The Invasion of The Chinese Cyberspies

HorsesAss writes "Time Magazine has an article up entitled 'The Invasion Of The Chinese Cyberspies and the Man Who Tried to Stop Them', which outlines how Chinese PRC is cracking DOD networks and downloading massive sets of files detailing every aspect of military planning and practice." From the article: "The hackers he was stalking, part of a cyberespionage ring that federal investigators code-named Titan Rain, first caught Carpenter's eye a year earlier when he helped investigate a network break-in at Lockheed Martin in September 2003. A strikingly similar attack hit Sandia several months later, but it wasn't until Carpenter compared notes with a counterpart in Army cyberintelligence that he suspected the scope of the threat. Methodical and voracious, these hackers wanted all the files they could find, and they were getting them by penetrating secure computer networks at the country's most sensitive military bases, defense contractors and aerospace companies."

Comments

Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[pieterh]

USA vs. China

While the rest of the world chooses sides or tries to get out of the way...

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[MyLongNickName]

Kinda reminds me of Hulk Hogan vs whomever. The 'whomever' is built into some type of super-human villan. It is curtains for Hogan. All over finished. Then Hogan drops the leg and is victorious once again.

Then next bad guy. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Last 'bad guy' was the EU. Last bad guy before that was Japan. Last bad guy before that was Russia.

Stupid analogy. Probably. But I am kinda tired and cranky right now, and haven't bought into all the China terror stuff. More tahn likely, China will hit a plateau that they won't be able to crosss as long as things are centrally planned. They will be a force to be reckoned with, sure, but won't be too interested in anything beyond their thousands-of-years-old sphere of influence.

And all of this will just take our eyes off of the fact that we are decaying from within. Much like Hulk Hogan's skill, physique and hairline were in decline 20 years ago.... Maybe the analogy wasn't as stupid as it first sounded...

Or maybe it is...

goodnight all...

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[Baldrson]

The outcome will certainly provide evidence for or against the sloagan "Diversity is our strength."

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[Anonymous Coward]

You give the US to much credit. The US will lose power over the next 25 years until it becomes irrelevant. I say India and China will go at it.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[mprinkey]

A succinct and apt analogy. Maybe now graduates from the Vince McMahon School of Political Science will finally start getting the recognition they justly deserve.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[MyLongNickName]

Where have you been? Their valedictorian got elected President!

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[Anonymous Coward]

That's hillarious but maybe the Jesse "The Body" Ventura School of Politicial Science would be a better fit, given his political career.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[globalar]

"Invasion", hackers (with a sense of purpose no less!), "new breed of enemy". Typical Time insight.

The reason to release information on this is almost purely a Pentagon press game. They have their own little war going on with China already. It's mostly been bearucratic (arguing over how much money is being spent on military budgets, saying one side is a threat, etc.) Occassionaly they move major pieces of the Pacific fleet, just to stir up speculation (in the U.S. press mostly). The Pentagon does have some necons nesting there, so taking a coarse line is in vogue.

Practically speaking, the Pentagon has also long been aware of the "soft-power" threats, especially IT. They have invested in computer networks for decades. Over the last decade work has gone into networking everything (in terms of information) and finding ways to control their resources electronically. The technocrats are keen on the U.S. military's weaknesses. This is translated by the more politically-minded managment into a counter-statement: The U.S. is vulnerable to an information war, but the better way to say this is to play up the threat of China in terms of cyber*buzzword*.

The Pentagon can argue for more funding this way and field little/no criticism. Same with the PLA in China (who has a growing budget). Both militaries are getting what they want without a huge payout in budget (i.e. a traditional war). And I definitely wouldn't rule out ego on both sides of the Pacific.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[justforaday]

But that implies that he got good grades...

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[cagle_.25]

The problem with your logic is that even *if* the U.S. is constantly on the hunt for a new enemy for Public Relations purposes ... it may occasionally find a real one!

I think China might qualify. China has been the hungry dragon for a long, long time. The U.S. will inevitably block some of its goals, and war within the next 50 years is likely.

1. Issue 1: Taiwan. The U.S. has supported the rights of Taiwan to de facto order its affairs. PRC has insisted on a one-China policy. When the time is right, the PRC will try to back its policy with force.
2. Energy. China's self-interest includes becoming a developing nation. Its citizens are just as interested in driving cars over there as soccer moms are interested in driving SUVs over here. The oil has to come from somewhere, and demand will surely ... no, has already ... driven the price of gas up; almost doubled it, in fact.
3. Korea. China has an uneasy relationship with North Korea, but it appears to be treating it as a kind of buffer state. If NK actually gets deliverable nukes (which is only a decade out or less), it will force a crisis.
4. Southeast Asia. That part of the world has cooled considerably in the last 30 years, but China still has trading interests there. In fact, it appears to be regrouping its strategy towards diplomatic influence.
5. South and Central America. For reasons that are unclear, China has made significant inroads into South and Central America: the purchase of the Panama Canal, and sweetheart deals with Venezuela.

Where does it all lead? To much more significant conflict than the U.S. had with Iraq.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[cagle_.25]

Point #4 is unclear. What I meant is that China is using a different channel -- diplomacy -- to revert to the level of influence in Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Laos that it once had through military means. That influence will necessarily rattle cages in both India and in Washington.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[cvstSD]

well...

re: "... purely a Pentagon press game. They have their own little war going on with China already."

How do we know your post isn't part of it?

:)

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[Master of Transhuman]

Actually nothing you've said indicates that China is an "enemy" of the US.

Everything you've said is related to China increasing its economic development and exerting influence over its historical area of influence to assist that development and the large Chinese populations in those areas.

The problem with your concept is that the US believes it and it ALONE can hold ANY influence ANYWHERE in the world. This was EXPLICITLY stated in the PNAC documents that formed the foreign policy of the neocons and Bush. It is a pure implementation of imperialism.

Therefore it stimulates conflict with states attempting to build their own influence. Iraq, for example, had NO conflict with the US in its sphere of influence. It DID, however, have a conflict with ISRAEL, which used its control over US foreign policy to force a war with Iraq which could cost the US up a trillion dollars.

The bottom line: the state is the problem, not the populations of those states. The Chinese have no quarrel with Americans, and vice versa. It's our "glorious leaders" and their rich backers who have the problem.

You want to stop war, get rid of the state.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[Comatose51]

Fuck me! I'm Chinese American. I guess it's off to the concentration camps for me... excuse me, I meant internment camps.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[Anonymous Coward]

I see more India and China as the dominante powers of a significant portion of the next century. US is now like England between WWI and WWII. In a transition stage where it's prepondominant status is slowly bleeding away towards new players. Trade made the US. But look at history, when a civilization becomes a consumer society, it consumes the wealth accumulated by previous generations. Then, the poor an hungry who can live with little get their chance... India and China have a huge population pool. By the time most of them are consumers.... LOTS of earth's resources will have migrated. It takes time before it becomes blatantly obvious that the "current" superpower has become an empty shell. Nobody realizes that it's only living on credit, but that little by little the ability to meet their accounts has gone. In the days of the Roman Empire, this transition phase could last much longer because the speed of communications was so slow. Now, a decade or two is a very long time.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[cagle_.25]

I need to be more clear, then: China is a likely *future enemy* of the U.S. The morality of it, and blame for it, is neither here nor there -- in this thread. I'm simply observing and predicting.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[qurk]

ieeeeeeeee

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[DigitalHammer]

Ha, ditto that homie. :)

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[mboverload]

Don't forget about China buying that new supertanker they probably plan on building into a carrier.

And no, I'm not kidding. Don't have the link handy though.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[bhsx]

Halturnershow.com was linked to Fark last week about the CCP's Defense Minister's recent speech in which he (CCP DM) spelled-out the plans to "Clean-up America." I'm curious if anyone else came across that. I don't know if it is accurate, I haven't seen anything else on it and HTS.com sure seems to be inflamatory, but if it's 10% true it's scary as hell. Even talking about getting into a shared research deal Isreal for what he thinks is the closest thing to genetic weapons, to wipe-out any race not "yellow."
It was a terrifying read. I can't find the link atm, but has anyone read that that can comment?

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[cybpunks3]

Where does Wal-Mart fit into this?

US vs. China pretty much means the US vs. its own capitalism as long as we destroy our manufacturing sector in favor of China.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[Anonymous Coward]

That's UNA-bomber talk and we all know how that ended - Bill Joy writing about gray goo taking over the world and founding of nano-tech going down the drain.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[Sponge Bath]

Where does Wal-Mart fit into this?

Straight into the inflammed ass of the consumer.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[saridder]

One thing you forget is that our national security is heavily tied into economic security and growth. If another country is disrupting our ability to do business, then our national security is in danger. USA has always been tied to economic growth before it was even a country, heck that's why the colonies were founded. Why would that stop today?

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[Thomas Miconi]

1. Issue 1: Taiwan. The U.S. has supported the rights of Taiwan to de facto order its affairs. PRC has insisted on a one-China policy. When the time is right, the PRC will try to back its policy with force.

And get away with it. See Tibet.

Energy is irrelevant - the US can't force 1.2B Chinese to gulp less oil than 280M Americans.

North Korea, admitting it survives that long, may start a war, but not one that would involve China. If Kim Jong Il decides to nuke Seoul, the Chinese won't raise a finger to protect him.

4. Southeast Asia. That part of the world has cooled considerably in the last 30 years, but China still has trading interests there. In fact, it appears to be regrouping its strategy towards diplomatic influence.

Duh. 30 years ? China has dominated the social, cultural and political landscape in the whole far east for two fscking millenia. They are the big powerful neighbours that you don't want to piss off. Relationships may be uneasy at times, but when it comes to China vs USA, well, one is "the local", the other is "the foreigner". No points for guessing who is who.

5. South and Central America. For reasons that are unclear, China has made significant inroads into South and Central America: the purchase of the Panama Canal, and sweetheart deals with Venezuela.

About as unclear as the reason why the US essentially purchased Saudi Arabia in the 40s. Re-Duh !

Thomas

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[Paua Fritter]

Iraq, for example, had NO conflict with the US in its sphere of influence

Actually I don't think this is true: prior to the invasion, Iraq had started to sell its oil in Euros instead of US dollars. As long as the world's oil trade is conducted in dollars, the world is essentially lending the US vast sums of money, loans which are backed by the assets of oil exporters. That's why the US "sphere of influence" includes the entire international oil trade.

If international oil trade were generally conducted in Euros, these benefits would accrue to the European Union. Or if OPEC denominated their product in a currency of their own (a hypothetical petro-dinar), then they could get the benefits themselves! There are other good reasons for OPEC states to drop the dollar, so IMHO the US government was quite right to be concerned that this might trigger a sell-off of dollars. This, I believe, was the real trigger for the invasion, not WMDs, human rights, political reform, terrorism, or whatever the latest excuse is.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[Uber Banker]

China already bought a very modern aircraft carrier from Russia (about 40 fighter capacity, cutting edge (Russian aircraft carriers concentrated on establishing fighter superiority with Mig-29s and SU-37s instead of being general purpose bombardment platforms like US carriers), it was destined as a new modern ship for the Russian navy).

The Chinese turned it into a floating casino.

So why the fuck would they buy a supertanker to turn into an aircraft carrier when they already produce the largest amount of tankers and cargo ships in the world?!?!!?!?

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[Liam Slider]

1. Taiwan is a small and culturally and economically insignificant island off the coast of a massive country. Almost everyone of economic significance in Taiwan is forging commercial links with the mainland. The mainland see it of minor importance, gaining points purely in chest beating; 300 years ago Chinese were a minority on the island, Ploynesians were the majority. It has zero cultural or economic significance for Chine.

Actually, Taiwan is fairly economically significant, regardless of it's small size. It has a GDP of $576.2 billion, and a per capita income of $25,300 (not great, but not exactly horrible either). It's an important international trade center as well.

2. China, unlike the US, has huge coal resources, which can provide the bulk of national power requirements for the next 30 years (providing the power plants and lines get put up).

Where do you get the idea that the US doesn't have lots of coal? Most of our electrical power comes from coal, and it's not imported, it's mined here. There are parts of this country where the entire economy depends on coal mining, as it's the major industry (certain areas of my own State for example) and a huge source of jobs. Heck, we export coal to other countries.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[Distinguished Hero]

They will be a force to be reckoned with, sure, but won't be too interested in anything beyond their thousands-of-years-old sphere of influence.

This is allegedly a speech given by Chi Haotian, "China's Minister of Defense and vice-chairman of China's Central Military Commission." I suggest you read it. Choice quotes are:

"Specifically, the following are the fundamental causes for the defeat of Germany and Japan: First, they had too many enemies all at once, as they did not adhere to the principle of eliminating enemies one at a time; second, they were too impetuous, lacking the patience and perseverance required for great accomplishments; third, when the time came for them to be ruthless, they turned out to be too soft, therefore leaving troubles that resurfaced later on."

"Our Chinese people are wiser than the Germans because, fundamentally, our race is superior to theirs."

"The first issue is living space. This is the biggest focus of the revitalization of the Chinese race."

"Our economic development is all about preparing for the need of war! Publicly we still emphasize economic development as our center, but in reality, economic development has war as its center! We have made a tremendous effort to construct "The Great Wall Project" to build up, along our coastal and land frontiers as well as around large and medium-sized cities, a solid underground "Great Wall" that can withstand a nuclear war."

"Would the United States allow us to go out to gain new living space? First, if the United States is firm in blocking us, it is hard for us to do anything significant to Taiwan and some other countries! Second, even if we could snatch some land from Taiwan, Vietnam, India, or even Japan, how much more living space can we get? Very trivial! Only countries like the United States, Canada and Australia have the vast land to serve our need for mass colonization. Therefore, solving the "issue of America" is the key to solving all other issues. First, this makes it possible for us to have many people migrate there and even establish another China under the same leadership of the CCP. America was originally discovered by the ancestors of the yellow race, but Columbus gave credit to the white race. We the descendents of the Chinese nation are entitled to the possession of the land! It is said that the residents of the yellow race have a very low social status in United States. We need to liberate them. Second, after solving the "issue of America," the western countries in Europe would bow to us, not to mention to Taiwan, Japan and other small countries. Therefore, solving the "issue of America" is the mission assigned to CCP members by history."

"Only by using special means to "clean up" America will we be able to lead the Chinese people there. This is the only choice left for us."

"When Comrade Xiaoping was still with us, the Party Central Committee had the perspicacity to make the right decision not to develop aircraft carrier groups and focus instead on developing lethal weapons that can eliminate mass populations of the enemy country. "

"We must prepare ourselves for two scenarios. If our biological weapons succeed in the surprise attack [on the United States, the Chinese people will be able to keep their losses at a minimum in the fight against the United States."

"It is indeed brutal to kill one or two hundred million Americans. But that is the only path that will secure a Chinese century, a century in which the CCP leads the world."

"Now, when I am about to finish my speech, you probably understand why we conducted this online survey. Simply put, through conducting this online survey we wanted to know whether the people would rise against us if one day we secretly adopt resolute means to "clean up" America. Would more people support us o

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[the gnat]

The mainland see it of minor importance, gaining points purely in chest beating;

The fact that the chest-beating continues unabated to this day suggests that for the PRC leadership it isn't at all a minor issue. The existence of a prosperous, capitalist, mostly Chinese democracy right off their shores seems to piss them off mightily. The past few decades of Chinese history indicate that the leadership will only permit freedom when it doesn't threaten their continued control of the country. They've shifted from totalitarianism to simple authoritarianism, with the result that they allow some freedoms but will quickly squash any mass movement they can't control. Taiwan, Falun Gong, the Internet...

I should add that I also find the Cuba embargo absurd, and I hate Communists almost as much as Nazis.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but how can a load of old drivel like this be modded Score: 5, Interesting?

Mod parent down...

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[0x0000]

The morality of it, and blame for it, is neither here nor there

I cannot agree - the nature of the future, and the nature of predictions of it - go directly to issues of morality and "blame".

For instance, the accuracy of your predictions depend upon the moral and political state of the present and actions based upon the present state of societies. If, for instance, China, the US, N Korea, and Taiwan pusue common cause for mutual benefit (as unlikely as that may sound, it would be an example of a differing moral and political condition), then war between them within the next 50 years becomes less likely.

I think that point follows logically, since your predictions depend upon the current political conditions remaining in place sufficiently long to cause a war. Insofar as that happens, your predictions seem accurate, but what good are predictions if we can't use them for something?

The two most obvious uses of such predictions would be a) prepare for that war, b) start changing the political/social/economic/moral conditions that can only lead to war. In case b), morality and (future) blame are obviously "here or there" - case a) is the default under the current system, and that condition is a function of morality and politics - so both pertain in both cases.

That said - I can sympathize with your desire to stop short of a discussion of those factors in this thread, since it could become a very long and complicated thread indeed, with a very nasty noise to signal ratio.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[Master of Transhuman]

In other words, for us to get rich and stay rich, everybody else has to be poor.

That's the attitude of the rich, not the poor.

And it's incorrect in fact, based on available planetary and solar resources and technology.

But it is a standard primate reaction.

In this case, however, I really doubt the rest of the world is going to stand idly by while the US kills a billion people (or even a few score million and wrecks the Chinese economy) just to maintain McDonald's fast food dominance over the globe. More likely, the world will say, "Thank you, we've had quite enough of the US now" - and fry this country.

And it doesn't matter how much military power this country has, it couldn't begin to stand up to the rest of the world. We can't even handle Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time. A few backpack nukes in critical places in the US and the rest of the nations driving our military bases out of their respective territories and the US will cease to be a factor in geopolitics for a while at least.

Should happen within two or three more decades, if not sooner. The US has quite worn out its welcome - if it ever had one outside of France and Britain for our part in WWII.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[Master of Transhuman]

Oh, I agree that establishing an oil bourse denominated in Euros would do damage to the US dollar.

And in fact, Iran is proceeding to do the same thing - which is undoubtedly (along with Israel's desire to see Iran destroyed) the reason Bush is planning to attack Iran as soon as some "terrorist incident" excuse can be laid at the Iranian's door, correctly or otherwise - just like Iraq.

Nonetheless, Iraq still had no conflict with the US. The US had a conflict with Iraq. Not the same thing. The bottom line and my point is that the US - like most states - will create any conflict it needs to justify actions taken to benefit it and keep everyone else in line.

Eventually the world will have had enough of this - and the US empire will be destroyed like every other in history. I would put this as inevitable within the next twenty to thirty years, maybe longer. I really doubt the US will survive in its present form to see a third Centennial. Physically, of course, it will survive, but as an economic and military superpower, the US days are numbered.

