of curiosity, I kept up to date on Chinese hacking at a site whose address is www.cnhonker.com (visit at your own risk, and don't hit the Back button
But very recently, in March, the site was closed by someone called "lion". I had a Chinese coworker of mine visit the site, and she translated the brief explanation for the site's closing as "After long thinking, we have no choice but close it. Please don't write to us asking why, give us a little time. We'll be back. September 2002, we'll see you again"
I am not much of a conspiracy theorist, but when it comes to autocratic governments, my instincts change... any bets on whether or not the Chinese Government has coopted some of their talented hackers for a patriotic cause?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Got an apartment there already. See ya and your fascist leaders!
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Big deal, they slow the internet down to a crawl for a few days as firewall administrators around the globe block them.
I've already blocked them. If the eggheads can't control their mail servers I really don't want any traffic from them. They aren't getting me any business.
Can anyone give me a reason that I SHOULDN'T block those racists?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
This is all about enacting a treaty that will allow us to pursue "cyber-terrorists" into the networks of china, rather than allowing the world to hack a chinese box and have anonymity.
Scare the public into blocking china's net access and see how quickly they allow info-extradition treaties to form.
I doubt the US military could control the scale as well in an attack on China. I envision that it would instead have to be a full blown knock-down-drag-out war. I'm not quite sure if American citizens are up for that.
Consider for the moment that China is a xenophobic nuclear power, and that they have little regard for the lives of their own citizens (c.f Cultural Revolution, Tianneman Square). How much regard do you think they would have for USian soldiers or civilians? China would be fighting against the barbarians at the gate, and there is a dim-witted cowboy in the Whitehouse. It scares me to think who would be tempted to press the big red button first.
I do not think that it would be in anyone on this planet's interest for China and the US to fight any sort of war...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Why does the US always feel that it is justified in arming itself with every weapon imaginable but others aren't. Remember what happened when India and Pakistan tested their nukes?
If they are developing methods of attacking via the Internet, so are we. Yes its a good thing we know of its possibility and are going to take steps to defend ourselves incase such an attack occurs, however, it doesn't mean the Chinese are "evil terrorist hackers!"
Just my opinion anyway.
- Tempestdata
If it's called Spam.
Yes, but the SPAM tends to originate from Western spammers who use open SMTP relays in China.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
What would china have to gain by attacking us?
They might spy on us, but we spy on them too.
Attacking us is not going to happen, they wouldnt gain anything out of it.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Good let the prices get higher, We'd all be making more money!
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
This is a copy of the message which set off the chain of events leading to this news article.
---
From: eli7ehax0r@yahoo.cn
to: President@Whitehouse.gov
Subject: fuck poiSonB0x!
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.
FUCk PoiSonB0x! Mr. President@!!!!!`
from: #poisonB0x@irc.haxor.cn
w3 are leetest. America must die!!!
---
Needless to say, the US elite anti-terrorism squads are taking the very seriously, and will start bombing China immediately.
(note: lameness filter sucks.)
Look out!! Behind you!! Oh, never mind, I must've scared him away.
...this article can't really be taken seriously. The Supreme Court has rejected prior restraint except in cases where National Security is involved. The article states that it was a classified report that discusses China's activities. If it was something important, the CIA could've pulled the whole article simply because it's classified - that's the only justification they need of its importance to National Security.
Furthermore, isn't leaking classified information treason? Yeah. So read it and write it off as "FUD". China simply wouldn't be able to hack into the U.S. systems - if we thought there was a threat, we could simply temporarily disconnect the overseas backbones (of which there are suprisingly few). Beyond that, the military, for some time, has used satellites to communicate; and every critical computer system is connected to a separate internal network, with no contact points to the Internet.
If China wants to drop some Spec. Ops. onto the Pentagon, that's a whole different story. But for now I'm not worried. Unless they try and DOS whitehouse.gov and kill all my RtCW ping times.
Jake
Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;
How incredably crafty, those sneeky chinese are using our own slime^H^H^H^H^H marketing people againt us! Brilliant! Why cyber-attack the US, when they just need to leave all of their mail servers open for relaying.
And to add insult to injury, they are probably running pirated copies of Exchange too. Take that Bill!
Okay using a bit of Perl we find that this article had 10 instances of the word 'cyber' in it. A stupid meaningless buzz word. Any competant admin who updates their system has very little to fear from
I especially love the part where it tells us how 'future conflicts will be cyber in nature'. Whatever, we dropped bombs in WWII without computers I'm sure we can do it now.
Stupid fear mongering, move along
The Anti-Blog
I submitted this a few hours ago and got rejected, but anyway... One question I raised in my submission (just about where the HERBAL VIAGRA joke is in this one), and one that I still think is worth answering is this:
The L.A. Times piece cites the CIA as saying that the People's Liberation Amry is conducting "research into offensive-minded cyber-tools" with the intent to cause damage to U.S. and Tawainese systems.
A technical contact at the Chinese Embassy in Washington counters that the research conducted by the Chinese government is purely defensive in nature.
There is no difference between offensive and defensive research except the intent, right? I mean, you could write a virus strictly for a deeper understanding of viral algorithms and how to protect against them. You could study more secure firewalls in order to circumvent them.
In short, the CIA can't prove that the research is offensive in nature unless they have intercepted Chinese plans to utilize the research in an offensive way. Similarly, it would be even harder for the Chinese to prove that it is defensive.
Therefore the news content in this article is essentially this: the CIA noticed that Chinese government studies network security.
sig is
hackers seek to disseminate information
Maybe movie hackers or something, these hackers seem mostly interested in breaking and defacing things, a skill set governments have been interested in cultivating and controlling for centuries.
Be wary though, for when the enemy is gone, it is you who will be the enemy.
Sound advice.
--
Benjamin Coates
That's me "treasonous." I would rather live in a country that has just laws and doesn't lock up whole classes of people (Africans) and pushes other countries into conflict by meddling in their internal affairs. Countries that learn from their mistakes. The US that won WWII is long fucking gone. It taught the lessons and then forgot them. Now you have a place that allows fascists to steal elections under a system rigged to empower the rich. Doesn't it sicken you that GERMANY is a freer and more just country than the US? You are a thoroughly propagandized troll who will live and tie under your master's thumb without once feeling free becuase the only real price you ever paid for freedom was $12.88 a Walmart.
Anyhoo, I grew up speaking German so what's the fucking difference? I am sure you would have loved Germany's policies toward those who dissent if they had won WWII. They labelled them treasonous and shot them. Isn't that what you are doing, you fascist.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Try this:
0 1
/16s and 300+ /24s.
http://ftp.apnic.net/stats/apnic/apnic-2002-04-
It shows APNIC assignments. You have to grep through the list to get just the CN assignments. It's a big, ugly, long list of 366 netblocks. 53
I'm gonna add it to the filter(s) at home and see what it does before I fubar the office with it.
This isn't significantly different from the militarizaton of space. China has space launch capabilities, and it doesn't take more than simple collision to destroy a satellite. Yet I don't worry about China (or anybody else) knocking US (or anybody else's) satellites out of the sky.
Why? Because an attack on our satellites would be no different from, say, offshore planes or ships jamming radio signals, or, for that matter, a bunch of commandoes blowing up inland transmission towers. It's a potentially devastating move, but it's also unquestionably an attack on the US and an obvious precursor to invasion or nuclear attack.
A concerted attack on the Internet, and especially on Amereican military computers that are connected to the Internet, is every bit the act of war as are the other scenarios.
Folks, the Chinese are not stupid. For all the sabre-rattling Beijing might do (and let's not forget that Washington's swords are pretty noisy, themselves), they're not about to commit species suicide anytime soon. MAD aside, China is no match for the US militarily in an all-out war, and that's what we've promised if they invade Taiwan. They might not like it, but they know it.
Should the military take steps to protect themselves against such an attack? Of course. But the rest of us shouldn't worry about it any more than we worry about CNN going off the air due to military action.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
A sizeable amount of my spam is in non-english character sets and originating from .cn sites, even offers to lease office space in Hong Kong. Just nuts, since I have no way of reading it. If you're not getting a lot of it, be glad.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Sheesh, I wish these politicians and spooks would grow up. The Yellow Menace went out with poodle skirts and tailfins. These poor blokes, with George "how do you spell W?" Bush at their head, need an enemy to pad their profit lines.
Yeah, some Chinese twits might do something annoying -- just like our own twits. Why are *their* twits worse? I can hazard a guess...
All about me
Isn't all the really critical stuff (defense, space, air traffic, telecom, power, finance, etc) all air-gapped? Meaning, they're PHYSICALLY disconnected from the Internet or other public networks.
Maybe I'm naive, but I don't see how short of a "deep plant" to get an agent "inside" in a position of responsibility, very good social engineering or physical sabotage/attacks, hackers (from any part of the world) could cause REAL crippling damage (more than just defacing web sites or destroying non-critical servers).
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
They're doing exactly what the al-queda (sp?) did to them.
No, in order to do that, we'd need to build two 110-story buildings in Riyadh (there aren't any, natch), fill them with office workers, and blow them up.
--
Benjamin Coates
On the other hand, that DOS attacks will occur is as newsworthy as saying that your children will have colds sometimes. It's all a part of growing up.
Think, write, think, edit, think...then post.
I'll secure my own systems, thanks. I don't need the government to do it for me.
Not to mention that I don't trust them enough to stop themselves from abusing it.
The thing is, a good majority of the administration are from the Reagan era.
I'd like to see who all is back from the Reagan era. I know Cheney and Rumsfeld. Admitidly two very high ranking officials, but who else. It seems a bit generous to say "a good majority"
Unfortunately what the administration has found is that it has opened up Pandora's box and does not know how to handle it anymore.
Just when did the US create a situation in the middle east? Look at Britain that created Israel. Look at the arab countries for attacking Israel. Look at Israel for rocketing innocent people. Look at childish leaders that can't agree on how to meet for peace, let alone discuss peace terms. There are lots of people to blame for the problems but hardly the US, unless giving hope of some sort of peace settlement is a bad thing.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
Do you get any traffic you want from .cn? No? Then just block it. All of it. Every IP address you can find in the .cn TLD. Anyone who looks at intrusion logs will have come to a similar conclusion. .cn addresses have a very high bullshit-to-business ratio, so why even bother? .cn, sorry, you are probably going to be hurt if this report is right.
If you want traffic from
The real thing that bothers me here is how easy it is for the FBI and CIA to just cry wolf.
I can think of at least 20-30 instances of them claiming some terrible tragedy was going to happen and then.... nothing.
Right now we are currently on "yellow alert" for "unsubstantiated" claims that there will be terrorist attacks against banks.
... unsubstantiated huh. If you want any other unsubstantiated claims, just give me a call!
In San Francisco, we still have national gaurd around the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges because of similar claims made *months* ago!
The thing I am really worried about is that a real 911 threat comes again and we do NOTHING about it because the CIA/FBI have made 1000 of these claims that ended in nothing.
Get your act together guys!
Uhh, you make it sound as if the police walk the streets and send anyone of African descent to jail. Patently untrue.
pushes other countries into conflict by meddling in their internal affairs
Ok yeah, we do this, and we need to stop
While I wouldn't exactly call you treasonous. (You actually have to betray your country to get that status) You are full of hot air and little sense. If you don't like it here so much get the fuck out.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Makes me want to move to the EU, where fascism is called by its real name, not jingoed patriotism.
GET HERBAL VIAGRA?
I just logged into my Hotmail account, it looks like the attack has begun!
I mean, why else would they be running Linux? Linux is for hackers, right? And everyone knows hackers are evil, desiring nothing but the total disruption and destruction of the American Way of Life(tm), just like those Godless Commies in China. Open Source is just another form of Communism.
Of course, the Chinese will say that they run Linux because of "backdoors" and "security holes" in Windows. Well, if they weren't planning to attack us, they'd have nothing to hide, would they? And if they had nothing to hide, they'd be running Windows and the CIA would know EXACTLY what they were up to! None of this "maybe" crap!
Seriously, though, how much damage could they really do? Oh no, I wouldn't be able to surf the web for a little while! My email might be delayed! Really, how effective would such an attack actually be in terms of an act of war?
It's well documented that the CIA is the largest drug dealing organization in the world, and it's common knowledge that most dealers are also users. I think this particular theory proves that those CIA boys have been smoking crack!