And after that, the Transhumans will ensure that NO human superpower exists. For that matter, no human state power at all.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[quarkscat]

"Actually nothing you've said indicates that China is an "enemy" of the US."

While I am as much in favor of reining-in the USA's military-industrial complex, for whom business is only good when we have yet another enemy lined up, as the next tinfoil hat wearer, sometimes the paranoid do actually have someone after them. And those that insist upon sticking their heads in the proverbial sand always have another part of their anatomy sticking up as a nice target.

North Korea is a proxy state for the PRC. 80% of all military and financial aid that North Korea gets comes from the "generosity" of the PRC. Through the nuclear WMD build-up in North Korea, the PRC can effectively blackmail South Korea and Japan while maintaining an aura of "plausible deniability". And when the first North Korean nuke arrives in the USA in container cargo (or is sold to Islamic militants), the PRC can deny any knowledge of its use.

The PRC, through their recently re-integrated territory of Hong Kong, attempted to buy the Port of Long Beach, CA lock-stock-and-barrel in 2001. When that purchase was denied due to national security and sovereignty issues, A PRC general who is part of the ruling Politburo threatened to nuke LA in retaliation. The PRC has bought exclusive rights to two huge port facilities at the Panama Canal, one on the East and one on the West Coast. Effectively, the PRC can sieze control of the Panama Canal at any time from their two "naval bases" there. And when the US Congress sought to block the sale of Unocal to a PRC government owned oil company, another PRC general on the Politburo threatened to "nuke the USA". The PRC has also warned the USA against any further impediment against actions the PRC may take to reclaim Taiwan, again on threat of a nuclear holocast.

The PRC is barely a reliable or responsible trading partner, having used their position in the WTO to agressively fight any and all restrictions or tariffs on their dumping goods onto the EU or USA markets -- a/k/a economic warfare. Their hostility regarding challenges to their territorial expansion fall just short of open warfare.

As far as blaming this hostility on the PRC government, rather than upon the Chinese people, that is a strawman argument -- the government there has no plans to engage democratic reform there. They are the government firmly entrenched in power, and they have a 10, 20, and 50 year plan for total Asian hegenomy.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[Mysticalfruit]

I'm missing something.

Why in the hell is sensitive information being stored on a network that's accessible from anything but a machine on the premises?

Now that we've got all this great networking technology, I think it's time that we make the decision to just completely cut off and isolate networks.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[Master of Transhuman]

North Korea is never going to sell a nuke to Islamic militants, regardless of any other technology sales they may have engaged or will engage in.

No dictator has ever sold nukes to anyone and never will. It's far too risky.

If a nuke comes into the US, it will be an Israeli nuke that some militant stole - or an Israeli nuke brought in by the Mossad to convince people that North Korea sold a nuke to Iran, so the US should nuke both of them.

That was a total red herring in Iraq's case (more so because they never had nukes and probably never would), and it's a total red herring for North Korea as well.

As for the PRC, we have plenty of asshole generals who spout off in this country, too. In fact, we have an asshole named Dick Cheney who has just ordered the Pentagon to draw up plans to use nukes on Iran in the event of another 9/11 incident.

It's totally meaningless as long as they have less than a couple hundred nukes and we have thousands.

And seizing control of the Panama Canal isn't going to happen either while the US has a Navy.

As for Asian hegemony, who cares? Right now, the South Koreans do more business with China than the US and I expect if Japan doesn't now, they soon will. If the Chinese can dominate Asia, so what? If the US has the right to dominate North and South America, why don't the Chinese have the right to dominate Asia? This doesn't make them an enemy of the US except to the degree that US politicians want to make it so for their own ends.

Get a clue. The world changes. Two hundred years ago, the US didn't exist as a significant entity. A hundred years from now, it won't exist as a significant entity. (Personally I believe humans won't exist, but that's another issue.)

Deal with it. We Transhumans will.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[cagle_.25]

You make an interesting point, and I mostly agree: in the final analysis, foreign policy is a matter of morality.

My point was simpler: in response to "Master of Transhuman", I was pointing out that one has to understand the issues first, before assigning blame.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 100 years

[Grym]

If a nuke comes into the US, it will be an Israeli nuke that some militant stole - or an Israeli nuke brought in by the Mossad to convince people that North Korea sold a nuke to Iran, so the US should nuke both of them.

Anti-Semite much?

Get a grip. You're forgetting that the most probable source of black-market nuclear weapons isn't China or Israel. It's Russia. They have dozens of missing nukes which are though to be in control of the Russian mafia. Hundreds more are almost completely unguarded.

It's totally meaningless as long as they have less than a couple hundred nukes and we have thousands.

Totally meaningless? This is a country whose government has called for the destruction of the United States. Iran has even got a government-sanctioned martyrdom brigade. If they obtain nuclear weapons, they are crazy enough to use them first--even if doing so would mean their utter annihilation.

-Grym

Just the Chinese?

[kitsook]

If the DoD systems are so easy to crack, what is stopping others to attack them?

Re:Just the Chinese?

[Poromenos1]

And, more importantly, why doesn't the DoD get their files off internet-connected PCs?

Re:Just the Chinese?

[MoogMan]

The Law.

Re:Just the Chinese?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article makes it sound as if the evil aggressive Chinese are preemptively attacking us and we are the victims. I'm sure we have been actively attacking them from day one. This is just one of those articles to fuel the flames between the US and China which will one day throw us into another Cold War.

Re:Just the Chinese?

[schon]

I'm sure we have been actively attacking them from day one.

Yeah right! Everbody knows that the USA is the only place that actually invents anything - everybody else just a copycat.

From the lightbulb, AC power and the telephone, to radio, all the way to the WWW, the USA has and always will be the only country that invents anything. It's why the terrorists hate us!

We have no reason to attack other countries, because we have nothing to learn from them - don't you know anything? You should watch more Fox News.

Re:Just the Chinese?

[John Seminal]

If the DoD systems are so easy to crack, what is stopping others to attack them?

Did you consider the USA wants those systems hacked by the Chinese.

It is like the old lawyer trick. My company made a product we knew would break and result in death (Say a car tire that we knew would explode and cause cars to turn over). Now your lawyers knows this, so they get a court to subpeona the papers showing we knew the product was bad. Instead of sending that one report, we send you that report mixed in 250,000 other reports. Hell, we might send you 249,999 reports and the 1 you wanted is missing. We send you so much stuff, that your whole legal staff is running at 110% and getting nowhere.

The point is if lawyers can use misinformation, I am sure the government is too. We did it with the USSR, causing them to spend so much on the military that their economy collapsed. Are we doing the same thing with China? Giving them a bunch of false "intel" that the Chinese believe they "stole" when in fact we wanted them to get it??

Re:Just the Chinese?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those of you in the know will realize that there are no connections between the Internet and the DoD SIPRNET. Most of these stories are very over-hyped or otherwise just plain misleading.

I speak from experience. This is AC because the "experts" will no doubt bore me with their "supposed" knowledge and arm-chair expertise.

Flame on....

Re:Just the Chinese?

[Samari711]

all of the best stuff is off the Internet, no doubt about it. There is still a lot of unclassified technology that the State Department doesn't want exported from the country though, and that's probably what's being stolen. It's usually stuff that is common in industry but can be used in certain circumstances for military purposes (i.e. encryption software). Boeing got fined pretty big not too long ago because a tiny chip in one of the comercial airplanes they sold to china could be used in missle guidance systems if oyu put enough together.

Re:Just the Chinese?

[anagama]

I think you've been watching too many Bond movies.

Re:Just the Chinese?

[Anonymous Coward]

I completely agree that they should get their files off internet connected PC's if they want to protect them.

I thought it was pretty much standard procedure for Classified information for the owner to secure the information in a computer that is not available to the outside world in order to minimize Tampering.

Re:Just the Chinese?

[jcnnghm]

Probably because if their files read like every other bit of goverment writing that I have every seen, they are as good as encrypted. Especially for people that are not native english speakers.

Re:Just the Chinese?

[Not_Wiggins]

It is like the old lawyer trick. My company made a product we knew would break and result in death (Say a car tire that we knew would explode and cause cars to turn over). Now your lawyers knows this, so they get a court to subpeona the papers showing we knew the product was bad. Instead of sending that one report, we send you that report mixed in 250,000 other reports. Hell, we might send you 249,999 reports and the 1 you wanted is missing. We send you so much stuff, that your whole legal staff is running at 110% and getting nowhere.

"If a new car built by my company leaves Chicago traveling west at 60 miles per hour, and the rear differential locks up, and the car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside, does my company initiate a recall?

You take the population of vehicles in the field (A) and multiply it by the probable rate of failure (B), then multiply the result by the average cost of an out-of-court settlement (C).

A times B times C equals X. This is what it will cost if we don't initiate a recall.

If X is greater than the cost of a recall, we recall the cars and no one gets hurt.

If X is less than the cost of a recall, then we don't recall."

Tyler Durden, is that you? ;)

Re:Just the Chinese?

[Maxo-Texas]

I have read that one of the largest man made non-nuclear explosions to date was due to bad data like this.

The story goes that we let russia steal sabotaged pump designs for their oil pipeline.

more details here:
http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/ntr41080.htm

Re:Just the Chinese?

[spagetti_code]

Given the choice between incompetency and conspiracy (esp with Govt depts) - I choose incompetency every time.

Re:Just the Chinese?

[QuietLagoon]

If the DoD systems are so easy to crack, what is stopping others to attack them?

China has full source code for Windows, others do not.

Re:Just the Chinese?

[Ralph Wiggam]

I don't buy it. If this was a massive misinformation job, it would not be in the newspapers. It would just happen.

I think that it's people outside of the PRC using machines inside the PRC to pull this stuff. Either it was the best way to hide because they know that Chinese law enforcement is not going to cooperate or they want the US gov to freak out about "Chinese" hackers and not look for the real people.

When Stalin was running the USSR, he firmly believed some of our misinformation. When presented with the truth, he often wouldn't believe it.

-B

Re:Just the Chinese?

[Infonaut]

Did you consider the USA wants those systems hacked by the Chinese.

You could be right. I know it's not fashionable on Slashdot to give credit to anyone in government for having any brains whatsoever, but from time to time the government gets things right. The closer you get to national security, the longer-term the planning becomes, and the more secretive as well.

I'm not sure that forcing the Soviets to try and outspend us was an example of misinformation, but there are examples of America actually using misinformation well: the buildup to Operation Overlord comes to mind, and the Pentagon used misinformation very well in making Saddam Hussein think the American attack would be a head-on affair, rather than the "left hook" it actually used.

Re:Just the Chinese?

[saridder]

That theory isn't far-fecthed. We've already done it :)

http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/ntr41080.htm

Re:Just the Chinese?

[webwiz1986]

Makes total sence. with todays curent state of world afires, disinformation is as imporent as real info. The US Gov may not be so smart, but the people that work for them a brilliant. who knows, mabey there is info thats ment to throw off the polcital types from ther plans to hand over the US to the UN, or start wars. or just the opposite.

Re:Just the Chinese?

[mikiN]

You are not implying that DoD systems are running Windows, are you?
Is my idea of mil-spec AS/400s with massive redundancy hardware running applications written in handcrafted assembly where each instruction has been scrutinized and each unit has been tested ten bazillion times just a myth?
If so, may <your entity of power and significance> have mercy on you.

Re:Just the Chinese?

[QuietLagoon]

You are not implying that DoD systems are running Windows, are you?

Yes, I am.

Navy ships are controlled by Windows. Windows bought^H^H^H^H^H^H won security certification from the US government.

Mil-spec AS/400's, audited code? You're joking, right?

The reality is that the Chinese has the full set of Windows source code.

Re:Just the Chinese?

[bluGill]

Don't bet on it. Misinformation is about getting the other guy to think what you want him to. Sometimes that means right out telling him that you are pushing misinformation knowing he will think it is a cover for your bad security, and take the bad information that you told him he was getting.

Other times it is finding out who the spys are and feeding them misinformation without them knowing about it. Sometimes you turn the spy into a double agent (on threat of execution), sometimes you just make sure the spy only has access to your prepared information.

Feeding misinformation is hard - you need to make sure that the enemy believes it. Feed too much and they won't believe anything (though at least they won't act on the truth), feed too little, and they will know most of your get your secrets by spying.

Re:Just the Chinese?

[OriginalArlen]

If the DoD systems are so easy to crack, what is stopping others to attack them?

What makes you think others are not attacking them?

Re:Just the Chinese?

[tabrnaker]

And that's exactly what they want you to believe.

Meh. I wouldn't worry about it

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not like they're terrorists or anything

Re:Meh. I wouldn't worry about it

[Ronald Dumsfeld]

It's not like they're terrorists or anything

Nope, sure ain't terrorists.

This is state-sponsored industrial espionage. Why spend five years developing the flight software for a helicopter when you can just steal it?

The article talks of one guy who got a bit too grey for the FBI's liking, and that of his employers. Basically he was having too much fun chasing his bad guys and bugging routers in Guandong, China.

Stupid really. This should have gone to the NSA to become a disinformation campaign. Let them think they got the software, but with subtle deliberate bugs.

Re:Meh. I wouldn't worry about it

[Anonymous Coward]

Let them think they got the software, but with subtle deliberate bugs.

Yes, this is exactly what the US did with Soviet spying during the cold war but times have changed. This is a global economy and it is entirely possible for something you have deliberately bugged to make its way into something that is then sold back to you.

Separate networks

[confusion]

Isn't this the reason that there is supposed to be an air gap between classified networks are and unclassified networks?

I'm wondering how much of what was obtained is planted information to look like something valuable. Then again, it is the government we're talking about, so it could well be national secrets.

Jerry
http://www.itcapability.com/

Re:Separate networks

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a gap between the 2. As far as I know, there has never been a hacking of a classified computer system in the DoD. The problem is that while single documents may be marked unclassified or for official use only, gathering a large number of those documents could actually be marked secret.

Re:Separate networks

[Halfbaked Plan]

One suspects that some of this is alarmism from the media. Like all those cool pricey 'DOD Manuals' you can mail order from 'underground' publishers that turn out to be the same instructions for digging a latrine trench or rebuilding a Diesel Generator you could have gotten at the public library.

Re:Separate networks

[convolvatron]

oh yes. definately. while the article is grossly sensationalistic i suspect that if you were the us dod you'd have some reason to be concerned. not just because of the bad press.

while all actually secret activities aren't on the net, there is alot you can infer from the other random office crap lying around. contracts, billing, travel, social contacts, supply ordering, etc. enough that you've probably saved yourself some time in deciding what to go after with your real intelligence resources

Re:Separate networks

[Homology]

One suspects that some of this is alarmism from the media.

When the Bush administration's poll numbers fall, or they want to draw our attention away from what the administation is doing, then there will be a "security alert" of some kind. The media plays along with these obvious ploys. This is just one of the "security alerts" from the current "bad guy". Of course, if you point this out, then you are an un-American, un-patriotic terrorist loving scumbag that have no gratitude for what the Great Uncle Sam has done for you.

Re:Separate networks

[bprime]

TFA states that no information rated "Classified" or "Secret" was retrieved. TFA goes on to state that so far, a network with those classifications has never been compromised. The information that was retrieved had export controls on it, but no higher classifications.

Re:Separate networks

[odin53]

The article says:

"So far, the files they have vacuumed up are not classified secrets, but many are sensitive and subject to strict export-control laws, which means they are strategically important enough to require U.S. government licenses for foreign use."

The article's author is kind of misleading here. The files so far vacuumed up are not classified BECAUSE there's an air gap. The author implies, however, that it's only a matter of time that these hackers will get through.

Re:Separate networks

[gabacho4]

As someone who uses the many networks available, if the day comes that our classified systems are compromised we are all severely screwed. The article is misleading as the sites being exploited are one the internet. Available to anyone with an internet connection. There is a huge jump from the open internet (NIPR) to the SECRET(SIPR) and TOP SECRET(JWICS) networks.

Re:Separate networks

[Jack9]

How would you know?

Re:Separate networks

[Anonymous Coward]

As a fellow government contractor working in the information assurance/security field for a high-level government facility in the midwest. Any other questions?

Re:Separate networks

[einhverfr]

Isn't this the reason that there is supposed to be an air gap between classified networks are and unclassified networks?

Hmmm.... I can see various issues with this. However, a decent compromise might be to have a whitelist of systems or networks that are allowed to connect and block everyone else at least for these hosts containing this sort of information. Yes, maintenance becomes a pain but this is the price of security.

A second thought I had was that I can't imagine that the army would be that cautious about breaking into the routers in China. International incident or not, the risks are pretty minor compared to not doing anything.

Basically, there are two possibilities that I can see:
1) These are official or unofficial government agents.
2) These are professional freelancers selling information to the highest bidder.

Even if this is not officially sanctioned by the Chinese Government, the fear that some warlord (yes, they still exist in Communist China) could be sanctioning it is likely to prevent the Chinese from cooperating. Needless to say this is an interesting problem.

Re:Separate networks

[Sixpack, Joe]

YOU SIR are an un-American, un-patriotic terrorist loving scumbag that has no gratitude for what your Great Uncle Sam has done for you!

When the Chinese invasion begins and you're mindlessly posting to your internet friends, you better HOPE that somebody in the Bush administration has alerted the media. Otherwise CNN will still be running stories about missing white chicks and loopy record execs running from Nigerian internet scammers. We'll miss the live video of all the hummers rolling into Red Square.

Re:Separate networks

[Artifakt]

Most of soldiers 'legal' paperwork is just graded confidential. Records with information such as who a soldier names as his or her next of kin, or how many dependants they claim with the IRS certainly aren't normally classified secret. However, the information that a whole army reserve unit has just gone through a whole bunch of personnel record upgrades and gotten say 98% compliance from the individual soldiers makes a pretty good indicator that the unit is being made more quickly deployable, and likely is becoming one of the first units to be sent to a potential new hot spot. Units that are moving up in deployability or changing mission often show signs such as increased physical fitness emphasis, updated vaccinations, additional training time for new equipment, and additional training for forign languages, or selectively recruiting and transferring personnel that may be useful for a certain area.
        As an example old enough to have lost its nastier uses to anyone today, My first MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) was in Telephone Central Office Repair (29N - That's become folded into other switching systems these days). The specialty had some ASIs (Additional Skill Identifiers) - those are two to four week additional courses only some soldiers stayed for- in this case ones specifically on various types of commercial, civilian-style telephone switching systems, from old rotary dial pulse types to DTMF). Units that were going to foreign countries with U.S. style phone systems, on rebuilding missions and such, often want people with an ASI appropriate to the types of phones used locally. So, at one point in the 90's any unit that asked for, say, 29N-B2's had probably just been told they were pulled off German or Korean deployment and going to Bosnia (or, at another point, Haiti).
        Bulk data minimg of "official use only" or confidential records can easily assemble secret level information, and I'd claim it's possible for skilled espionage to get enough of the big picture to take a good guess at even Top Secret matters.