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
At first I started getting angry, then I realized. Troll. Almost got me to flame you,... almost. It was the last paragraph that pushed it WAY over the edge of belief though.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
I would say the CIA's mission is to survey the world for economic potential. Nothing more, nothing less. That's about what all wealth of information is used for.
Conspiracy stories make for great reading, but all the hype behind the CIA is humorous. Sure, information they sometimes obtain is used for defense purposes. Same could be said for NASA, NIST, TRW, and the local Dunkin' Donuts shop.
IIRC the Chinese tried to claim Taiwan was Chinese property a few years ago,
The Chinese have *always* claimed to own Tiawan, and the Tiawanese for that matter claim to own China. This 50 year old conflict has a very real potential to boil over into a real shooting war and if it does we would very likely get involved. The CIA is warning that when/if that happens the Chinese are planning a cyber attack as one element of their battle plan.
Do the Chinese really want to pick a fight with a country that is fairly internet-dependent and risk starting World War 3 and in the process getting nuked into oblivion?
No, but it is not hard to imagine a scenario where they did. And it is unlikely that we would use nukes since China is perfectly capable of retaliating in kind. (thanks to US aerospace companies)
[flamebait]
Ok, so public support for Operation Bomb the Towelheads is declining; what's the government to do? I know! Let's make the American people xenophobic of ANOTHER socioreligious group!
What this all boils down to is a game of hide-the-sasuage that the government is playing with us. The general public is like a herd of buffalo: pretty dumb, hard to get moving, hard to turn, hard to stop when they ARE moving. Apparently support of the US' support of Israel (as Israel plays their own game of Bomb the Towelys) is waning, so the US needs another shiny object with which to distract the herd.
Hmm, I know how to distract them! Let's release a shiny press releas^H^H^H^H news item! Let's see, it's buzzword bingo time:
Hackers? CHECK
Cyber-terrorism? CHECK
Red commie Chinese? CHECK
SHINY OBJECT COMPLETED. DO YOU WISH TO DEPLOY? (Y/N)
DISTRACTION SUCCESSFUL, YOU MAY RECOMMENCE BOMBING OF THE ARAB NATION.
[/flamebait]
I'm sorry if I sound cynical, but the public seems to be infinitely stupid and the government seems to be infinitely willing to leverage this stupidity to their advantage. Just planting the meme of "Chinese Cyber-terrorists!" is bad enough. What's even worse is that the lemmings will be talking about this vaporous Chinese threat over the watercooler tomorrow morning instead of talking about how Israel murdered so many Palestinians and buried them in a mass grave.
It's a red herring planted by a cynical government which isn't afraid to use blatant misdirection to draw attention away from itself.
Where in my original post did I say that nobody could criticize the government for its actions? I firmly believe in your right, my right, everyone's right to criticize the government. That's what democracy is all about.
Think for yourself indeed. I fail, however, to see how a warning about potential Chinese cyber-attacks is manipulation of the entire country.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
For example, US military capabilities are overwhelming in part because of CIA contributions. But no intelligence agency worth a damn is going to go around saying, "See that special ops hit on the enemy command and control node? WE provided the intel for that!"
Just because they're not crowing about their successes doesn't mean that they're a bunch of incompetents.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
probably ran around kicking squirels, and wondered why they bit him... maybe he liked the shots? rabies, rabies!!!!
sounds kind of 1984-ish. the alliance is in great danger of attack from those that are evil. oh yah, everyone except us is evol! kick kick!!!
nader was right though, gotta wonder what we got ourselves into...
If they don't even want to tell about the times they've been right in the past, it is even less of a chance that they will tell the public a truthful prediction of the future (like this alledgedly is).
What the CIA says publicly will obviously have no correlation (neither positive nor negative) with what they really think is the truth. They will simply give statements that they think have a desired effect, either on the american public or on foreign governments. How could it be otherwise? This is not because they are "evil" or whatever. It is their job.
Do you really think that you for some reason know better than the CIA what's going on in the minds of China's rulers?
This is a strawman. I certainly do not think so, neither do anyone else. The real question is: Do you really think that you know what the CIA knows about the minds of the rulers of China? What would CIA possibly have to gain by being consistently truthful in what they say to you to you (about as much as if they were consistently lying, I suppose)?
The conclusion must be that to extract any information whatsoever from the CIA, you have to analyze what they say. Do they have anything to gain by lying about this matter? (Yes, a lot - More threats = more budget). Do they have anything to gain by being truthful (Sure - If they think it is a real threat, it is only good if the servers get prepared). This analysis give no reason to believe either one or the other. In other words, the article has almost zero informational content.
Simple, no? A bit of critical thinking will get you a long way.
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
They've already killed innocent civilians, violence solves nothing. They're doing exactly what the al-queda (sp?) did to them. They have become terrorists.
It is exactly this same FLAWED logic that people use to portray the Palestinians as victims. Civilians being killed by a bomb from a plane that misses its target and people flying planes into a pair of 110 story skyscrapers are not even REMOTELY equivocal.
Come see The World Trade Center site sometime when you have a chance before you make such misguided comments.
This is little more than a journalist's self-fulfilling prophecy. You get disinterested parties (the CIA isn't exactly it) saying that there's something big brewing, then you've got a story I'll listen to. Coming from a journalist on a slow newsday or a law organization that isn't a shining beacon of all that is good and great with democracy, however...
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You mean when Bush said "The Chinese have Chomskybot and are not afraid to use 'em against Slashdotters?" ;-)
I think it's completely stupid to call every single "evildoer" a terrorist. Terrorism is about terror. I don't care what you do with your stupid computer, I am not terrified. I may be annoyed, it may cost people money and it will piss off a lot of people. But being pissed off is a far cry from being dead. 9/11/01 was terrorism, suicide bombers are terrorists, computer hacking and DOS attacks are NOT terrorism.
Because American media and politicians find a word that sparks emotion they use it whenever they can until the word loses it's true meaning.
If you don't believe me, you don't live in the US.