Re:Separate networks

[Master of Transhuman]

Yeah: how would you know?

By definition, if you're not GOOD at your job, you wouldn't.

And since you're a government contractor working on the "highest REAL cost bid wins" basis (as usual with the government, despite it supposedly being the opposite), you probably don't.

Just because you work in the field doesn't mean squat. Depending on your clearance and your need to know, you wouldn't necessarily even KNOW that some classified operation got busted at some point.

As for the "air gap", yeah, right. Tell me the US IT operation doesn't fuck up constantly and have dozens of unknown Net connections that a hacker can use. Nor would Chinese hackers need them - they'd have people in place to GET them connections if necessary.

Just the fact that everything is labeled "secret" when it isn't shows how idiotic the government security is.

Dick Marcinko used to waltz his Red Cell SEAL team into government secure operations constantly, until the Navy fired his ass and put him in jail on a trumped up charge to prevent any more embarassment of senior Navy officers.

Military security is a joke and an oxymoron for morons.

Re:Separate networks

[Master of Transhuman]

And you only need to compromise one person with access to those networks to penetrate those networks.

And I'm sure the Chinese have already done that, or are working on it in the unlikely event they haven't.

The Russians and Israelis undoubtedly did it years ago. Hell, the Israelis run the FBI's entire wiretapping operation! And you think they don't have agents in place in that operation?

The notion that NO ONE has EVER compromised a US secret network is so ridiculous I can't even conceive of anyone being stupid enough to believe it.

If security was that good, every big corporation would be using it and they aren't.

Last I heard, back in the nineties, a group of computer and telecommo execs were given clearance and shown the facilities at the NSA for review.

Their conclusion: The US will be deaf, dumb and blind in ten years, the equipment was so outdated.

And everybody has heard how fucked up the FBI is.

And we're supposed to believe the US military - the POSTER BOY FOR FUCKING INCOMPETENCE - is so tightly secure that NO ONE has EVER penetrated their secret computer networks?

Oh fucking please.

The US military simply is NOT in the lead in security except for the ability to give ORDERS to people directly and to jail them if they fuck up.

This is not a secure situation, no matter how much it seems like it.

Re:Separate networks

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA:

So far, the files they have vacuumed up are not classified secrets, but many are sensitive and subject to strict export-control laws, which means they are strategically important enough to require U.S. government licenses for foreign use.

Re:Separate networks

[Augmento]

no air gap. http://iase.disa.mil/acronym.html#S

Re:Separate networks

[Eil]

The problem is that while single documents may be marked unclassified or for official use only, gathering a large number of those documents could actually be marked secret.

Well, perhaps. The main problem is that military leadership have become extremely dependent on computer technology just as much as any business leadership certainly has by now. A tremendous amount of information is created, saved, and passed along in the form of email and Microsoft Word documents. Couple that with buttloads of really, really insecure networks running 100% Microsoft kit administered by cranky old enlisted retirees working for Lockheed Martin and you've got a recipe for easy pickins. Sure, there are programs like COMPUSEC that preach the gospel of basic security practices to end users, but end users are not the problem.

This is pretty much the story in the flying squadron that I am assigned to, and I imagine the rest of the Air Force is the same way. The Air Force simply does not have any grasp of how to put together quality, efficient, and secure networks. Every detail of our flying operations is stored on the base network and on various desktop computers. A reasonably skilled hacker could have access to ALL of it.

About the only really important thing they would never be able to download is the encryption ciphers used for authentication and secure voice because those are currently still stored on paper tape. But there are plans already underway to move them to a computer...

Re:Separate networks

[OriginalArlen]

(Sigh, another highly informative post destined to languish unread at +2 ... I must check /. more often ;)

Good question. A couple of months ago NISCC (the UK's national CERT-like organisation, with added input from police and spooks) announced that they'd found the same thing happening in the UK. The attackers were using custom trojans to attack a handful or organisations at a time. The key point was that they don't NEED to attack ultra-secure air-gapped networks or machines to get useful data. Every typical multinational has vast amounts of commercially sensitive info on NON air-gapped machines - bog standard corporate desktops and file servers, f'rinstance. The thing that people don't seem to be grasping is that normal commercial info (marketing plans, design info on new products, merger & acquisition activity,...) all makes great targets for espionage. This info is all very useful to state actors - especially if the state owns large chunks of the economy and has a direct interest in commercial success for their own companies.

After all, they're only doing what UKUSA have been doing for the last sixty years, latterly with the well-known ECHELON system.

Why doesn't the DOD just lock out all of China?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a reason that they even bother accepting traffic from any where outside of the US?

Re:Why doesn't the DOD just lock out all of China?

[Vapebait]

The computers that are directly attacking the DoD are not necessarily outside of the US.

Re:Why doesn't the DOD just lock out all of China?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the DOD interspersed national secrets with information about Falun Gong, I bet we could trust the Chinese to do our job.

Re:Why doesn't the DOD just lock out all of China?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm wondering why on earth they keep military plan files in a network(s) that can be reached from outside their own locked doors?

Re:Why doesn't the DOD just lock out all of China?

[YrWrstNtmr]

Is there a reason that they even bother accepting traffic from any where outside of the US?

Sure. Data sharing with allies, aircraft, ships, ground equipment is frequently designed/built elsewhere, and the myriad of US bases in other countries.

In addition, the 'compromised' systems are not actually DoD, but contractors. Boeing, LockMart, etc.

Lastly...if you read the article, no actual classified systems were compromised. OF course...gathering and putting together a lot of unclassified info can be quite bad.

Re:Why doesn't the DOD just lock out all of China?

[Guppy06]

Part of having a global empire means having people stationed around the world (i. e. outside the US).

Re:Why doesn't the DOD just lock out all of China?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a reason that they even bother accepting traffic from any where outside of the US?

Cos it'll be pointless, they'd just use compromised machines located in the US as the end point in their proxy chains if they weren't already doing that.
  Let's face it, if you're trying to steal info, you'd have to be pretty stupid to connect directly to your target.

Re:Why doesn't the DOD just lock out all of China?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that has to be the stupidest question I have ever heard...

How about disconnecting the Military from AOL?!?!?

[dangermen]

How about disconnecting the Military from AOL?!?!? Why is our national defense infrastructure attached to the Internet? Where autonomy can be easily obtained. How about people make a private network for defense systems. Public networks will largely never be secure because some asshole will always want in and will always have more time to crack away.

Who do they think they are?

[bart416]

Who the hell do they think they are. The frikin communists. First they make that the people that live in china can't put on the web what they want. Now they start hack servers and mainframes of international organisations, factories, research labs and military bases. I think everybody should start blocking everything with origin out of china.

Re:Who do they think they are?

[-brazil-]

Who the hell do they think they are.


It's called "intelligence gathering", and if you think there aren't a lot of CIA guys trying to do exactly the same thing with any Chinese military server they can find, you probably also still believe in the easter bunny.

I think everybody should start blocking everything with origin out of china.

Makes it kinda hard to do business with them, which is way too profitable to give up over some silly little incident like this.

Re:Who do they think they are?

[djpenguin808]

Actually, it's a lot more likely that the government has the NSA working on China's (and everyone else's) servers.
The CIA doesn't have anything you wouldn't expect to see on their Scientists, Engineers & Technology career fields page. Pretty standard IT stuff you'd likely see at any large organization.

The NSA, on the other hand, has some very interesting listings under the Computer Science section of their career fields page. They look suspiciously like pleasant euphemisms for very devious behaviour.

• Information Systems Security
• Vulnerability Discovery

I don't know about you, but that sure sounds like "protecting ours" and "breaking into theirs" to me...

Re:Who do they think they are?

[gorbachev]

You think the US is not doing the same? If so, I've got this big ass bridge I'd like to sell you.

The difference is that the Chinese really are blocking US.

Re:Who do they think they are?

[bart416]

If the chinese goverment makes a law all companies start to follow them. THats just pure nonsense. Thats what i am talking about.

We'll just put our classified stuff on the net.

[Anonymous Coward]

This linux server will be secure enough.

- Custer

In The Other News

[BackOrder]

There are massive destruction weapons in Irak...

It feels like someone is trying to find an excuse to go on war with China.

I am not anti-american. I have friends and customers in USA. But I guess it's time to have a wake-up call, my friends. Anyway, if it's not war, it's outsourcing.. tough luck.

Re:In The Other News

[-brazil-]

It feels like someone is trying to find an excuse to go on war with China.

Not until it's hyped up a LOT more.

But that's not going to happen. Next on the list is Iran, unless they manage to get the bomb first (which is exactly the reason why they want it). Attacking China itself would be suicide, it's way too big and powerful, and already has the bomb. The only way the USA and China could end up in a war is if China starts it by attacking Taiwan, and that would be a limited scenario.

Re:In The Other News

[Anonymous Coward]

USA will never go on war with China (China doesn't have petroleum).

Oh, and your sig isn't correct. stop using that big bullshit that is systran (i wonder how they even sell their shit, it translates incorrectly to/from all the languages i know...).

Correct verb is vladet (to own), not imet (to have), assuming you want to say "in soviet russia, you own the matrix". Now if you want to say "in soviet russian, you have the matrix", your sentence is grammatically correct, but it's still not russian, because you should use the "indirect" form, "u vas est ...".

Re:How about disconnecting the Military from AOL?!

[null etc.]

How about people make a private network for defense systems.

Sounds like this old network called ArpaNet.

Fortunately!

[Seumas]

Wow. And it isn't an article written by John Markov? I'm shocked!

I guess the government and corporate world should have been paying more attention to what breeches by harmlessly curious teenagers signaled rather than harassing and fining and jailing them for embarrassing them for their own incompetence while letting actual national threats from foreign nations occur.

It's a good thing they turned those 13 little kids from that one school into felons for typing in a password that was obvious and widely available to install stuff on the laptops they were given to use. Today, installing iChat. Tomorrow? - secret highly paid communist spies haxoring into the super elite United States government. OH NOES!

Re:Fortunately!

[stewwy]

Another example of kill the messenger and ignore the problem , which seems so prevalent in western society

Re:Fortunately!

[Anonymous Coward]

1. John Markov

John Markoff - guess you haven't followed his career too closely if you can't spell his name

2. It's a good thing they turned those 13 little kids from that one school into felons

No, they each have to do 15 hours of community service and write an apology letter - guess you haven't followed this case much, either

Re:Fortunately!

[Anonymous Coward]

I would hate to have your morals. Doing right isn't a gray area. I don't care if the password was tatooed on their foreheads. They KNEW it was wrong doing what they did and they did it anyway. They are guilty, period.

Re:Fortunately!

[Rakishi]

"wrong" is an objective term, if they did no damage then why is it wrong? The password was provided and they were curious, human nature is to explore things. In addition, they were in essence kids and I'd expect them to do such things.

I'd hate to live in a world where everyone unquestionably follows authority and never investigates anything, as you seem to be a proponent off.

So what else is wrong to you? Were the factory worked wrong for making unions which the government didn't approve off? Were slaves wrong for trying to escape an oppressive master?

Re:Fortunately!

[pilkul]

I guess the government and corporate world should have been paying more attention to what breeches by harmlessly curious teenagers

I'm not sure I want government and corporate officials prying in teenagers' breeches. It's all harmless curiosity until someone gets pregnant.

Overblown?

[Snoolas]

To me the whole thing sounds a bit... Dramatized. It sounds like it came from a movie. It wouldn't surprise me if the truth was exaggerated just a tiny bit.

Re:Overblown?

[HBI]

You're on the right track.

This is a story, nothing more.

Re:Overblown?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dramatized? How does one hack three Chinese routers with homegrown code to send Emails to Yahoo?

Re:Overblown?

[Richard_at_work]

Yes, exactly. My first thought was 'Am I supposed to shocked and horrified about this? Well, Im not!'. You can bet your ass that the US is doing exactly the same against the Chinese defence contracters and other companies.

Re:Overblown?

[Richard_at_work]

In support of my assertion that the US will be doing exactly the same, I point to some recent Lockerbie bombing allegations regarding the CIA and faked evidence. Believe me, a top level policeman and a former CIA employee dont simply make this sort of stuff up, although it is up to a court of law to decide if its admissable.

Re:Overblown?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he exaggerated a lot. Especially how the investigators could eavedrop on all actions.

Doing a Google Search on the author turns out he likes to make things dramatic; the tendense in the different topics he writes about have one thing in common: scaring the american public.

Jeezs, where have I seen this before...? Oh right, 911 and the war on terrorism. This time its the chinese.

Uh...

[mcc]

They already did that

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ye olde honeypot. There's no information like misinformation!

Ooh, that'll stop 'em... for about 15 seconds.

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot.

The U.S. is chock full of poorly-admined Windows boxes with Swiss cheese security, connected to fast network connections. Any of them could easily be pwned and used as a jumping-off point for an attack, rendering your solution completely and utterly useless, probably in less time than it took to implement.

'Secret' procedures....

[Halfbaked Plan]

...like democratic practices.

I wonder if the clever cyberspies have downloaded the minutes from any Town Meetings, or 'subversive' documents like Robert's Rules of Order?

The US should just import in more pop culture. That is what has successfully subverted communist regimes best in the past. Send 'em Ramones, The Clash, Gang Of Four punk rawk.

Re:'Secret' procedures....

[Orbital Observer]

The Chinese already have punk rock. I was there Christmas of 2000 (and yes, they also have Christmas) and enjoyed the strains of rap-rock by a band called (I think) Bad Motherfuckers. It was an illuminating trip, to say the least.

Re:'Secret' procedures....

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they should just load up the DOD servers with pop culture.

Re:'Secret' procedures....

[DigiShaman]

You laugh, but this is EXACTLY what is happening with the youth of Iran. Western culture through Sat TV, music, and other forms of entertainment is exposing them to a form of individuality. In fact so much so, it could a generational civial war Iran of pro-westerners and the die-hard Islamic movement.

Interesting what a little tit-exposing-TV will do. I for one....LIKE IT :-P

Re:'Secret' procedures....

[prurientknave]

if you think they're going to fight for their right to party you're quite mistaken MTV man

Re:'Secret' procedures....

[DigiShaman]

Heh.

Seriously though, they might put up a fight if the government starts forcing islamic laws further down their throat. I mean, who doesn't want liberty and freedom? The desire for it is basically a give-in. Except, the more power you give to the people, the less power the government has left. Now...who governmental control is going to give up such addiction to power. Well, it's never going to happen without a fight. History has proven this time and time again. It's called a revolution.

Three words (with punctuation)

[42Penguins]

oh teh noes!

s/secure/insecure

[Alphanos]

"Methodical and voracious, these hackers wanted all the files they could find, and they were getting them by penetrating secure computer networks at the country's most sensitive military bases, defense contractors and aerospace companies."

Who wants to take bets that they're using the type of 'hacking' methods as that guy searching for evidence of UFOs in the story a while back? Logging into systems without passwords, etc. isn't 'hacking' (or cracking, if you prefer) into 'secure' systems.

Re:s/secure/insecure

[iCEBaLM]

Not only that, but if they're hackable, or have been hacked into, they're not secure.

Re:s/secure/insecure

[RedLaggedTeut]

Logging into systems without passwords, etc. isn't 'hacking' (or cracking, if you prefer) into 'secure' systems.

Well it depends. Gathering the information where something is stored in itself is like hacking, because there is no difference between having to guess 15135342 in http://somesite.gov/secretdoc/15135342.doc and having to guess 15135342 as a password.

Also, downloading one such document is no hacking, but continuing to do so after you realize that you entered a part of a system in an unexpected way is criminal.

After all, most hacks do something unexpected, especially if you hack a permission system by privilege escalation, then you could just claim "Hey, I had permission to do that" ;-)

Re:s/secure/insecure

[schon]

there is no difference between having to guess 15135342 in http://somesite.gov/secretdoc/15135342.doc and having to guess 15135342 as a password

Looks like someone doesn't know very much about HTTP.

There are many more ways to discover (rather than having to guess) that 1513542 is the filename than guessing a password.

Besides the fact that most filenames are based on a logical sequence (so 1513542 would logically follow 1513541, and someone who has access to it might *MISTYPE* the filename, and thus get the wrong 'secure' document) how about pulling it out of a cache? Link referral (it's not inconceivable that if the file has a link, and is opened within a web browser, that the filename will be sent as part of the referrer(sic) header), or from proxy logs?

If you *really* think there is no difference between using a 'hidden' filename and using a password, then you have no clue about how HTTP works (or even security in general.)

Re:s/secure/insecure

[RedLaggedTeut]

Well, some people would call inspecting proxy logs hacking, which is my point.

It might not be a good example, but it sounded to me like the discussion was about how the chinese pulled documents that were "hidden", not password protected in exactly the way you suggest.

Sorry, but I have to say...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hacked By Chinese!

(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Red_worm if you do not know what it means)

Wasn't that an episode of Doctor Who...

[Talaran]

...from the Tom Baker years?

Secutiry through stupidty

[future assassin]

Post super sensitive documents on a publicly accessible server or firewall, as no one would think they are dumb enough to do that.

In the past, that would be an act of war

[Travoltus]

Now, China pwns Bush and they pwn the corporate goons who pwn Bush.

Free trade with China must be preserved even if it means ignoring acts of war.

Re:In the past, that would be an act of war

[-brazil-]

Act of war, my ass. That's day-to-day business as far as military intelligence is concerned.

Re:In the past, that would be an act of war

[TrekkieGod]

I guess you got moderated as flamebait because someone decided you were insulting military intelligence.

Point is, espionage *is* day-to-day business. We know we're being spied upon, they know we're spying upon them. You get the edge not by stopping all espionage on their part, but rather by finding out who is doing it and how. Once you know this, you can use those channels to control what they find out, and start feeding misinformation when it truly matters.

Re:In the past, that would be an act of war

[Travoltus]

Why was brazil's post modded as flamebait? It's an alternative point of view and quite a valid one as far as I'm concerned.

American Mandarins

[Doc Ruby]

And Rumsfeld sez: "We're fighting them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here."

The neocons we've got running the Pentagon can't even beat the Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Instead they've started a war in Iraq they've screwed up so bad that we can't win. Instead of at least focusing our defense against an actual country, China. No, for China the neocons have "Most Favored Nation" trading status, so they can get our industrial base, AND control our debt market.