- Mitch Daniels - Office of Management and Budget Director
- Condoleezza Rice - Foreign Policy Advisor
- Robert Zoellick - US Trade Representative
- Andrew Card - Chief of Staff
- Richard A. Clarke - Special Advisor for Cyberspace Security
- Robert Joseph - Senior Director for Proliferation Strategy, Counterproliferation and Homeland Defense
- Elliot Abrams - Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights,and International Operations
- Richard Armitage - Deputy Secretary of State (from former Bush Admin)
- Paul Wolfowitz - Deputy Secretary of Defense
- Gary R. Edson - Deputy Assistant for International Economic Affairs and Deputy National Security Advisor
- William Howard Taft, IV - Legal Advisor to the Secretary of State
- Timothy Muris - Federal Trade Commission
Source and othersIs that enough for a majority? It seems like most of the major positions are carried over from the Reagan (or Bush, Sr)'s administration.
I agree with you that everyone has had at least a hand in this cookie jar. But what lead to the recent escalation was the fact that Bush turned a cold shoulder when suicide bombers were blowing up Israel and for the first couple of days of Israel's incursion, Bush did not give a public statement telling either sides to back down. (as reported in Time Magazine and LA Time.
You must remember that Bush came into the White House saying outright that Clinton's mistake was in meddling with the affairs of the Middle East. Up until 2 weeks ago, he pretty much wanted to ignore the issues...which lead to mass confusion on Bush's stance Which Sharon took as an OK to advance onto Palestine territory. Now recently, Powell went over there to try to resolve things, but his mission was considered by many as a failure. Both sides have lost respect for the US as a mediator.
:-P
Bush does not really care or want to be involved in the middle east. It's quite a tangled web. On one hand, part of his administration wants to fully support Israel. But on the other hand, if he does support Israel, the entire Islamic world will come down upon him. Even today's news, the Saudi Prince (our supposed Ally) just threatened to cut off ties to the US if the US does not take a harder stance on Israel. In addition, Egypt (another ally) is threatening to go to war again Israel once it gets enough financial support.
Alright...I'm done with my rambling...
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
Geez, I like AMD too, but Andy Grove isn't that powerful :)
Seriously - how about finding out about people who Really Don't Like Us, and Kicking their Asses before they can kick ours?
You may not have noticed, but there are some people out there who Really Don't Like Us. Some of them are pretty open about not liking us. They wave flags and rant and rave in peaceful demonstrations. But some of them keep quiet about not liking us, and you don't find out about them until they fly a plane through a building, by which time it's a bit late, especially for the people in the plane (and the people in the building, for that matter).
I happen to be among those who believes that the people in the latter group rather desperately need their Asses Kicked, and that infiltrating and exposing such groups is a good way to Kick those Asses.
Sun Tzu knew that most wars are won before the first battle is fought, and that the best way to win a war is never to need to fight one in the first place. I'd paraphrase that by suggesting that if you can keep your adversary sufficiently off-balance (through the Kicking of Only the Very Few Asses that Really Need to be Kicked), you can defer war indefinitely.
Good intelligence (whether CIA or Mossad, the point is immaterial) allowed the Israelis to find out about Saddam's nuclear weapons programme. In 1981, eight Israeli F-16s to attack an Iraqi nuclear reactor. During the raid, ONE technician at the reactor was reported killed.
As a result of that raid 20 years ago, Saddam's nuke programme was set back by years; he had no nuke to drop on Tel Aviv during the Gulf War. In all probability, he still has no nukes.
Good intelligence meant that one guy got fragged (by accident) in 1981, but millions of casualties were averted in 1991, and if the US goes after Iraq in the near future, millions of casualties may yet be averted.
Let me put it another way: Only eight guys in eight planes had to risk their lives, and they only had to do it once, 20 years ago, in order to prevent millions of casualties.
You might want to think about those kinds of numbers the next time you ask "what has intelligence done for us?"
> Another good point -- what do the NSA do for anyone? Surely all the smart people doing cryptanalysis and whatnot for them could be doing something more constructive.
Ummm... you mean, like strengthening DES against differential analysis by tweaking the S-boxes when nobody (not even IBM, which invented it) outside NSA knew about it?
Remember - NSA isn't just about 0wning the other d00dz - they're also in the business of making it harder for other d00dz to 0wn j00.
Addendum:
My original point - that intelligence is probably the greatest force multiplier possible - remains.
It's bad form to reply to one's own post, but I'd have been remiss, however, if I didn't also credit the unknown number of intel guys who also risked their lives to make it possible for eight pilots to save millions.
Huh? I think the comparable levels of real-world harm are so far away from "pretty close" as to have a red shift due to cosmological expansion.
I mean, unless there are 40-45 million people dead that we've somehow managed not to notice in the past 50 years.
You wanna knock the Cultural Revolution casualties down to just the ~2 million actually executed, ignoring the ~10M who "died of natural causes" in the labor camps, and the ~30M who died from starvation... well, fine, but I'll still take my chances with the CIA ;-)
This is a very serious threat. Think about it, if the US is Cyber attacked by the Chinese they're going to retaliate somehow. If they feel threatened enough they might just decide to use weapons of mass destruction, yes I know it's hard to imagine but they might even use The Bomb !!!!! The Netscape could be changed forever and Cyberspace could enter a virtual nuclear winter freezing every server on the planet!! PLEASE think of the children and do all you can to convince the leaders of both country to enter a virtual cooling off period.
I stole this Sig
Sending out email viruses? If China is bent on screwing with Outlook users, then slap my ass and call me Comrade, 'cause I'll help.
mar1no, or whatever your name is, and you too Mr. Moderator, the two of you are so fundamentally unable to distinguish right from wrong that I wonder if you might be capable of heinous crimes yourself. I'm not using a figure of speech here.
I have certainly never refrained from criticizing the US for the numerous stupidities it has indulged in over the years, and God knows we have an idiot for a president now. But whether I like the guy or not, what he did as an immediate response to the 9/11 attack was exactly what had to be done.
What gives the US the right to respond to mass murder with force, you ask? You tell me, what gives law enforcement the right to use force in the apprehension of a murderer who is resisting arrest? Do you believe that murderers should go free?
I'm a strong believer in peaceful resolution of conflicts, but the awful fact is that human history occasionally produces people who simply go on murdering until somebody forcibly stops them. The existence of Hitler and bin Laden and the Nazis and Al Qaida are the awful proof of this fact. Do you think that no attempt should have been made to capture the members of Al Qaida after September 11? Tell me, what would you have done? What would you have done in the real world that we live in, with all of fanatics and fascists and mass murderers who are not interested in peace at all?
And for the love of God, where do you get this moral equivalence crap? The terrorists murdered American civilians because they are Americans, and probably because the terrorists assumed that they are all Christians. Bin Laden put it in precisely those terms. But the US has used deadly force in an attempt to catch mass murderers who are resisting with deadly force; the US has not sought not to kill anyone merely because he or she is Arab or Moslem.
The Al Qaida terrorists used airplanes full of civilians as missiles, to murder even more civilians. Tell me, when has the US put hundreds of civilians on board the missiles it has used in warfare? When has the US deliberately targeted civilians at all? Some people around the world apparently believe that this happened, but I don't where on Earth they get these ideas. Even if you don't believe that there ethical motives for the US military to try to avoid civilian deaths (and I believe they do have such motives), consider the fact that the US has nothing to gain and everything to lose when innocent bystanders die. Public revulsion at civilian casualties is probably the only thing that could make the Americans lose the war; that's what happened at Vietnam. If they want to succeed in their goals against Al Qaida, they simply have to limit civilian deaths as much as they can.
Another question: Do you believe that the United States should have joined World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor? After reading your post, I can't rule out that you might answer no to that question, in which case you are, to put it bluntly, so stupid that I'm wasting my time. But if you are reasonable enough to agree with most people's take on history, than consider this:
Can you enunciate a moral principle according to which the US should have joined war after Pearl Harbor, but should not have after 9/11?
As a matter of fact, there were two things that could have happened after September 11 that would have made all military action unnecessary:
Both of these were never the least bit likely, given that members of both Al Qaida and the Taliban happen to be murderous fascists. Nevertheless, this is what Al Qaida and the Taliban were morally obliged to do, just as a murderer is obliged to surrender himself to law enforcement. Of course they didn't, and only then was the US in a situation where the use of force was necessary. And for this reason, it is Al Qaida and the Taliban who are responsible for the civilian deaths in Afghanistan. By attempting to get away with mass murder, they are the ones who have placed ordinary Afghans in grave danger.
mar1no, I live over here in Europe, and I hear idiot blather like yours all the time. Are you a European, by any chance? I think people like you are arrogant and astonishly naive, living in a dream world and completely out of touch with reality. I think you are a moral midget, and above all quite simply dumb beyond my imagination. There's hardly enough I could say to express my contempt for you. You can't be trusted to come up with any serious solutions for the real problems that exist in the dangerous world we live in. And it's too bad, because the rest of the world could give GWB an earful for his mishandling of the Middle East and his stupid ideas about, God help us, the "axis of evil". But no one will listen to you, because you deserve no respect.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
If china does DNS attack it will be very easy to block them. Just block everything that comes from China. Further more China knows that, and knows that they will suffer economicaly if they are disconnected from the internet and would not try to launch DNS attacks. What the CIA is really worried is hackers from the first world, who will be hard to track down and may disagree with many powerful people's and cormporations visions of the new world order.
considering a router somewhere in the midwest going down this morning prevented my office from seeing vast chunks of the internet (including, apparently, our default nameservers.. thankfully i could still get to /.) and thus we were *completely* unable to work for a few hours (a major hardship, not to get email all morning. it took me five minutes to determine it wasn't a local problem. the rest of the time, i read Wired.), a real attack, taking down important sites would make my life.. er.
actually...
a lot easier. damn. no nagging email from clients, no more spam for a few hours...
hell, i should just take the mail server offline and disconnect the phone (people that can't get their email remember my phone number real quick), tell everybody it's the chinese and that the phones got hacked, catch up on my reading or go home for a nap. that should work a a couple times, at least.
"sorry guys. nothing i can do from here. just gotta wait til things can get routed around the problem..."
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
maybe the chinese are watching the discovery channel to determine what systems are our trusted military ones:
.mil guy talking about how they keep all there machines secured and was saying that they dont even let the IP addresses for machines be known - but right behind him was a screen that had a list of IPs and hostnames for boxes on their network and it was fully readable when watching the show.
There was a show on (IIRC modern marvels) that was talking about a military unit dedicated to securing their systems and monitoring for break ins. there was a
they prolly just got a freeze frame from that show.
The basic problem with your viewpoint here is that you've allowed yourself to be sucked into the American Media Machine regarding Bin Laden.
Bin Laden is a small time hoodlum that fathered the psychosis and reactionary leanings of a few zealots, like any good cult leader would. Then they commandeered some planes and caused some serious destruction and loss of life. At least that is what you have been fed. It remains to be seen how much of this is truth, and how much is manufactured for convenience. GW can't very well address the American Constituency and say "We didn't even see this coming, and we have no idea who did this".
To compare Bin Laden with the likes of Hitler is to insult the lives of the *millions* of people who lost their lives during WWII. The American military brass are so busy trying to forestall the next Vietnam, WWII, or Korea, that they cannot see the forest for the trees. In the Eighties it was the Ayatollah in Iran and Mohammar Qadafi in Libya, in the Nineties it was Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and in the 2000's it's Osama Bin Laden. Step back and have a look a what your democratic and free nation has accomplished.
In five years Bin Laden will be gone and you'll be turning another tin-pot reactionary into a celebrity. Maybe this time he will be a cyber-terrorist. Ooh, just imagine the headlines. Meanwhile in a bombed-out faraway place that was a media/military magnet 10 years ago...a young mother begs for food in the streets...a boy died after stepping on a landmine today...
Very little of the military actions taken by America in the last 30 years have been based on moral or ethical quandaries facing the free-world, such as those faced by humanity in the 30s and 40s. Rather, the majority of American actions have involved leveraging your superior military might against foreign nations who threaten your economic position, usually in the petroleum based industries.
Please step back from the fear and hatred for a moment. Step back from the pablum that is your news media. And take a good hard look at the benefits and priveleges you have because of all those people all over the world who cannot participate in democracy, or don't enjoy the same level of economic power because the US government won't "liberate" them, as their is no oil to be found there.