I wonder if this was part of the plan George Bush Sr hatched when he was Nixon's first ambassador to China, "opening them up". Open fire, more like it.

Re:American Mandarins

[Homology]

I wonder if this was part of the plan George Bush Sr hatched when he was Nixon's first ambassador to China, "opening them up". Open fire, more like it.

Bush Sr is very different from his son. I'm sure that Bush Sr would not, like his son, have squandered the goodwill extended to USA after the awfull terrorist attack in New York.

Re:American Mandarins

[Doc Ruby]

Bush ran Iran/Contra, and the Savings & Loan heist that underwrote so much of it. He was a lot smarter that Jr, but I still wonder whether it's just a question of the "right" act at the "right time". Certainly Bush's Carlyle Group has benefited from the way the Iraq War has been prosecuted, as well as its investments in China. Follow the money, and the different faces for different eras don't matter as much as the consistency of direction.

Couldn't they create a DoD "honeypot"

[Anonymous Coward]

...which would house useless data and deliberate disinformation? Let them drown in a sea of incorrect information.

This article is funny

[tsotha]

The writer tries to dance around it, but if you read between the lines you see reason these servers are connected to the internet is they don't hold classified data. Every day the DoD produces an unthinkable amount of documentation, and only a small portion of it actually matters to anyone (including DoD).

Oh, and this guy is a moron. Part of the counter-intelligence game is to make sure the enemy doesn't know he's been caught. This guy is such a bull in the china shop he's destroyed any chance we'll be able to learn "means and methods" information from this ring.

Re:This article is funny

[CHESTER COPPERPOT]

but if you read between the lines you see reason these servers are connected to the internet is they don't hold classified data. Every day the DoD produces an unthinkable amount of documentation, and only a small portion of it actually matters to anyone (including DoD).

I disagree if you think gathering innocuous near-open source information isn't important. In the article it stated "these hackers wanted all the files they could find." It's obvious now that the Chinese way of collecting information is to throw a massive net into various geographical realms (including cyberspace) and gain as much information as possible. Who knows what data these guys are getting. The data may seem innocuous to us but to the Chinese it may be pertinent competitive information. In a worst case scenario this information gathering could be a reconnaissance for future cyber covert action.

In the SIGINT world while breaking cryptography and traffic analysis are considered more important much more manpower goes at targeting weaker sources like plain voice traffic and technical parameters. This method of attacking a a FUOU network that doesn't haven't high level classification goes along with the Sun Tzu-based chinese way of war. In Sun Tzu's art of war he stated "To effect an unhampered advance, strike their vacuities." That is what these guys are doing-attacking weak unclass networks rather than go after harder to attack classified networks.

Part of the counter-intelligence (CI) game is to make sure the enemy doesn't know he's been caught.

While that is so, it's a pretty sophomoric view of CI. Usually CI runs through a couple of stages:

1. Ascertaining what needs protection in the first place and assigning priorities (time and money) to targets. In this case the US probably now realizes that these low level networks need as much protection as high level networks. So the priorities will probably change in the future.

2. Second stage is analysis needs to be done to ascertain the particular vulnerabilities of those secrets that were ID'ed in stage one. If the higher officials were worried about this cyberthreat there was obviously vulnerable information on those networks. Probably either put there due to incompetence or if the information is put into context with other disparate info.

3. Third stage is where CI assesses what areas foreign intel is targeting and assess its ability to reach those targets. Obviously these guys have the ability to target the low level networks.

The American CI have a pretty good idea about the Chinese hackers technical means, their operational means and what information the Chinese are exactly getting-hence why they are worried. So to publicly out this through the press really isn't a big deal because they know everything they need to know, they now need to assess their vulnerabilities and run through the CI cycle again.

Re:This article is funny

[tsotha]

I disagree if you think gathering innocuous near-open source information isn't important. In the article it stated "these hackers wanted all the files they could find." It's obvious now that the Chinese way of collecting information is to throw a massive net into various geographical realms (including cyberspace) and gain as much information as possible. Who knows what data these guys are getting. The data may seem innocuous to us but to the Chinese it may be pertinent competitive information. In a worst case scenario this information gathering could be a reconnaissance for future cyber covert action.

Yes, I understand there may be some value to the information they've acquired. It's impossible to cover every "shadow" thrown by a military project. The problem is, from the Chinese perspective, is these kinds of large data dumps are much more trouble to analyze than they're worth. That's why the data isn't classified. It's far less effort to develop agents with access to clearly valueable data (like Aldrich Ames or Robert Hanssen) than to engage every statistician and analyst in the country to piece together valuable information in a sea of data. This is why the FBI didn't consider it worth the effort to pursue with their own resources. The is the same situation Cliff Stoll was confronted with when German hackers broke into his university system looking for military secrets.

While that is so, it's a pretty sophomoric view of CI. Usually CI runs through a couple of stages:

...

Well you've given some nice guidelines about what data should be considered important, but it doesn't bear on the question of what to do when an intrusion is detected.

The American CI have a pretty good idea about the Chinese hackers technical means, their operational means and what information the Chinese are exactly getting-hence why they are worried. So to publicly out this through the press really isn't a big deal because they know everything they need to know, they now need to assess their vulnerabilities and run through the CI cycle again.

It would be the height of arrogance for the FBI to assume they "know everything they need to know". The proper response to an incident like this would be to try to figure out names, techniques to go with those names, and lines of authority in China. That way you wouldn't get caught flat-footed when they try something new. Maybe that doesn't fall under "means and methods", but it's something they should be doing. The fact the attackers know they've been discovered makes it that much more difficult.

The correct response for this kind of thing is for the CIA to penetrate the relevant Chinese organization, but these days I don't think the CIA actually does anything but play US domestic politics.

At last what you deserve

[Anonymous Coward]

All your base are belong to us

Absolutely Expected

[Alric]

While the article was written to be dramatic and exciting, this scenario is assuredly based on truth.

Does anyone seriously doubt that China, India, Russia, and Israel have teams of computer scientists probing U.S. government and corporate networks?

Does anyone doubt the U.S. has many, many teams (NSA, CIA, DIA - especially AirForce Intelligence) probing foreign networks and eavesdropping on practically ALL digital communication?

Would you be surprised if a CIA field op were found in China? Digital espionage is the future. Expect it.

Re:Absolutely Expected

[Anonymous Coward]

"Does anyone doubt the U.S. has many, many teams (NSA, CIA, DIA - especially AirForce Intelligence) probing foreign networks and eavesdropping on practically ALL digital communication?" - by Alric (58756) on Sunday August 28, @02:59PM

I don't, not whatsoever. Put it this way: It's usually a "fight fire with fire" thing out there...

* :(

APK

P.S.=> Ever see the old Star Trek Original Series Episode called "The Savage Curtain" where the silicon based beings on a volcanic planet made Abraham Lincoln (one of Capt. Kirk's personal heroes) appear & then Spock & Kirk end up on the planet below to combat some of the most 'evil villains' out of history?

Near the start of the combat, the silicon creature told them "We offer you a great honor: To become our teachers, so we can understand your concepts of "GOOD" and "EVIL"... and we may all benefit from the spectacle... of the play"

In the end? Kirk & Spock triumph (as per usual) but the silicon creature says: "We see that in order for GOOD to defeat EVIL, it has to adopt the same methods" & they saw no diff. in good or evil...

It is, after all, a matter of who's doing the looking/judging, & reality? Just a matter of perception... apk

Air Gaps

[kcarlin]

Isn't this the reason that there is supposed to be an air gap between classified networks are and unclassified networks?

There are defense networks operating at all levels of security and a wide variety of restrictions. And some of the more interesting information that can be widely attained may have some element of inaccuracy associated with it.

While there is a basic approach established for each classification level, the security measures used for any given net can vary widely.

Think Spy vs. Spy in cyberspace.

By the way, air gaps are only good when combined with physical security and human engineering counter-measures. The security folks I've spoken to find human engineering is still the most common problem.

Re: war with China?

[Migraineman]

"Never get involved in a land war in Asia ..." And don't mess with the Sicilian dude.

oh darn

[presidentbeef]

I thought it said 'Invasion of the Chinese CyberBabies'.

Looks like the actual title on the site is 'Invasion of the Chinese' which is nearly as amusing.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 30 years

[Colin Smith]

China's going to "win" BTW. They're the next superpower, already competeing for resources.

Look at your clothes, computer, TV, video, car labels. You can bet most or all of it's from China. That's going to continue till the exchange rate sorts itself out. It's a good thing that they recently "floated" their currency and that it's rising in value.

http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?from=USD &to=CNY&amt=1&t=5d

Great article

[Anonymous Coward]

A great article. And a perfectly documented example of how our government often works as it's own worst enemy. I wonder how many more national secrets and other classified information we give out to the Chinese every day? I wonder where the I.Q. of the FBI employees who decided to eventually pass on this investigation stacks up? Should they get lollipops when they go to the bank?

I don't know, crap like this these days, makes me AFRAID to be an American instead of PROUD.

Shanthi Kalathil Paper (China and information war)

[Anonymous Coward]

This is old news, folks. The Chinese government has always actively used the internet defensively (censoship) and offensively (information warfare). For example:

The Internet and State Control in Authoritarian Regimes: China, Cuba, and the Counterrevolution

http://www.ceip.org/files/publications/HTMLBriefs- WP/WP_Number_21_July_2001/20009535v01.html

"Finally, the Chinese government is developing a strategy for information warfare that will allow it to more effectively project its power on an international scale. Recent writings by Chinese military specialists show that China is increasingly focusing on "asymmetric warfare" options, including guerrilla war and cyber attacks against data networks.57 In recent years, U.S. newspapers have reported suspected Chinese hacker attacks on U.S. weapons labs, and military experts believe that China is willing to reduce its standing army while increasing its reliance on a "multitude of information engineers and citizens with laptops instead of just soldiers."58 Although Chinese hacker attacks on U.S. web sites in May 2001 did not demonstrate the offensive capacity Chinese military analysts have envisioned, the continuing study and development of information warfare can be seen as a top-priority proactive measure in line with the country's goal of modernizing and transforming its military strategy."

The paper also mentions that China has plans or is already developing an internal network (not connected to any outside networks) to handle all of its security/military information. What is the US waiting for?

Re:In The Other Conspiracy Theory

[Anonymous Coward]

But that's where we get all our crappy stuff from.

Seriously though, there is a big difference between a war with Iraq and a war with friggin China. If we won a war with China there is a good chance it would be a pyrrhic victory ; the losses in Iraq could never compare. That's not only a good way to lose a whole generation of men, but it's also a good way to end your political career and (most likely) your political party as well.

That's a ridiculous thing to even suggest.

Will somebody please explain to me...

[rsilvergun]

why the hell critical military information would be widely (and easily) accessible over an insecure media like the internet? It's kinda like those nitwits who worry about our power grid getting hacked: we don't hook up the power grid controls to the Internet! Geez, as if there aren't enough Americans running scared from terrorists we get more of this crap. Anyway, I like to think the US military isn't gonna put the plans for our latest military tech on an unpatched IIS server.

Internet Zoning and local laws

[empaler]

Well, if what they're doing is not illegal in the country they're in... :-O

You're assuming there's a plan

[Colin Smith]

Hanlon's razor.

Not overblown at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

Businessweek had a similar article some time back (last fall, IIRC). Basically, the Chinese spy network is so effective because there are lots and lots of them. China doesn't have the same computing power as we do; so they make up for it by using lots of people. Spying isn't the only area where they've used this approach successfully.

I've seen this first hand. Back when I and a few other friends were doing a high-tech startup, we finally got some press on our first product. Now, we were working in a little two room "hole-in-the-wall" of an office; and it took a concerted effort to actually find the place. The first office was the "front office", made up to look semi-business like. The second office was where everything else took place.

One day suddenly the door swings wide open, and there's this Chinese guy asking for our company. I take him next door, where he spent a couple hours chatting with our President. Pumping for as much information as he could.

To top it off, he had the audacity to offer a "niece" of his to serve as our secretary (since we had none). He'd even pay her salary, since he claimed he wanted to give her a job. Sweet Jesus; I can't believe he thought we'd be so dumb, but I've since learned there are a lot of dumb people doing startups (not to mention other businesses).

So don't underestimate the Chinese at all. And also make certain that all of your non-public doors are locked. :(

You don't choose sides.

[Anonymous Coward]

You try to get out of the way, _always_.

But, alas, sometime you have something one of the two wants... then you're forcefully "liberated" and "choose" to side with it.

Unless, of course, you're blessed to be loved by the two... then your life will be really miserable and lots of people will die. Your culture is history... or will even erased form History!

Now, why use the term hackers, when spies would be much more correct?
If they were spying mathematicians, would they be called just mathematicians?

Hardly (was:Overblown?)

[Lead Butthead]

I don't know how many people in the west realises this; that PRoC despite all the "diplomatic olive branches" they've extending, has *NEVER* ceased considering the United States as their enemy number one, nor have they ever stopped educating their young of that. Anyone thinking otherwise is fooling themselves.

Re:Hardly (was:Overblown?)

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know how many people in the east realises this; that United States despite all the "diplomatic olive branches" they've extending, has *NEVER* ceased considering the PRoC as their enemy number one, nor have they ever stopped educating their young of that. Anyone thinking otherwise is fooling themselves.

The real problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

is that the Bush admin is busy pushing Windows everywhere. This is a payback to Bill Gates.
Before that, the gov. did what was best for them (normally secure systems). NSA, NRO, and CIA still only accept none MS systems for running critical stuff, but groups such as Homeland security (Sig Hiel to the faterland), insist on MS. In fact, if you offer a solution on *nix, they insist that it be ported. Fortunately, there are groups in DOD that still think that security is far more important than politics. How much longer, well, that remains to be seen.

If my experience is any indicator

[instantkarma1]

If my experience is any indicator, I'd not be surprised at all. Most of the GS employees working on the Navy Marine Corp Internet (NMCI) I met while working as a consultant were......less than knowledgable when it came to standard security practices and safe-guards. This, coupled with a 8-4 mentality and running the world's largest intranet on MS Windows makes for a likely target.

Re:If my experience is any indicator

[JhohannaVH]

Maybe that's why they didn't hire me... I specifically took issue with the fact that they run the whole frickin' thing on Windows. Not only that, but their primary focus was NOT security. I mean, the least they could have done was run Apache on a Windows server. I mean PUH-LEase. They called me last week for an interview (the fourth time they have), and I finally told them to go take a leap because I'm too overqualified. :P

Jho

Re:Geopolitics of the next 30 years

[ScentCone]

Look at your clothes, computer, TV, video, car labels.

Well, 20 years ago, you'd have said the exact same thing about Japan. They themselves were banking on their demonstrably superior manufacturing ingenuity, efficiencies, and focus to make them dominant. They then totally overextended themselves, and their economy has been more or less in the tank ever since.

Now, the difference between them and the Chinese situation (also sitting on top of an economic bubble they won't be able to sustain) is that the Chinese, having not been aggressors in WWII, don't have any of the politically correct inhibitions about using force to prop up the weak spots in their system. Taiwan would certainly be their first target, and that will cause a wretched mess. But the whole southeast Asia area will feel their influence as they look, themselves, for more resources.

I'd like to say that the currency float you mentioned was a good thing, but there isn't a single economist who sees it as anything other than an empty political gesture. All they did was let it "float" within very narrow bounds, defined by them, with essentially no impact whatsoever on the real underlying exchange mechanics.

The real issue here is going to be energy. Probably the most alarming development is the Chinese coziness with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. They're taking a lot of their cash surplus (um, that would be the cash we're spending on their inexpensive products) and pumping a lot of it into investments in that oil producing country. That's fine with Chavez, because China is the nearest thing to an idealogical opposite to the US he can find (well, one that isn't clearly a broken-down mess, like Cuba).

My guess is that Venezuela will become, is essence, a Chinese outpost. And a huge foothold, economically, in Central/South America. Just in time for the economies in Brazil and Argentina to start looking ripe for more investment.

So, we may see Wal-Mart eventually filling up with "Made in Brazil" goods, but made by firms operated by Chinese interests.

I'd not, though, call them the next "superpower" any more than one could refer to the Soviets in that sense. They were, in that they had the military and the nukes to be hugely influential, but it was a house of cards. That won't be as true of the Chinese, in that their businesses are tilting capitalist despite the (now mostly smoke) communist creed of their heavy-handed government. But as long as they are to a large degree centrally managed, they're going to make a lot of the tone-deaf mistakes that the Soviets did. And this time, a whole lot of Chinese citizens are going to be a whole lot quicker to step up and try to prevent the economic flushing that happened in Russia after the USSR tanked. It's going to be fascinating. In the meantime, I'd vote for policies that encourage more US investment in central and south America, and policies that ask the same thing of China that the US must do to do business in their country.

Gang of Four

[ThreeDayMonk]

I'm not sure that Gang of Four are the best poster boys for the capitalist way, given that they take their name from a group of Chinese communist politicians blamed for the Cultural Revolution!

You must feel cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Does replacing "o" with "p" in variants of "own" make cool? I hope one day I can be that cool.

Re:You must feel cool

[Travoltus]

It's an article about hackers, gimme a break :p

Re:You must feel cool

[Anonymous Coward]

one day, I hope to be that cppl!

You want to know why that shit is made in China?

[Anonymous Coward]

They shit where they eat, and the Chinese people can just suck it, because their like suffering under dictators.

Yes yes, it's 1980 again, and Lee Iacoca is doing commercials on TV. They're a superpower, but they're not going to be the preminent one. And if they want to have a merry little war over Taiwan, they better pick in less than 10 years as their time table, because once we've deployed an array of lasers to the battlefield, their reward will be a preemptive nuclear strike.

China will loose

[John Seminal]

China's going to "win" BTW. They're the next superpower, already competeing for resources.

Look at your clothes, computer, TV, video, car labels. You can bet most or all of it's from China. That's going to continue till the exchange rate sorts itself out. It's a good thing that they recently "floated" their currency and that it's rising in value.

Unlike the USA which has no enemy country in striking distance, China has more than 2 countries capable of a long term war. They have Japan which is the economic superpower of the region. When people want quality and not cheap rip off products, they buy japanesse, not chinese. Then you have Tiwan, which will be the war to ruin China. The people of Tiwan don't want anything to do with China, and they have a military power that can fight back. How many f-16's did the USA sell Tiwan? And doesn't the USA have an aircraft carrier sitting right there? I can't even start to wonder how many nuclear subs are there too. And then there is Russia. At one time they were partners because of their shared political beliefs. But now, China and Russia act more like annoyed neighbors than partners.

Then there is Mayamar, or Burma, or whatever the hell the country is calling itself this week. They are the #1 producer of heroin and drugs in the region. And they are very unstable. If Chinese people start making any money, Burma will be ready to supply an endless stream of drugs. Unlike the USA, where we must deal with Cambodia, Burma shares a border with China.

And then there is North Korea right next to China. North Koera has weapons, and nothing else. Their people live in poverty, and they don't have enough food. That is a powderkeg waiting to explode.

And China also shares borders with India and Pakistan, two countries that have been in a pissing contest of hate for my entire lifetime. A nuclear war could break out there any time. The two countries have already had fights, with muslims murdering hindu's and hindu's trying to defend themselves.

And here is the bottom line. 20 years ago China could not grow enough food to feed all their people. The USA is the #1 exporter of food to China. If the USA stopped supplying exports of food, China would have one of the worst epidemics of famine the world has ever seen. The USA was smart, we got them to breed so many people, that if the USA withdrew food exports, millions of Chinese people would die.

How has China made money? By ripping off USA patents and copywrites. They might take a car, reverse engineer it, and then build it with low quality parts. They don't include the saftey standards. They pirate playstation games and computer games. China does not innovate, they don't produce anything the world demands.

No, China will not win. They can't feed themselves.

Re:China will loose

[DoktorTomoe]

Your information about China is outdated. As is your information on the possibility of US military intervention in an eastern war scenario - the US forces are bound in the middle east, and would not be sufficient to proactively engage to help Taiwan if the PRC decided to "take it back".

One more point: The Chinese always used mere manpower to win battles - and they would do so in a war on Taiwan as well. Taiwan currently owns 150 F-16, so what, if the PRC can easily send ten times that much firepower?

Re:China will loose

[Sephiriz]

"China does not innovate, they don't produce anything the world demands." They don't? Well, Mr. Seminal, where do you think you get your bras from, huh? Huh!?

Re:China will loose

[Anonymous Coward]

the US forces are bound in the middle east, and would not be sufficient to proactively engage to help Taiwan if the PRC decided to "take it back".

Maybe not with ground forces, but China would need to establish a beachead on Taiwan in order to even get that far, which would require a great deal of naval power. Currently, China just dosen't have the naval or air power to take on a US carrier battle group (or two), much less perform a full on sustained ambphibous invasion.

One more point: The Chinese always used mere manpower to win battles - and they would do so in a war on Taiwan as well. Taiwan currently owns 150 F-16, so what, if the PRC can easily send ten times that much firepower?

See above. That was basically the old Soviet doctorine, and the US spent the better part of 50 years establishing countermeasures for this. A bunch of outdated, crappy MiGs wouldn't even be able to come close to scratching a Aegis-equipped frigate. Even one of thier nice, new Sukhoi fighters equipped with an armement of Sunburn missiles would have a hell of a time even getting into striking range. It just ain't gonna happen, and the Chinese know this.

Re:China will loose

[ciroknight]

Your point is disturbing, but at the same time untrue.

I feel that the Chinese government could start to feed themselves, and any economic policy from the US that would cut off food supply to China in anything less than full out war would be generally seen by the American public as cruel and unusual punishment. You'd think Geneva would have something to say about it as well.

As for your nuclear doomsday theories, remember the principal of Mutually Assured Destruction. No nation can afford to use a nuclear weapon against any other nation at this point in time; a nuclear weapon is an invitation for other countries to get involved and use their nuclear weapons, and before you know it, the skies are full of them. North Korea might be one to try to use a nuclear weapon, but it's likely to only cause the next Korean war, and this time around, everyone will have an interest in "liberating" the people of North Korea.

My end point is this: China, nor India, nor Pakistan, nor any "third world" country these days can afford war. War has turned into a game of who's got the bigger penis economically; weapons to defeat stealth bombers are so expensive and computerized it's unimaginable (or just a whole hell of a lot of cheap ammunition and a whole lot of luck), and then you have to worry about the UN and the possible sanctions economically you'll bring on yourself.

War as turned into a Guerilla-style combat sitation; anyone who still has a will to fight a monster knows that you can't take the monster on by the horns, you've gotta sneak around and poke and jab and take your victories where you can. That's the future of warfare for countries in the economically downturned regions.

China doesn't want war. China wants to get their economy back running. And one way to do that is to get all of the information about anything and everything you can. Along with their Communism-system, they can order to people to build anything, and I do mean anything, they way, at any price. China's population gives them a huge advantage here: you have a diverse skill set to choose from, and if someone refuses to do their job, termination doesn't hurt that skill set at all. China doesn't need to innovate to outperform; Japan's cheap-car revolution wasn't innovation. It was outproducing the competition, at a lower cost, with cars that were simpler, and therefore lasted longer. All China needs is the next car, which, from the looks of it, China's attempting to get their "car" in the forms of space competition, and electronics/computers.

I honestly don't see why we are so afraid. What we're seeing is the start of the next industrial age occuring in China, at which a point America will have to put their collective asses together and start innovating again just to stay ahead of the competition which will offer everything we have now at half the price. Those companies which refuse to innovate will be left behind, and if that makes our country weak, then we know who to blame, and we know what to do about it.

Re:China will loose

[Anonymous Coward]

New PRC fighters don't scare me...
It's the old ones, which they undoubtedly have a bejeezus-load of.
A swarm of antique fighter jets can overwhelm even an Aegis ship when they kamikaze. Yeah, that's a Japanese tactic...but you think Chinese leaders couldn't talk a Chinese pilot up to it?

Re:China will loose

[Anonymous Coward]

But a couple of 2.5 Mach Mosquitos or Yakhonts (or that Russian-Indian-Chinese new missile based on Mosquito) would "prepare" the naval battlefield (convert into dust, better said).

Perhaps not now, but in 20-30 years, I wouldn't be counting on (non-nuclear) US tech in that war.

Re:China will loose

[Anonymous Coward]

NEWSFLASH - it is not 1945. The Aegis system can track and destroy up to 200 targets simultaneously at a range of over 200 miles. Your little plan has serious flaws, I'm afraid.

Re:China will loose

[Anonymous Coward]

In 20 to 30 years, USA will certainly have a comprehensive defence against supersonic cruise missiles. I'd even go so far as to say within the next few years they'll have something cooked up.

John Markov

[Anonymous Coward]

That sleezy journalist, John Markov, writes for the N.Y. Times, not Time magazine.

For those of you not familiar with John Markov, he'll do anything he can to you if he wants to make a buck. Print lies on the front page of the NY Times, and even make up evidence to get you arrested. All so he can make money from either a book of a movie deal.

The best example of his actions are with Kevin Mitnick.

And the N.Y. Times has explicitly endorsed this practice.

I'd sign my name, but I'm a techie who doesn't ever want to get in his sights.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 30 years

[Fmuctohekerr]

I think they just revalued it and let it rise by 2% or something. The yuan is still pegged to the dollar. For now. They'll probably peg it to the euro soon, but I doubt they'll be letting it float anytime soon.

To Be Corrected by Chinese-American War...

[Anonymous Coward]

over Taiwan. Angered by separatist rhetoric, PRC attacks Taiwan. Taiwan nukes Beijing (nukes hidden there already). PRC tosses nukes at Taiwan, US enters war and obliterates 20 largest Chinese cities. PRC tosses handful of nukes at US but most miss their targets.

Result: no Chinese banks left to balance the debt. US now owes China nothing because

• China is gone,
• there is no bank left to pay,
• there is no way to wire the payment,
• there is no one to collect the payment.
  

China is left a 5th-world nation, a stone-age society pounding rocks together once again. US recovers in 10 years and continues to dominate the entire world for 500 years - India dominates in Asian sphere but remains friendly with US.

Best part - IT careers in US skyrocket.

Re:To Be Corrected by Chinese-American War...

[Doc Ruby]

And the Chinese haven't already smuggled several nukes into US cities among the vast fleets of containers we've already accepted from them, full of cheap consumer goods? Somehow the US nukes all hit, but the Chinese missiles don't, despite our crappy track record with missiles like the Patriot? You think Taiwan will nuke the cities its richest industrialists depend on to manufacture the goods they sell in the US and elsewhere? You think anyone will do business with the US, once it launches the nukes? You think the war will remain limited, once the US enters it with nukes?

You think nuclear war is good for business? One nuclear war can ruin your entire day.

Re:To Be Corrected by Chinese-American War...

[Anonymous Coward]

And the Chinese haven't already smuggled several nukes into US cities among the vast fleets of containers we've already accepted from them, full of cheap consumer goods? Somehow the US nukes all hit, but the Chinese missiles don't, despite our crappy track record with missiles like the Patriot? You think Taiwan will nuke the cities its richest industrialists depend on to manufacture the goods they sell in the US and elsewhere? You think anyone will do business with the US, once it launches the nukes? You think the war will remain limited, once the US enters it with nukes?

Silly questions. "Yes" to all questions but your first, to which the answer is "No"(because China does not have enough nukes to send many to the US packaged as 99-cent store goods - they have to keep some warheads to put on their missiles for Taiwan).

Re:To Be Corrected by Chinese-American War...

[Rakishi]

I agree with the previous reply, althrough I'd like to add:

-Why the heck would China attack Taiwan? Last I checked Taiwan wasn't declaring independence (it might but it stands much to lose), and was waiting/hoping that China will become a democratic state (so they can join together again).

-Why the heck would they nuke China? I mean, personally I'd prefer communist rule to potential annihilation. China is invading Taiwan, not bombing them out of existence.

-Why would China nuke Taiwan? They want to invade them and take them over, not make them a worthless wasteland. The nuking of their city would give them a massive boost in international support, potentially even making the US back off. I mean, Taiwan just detonated the first offensive nuke in 60 years, I'd sure as hell like them to be taken over and contained for everyone's sake.

-Why would the US nuke China? The nuclear exchange was between China and Taiwan, caused by Taiwan. The US stands much to lose if it uses nukes, both politically and economically.

-US nukes wouldn't be used against cities; you take out the military targets and bases to prevent a counterattack (nuclear or otherwise). This is both for political and military reasons, including a desire to not have the enemy do the same to you. Potentially, you may use limited nukes to take out a few key cities and try to force surrender through psychological attack (ie: Hiroshima and Nagasaki). There is no point, especially given the morals of America, to knock a country "back to the stone age" and such a change in views is not likely to happen. Even during the Cold War, the US would have preferred a nuclear war were cities were not prime targets.

-Why would China not take out the west coast and potentially more if their cities were taken out? Why launch a handful of nukes and not the dozens that they have, if not more? We lack any deterrent to stop a full Chinese assault; this is by design to prevent a new arms race. They either have or will soon have submarine based systems which lets them attack from closer and be immune to preemptive strike.

-In addition, as the other poster said, why would they not have nukes in the US if the political climate has deteriorated as far as an invasion of Taiwan? I mean from what I've hear the Soviets had quite a few small nukes in the US, probably most are still here if they did. I'm sure China could persuade some ex-kgb operative to sell them their nuke, already in the US, or simply buy it from Russia direct. If nothing else, they would construct their own and smuggle them in which is not that difficult.

-Nukes don't send countries back to the Stone Age, not unless you lob a lot of them (we don't have that many city killers around anymore). Even then it's neither politically nor militarily useful to do so, especially when you can do other actions with minimal cost. Also China is a relatively big country, and radiation goes with the wind. I'm sure Japan, India, the Philippines, Australia and so on will not be very happy nor will their allies.

Re:To Be Corrected by Chinese-American War...

[Rakishi]

It is estimated that they have total 400 nukes, in general the ones you'd send into another country would need to be specially built to be small (Soviets supposedly made suitcase and mini-fridge sized ones). Either that or acquired, plans or nukes themselves, from some ex-soviets (they are supposedly missing/"unable to account for"/"claim they were destroyed but have no paperwork" quite a few mini-fridge nukes).

Re:To Be Corrected by Chinese-American War...

[Doc Ruby]

Those are silly answers. Especially if you don't realize that China has built many more nukes abroad from "black market" materials than the official counts tally. But that doesn't mean you're alone in your conceited distortion of an American nuclear supremacy that could win such a war, that it would be worth the $20 trillion in cancelled debt. Be careful what you wish for: you might get it. And that nightmare, no one wakes up from.

Re:To Be Corrected by Chinese-American War...

[Doc Ruby]

Moderation -1
    100% Flamebait

I ask some serious questions of a silly post, I get told the Qs are silly, with silly answers. I say the answers are silly, and say why. TrollMods say that's "Flamebait". Nonsense.

Re:To Be Corrected by Chinese-American War...

[bluGill]

It is unlikely that there are small nukes in the US not controlled by the US government. The parts of a nuke decay, so a small nuke becomes ineffective fast because of this.

The US used to rotate their small nukes in Europe every 3 months, back when they were considered the only way to stop the Soviet army. (back when this was a considered likely the goal was to slow them down long enough to build our armies)

Re:To Be Corrected by Chinese-American War...

[Rakishi]

Good point, however the only two things in a nuke which potentially decay from what I read are the tritium booster (half life of 12.7 years) and the chemical explosives (decay probably varies). It is possible to make a low-yield bomb which does not use a booster although it would of course be less effective. Not sure how small or failure-prone such a device would be.

However if the explosive charge lasts then such a device has a decently long life (decades?), of course failures are more likely with age. You won't take out a city however all you need is to drive your car close enough to that key building or park in the middle of a population center.

Even with a booster, you could get 5 to 10 years of life out of a device although again your failure rate would probably go up (which is why the US probably checked up on their nukes).

Re:Geopolitics of the next 30 years

[Anonymous Coward]

why would china win? they don't have a solid system of law, banking, equity networks, business analysts and other parts of the ecosystem in place to make business thrive through competition. they have a low wage rate and some initial manufacturing momentum.

social structures in china are beginning to break down. the young are already breaking the generational pact as they are able to find company based jobs are leaving rural families. this 'next gen' will want rights and benefits like the west has.

Expected as anti-Chinese propaganda, yes

[Antiocheian]

First of all, the title of the article is "The Invasion Of The Chinese".

Secondly, take a look at this: "They would commandeer a hidden section of a hard drive, zip up as many files as possible and immediately transmit the data to way stations in South Korea, Hong Kong or Taiwan before sending them to mainland China."

How would anyone know where stations in these areas would transmit their data? Considering that these "stations" belong to hackers of the highest caliber, it's impossible. Unless one is speculating of course.

Such articles are not hard to find in todays' US media, even in serious ones such as Time. For example, this particular article has popped in Newsmax.com as well. (BTW, anyone willing to read more anti-China drivel should stick to Newsmax.com -- their supply is unlimited)

Sorry Alric, but the only thing I can get from this Time article (and only considering its a Time article) is that some influential people in the US are very very afraid of China.

Re:Expected as anti-Chinese propaganda, yes

[Alric]

Well, it's actually titled "The Invasion of the Chinese Cyberspies," which is slightly different from "The Invasion of the Chinese."

Anyhow, I absolutely agree with your implied point: this article is mainly just FUD-based fearmongering, which happens to sell but also works as an effective tool to keep the U.S. populace in a the proper state of anxiety.

My post was primarily in response to several earlier posts by people who seemed to be surprised that foreign governments might be trying (and able) to access some of our medium-security networks.

Re:Expected as anti-Chinese propaganda, yes

[Antiocheian]

It is titled "The Invasion of the Chinese", I believe. "Cyberspies" is a subtitle. Take a look at the title of the browser's window. Also in the next pages of the article, the title remains "invasion of the Chinese" plainly, without the subtitle.

All your secrets...

[Anonymous Coward]

...are belong to us.

OLD

[Zorque]

The Red Hot Chili Peppers told us this would happen years ago.

Military Technology and the Order of battle

[NetNinja]

Desert Storm 1 and 2.

If you think the Soviets crapped thier pants reading after action reports of the speed and leathality 12 M-1 Tanks taking out 38 T-72's and stealth bombers and fighters penetrating Iraqi air space and bombing targets of interest. The Chinese are even more frightened.

Buying Soviet manufactured technology and hardware may be robust but when a single squadron of stealth figters is able to take out your signal and command structure you need to do anything that gives you an edge.

Why invent anything while you can steal it.

Re:Military Technology and the Order of battle

[Xarius]

Why invent anything while you can steal it.

That's the American Spirit!

Re:Military Technology and the Order of battle

[dodobh]

All that is great, unless your opponent is willing to die to destroy you.

Remember, they just need a nuke, or a bacterium, or an airplane, or a rumour. Explode a nuke or two in Antartica under the ice shelf, and you have the worlds most dangerous WMD. Explode one in the Pacific, at the bottom of the ocean and you could trigger off an earthquake.

Send a few over in suitcases and explode thek at the airport itself. Nothing like a few kilograms of depleted Uranium or Plutonium in the air to kill people.

Re:Military Technology and the Order of battle

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no, you mean Israeli spirit? Selling american military secrets to china, dont you remember?

Re:Military Technology and the Order of battle

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

"...when a single squadron of stealth figters is able to take out your signal and command structure you need to do anything..."

Yes, it would appear that the Chinese are interested in our stealth technology. For years there have been rumors that our "accidental" bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia was really retaliation for either helping Yugoslavia nail one of our stealth fighters or exchanging information with Yugoslavia about how to track our boys with passive radar.

See...(http://www.aeronautics.ru/f117down.htm)

Re:Military Technology and the Order of battle

[YrWrstNtmr]

Uh, yeah. Venik is a whackjob. Ask around in rec.avation.military.

The F-117 that got shot down had less to do with 'tracking our boys with passive radar', and more to do with the fool pilot following the exact same flight path and times a few days in a row, and the SAM site getting lucky.

aeronautics.ru (Venik) is also the mouthpiece for Russian Plasma stealth technology, and conspiracies surrounding the Kusrsk sinking.

Re:Military Technology and the Order of battle

[bani]

he was also unmasked and publically embarassed/shamed for having posted "iraq war intelligence intercepts" that turned out to have been entirely fabricated by him.

Re:Military Technology and the Order of battle

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Sorry, I didn't know Venik from Adam. Here's some other links about the passive radar angle.

http://flatrock.org.nz/topics/flying/f117a_nightha wks.htm

http://www.flymig.com/forum/posts/1108102615.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealth_technology

http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/t-47020_Passi ve_Radar_System.html

Re:Military Technology and the Order of battle

[YrWrstNtmr]

It it technically possible? Probably.

Is that how that F-117 got shot down? Doubtful.

Misunderstanding the information age

[argoff]

I think it's time for a paradigm change when it comes to secret information.

How about making all information available freely with the expectation that free coumtries and societies will be able to make better use of it than tyrrinical centralized ones. It would also do a lot to keep governments honest, transparent, and accountable, which to me is a far greater threat then the Chineese.