Nobody gave a shit about Afghani women in burkhas until Bin Laden stepped on your lawn. But now the US has 'moral' obligation to restore order and democracy to the West, and rid the world of the evil Al-Qaeda. It reads like a drug-store novel. People have been twiddling their thumbs and farting around for years over the crap that goes/went on in South Africa (apartheid) and starving Africans, and hummed-and hawed about Croatia, Serbia, and Chechnya. But the US never took much of a moral interest in any of it other than an obligatory peace-keeping role or diplomatic stance. Mainly because their was no economic benefit to any of it, seeing as how there was fuck-all in the way of resources in any of those countries. But oh, watchout for those dirty towel-heads and camel-jockeys, they want to kill all Americans. Right. I think they just want you to stay the hell away. But you don't because you need that oil.
Israel has one of the most lethal and sophisticated military establishments in the world, heavily subsidized by the US. If anyone has been treading the fine line of morality (can you say systematic state-sactioned racism toward palestinians), it is Israel. And you're in bed with them, and we all know it.
The world is watching you Rome, and we can see corruption and decadence. Not a good model of democracy and freedom, just a good game of command and conquer.
Personally, I wish that the US govt would do more to examine what it is doing and stop going out of its way to make new enemies. Believe it or not, I'm not alone in this wish... maybe someday we all can get along...
My friend, I wish I had your enthusiasm. More than likely, perhaps millions of years in the future, the last living man on earth will most likely drown trying to attack its own reflection in a lake.
The truth of the matter, I believe the wholesale behavior of nations are just as insane and lacking in judgement as the people that make them up. So if a nation (as a whole) acts nuts, well then, there you go. Perhaps most of the people there are nuts too.
The USA doesn't act stupid. The USA is admittedly greedy. Not nuts or stupid. Not any more nuts than Rome acted before the whole lead in the drinking water thing, and look what they did. To think that other nations think that we are a bunch of stupid cowboys only gives us a tactical advantage. Keep thinking that. Its that same thinking that deep, hidden rock caves can save you in 21st century warfare. And that you can attack innocents in a twitchy, militaristic nation and not get some serious retribution.
I share the same feeling about most nations as I do the USA. Not nuts, not stupid, just trying to carve something for themselves. Not as greedy as America perhaps, but certainly not a bunch of saints because they're not America.
However, Saudi Arabia (and many Arabic nations) appear on the outside to be nuts. Not evil. Nuts. Any nation that enforces its dress code lethtally, speaks to the President of "the meanest dog on the street" like he is a piece of crap and HAS NO REAL ARMY TO BACK THAT SHIT UP, and then has a member of its diplomatic corps for the UK print poetry about the glorious death of their hijackers killing innocents, well then, there you go. Nuts. Not acting in a sane way. Practically begging to get fucked with by the CIA. Or killed. You just don't talk to "ol hot head" like that.
Don't even get me started on Israel.
Also, I would argue that the US has done great controlling the world. We shouldn't want to control the world, but we certainly aren't piss poor at it.
The anti-civilization nutties are rising up now, but that is because they haven't threatened me (meaning the citizens of the world) personally.
When Hussein or someone decides to make New York dissapear in a blinding white flash, well, then they will see what happens when the US starts conscripting troops, and we open up all of those warehouses full of rifles and ammo we've been stockpiling for two generations. We're the only ones fully prepared for straight up war all over the globe.
I've been to those military bases, it scares the hell out of me to see that much weaponry, and I'm an American.
But I don't think we're going to flip out real soon, though, unless someone flips out on us first, and I think that many Arabic nations have been waiting to flip out on everyone not themselves. They have been attacking the reflection in the water for generations.
The other half have a little "Made in the USSR" sticker on them, and except for the Chechnyans, nobody's too mad at Russia...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I can't believe I had to scroll this far down to find this post. There is a case that probably proves your point. Around y2k, there were major attacks involving airliners that were thwarted. You hear about it from time-to-time in the media, but there is no way that such a thing can ever generate the volume of coverage that 911 can. That's because the very nature of such work is such that when you succeed you generate little or no news. The same thing applies to presidents. A president who wins a war is a hero. A president who prevents a war is just "a good foreign policy president".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
"GET HERBAL VIAGLA"
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Yeah right, whatever. What possible reson would China have to do this? What do they get if they "win"? Is a few days (a week at the most) of clogger routers worth having trade restrictions imposed by the US and it's allies, decimating thier economy? Are a few delayed "joke of the day" emails worth having missles hurled at them evoporating thier cities? People don't start major international wars just to be mean, they do it when they can gain something. What can be gained from this?
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
I seriously doubt we'll notice any difference.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
The news in Japan is similar. One of the more popular foreign policy rags (Sapio) ran an "intelligence" report last week about Korea and China teaming up to conquer Japan.
Riiight.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Remember when Bush said, "You are with us or against us"? I think that is an overly simplistic statement in that you either help the US or you are our enemy. Why should other countries come to the aid of the US when they need help, but when the other countries need help, they turn their backs. There are many instances where the US have refused to help due to the fact that doing so will not benefit the US.
Secondly, the US should not be meddling in the affairs of other countries that lead to instability in the world. Remember a guy named Osama Binladin and "Afghan terrorists? They were products of the US CIA op to hold back the Russia from taking over Afghanistan. Should the US have been involved in that? Maybe it was getting all caught up in the Cold War and stuff like that... I'll give that to you...people make mistakes in life..plus that was a long time ago...
More recently though...there are direct evidence that the current Bush administration was involved in the current ousting of the President of Venezuala. The biggest promoter of democracy (the US) wanted to oust a democratically elected president. I had read somewhere that the new president wanted to implement policies that would help the Venezualan people but would hurt Chevron, a major oil supplier to the US.
That's the hypocrisy of US foreign policy. There are many cases in which the US does things to hurt other people and to destabilize the world for the benefit of the US.
_______________________________
"I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
What would be the gain of a world war or a surgical strike? They won't be conquering American soil, we'd nuke everything before that happened. They will be severly hurting themselves economically (The US economy is huge, and combined with it's allies, could make China a very unhappy camper). At best, they would get to act all smug and pat themselves on the back during the couple of days it takes to clear up the routers and bring back up the sites... but a pat on the back isn't particularly comfotring when you find your country engulfed in sanctions, frozen bank accounts, and global ill-will... not to mention the revenge cyber attacks!
In fact, the revenge attacks will be particularly devistating, becuase America wouldn't be simply DDoSing, they would be breaking down firewalls and disseminating pro-democracy propaganda. As highly as the Chinese leaders think of thier little dictatorship, there is no way in hell they think they could win over the rest of the world to their cause just by spouting "Down with the Capatalists", but the reverse is very true. The free countries of the world could deal a very heavy blow simply by allowing their propaganda to flow freely in China.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Of course, she cannot see the digital photos I put up on my homepage because, presumably, my whole college is blocked by the Great Firewall. This very much annoys me. What this means, though, is that China is a complex country with both liberal and conservative elements. (*gasp!*) I like a lot of the progress these days, but I find their wanton blocking of any sites with opposing viewpoints really despicable.
And here you are blocking off a whole country... Which side are you on, exactly?
There's no way in hell the US could ever even capture most of China, let alone occupy it. Same goes for a Chinese invasion of the US.
Both would be amphibious invasions conducted from across the worlds widest ocean. For an amphibious invasion to be successful, you'd need something close to 5-to-1 odds. Neither side has that.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
So he tells you he's leaving the US, and you respond with "get the fuck out?"
Smaaaart.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Didn't see this posted yet- everyone knows that all the really important gov systems are NOT on the Internet, right? And good luck getting into NIPRNET or SIPRNET. Of course, /. and uberpron.com will be down, but important gov systems won't be fux0red. Deciding whether this is good or bad thing I leave to the audience to decide.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
It is exactly this same FLAWED logic that people use to portray the Palestinians as victims. Civilians being killed by a bomb from a plane that misses its target and people flying planes into a pair of 110 story skyscrapers are not even REMOTELY equivocal.
What twist of mind took you from the parent's post talk about American intervention to saying that the Palestinians are not victims?
It's even more amazing that you believe that all the destruction in Ramalah was caused by a bomb from a plane that misses it's target. Maybe the tanks that ocupy some Palestenian cities are there purely by chance?
In the Middle East conflict both the Israelis and the Palestinians are victims - or to you believe that being blown-up by an Israeli tank or war-plane is different from being blow-up by a Palestinian suicide-bomber
PS: I love the ever present reference to the September 11 attack - always done in a very visual way so as to go directly to the emotions of the reader (and bypass the part of the brain that thinks) - Interestingly enough, this kind of references mostly comes in posts whose logic is weak or non-existant.
It doesn't take a deep study of Chinese culture and politics to understand that driving over unarmed protesters with tanks or enforcing "one family, one child" laws is the mark of an authoritarian state.
And you never will, because you don't have a need to know. That's the way things work in a representative government - we elect people to make decisions for us, including decisions about issues of national security that are too sensitive to release to the general public. The only way you will ever get proof that the CIA needs to exist is if you get rid of it and bad things happen more frequently. Instead of saying "I don't see why the CIA should exist," you should express your concerns (from an objective viewpoint) to your elected representatives. There's a lot going on in the world that you don't know about, so you really aren't in a position to call for the CIA to be disbanded. If you are concerned that your elected representatives can't be trusted to make responsible decisions, then that is where you should focus.
Ahhh.. I must work for the CIA!
By your logic, the fact that the CIA hasn't been well-represented by popular culture means that they haven't been getting much right.
If that's the case, it's also correct that before the late 1950s, African-Americans were all bumbling servants, because that's how they were portrayed in popular culture.
It would also stand to reason that because current popular culture lauds their achievements, WWF "wrestlers" are true heroes.
I could keep going, but your argument is circular, Pedro. First you say the CIA gets all the praise, then you say that they don't because they're incompetent, but that doesn't matter, because they'll still get funding.
It seems to me that your true argument is that the CIA is an evil organization that doesn't deserve funding, whether they're capable or not. If that's what you think, why not just say it?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
T'is another classic case of the pot vs. the kettle.
Funny why CIA hasn't mention the "Blondes" ?
They are a group of cracker funded by CIA to whack havoc on China.
They called themselves "Blondes" because they claimed that they've all dyed their hair blondes, since they hate the original color of their hair - black.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
No matter what Americans think, the Chinese are not inept idiots and when the shit hits the fan, are as capable of wiping the US off the face of the earth just as the US can do the same to it.
The Chinese aren't inept, just different. More to the point, they see the American government as a bastard regime and feel it their divine right to interfere. Furthermore, not even *if* all 20 of their nukes made it to the US would the Americans be wiped off the face of the earth.
And please, comparing Alexander The Great to Curious George is an insult of global proportions....If you are going to be so obvious in your trolling, you should try to bury it a little deeper in the thread...
ASCII tastes bad dude.
Binary it is then.
China:
Military manpower - fit for military service: males age 15-49: 200,886,946 (2001 est.)
India:
Military manpower - fit for military service: males age 15-49: 164,410,461 (2001 est.)
USA:
Military manpower - availability: males age 15-49: 70,819,436 (2001 est.)
Fit for service:
~35,000,000
And don't forget the rest of the world; we are outnumbered 20-one with just our most feared enemies. We mustn't forget that just because we have a little bit of water separating us from everyone else.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
"I'm not a China supporter or a Communist, but the fact is that just because it's a bastard regime does not mean that the USA or anyone else has some divine-right to interfere."
... are as capable of wiping the US off the face of the earth just as the US can do the same to it.
That's debatable. Beijing has repeatedly and documentably persecuted minority groups as it sees fit. The current group of persecutees that makes the news the most are the Falun Gong sect. But they are far from being the only ones.
If they are unable to defend themselves, why shouldn't we look to aid them?
"the Chinese
HAH! HAH! And again HAH!
The United States is currently the world's only superpower. "Superpower" means that we can project our influence (be it political, economical, or martial) to any point on the globe at any time. All continents. All oceans. All countries on this planet have to deal with us in one way or the other. Last year proved that even 180 degrees of longitude isn't enough to escape us.