IMHO, we have recently become more vulnerable to the Chineese, not because they have become stronger - but because we have become weaker.
(especially economics wise)

Re:Misunderstanding the information age

[YrWrstNtmr]

Nonsense. 'Secret' information will eventually be known, but not until after it is usable.

Consider a small battle. Two tank companies hiding in the woods on either side of an open field. The secret is 'how many tanks/troops does he have? When the attack happens, both sides know. But until then, it is merely speculation.

Consider a new aircraft. Keeping its design and capabilities a 'secret' is hugely useful. Even though, once the first attack happens, that data will be widely known. By keeping it a secret as to how it works and how to defeat it, I can gain a slight advantage in the opening hours. And frequently, thats all it takes. With my SooperDooper spyplane, I get to take out your command and control facilities, before you have a cue as to what has happened. If it were widely known, you'd know how to defeat it.

Consider an upcoming corporate restructuring. If it were widely known, stock prices might fall, simply because of rampant speculation. The masses don't have (and cannot digest) all the pertinant information.

Consider the Manhattan Project. Should we have shared that info freely with Germany and Japan? Somehow, I think not.

A secret is not expected to remain secret forever. Just long enough to be useful. i.e. gain me an edge.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 30 years

[antifoidulus]

It's not just a bubble, China has copied EVERYTHING Japan has done right down to the bad loans.
The dollar bought 360 yen from after the war into the 70s, just like a dollar right now buys an inordinate of RMB
China's industry started off by manufacturing cheap labor intensive goods at western company owned factories, as did Japan.
China eventually started moving up the food chain, and even making things for their own companies, as did Japan
Everyone thinks that China's record growth will continue unabated, so banks loan money to businesses that have no realistic hope of ever making a profit. Same thing happened in Japan.
China's bubble will be bursting, much like Japan's did, but as you pointed out, Japan didn't have nuclear weapons or one of the strongest conventional forces on earth when it's bubble burst.
China is heading towards having too much capacity, they can't even sell all the stuff they are making, but they are making it anyway. The problem with the export economy is that it cannot grow when it doesn't have anyone to export to anymore. The centrally planned(yes, China's economy is still centrally planned, just not as tightly controlled by the government, much like Japan's economy) works well when you are trying to grow, but the distortions introduced eventually warp the economy. For instance, everyone lists Japan's high rate of savings as one of the reasons that Japan grew so quickly, however now the problem is that they cannot get consumers to spend their money. Every economic report coming out of the country states that, and thus Japan seems to only be able to grow by exporting more.
The export economy can also warp the economy on the whole in more subtle ways as well. For instance, in Japan the export industries are among the most efficient in the world, but everything outside of it is a mess. All one has to do is walk into any big store in Japan and you are just hit with how many store clerks there are. Overemployment is phenominal there. There are even people at some of the bigger stores who are solely in charge of managing the umbrella condom dispenser(umbrella condoms=the plastic bag you put over your umbrella when you enter a building in Japan. They really aren't called umbrella condoms, but it's an accurate description) China seems to be suffering from some of the same problems, only it's going to get worse there as they have 10x the population of Japan.
I honestly don't think the world economy can continue on this pace forever. Every poor country wants to get rich the same way Japan did, but for that to happen, the dollar has to remain strong. However, for every dollar they import, the dollar just gets that much weaker. When only 1 country was doing it, but now there are a lot more, and eventually, something will have to break.

Bad comparison

[antientropic]

Well, 20 years ago, you'd have said the exact same thing about Japan.

People keep making the comparison to Japan in the 1980s, but it's rather misguided. Japan has less than half the population of the US. China on the other hand has more than 4 times the population of the US (and India is similarly gigantic). It is hard to see how, in the long run, the US can maintain the relative world dominance that it now enjoys.

"Small" countries (which the US is compared to China and India) can sometimes, by accident of history, obtain superpower status for a short while, e.g., the Dutch Republic in the 17th century. But eventually the bigger players will catch up with them.

Re:Bad comparison

[einhverfr]

Not so sure. YOu seem to think that population makes a superpower. Yet as you also point out, most of the historical superpowers were not necessarily the most populous countries.

Instead, I think that *trade* makes a superpower. This provides a Grand Unified Theory of Geopolitics which accounts for every major superpower I can think of from the Persians and the Greeks to the US and the EU. The EU is doing a better job at that than the US at the moment, and so I think that they will continue to surpass us.

China's downfall (and Japan's too) is that they are extremely ethnocentric, which prevents them from effectively assimilating the results of the trade. Right now, China *appears* to be doing exactly this (as measured by manufacturing counterfit items) but I don't think there is any real room for pluralism in Chinese society. Even the European Powers of the 17th century had more room for pluralism than we see in China today. So China will eventually find their bubble bursting. They will still be a large power but nothing on the scope of the EU.

If I was going to be worried, I would be *much* more worried about India.

Re:Bad comparison

[Iloinen Lohikrme]

US power has allways relied on networking with other countries, and their current state as an hegemony relies hevily to that. That is what has to be counted for when comparing countries with each other.

In example: China and India both have over 1 billion inhibitans, when US only has about 300 million. Now count in Mexico and Canada to that, which are geographically close and their economies are tightly linked to US, you get a powerhouse of over 450 million. Okey, that's not so much, but then count in Europe. Europe and North-America are basicly tied to each other economically, politically and militarily. Now you will get a networked power of over 1 billion people, the transatlantic civilization. When one notices that US is just a small part of transatlantic civilization, it's easy to understand that US power relies on leading the network. European Union could be a superpower, they have the people, developed economies, technology and military strength, what they lack is the desire to lead. The US has desire to lead, and most in importantly, their culture is most suitable for leading the network.

The suitability of US to lead a network which ties heavily Europe and Latin America to a one economic powerhouse is their firstly their commitment to capitalism being a truly multicultural and -ethnic society. Capitalism is very lucrative to all countries because it's based on anything being in sale, meaning bigger countries don't have any desire to use their power on smaller ones, as long as everything can be bought, that means vice versa that the smaller countries can use the same resources that the bigger ones, as long as they got the cash. And because US is multiracial and -cultural it doesn't have the burden of carrying a message that one race is better than others, which easily forms when other country has an overpower over another.

Thougth US won't be the only superpower in the world in 50 years, it doesn't mean that it still woudln't be leading the transatlantic civilization and it's powers. Yes, India and China will be lot stronger, but then again, they aren't networked power, they are too big to form networks. I would suspect that the tensions between superpowers will be more in Asia between India and China, an between group of smaller nations that for surely will group together to make a counterforce against China and India, namely Indonesia, Malesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore and Burma.

Thought then again, if the global capitalism continues to rise, in 50 years, it mighty be just the same what is the leading superpower. It just doesn't matter how much power you have when everything is for sale.

Re:Bad comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Please explain in more detail, what ethnocentrism has to do with economic growth and perspective?

Japan did achieve much more per capita, while China is by order of a magnitude bigger and has a lot of unused potential. Even if bubble bursts, they will be far ahead of USA at that point.

Are you so afraid that someone could overtake US empire's "dominance" someday?

Re:Bad comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

When I read comments like these I start laughing. As for "multi-culturalism" of US, it must be a joke because the US tech force is almost exclusively white male (most hispanics and blacks do the worst jobs). And even these species is being rapidly replaced by folks from India, China and elsewhere. With more and more jobs going abroad into China and India, its just a matter of time before US becomes a country of consumers with back-dated know-how and that means a bleak future.

Re:Bad comparison

[einhverfr]

Please explain in more detail, what ethnocentrism has to do with economic growth and perspective?

Technological advances and infrastructure are the result of trade and being open to other cultures. Nearly every great empire of history extended on the basis of trade first and foremost, and only secondarily on a military basis. This was true of the Persian empires (Archimenid, Kushan, etc), of Imperial Rome, of all the great Colonial empires of the 17th and 18th centuries, of US expansionism, and even of the expansion of the USSR (or CCCP if you prefer).

Part of the problem is that if you are too concerned about preserving your culture against the influences that this trade brings, then things tend to collapse on themselves pretty fast.

Japan did achieve much more per capita, while China is by order of a magnitude bigger and has a lot of unused potential. Even if bubble bursts, they will be far ahead of USA at that point.

Possibly but I remain unconvinced. Of course I could be proven wrong.

Re:Bad comparison

[shrewd]

what rubbish, is this designed to console yourself and your fellow americans that you will lead the world forever? china and india are: " too big to form networks."? what total rot. china is well networked with it's region including economies such as Australia and New Zealand (to which it has FTA with, oh and by the way we, in Australia, value our FTA with china more than the one with the U.S. the U.S. could never see the big picture and isn't interested in doing anything that falls outside it's own self interests) india and china are heavily networked, even to members of this glorious "transatlantic civilization" to which you claim the U.S is a leader of. i bet the next 50 years holds a metaphorical bucket-of-ice-water to the face for you. i bid you good day.

Re:Bad comparison

[the gnat]

This was true of the Persian empires (Archimenid, Kushan, etc), of Imperial Rome, of all the great Colonial empires of the 17th and 18th centuries, of US expansionism, and even of the expansion of the USSR (or CCCP if you prefer).

I'm not familiar with the Persians, but most of these examples weren't assimilationist. Both the US and the Roman Empire eventually evolved to become truly assimilationist. The USSR's expansionist policy, however, was partly driven by Russian paranoia about foreign invasion, and partly by Stalin's megalomania. Eastern Europe was pretty much immediately colonized after WWII; there was no initial period of peaceful trade. The European colonial empires were trade-driven but the conquest of anyone they encountered was guaranteed, and usually driven by extreme racism. They were never assimilationist either, except to the extent that they co-opted the natives in some cases to help run their colonies. The home nations were little influenced by the foreign conquests, and the colonies maintained an elite of pureblood colonizers.

And in almost all of these cases (Rome and maybe the US excepted), the subjugated nations never reached equal status with the homeland, even after centuries.

Re:Bad comparison

[Iloinen Lohikrme]

For your information I'm finnish and writing this from the view of periferian observer. In my view US will continue to be superpower and be leader of transatlantic block unless European Union will transform to a working federal govement.

When I say they are too big to form network I really mean it. A network is combination of different size powers which none of them is bigger than the combination of the rest. When you have a one big player and many smaller ones, the smaller ones become the outposts of the biggest. This in mind, do you ever think that you will form more than an economic area with China? Do you think that you will have political union with them? Common currency? Military alliance? Freedom of goods, services and people to travel freely between network? Of course this in only happening in Europe, but that too eventually will lead to leveling more borders with Europe and North-America.

I think that in the view of Australian, you desire to network with anybody that can bring boost to economy and increase your safety. In other words make sure that Indonesian don't just run you over. They are biggest muslim country in the world and a rising economic powerhouse in south-east asia. That is what you are afraid, and that's what is linkin countries like Australia to become outposts to world superpowers.

Re:Bad comparison

[shrewd]

i have never heard anyone in my lifetime who considered indonesia a threat, china and japan maybe, but indonesia just doesn't have the military capacity to take on a first world country on their terms...

Re:Bad comparison

[Iloinen Lohikrme]

When a country plays power politics it has too agendas to take care, the needs of today and the needs of tommorrow. Yes, today Indonesia is poor developing country of 240 million inhibitants and Australia is rich developed country with 20 million inhibitans. That is todays situation, but situations change over time. Indonesia and other developing countries are rapidly gaining developed countries, they won't catch them, but the gap between Indonesia and Australia will shorten.

Now the question is, is Indonesia threat with power purchasing capital of 3400$? with 7000$? with 14000$? ..Australia has now power purchasing capital of over 30000$. Now there is no problem, but ask yourself what about the future when Indonesian have gained maybe to 10000$? Are they a threat then? That is why a nation must make it's decision today on how the future will look on it.

Chinese PRC?

[Omega]

Chinese People's Republic of China?

Not to be the acronymn police, but do you want to try that one again? Or does PRC stand for something else here, because I didn't find it mentioned in TFA.

Re:Chinese PRC?

[DigiShaman]

PRC = People's Republic of China

CCP = Chinese Communist Party

can you hear the music?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can hear the classic "Secret Asian Man" playing right now

Re:Geopolitics of the next 30 years

[einhverfr]

First, I will agree that China is over-rated as the next great powerhouse economically and militarily. Personally, I think that they are clearly a "World Power" but not on the level that either the US or EU are. China would like to be there, but they have a lot of obstacles to overcome.

The most serious is that China is not, and will probably never be, a pluralist society. The Chinese have almost always seen China as the center of the world in a way that even the US has not done. So while they go back and forth between isolationism and expansionism, the isolationism always wins out because of the huge force that ethnocentricity plays in their culture. I am not saying that this is good or bad. It just places limits on what China can achieve in a pluralist world. To a large extent, this is what crippled the Japanese expansion as well.

Currently the world has two superpowers: The US and the EU. The US is a military superpower and is largely able to dictate its will militarily, and the EU is an economic superpower which is largely able to dominate international and internationist institutions as well as dictate terms on a purely economic basis. Assuming that an EU constitution is forthcoming at some point and that the EU countries agree to have a single foreign policy, they will be in a position to actively challenge the US on any foreign policy area simply by virtue of their economic clout. Note the growing diplomatic war between the US and EU (usually referred to as "Old Europe").

I don't think it will be too long before EU-as-borg metaphores start becoming commonplace... Imagine if at some point after Iraq becomes democratic that Turkey, Russia, and Iraq end up member states of the EU. The oil reserves alone would then mean that the EU would have the largest oil reserves in the world...

Reminds me of old sci-fi books...

[FatSean]

Like from the 40's and 50's which fortold a glorious future in which industry and government would scratch each others' backs for the good of the people. Smelled like propaganda when I was 14 and found them in a dusty used bookstore...

Sunds like we got that future...but the back scratching doesn't seem to be trickling down to the citizens.

Re: And This Is How The Government Plays The Game

[Master of Transhuman]

"Given such assurances, Carpenter was surprised when, in March 2005, his FBI handlers stopped communicating with him altogether. Now the federal law-enforcement source tells TIME that the bureau was actually investigating Carpenter while it was working with him."

I'm not surprised at all.

The policy of the state is always to create new enemies to justify its existence.

The US ALLOWED the Chinese to steal nuclear secrets some years ago because they want the Chinese to be a credible threat in ten or twenty or thirty years when China becomes an ECONOMIC threat to the US, thus justifying war against China.

The same thing is happening in this case: Some lower level FBI guys supported this guy, until the higher ups and the politicians got involved.

Then they pulled the rug on him because they WANT the Chinese to steal lower-level secrets.

This is so obvious it's pathetic.

I for one welcome our new Chinese ...

[Anonymous Coward]

ah, forget it.

Paranoia ....

[DoktorTomoe]

This is like the second "evil yellow little men are trying to haxxor our WOPRs"-story on ./ in mere 3 days. Somehow this is like the WMD discussion just before the Iraq war.

Governments and nations spy on each other. The Chinese spy on the US and vice versa, the US spies on practically everyone, the Russians spy on China, and Germany spies on the US. That's the way international politics work when information is essential.

Really, if information retrieval from government webservers and "hacking" are your [US citizens] only problems, you may feel lucky, as there is one great solution: Do not connect mission-critical systems to a network or a subnet virtually everyone has access to.

Why is it classified?

[Anonymous Coward]

You think information is classified to keep it from the ChiComs? Hah! It's classified to keep it from you, the American taxpayer.

so?

[whathappenedtomonday]

the NSA has Echelon and uses it to spy on the whole world - so how can anyone complain? It's still the same (post cold war) game, only the weapons changed.

I wonder when European countries will finally stop taking part in this...

Re:Geopolitics of the next 30 years

[marcosdumay]

You are making that same mistake that I see repeated again and again... On a confrontation both sides lose. That means that if US and China face some real confrontation (even if a cold one) the most likely result is the growth of another power (EU?).

Re:Geopolitics of the next 30 years

[thogard]

There wasn't a time when everything was made in a Japan. Go try to buy a toaster that isn't made in China. I don't think you can do it. When Japan was rumored to be making everything, you could still find a US made toaster and a few made in Malaysia or Hong Kong. Now you have only one choice and you don't have a choice about many other things as well from kids bikes, kitchenware, ball point pens and even food, so much is now made in China that if there is ever an economic problem between China and the US (or EU or anyone else), there is simply no place else to get some things. As it stands right now, the US can not have a war with China simply because there are not enough non-Chinese pens to fill out the red tape.

May You Live In Interesting Times

[Quirk]

"My guess is that Venezuela will become, is essence, a Chinese outpost. And a huge foothold, economically, in Central/South America. Just in time for the economies in Brazil and Argentina to start looking ripe for more investment."

My guess is that, should the scenario you've outlinned be implemented, Uncle Sam will dust off the Monroe Doctrine and, as Teddy Rosevelt put it, walk softly up to China carrying a very big stick.

Re:May You Live In Interesting Times

[cybpunks3]

JFK told Castro that if he didn't get the nukes out of Cuba, Cuba would be wiped out proactively.

But that was 40 years ago. Times have changed.

We're now in an era where the US sits hamstrung by global politics while country after country gets nukes. Pakistan, North Korea, and now Iran who is suceeding in stalling until they inevitably reveal that the secret cake is out of the oven.

I don't see how we could stop anybody from acquiring nuclear technology no matter how close to home unless we were willing to threaten a first strike to prevent it. And doing so pretty much shoots the rhetoric of the evils of having "weapons of mass destruction" out the window.

We just don't have the troop count without reinstituting the draft to fight a conventional war.

So to me I think China could ultimately supply nukes to Venezuela and Cuba as a way of insuring unfettered access to Venezuelan oil at the expense of the US.

What would happen is the US would continue to be hamstrung. We are too dependent on China as an economic partner to ramp up a cold war, and yet by not doing anything we are assuring the gradual decay of the country from a shortage of oil imports now getting gobbled up by rivals.

Re:May You Live In Interesting Times

[Anonymous Coward]

If the US tries any bullshit, China will start dumping US dollars like there is no tomorrow. China can crash the US economy quicker than you can get a blue screen in Windows 95. Uncle Sam is a whore.

Re:May You Live In Interesting Times

[bluGill]

Dump them for WHAT? US dollars are not backed by anything. China cannot call the US up and demand a few thousands pounds of gold (or whatever the value they hold is). They can either buy goods with them, or trade them for other currency. Massive trading will change the prices.