The People's Republic of China is a regional power at best and will continue to be so in the forseeable future. Their economic influence may have some global reach, but their political power doesn't reach much beyond eastern Asia and their military influence literally ends at their borders. Their army is numerous but ill-equipped and inexperienced. Their aerospace industry has literally been purchased from foreign suppliers. Their surface fleet couldn't even properly invade the Spratleys. Their few submarines can be found with Geiger counters. And their intercontinental ballistic missiles number in the 20's. The People's Republic would be hard pressed to make their influence felt in the Alleutians, and even that wouldn't last more than a week. For at least the next few decades (if not the rest of the century), the only country that truly has the power to attack us in the way you're talking about is Russia.
Being able to build a nuclear device is one thing. Being able to mass-produce reliable warheads on a large scale is something else entirely. Being able to build self-guided boosters capable of carrying said warheads and properly following a ballistic flightpath to a target on the other side of the world is orders of magnitude more difficult than either of those.
"This "we could beat you up if we really wanted to" attitude is juvenile"
Call it what you will, but it is realistic. Again, there is a reason why we are called a superpower.
"will probably stop abruptly when the US is nuked, which is a fairly obvious ultimate goal for any terrorist organisation, of which there are many."
A realistic terrorist-built device will have a yield of maybe 10-20 kilotons. It would be silly to expect there to be much more than 5 such devices built. Each bomb, if properly used, would probably kill ~20,000 each.
Whether you believe it or not the US has shown a remarkable amount of self-restraint in dealing with Afghanistan. Public outcry against the attacks in the US was such that most people wouldn't have minded nuking Afghanistan. No need to ask for Pakistani airspace, no need to deal with the logistics of long-range bomber flights, no need to try to cooperate with an indigenous force, simply punch in some GPS coordinates and that would have been that. No line, no wait. It wouldn't have even made an appreciable dent in the US nuclear stockpile.
Public opinion is currently at the point that, if there were a terrorist nuclear attack at any point in the near future, within a week at least one country would cease to exist out of shear principle. After a few years we will have rebuilt and be right back where we were before (New York's financial district was wiped out and yet we're the ones leading the economic recovery), while whatever hapless country on the other end of our retaliatory strike won't have anything left to rebuild with.
"And please, comparing Alexander The Great to Curious George is an insult of global proportions..."
I'm not. We're talking about George W. Bush here, not Lyndon B. Johnson. Bush's leadership technique avoids micromanagement like the plague and giving credit for the military victory to someone much higher than Pentagon brass or the folks at Langley would be hollow. Unlike just about Democrat president after Truman, Bush knows enough to stay out of their way and let them do what they do best.
All they really need is
Ground troops, how will we stop billions of chinese people all running and attacking the whitehouse?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The only thing that could possibly happen is for everybody to see again how non future minded Microsofts OS Security is.
or to you believe that being blown-up by an Israeli tank or war-plane is different from being blow-up by a Palestinian suicide-bomber
Yeah, I think it is much different to be blown up by a misguided Israeli tank shell or missile or bomb that wasn't meant to strike me and some lunatic nut suicide bombing terrorist who INTENTIONALLY tries to kill dozens, hundreds or thousands of civilians.
I also remember Palestinians jumping up and down celebrating when the World Trade Center fell. The Palestinians, like the rest of the Arab world, don't want peace with Israel and never have.
WHen did I say that all the destruction in Ramallah or anywhere else in the West Bank was brought about by a misguided bomb? Nice of you to draw conclusions that are devoid of logic.
Here's a tip for the Palestinians: If you don't want tanks and bulldozers rolling through your villages, try not blowing up people in other countries. The Palestinians are victims, victims of being pawns of the other Arab states and their repugnant leadership.
Yeah, I think it is much different to be blown up by a misguided Israeli tank shell or missile or bomb that wasn't meant to strike me and some lunatic nut suicide bombing terrorist who INTENTIONALLY tries to kill dozens, hundreds or thousands of civilians.
/airplane-bombs were misguided.
...
1) You are making an assumption that the tank-shells
2) If the Israelis WOULDN'T go around firing shells or droping bombs, none would hit any civilians. (Please don't forget they were doing it in territory they invaded in 1964)
3) There is no proven relation between Osama bin Laden and the Palestinians. I would suspect that the situation in Palestine and the American support to Israel are part of the "reasoning" behind the Sep. 11 attack. Then again, so is the fact that there are American bases in Saudi Arabia (holy land and all that) - are the Saudi's also to be blamed?
I also remember Palestinians jumping up and down celebrating when the World Trade Center fell. The Palestinians, like the rest of the Arab world, don't want peace with Israel and never have.
1) Never say never - if you say never then it's bound to be false.
2) I'm sure there were some Americans cheering up when the Oaklahoma bombing happened - does that make all Americans bad???
WHen did I say that all the destruction in Ramallah or anywhere else in the West Bank was brought about by a misguided bomb? Nice of you to draw conclusions that are devoid of logic.
Well, it seems i concluded wrongly that your only explanation for the death of Palestinian civilians was "misguided" bombs. This was the core argument in your explanation that Palestinians are not victims.
How can you then equate the destruction in Ramalah and other places (like Jenin) which was brought about by bombs which according to you are not necessarily misguided with the fact that (also according to you) Palestinians are not victims.
Please keep in mind that destroying a person's home and all his/her thing is a for of victimization and that under all that destruction there were a lot of dead bodies.
Here's a tip for the Palestinians:
If you don't want tanks and bulldozers rolling through your villages, try not blowing up people in other countries.
I agree.
I can understand the desperation of a people living in an occupied land (yes, Palestina is an occupied land since 1964 - even the UN accepts this) fighting against an army which has all of the latest tanks, planes, helicopters and other weaponry - this surely lead to those desperate measures.
Yet, i still agree that the suicided-bombings are not the solution, they are part of the problem.
The Palestinians are victims, victims of being pawns of the other Arab states and their repugnant leadership.
Remove "other Arab" from the phrase and i'll agree with you:
- The Palestinians are victims, victims of being pawns of the states and their repugnant leadership.
With "the states" meaning country leaderships all over including Palestinian, Israeli, USA, other Arab states, Europe, etc
I'm just curious as to your feelings on this, so I'll ask the question simply. Do you think the United States needs an intelligence agency (in its current form or in some other manifestation?).
Also, the British may have been the first to create an "information agency" but the use of espionage has been systematically used by nation-states of all kinds since ancient India and potentially even earlier. Seems that many governments find information about threats to be valuable.
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