If they buy goods, the price of goods increases (supply and demand). Because they are buying with dollars, the price of goods from Europe will go up more than US goods, thus stimulating the US ecconomy, and crashing Europe's ecconony. (Europe sells are lot of goods to the US) Not just Europe, but most other countries. Of course the US will have trouble buying goods from elsewhere, but the US has many natural resources to draw from, so it isn't the end of the world. Just a difficult time until the US becomes more efficant. (In other words this would spell the end of the SUV)

Dumping currency can only be done by trading it to someone else. However the US currency floats, so by crashing the US currency, they also crash their own reserves. Paying $10 for (at today's rate) $1 worth of Euros isn't good business sense. Though Europe is not stupid enough to miss such a fire sale. In the mean time, the US can ride this out - we produce more than enough food, and plenty of oil. It would mean the end of the SUV (which is already coming), and would push alternative energy, but that is about it. Of course because the dollar is so cheap, goods from the US are now dirt cheap on the world market, and the US can make things like crazy.

Note that the US is help by both of these situations, more than hurt. (long term, there will be serious short term effects) Europe (and Japan...) is hurt by it.

Long term, yes China does have to reduce their US currency holdings. (well they don't have to, but there is no reason to believe they won't), but it won't crash the US.

Re:May You Live In Interesting Times

[infolib]

We just don't have the troop count without reinstituting the draft to fight a conventional war.

You do. Not against China, but against most small to medium states. It's just that they're in Iraq.

White vs black thinking is usually wrong

[marcybots]

Usually only fools think in terms of white in black, because their not bright enough to understand the true complexity of life. Will we at some level be at odds with China, most definitely. Will China be our largest trading partner, most definitely.
      Therefore there will be a great deal of ambivalence in our relations, with China trying to wield its new found power and America trying to maintain a unipolar world order, but at the same time both sides not wanting to disrupt many of the delicate threads that hold their delicate economies together. Outright war is not going to happen,
      America has a huge foriegn debt, trade deficit, and budget deficit that are endangering its long term economic growth while China's very booming economic expansion is at the same gathering support for the government while fostering a great deal of corruption within it. Outright war would wreck both countries.
      However, on the espinage front, we really have to get on the ball and be very agressive with china and realize that we have to go after them harshly, perhaps using anti terrorism law. If this escalates things that is what must happen. There may be some saber rattling in beijing when we execute or imprison a few spies but that is what must happen, we have to use any means possible to root out chinese spies since the chinese are using any means possible to get our agents.
      Its no secret that during the cold war the that the russians had a much better intelligence agency than us, thats why it was called the IRON CURTAIN, we had no idea what was going on behind the iron curtain. When they hack us, we hack back, we disable their systems, we play their game, we play harder. Our infrastructure may be fragile, but theirs is much worse and we can take advantage of that fact.
Unless the United states is for some reason willing to world war three over a Chinese annexation of Taiwan, I doubt we will see a war with China any time soon. I doubt they have any aspirations to annex a huge empire since they already have an empire and really dont like people who arent chinese, so why would they want them as part of their country?

Re:White vs black thinking is usually wrong

[Spy Handler]

Didn't it occur to you that much of US foreign debt, which is owed to China, would get eliminated once war is declared on China? It's called seizure of enemy property.

open source spying?

[sking]

i fail to understand why the u.s. government is treating this guy so badly. granted, he used expertise gained by his employment to do some of the things that he did, but c'mon... he is (was) doing the u.s.'s intelligence services a favor.

i would think that activities such as this would be encouraged, but then again, we're talking about a system whereby the government rewards only those within a proprietary complex of contracts, etc. maybe this is just a little more evidence that that system needs to change.

Naw. You'd still have religious wars.

[khasim]

You will always have war as long as one group of people can define themselves as "us" and define different people as "them".

Which gives you the state wars, religious wars, ethnic wars, class wars (French Revolution), etc.

It's all about control of resources.

Re:Naw. You'd still have religious wars.

[Fyre2012]

your argument suggests that humans are incapable of resolving disputes without the use of force.

you confuse 'people' with 'politicians'...

i don't recall any of my neighbours calling me up and saying 'hey, we should go attack x country', but i do recall a certain president suggesting that 'all options are on the table' and 'the use of military force is absolutely necessary in a preemptive sense'
Rich politicians wage wars and send the poor to fight them. The masses don't just get together and decide "hey, it's a good day to attack 'x', we don't like what they think about 'y'"
the flag toting citizens are nieve enough to think that a) it's in their best interests to go to war, and b) they actually had a choice to go to war or not

there are ways of securing resources, and applying a strategy to allow those resources to be evenly and fairly distributed among those nations in need

the problem arises when one 'nation' (read: wealthy group of industrialists) feels that they deserve more than everyone else (does 5% of the world really need >50% of the worlds resources?)

people are people and people are not nations... there is no 'us' and 'them' there are only 'peolple' who are capable of sitting down and figuring problems out without killing eachother over it.

Not fearmongering, this is really heaponing

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats funny, "yesterdays" article detailing how unsophisticated attacks against US DoD systems with no information classified more than "for official use only" for a large part had asian source ip`s turned into the chinese goverment being involved in massive and organized spying.

I guess the crack team of investigative reporters at time have some hard evidence of chinese goverment involvement? I mean before pointing the finger they wouldn`t go with the guess of one civilian who was recently fired over cracking chinese routers to find who did this would they? Could time sink as low as to casually mention the "Attacks bounced through unsecured asian hosts where no police effort can be expected to find the real attackers" explanation only to continue with page after page of aligation? Nah even if it would help them sell a few more copies to people who are already scared of China and all the "cyberterrorism" stuff.

Ofcourse the US fearmongering around china isn`t incidental. If you are part of a defense project that even the dumbest senators and taxpayers can see isn`t gonna stop even half a terrorist then you have to point to another threat that looks like, say, cold war era soviet russia. There are plenty of these projects:

• nuclear bunker busters
• missile defense based on rockets that don`t leave the launchpad and if they do miss targets by only a little bit (as long as the targets fly a carfully aranged route ofcourse). Anyway, to be absolutely safe, lets not test this system again, it might fail again and enemies (in nuclear weapons states/congress) might read about that and then they might lose their fear of the US having/not having such a system)
• and ofcourse the stealth spysats that are only a few billion more expsensive but that are also somewhat harder to spot by an amateur with a cheap telescope and a computer. Thats ofcourse compared to the normal spysats that are not stealthy but that realy are much much more.... impresivily over budget to the point where the all importand radar imaging sensors get dropped.

Lots of projects means lots of people in those projects means lots of people out of a job if the project get canceld to fund say competent airport security personal hired at a pace that does allow for decent selection and training. So people point to china as the new superpower threat.

Also the fact that these systems don`t help at all against ied`s targetting soldiers on police missions to prevent civil wars starts to piss people of, but hey, lets put weapons in space anyway.

That said I do think the Chinese are behind this. China is famous for its reliance one open source inteligence and cracking hosts with non classified information is only a small step further from normal web browsing. Ofcourse it is nothing like cracking the networks with top secret stuff on them (like siprnet host). But if you stay away from smil.mil and sgov.gov you get plenty of easy targets without drawing to much attention. This has been going for how many years?. You might get information thats interesting if you have the manpower to study the huge loads of documents you get. Also the militairy/industrial/space targetting fits with China`s efford to get western style high tech weapons though cloning the western ones. But none of this means the chinese don`t just buy their documents at a few bucks a gigabyte from some russian who did botnet when he was a kid and now does this with botnets on the side though.

Anyway, if western reporters would just get of their asses and send someone over to china we would know for sure. There is no way you can talk to a couple a chinese weapons enineers and not have one of them brag about where they get their ideas. Cleverly stolen or cleverly designed sound like exciting answers to give to an reporter. Western engineers already have pointed out simalairities between chinese and western weapon systems. Ofcourse they could fin

Time Magazine = Propaganda. Period.

[Fantastic Lad]

Time Magazine is one of those social engineering tools which makes me groan every time I pick it up.

It reports the same old state-sanctioned, 'official' story every time, asks no worthy questions, and challenges none of the important limits. Remember: Time supported the whole, "Americans to the Rescue in Iraq" parade.

To quote Cindy Sheehan:

"Now I am being vilified and dragged through the mud by the righties and so-called "fair and balanced" main stream media who are afraid of the truth and can't face someone who tells it by telling any truth of their own. Now they have to twist, distort, lie, and scrutinize anything I have ever said when they never scrutinize anything that George Bush said or is saying."

If Time Magazine says we should fear Chinese hackers, then all that means is the Bush league wants to raise the fear level surrounding the web so as to make way for increased controls and further powers for monitoring and the option for precision lock-down, etc.

Same old game. New arena.

-FL

Re:Geopolitics of the next 30 years

[CodeBuster]

First, I will agree that China is over-rated as the next great powerhouse economically and militarily. Personally, I think that they are clearly a "World Power" but not on the level that either the US or EU are. China would like to be there, but they have a lot of obstacles to overcome.

An accurate, if somewhat rough, appraisal of the current situation and the direction of current political, economic, and military momentum.

The most serious is that China is not, and will probably never be, a pluralist society. The Chinese have almost always seen China as the center of the world in a way that even the US has not done. So while they go back and forth between isolationism and expansionism, the isolationism always wins out because of the huge force that ethnocentricity plays in their culture. I am not saying that this is good or bad. It just places limits on what China can achieve in a pluralist world. To a large extent, this is what crippled the Japanese expansion as well.

The "middle kingdom" mentality that has existed for millennia in the collective Chinese social consciousness. This is certainly a potential handicap in their international dealings, but I would not characterize this difficulty as insurmountable.

Currently the world has two superpowers: The US and the EU. The US is a military superpower and is largely able to dictate its will militarily, and the EU is an economic superpower which is largely able to dominate international and internationist institutions as well as dictate terms on a purely economic basis. Assuming that an EU constitution is forthcoming at some point and that the EU countries agree to have a single foreign policy, they will be in a position to actively challenge the US on any foreign policy area simply by virtue of their economic clout. Note the growing diplomatic war between the US and EU (usually referred to as "Old Europe").

This is where we part ways. It would be inaccurate to characterize the EU as an economic superpower in the same league as the United States (never mind the military part where the United States has a clear advantage), which has both significantly higher GDP per capita and growth than the European Union. Consider the recent trends in the economic and political development of the European Union, the defeat, by referendum, of the EU Constitution, protectionist import tariffs, the high rates of unemployment and slow rates of growth in Germany, France, Italy, and other EU states, with the notable exception of the newer Easter European members where growth is somewhat higher, and the increasingly expensive, burdensome, generous, and ultimately unsustainable social welfare programs that are seen as a birthright by citizens of the EU member nations. If the European Union wants to seriously compete with the US economy and the Asian Tigers then they need to slash government spending, cut taxes, remove onerous government regulations which distort the markets, and encourage more entrepreneurship and risk-taking with investments and capital. There seems to be a lack of will among the EU nations, France especially, to follow through with the necessary reforms on the grounds that bare knuckle American style capitalism is just not the "European" way. If the EU is serious about competing in the global economy then they need to enact meaningful reforms or leaner, meaner, and more efficient firms in the US, India, and China will eat the lunch of over-regulated, uncompetitive, and risk averse European corporations. The EU is still number two economically to the United States, but they are nowhere near overtaking the US in economic power, indeed they are in danger of losing their number two spot to more competitive Asian nations if they are slow to move on needed reforms. People in Europe are afraid of the US system and globalization, but does the European model of high taxes, massive government social service programs, and protectionist economic policies really deliver the best standard of living for all Europeans

Because *no one* cares(ed)...

[Anonymous Coward]

... about the information. By time it is found out about how much has been taken or used, those responsible are dead or retired.

Oh, it's happened and happening. Just look at the security score cards given by the Gov. Accounting Office to the DOE, their contractors, and other psuedo-governmental agencies.

But, even if the Chinese wanted something, our politicians have likely given it away in exchange for something else.

Oooh. They're "Methodical and voracious".

[Fantastic Lad]

You can always count on Time Magazine for choice adjectives.

Emotionally charged public relations terminology designed to create specific reactions in the reader. (So much for impartial journalism). The Chinese have been getting this profiled rap for a while now. (They are systematic! They think like machines! They are hungry for our resources! Blah, blah, blah.)

What makes it doubly dangerous is that the Chinese are being stirred up in exactly the same way. If the people of the world would stop believing the propaganda, would stop paying their taxes and stop supporting giant corporations, we'd have a lot fewer wars!

-FL

Re:Geopolitics of the next 30 years

[Anonymous Coward]

Allowing to let the currency float even within the very narrow band is significant. I lived in China for 5 years when my company set up a facility there. The Chinese do not make drastic changes. Everything is gradual. This is a first step, in a few years they will probably expand the band that the yuan can float in. There are a few problems that they need to solve before becoming a superpower. First their financial system needs to be seriously reformed. Their banking system is not particularly efficient or stable. The other huge problem they will need to deal with eventually is their society is getting old. The one child policy will mean that they will need to deal with the problems that come with a society that has a large percentage of the population passed the point where they can contribute to the economy. P

Here's that link.

[bhsx]

Considering I knew it was linked from Fark, I don't know why it didn't occur to me to just look there.
Anywayz:
Here's that link!

How the real USA vs PRC war will play out

[wsanders]

Who needs military confrontations when we can feed them McDonalds and KFC, sell them American cigarettes, and then get them to drive fast cars on their newly-built high speed freeways.

They can retaliate by poaching our intellectual property - Ha! We will invent crappy action movies and bad pop music CDs so fast they won't be able to keep up.

Take that, Evil Commies!

China already lost

[Anonymous Coward]

WalMart has a significant presence there, both in the manufacturing side and the retail side; and it will quickly proceed to bleed China dry just as it does every other community it enters.

Politics really isn't so much centered around political lines as much as corporate lines these days.

Sung to the tune of "Californication"

[DJ_Perl]

Cyberspies from China
Try to steal your information
Freelance spyhunter helps the
Fed's investigation
And if you like these kinds of cracks
It's Cyberpenetration.

They don't compare

[Robotron23]

Japan doesn't have in excess of 1.3 billion people to make use of. It didn't have access to raw materials from within. And perhaps most obviously, Japan only really produces motor vehicles and electronics. Japan has only just attempted to regain some military strength, China has an army of millions, with some 200 million able bodied men to conscript should need arise.

Culturally, both nations are like chalk and cheese. Taoism/Buddhism is more prevalent in China, while religion in Japan is largely ignored...perhaps due to more materialism but that open to debate. Before about 1982 the PRC was very restrictive on culture as a whole. Their socialist culture is still quite prevalent even today...Tianemen Square is designed to make those within it seem small, almost forcing people to cower beneath the intense power of the Chinese state, none of thats present over in Japan.

They simply aren't very comparable...the only true thing China and Japan have in common is the fact that they're both home to some incredibly intelligent people who are able to regulate and nurture the economy. Quite simply, if China's economy goes under, they won't be the only ones to feel it. Prices will rise as their production lowers, discouraging global consumer spending etc etc...Wouldn't happen with Japan, people can do without Mitsubishi's and PS3's, they can't do without clothing.

I don't think the Chinese will allow too much US investment. They regard the US as rivals in a sense... though the US produces less in terms of materials and more in terms of services. But only time will tell of course.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 30 years

[einhverfr]

This is out in left field...the Russians would never join the EU, just as they will never be members of NATO, and the French, Germans, and other EU nations wouldn't let them either. It took some serious arm twisting in France and Germany to get the Eastern European nations into the union. The EU membership of Turkey, a historical enemy of Europe, and a political hot potato in Germany (because of cheap immigrant Turkish labor), is very controversial and still very much in doubt. As for Iraq becoming part of the European Union? Well...let's just say that it really wouldn't be the European Union anymore if they let gulf Arab states join now would it?

Ok. I think it will be some time before serious talks begin regarding Russia and certainly there are some difficult issues there. However, Russia's economy is fairly small, as is their population. Their natural resources are strong, and the biggest obstacle is their momories of empire (first under the Czars and then as the CCCP). But I also think it is both logical and inevitable that such talks will begin sometime after the Eastern European countries have been well assimilated.

As for Turkey, there are two major obstacles in on-going negotiations. The first stated point has to do with human rights. But the second unstated point is that nobody would accept Turkey into the EU unless the issue of Cyprus is resolved first. It would be like accepting, I don't know, British Columbia into the US while they have a military standoff over land with Washington State..... Sorry, ain't gonna happen.

If Cyprus can be resolved, then I think that Turkey could be admitted faster than people realize. Cheap, imported labor can easily come from elsewhere, anyway....

Personally I think that Iraq is going to be another Islamist Democracy (like Iran) and that the EU will probably have no interest in them for the time being. And indeed the one major victor in the current Iraq War may indeed be Iran. So the Iraq bit was somewhat out in left field.


The EU has a chance to turn things around in the decades ahead, but as it stands right now they are heading toward economic stagnation, fractious political bickering, and a declining level of prestige in the conduct of world affairs. It is not too late for the Europeans to turn things around but their position, as it stands now, is not as good as that enjoyed by the only real remaining super power, the United States.

These things are largely cyclic. The EU overextended itself a bit with annexation of most of Eastern Europe. It is going to take a while to make this work. But look at how long it took the German economy to deal with reunification. It didn't happen overnight, and most of the trends you describe occurred there too. I think it will probably take a few years for things to get ironed out. Maybe even a decade. Then you will see another expansion. I think that as it stands, it will be necessary for an EU Constitution to be passed before additional expansion occurs. This may delay things further.

But there is another factor about the EU constitution to consider. Namely that it failed in France in large part because people felt that Chirac was belittling the French people in the way he sold the idea. People asked for a debate and they got infomercials. So in large measure, this was a vote of confidence on the governments where it failed and not on the constitution itself.

Finally, you seem to feel that manufacturing is the center of the current economy. This seems to me to be patently untrue. The wealtiest nations in the world are nations which are involved in very little manufacturing. This holds true on every continent. Instead trade, engineering, and high-value deliverables are the key points to becoming wealthy.

As an aside, this is also why affirmative action is a crutch we need to do without. I.e. it assumes a manufacturing economy where the difference between an entry-level and higher-level job is mostly education (this was true when affirmative action was begun). However, with the economy today, we need to be focusing instead on ensuring that everybody regardless of socioeconomic background has access to a high-quality education.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 30 years

[binary paladin]

Finally, you seem to feel that manufacturing is the center of the current economy. This seems to me to be patently untrue. The wealtiest nations in the world are nations which are involved in very little manufacturing. This holds true on every continent. Instead trade, engineering, and high-value deliverables are the key points to becoming wealthy.

The problem comes the tides change. Our "modern," "global" economy hasn't been around long enough to really demonstrate the cycles yet. Yes, right now the wealthiest nations have moved away from manufacturing, more or less because wealthy nations find such things beneath them (we can always ship it off to some unsophisticated foreigner that we can pay even less than a McDonald's worker here).

The problem will present itself when a nation that provides a wealthy nation with most (or at least a majority) of its manufacturing decides to go to war. Sure, China's economy would have issues if it were to cut trade with the USA, but you want to know who would have some real issues? It's not just the cheap crap we lose, it's the parts to a good deal of the expensive things that are supposedly "made in the USA."

Sooner or later the cheap labor of the world is going to turn on the arrogant, wealthy nations. China's looking to do it now.

Mod parent waaaay down

[SirSnapperHead]

I appreciate anyone taking the time to think about the important political issues of the day but your post is so riddled with inaccuracies and illogical conclusions that I feel an obligation to point out why this post really, really is not insightful:

"China has more than two countries capable of long term war" - Japan and Taiwan? Japan is an economic powerhouse, but certainly not a military one. The same goes for Taiwan. Both countries rely on American military power. All you are really saying here is that the US is capable of launching a long term war against China. Considering how overstretched the US military already is in Afghanistan, Iraq, and potentially Iran even that apparently obvious conclusion is a little flaky.

Russia? They are struggling to suppress the unrest across the disintegrated mess that was once the USSR.

"Then there is Mayamar, or Burma, or whatever the hell the country is calling itself this week." - For someone taking the time to write such a long post on geopolitical issues it is worth the effort to learn the names of the countries you want to discuss. It really isn't that hard. Myanmar was the name promoted by the military junta since 1989, but the US has continued to refer to the country as Burma. They are the number 1 producer of heroin (and a major producer of amphetamines) in the region, but this hardly constitutes a threat to the military capabilities of China. Especially considering how the US has weathered the storm of drugs coming from South America over all these years.

"Unlike the USA, where we must deal with Cambodia, Burma shares a border with China." - ??!?

"And then there is North Korea right next to China" - North Korea is a major threat to Japan, not China. This also means North Korea is a threat to the US. It only has any real dialogue with China, so in this delicate web of diplomacy China actually gains from this situation.

"China also shares borders with India and Pakistan" - So? The Himalayas pose a problem to any bizarre notions of a pointless land war to conquer worthless tracks of high-altitude land. The resource wars between China and India are all along economic lines, and these will potentially be far more important and devastating to countries in the region.

"A nuclear war could break out there any time." Relations between India and Pakistan have been improving dramatically over the last half year, with a new public bus route opening up from Srinigar in India across the Pakistan border, and a bunch of other important diplomatic meetings taking place indicating Things Are Getting Much Better.

"And here is the bottom line... If the USA stopped supplying exports of food, China would have one of the worst epidemics of famine the world has ever seen." - Business week said 6 hours ago: "China is one of the largest foreign investors in U.S. Treasury securities, with its holdings of $244 billion, second only to Japan." It is making so much money from shifting exports to the US that it is now effectively using that money to prop up a US economy weighed down by disasterous decisions that continue to be made by the Whitehouse.

Your post plumbs the depths of ignorance to levels I have seen before. But to see a post at such a level rated insightful is... absolutely astouding. Even after considering this is Slashdot. Don't be disheartened, keep offering your opinions, but remember in this case that you have got it utterly wrong. This just means you can only but improve.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 30 years

[einhverfr]

The problem will present itself when a nation that provides a wealthy nation with most (or at least a majority) of its manufacturing decides to go to war. Sure, China's economy would have issues if it were to cut trade with the USA, but you want to know who would have some real issues? It's not just the cheap crap we lose, it's the parts to a good deal of the expensive things that are supposedly "made in the USA."

Yes, the problem of "What do we do if we are at war with China and they make the IC's in our military technology?"

So it would be dangerous if a country which might hold a monopoly on the manufacture of a critical technology might decide to, say, use their economic clout. And it need not be a military confrontation. A trade war would be sufficient.

But again, a lot of this has to do with how irreplaceable a given country has become. Thus far, the manufacturing sectors have proved sufficiently dynamic to reduce this concern to a fairly minor one.

There are however secondary issues that few people consider in this trend. A major one is that if Taiwan is a major manufacturer of circuitboards and processors, why should they have to obey US trade policies? Why can't they ship to Iran, Syria, North Korea, or Cuba? Basically, the control over high tech that the US has typically sought becomes far more difficult once manufacturing is done offshore. So I am quite surprised that the "conservative" think-tanks have not strongly advocated trying to keep those industries here.

In the end, I think you have some valid points, but I think that in the end, manufacturing has tended to be easier than design, and so moving these to underdeveloped areas seems to make sense. Ideally, though, we would live in a world where any given good is manufactured in many different areas and traded in a free market.

Yeah Right

[tom's a-cold]

and they were getting them by penetrating secure computer networks at the country's most sensitive military bases, defense contractors and aerospace companies."

Secure networks, if you mean classified networks, are not connected to the Internet.

What the Chinese are probably doing is snarfing up all the data they can from government sources on the Internet, and using that to infer information that is classified. And maybe if they're lucky they'll find something that was incorrectly made public, though the processes are heavily biased to over-classify material rather than vice-versa.

So what's the motive for the scaremongering tone of the article? What are they trying to get out of it? Either allowing prosecution of people who are accessing publicly-available materials, or a further clampdown on freedom of information. I've heard Republican congressmen ranting about infosec lately, so my guess is the latter. That would also serve to delay and obstruct subsequent corruption (war crimes? Maybe but less likely) investigations.

The Chinese are a convenient scapegoat, but if I'm going after corrupt hypocritical authoritarian warmongers, I can find plenty of those closer to home. After all, it's not the Chinese who are fishing through my library's records.

future nano/biotech war...yeah, like we need it..

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh great, as if anybody learnt anything form the trillions wasted in the last cold war between US and USSR...it's ironic that we are getting to the point that we now have the ability to develop nano/bio and eliminate aging, and make it possible that everybody can have a nano-replicator and material wants will be a thing of the past...what do we want to do, but let a bunch of military dinosaurs (on both sides) decide your future..is it going to be plain old nuke flattend cites or a combo of nukes, add some cool nano/biotech to the mix, perhaps we could have one country nano-attack the other and turn them into remote controled brainwashed slave masses that agree with us that we are the superior beings and that our particular socio-ecenomic ralities are the best (whatever). Remember, the first country to develop good nanowhepons will be the able to take over the world and no-body will be able to resist, period.

Besides, if ther is a conflict in the next 20 years, where are we going to buy our
pc and VCR/tivo pda junk off of, if its not china??
You know, with the article (yesterday) about the advances in life extention, if we blow trillions and trillions in the next 40 years on war, when we could hve spent a fraction of that and developed working nano that could make us all younger and make it easy to move to pre-built (by nano) cities on the moon and mars, but instead we figure out ways of blowing up each other here on earth, it would make more sense to use nano to re-wire the reptilian and competitive parts of our leaders brains into something smarter so that we won't have to ride the testosterone "missle-ride-of death" into some glorious futue war where your are expectd to support the troops like the current administration expects you too.

Obligatory Tron

[Anonymous Coward]

Master Control Program: He's not any kind of program, Sark. He's a User.
Sark: A user?
Master Control Program: That's right. He pushed me... in the other world. Somebody pushes me, I push back. So I brought him down here... What's the matter, Sark? You look nervous.
Sark: Well, I - it's just - I don't know, a User, I mean... Users wrote us. A User even wrote you...
Master Control Program: No one User wrote me. I'm worth a couple million of their man-years!

The Chinese

[infoterror]

It is unwise to speak so negatively of our new masters.

What's really ironic and annoying...

[tkrotchko]

...is that while we're squandering our resources tracking and prosecuting Buffy downloading the latest Brittany album, the Chinese are making off with our state secrets.

Well, if we lose the next infowar to China, at least we'll be sure the RIAA gets everything they have coming to them.

Sounds like Carpenter tooting his horn

[SysKoll]

Let's see, the FBI doesn't want to have to do anything with the hero of this story. Story is totally devoid of technical content. The article is littered with fluffy little improbable pieces like When he uncovered the Titan Rain routers in Guangdong, he carefully installed a homemade bugging code in the primary router's software. -- how? By clicking on the "Install homemade bugging code" link in the router's web page? Or was that "router" running IIS4 on Windows? Puhlease.

The story's author is Nathan Thornburgh. A look at his track records at the Time shows a total lack of technology articles. And this story isn't raising his average. Looks like the author is anything but a techie. Which doesn't prevent him from writing down to his audience about things he knows nothing about.

Frankly, I can't help but wonder if Thornburgh hasn't been completely hogwashed by this Carpenter guy. The story would also be a tad more convincing if the artcile didn't read like a bad movie script or one of those inane pulp "hacker" novels concocted by writers who think using FTP to transfer files is a great technical prowess.

Thornburgh should write B-movies for the sci-fi channel. At least he won't have to explain the technobabble.

Re:Sounds like Carpenter tooting his horn

[blinkenlighten]

Yes, let's see... Instead of sending the typical 99% of FBI replies to Congressional inquiries on open cases ("no comment"), David Szady, the head of FBI's counterintelligence (not the field office), says "We are aggressively pursuing the leads provided by Mr. Carpenter." Hmmm... Sounds fairly important to me if the head of FBI's counterintelligence takes time to reply instead of the field office. Ok, let's take a moment to reflect on the readers that buy TIME magazine. What?! They aren't all programmers or network security analysts? You've got to be kidding me. Of the 30 million readers of TIME, I'm utterly shocked that the article was "devoid" of technical content. Are these editors on crack or something? There definitely should have been a step by step discourse on how to reprogram flash memory in the piece -- again, I am completely taken aback. TIME is sort of like the National Enquirer or the Mirror, isn't it? They don't do much vetting of their stories, they just publish whatever some Tom Dick and Harry strolls in with if it will sell magazines, by God. And then we have the previous well-sourced pieces by Frank Tiboni of FCW and the front page Washington Post story by Bradley Graham. Where do they find these morons?! Puhhleeeeeasssssssseeeee....

Re:Sounds like Carpenter tooting his horn

[SysKoll]

Goood point regarding Szady's comment. I hadn't taken that into consideration.

As for the writing down, you can easily write a technical piece for a non-technical audience if you curb the sensationalism and take time to explain instead of waving your hands. I've done it. If the Time audience can sift through an explanation of Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA or accounting fraud mechanism, they could survive a couple of explanatory sidebars about computer terms. Don't you think? Or don't you have any faith in your fellow human? (You don't? Good. There is a sysadmin carreer in your future :-) )

Finally, as for media verifying their sources, recent affairs demonstrated that the biggest media really don't care about checking a story. You need to work for a magazine for a few months, that would cure your illusions.

So who is the new threat if not China?

[elucido]

America needs an enemy. American always requires a new threat if you havent seen the pattern by now. China is the only competitior left which makes them automagically the new threat just as the Russian communists were the threat.

America needs an enemy overseas to fight to keep America from fighting itself and commiting suicide. We need war as a way to allow aggressive Americans a place to vent. We need an enemy to give Americans something to fight, to keep the economy going, and to give people a reason to support global domination. If the Americans don't do it the Chinese will.

The point I'm trying to make is that capitalism requires constant competition to function. America = capitalism. This means America requires competition to function. The equation shouldnt be so difficult. Otherwise China will let us compete with our selves, watch America collapse, and take over. Then the Chinese will take over the world.

I think its stupid for any American to think that America can exist without a global threat when America has been fighting threats sinces the very beginning. We either fight the threats overseas or we will start fighting them here at home, and I'd rather it be overseas.

Lets compete with China instead of with ourselves.

Re:So who is the new threat if not China?

[0x0000]

America needs an enemy. American always requires a new threat if you havent seen the pattern by now.

While you are mostly right about this, you have limited the temporal scope of the point, I think, in order to focus on the US. Fact is, many (most?) world power nations have had this same problem - they require external enemies in order to thrive. This is 19th Century politics, I think (I hope), but that remains to be seen...

America = capitalism.

Your statement here represents a fond dream for some, and an overwhelming fear for others. However, it is simply not the case. The US has adopted some capitalist principles, but so have most other nations that have progressed beyond basic agricultural economies. Capitalism is not a form of government - it might be considered a sociological phenomenon, but it definitely economics, and while Economics and Politics are related, they are not precisely the same thing. The US is hybrid of a number of things - it has some Capitalist genetic heritage, but it is hardly synonymous with Capitalism. An obvious support of this idea is the dominance of monopolistic and trans-national corporations in the US economy. There is almost no economic competition within the US - there is a great deal of price fixing and monopolistic practice. That doesn't support your assertion of a "need for competition".

I will give you that in order for the monopolies to appear capitalist there must be a perception of competition, but that's an entirely different matter than Capitalism in a true sense.

I think its stupid for any American to think that America can exist without a global threat when America has been fighting threats sinces the very beginning.

Well, I hope you're wrong - I happen to be one American who believes that America can and will exist without endless hot or cold wars and manufactured threats against its security. In fact, I believe that it must take that path into the future or it will cease to exist.

I view this principle you are outlining as something I call "The Myth of the Perpetually Expanding Market". It is the (fallacious) idea that Capitalism is a short term proposition that involves nothing more than market growth.

As you say: The US has ever had a threat to deal with. From the very beginning. That's true, as far as it goes, but remember that the US is an infant in terms of national political and ideological maturity. Well, maybe an adolescent - I'm not really enough of a Historian to say - but the fact is that the US is a young nation. If we go to other nations in history and examine their growth (and in some cases, decline) we find that many nations have survived this particular phase of national development not by seeking out new, better, bigger, or more winnable wars, but by re-examining this concept of unlimited growth - the "Myth of Perpetually Expanding Markets".

The Europeans have done it. The Chinese have, as well (I think - I'm not an expert on China). For China, it the reason they have continued to survive for longer than most Americans can even imagine, let alone plan for.

. We either fight the threats overseas or we will start fighting them here at home, and I'd rather it be overseas.

Fair enough, if you assume that we must fight in order to either survive or progress. You should realize, though, that that assumption can only lead (ultimately) to the annihilation of one of the warring parties - the US has got by so far by being a very efficient killing machine. But then, there are examples throughout history of societies (nations) that tried to hold on to that "fastest gun in the west" status against the rest of the world. They have all failed. If you examine it dispassionately, it becomes evident that any nation that tries to hold onto that "best fighters

You've got to be kidding. . .

[the gnat]

The same website also carries overtly anti-Semitic statements, like where he refers to "Jew Greenspan." I'll bet this guy also thinks the Protocols of the Elders of Zion wasn't a forgery. Given his apparent politics, it's no wonder he'd post a story warning of the Yellow Peril. Until I see this story somewhere else, I'll assume he pulled it out of his ass.

Re:You've got to be kidding. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

The same website also carries overtly anti-Semitic statements [...].

Sorry: Judeocriticism as such has long since ceased to be an effective ad hominem; try again.

Re:You've got to be kidding. . .

[Chmcginn]

Okay, how about blatant racism? (Check on pretty much all the articles about LA)

I see you arent aware that the war has begun

[elucido]

It's called a cold war. Just like the war with Russia, and its started already. The problem is America is losing. Americans are so greedy and selfish that China has learned to exploit Americas corporate weaknesses to its own advantage.

Outsourcing? It's simple. People who support outsourcing are supporting the Chinese. China is already kicking our asses in the economic war. If you want to win the war with China, you have to win the economic war. There is about 0% chance of the war becoming a physical war because at this level, with this much money at stake, neither country will ever want to have a physical war, and America will not go to war to defend Taiwan just as China will not require physical war to take Taiwan. China will buy Taiwan.

And before people post saying I don't know what I'm talking about, here is an blog for you all to read. Thomas PM Barnett is a war strategist. Read his blog, do some research on the subject, and then respond to my post.

Thomas P.M. Barnett is a strategic planner who has worked in national security affairs since the end of the Cold War and has operated his own consulting practice (Barnett Consulting) since 1998. Recently, Tom founded a consulting partnership with two other outstanding individuals called The New Rule Sets Project LLC. The consultancy was acquired by Enterra Solutions, LLC. in August of 2005, with Dr. Barnett as Senior Managing Director.

Thomas PM Barnett's Blog

Re:Geopolitics of the next 30 years

[Anonymous Coward]

> The dollar bought 360 yen from after the war into the 70s, just like a dollar right now buys an inordinate of RMB

What, now 'inordinate' == ~8?

2 Points...

[Cleetus Freem]

1. I would be surprised if the U.S. is not doing pretty much the same thing to China. Does anyone seriously think that this is a 1 way thing?

2. Why is everyone getting so worked up over the "threat" China poses? Economically, yes, China has and will continue to have a huge impact on us. However, look at which country is famous for invading others and which has almost no history of armed intervention at all! Since the establishment of Communist China in 1949 how many countries has China invaded/militarily intervened in? In that same period how many has the U.S. invaded/militarily intervened in? Pretty obvious who the real threat is.

Re:2 Points...

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Tibet, i guess you don't consider China's occupation of tibet to be similar to the US invasion of Iraq.

Re:2 Points...

[Anonymous Coward]

2) Tibet, India, Korea, Vietnam, the Soviet Union, etc.

Re:2 Points...

[Cleetus Freem]

You left out all of the countries the U.S. has invaded... typical.

Anyway, I will call bullsh!t on you and here is why:
Tibet has been part of China for hundreds of years (and if you still insist on claiming Tibet was a separate country then realize that to the Chinese, it is not thus it is not an invasion to them. Important psychological point if nothing else). The only violence with India and the old USSR involved border disputes, not invasions. Korea?! Hello!!! The U.S. crossed the 38th parallel and parked on the Korea/China border, all while U.S. commander Gen. MacArthur spoke publicly about wanting to nuke China. It was only after all of that that China went into Korea. What the hell do you expect them to do? If China had been parked on the Rio Grande while their commander threatened nukes, wouldn't we move to push them back? Vietnam is the only example of China invading another country. Period (and that invasion was, in part, precipitated by cross border violence so it wasn't like China just went to kick ass). Compare that to the U.S. and China comes across as a hell of a lot better international neighbor than the U.S. Oh, and your "etc."... what is that about? There are no etceteras. You, Mr. Anonymous Coward, are simply a typical example of western (American, really) ignorance. Sad but simply part of the majority.

move right on, nothing to see here

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh, like we don't spy on China.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 30 years

[Anonymous Coward]

i think that this increase in deman for oil is only going to force the US and EU to prompt the development of economical fuel cells. in 20 years, fuel cells will be the biggest industry in the US, and fuel cells aren't something china can copy and mass produce for cheap.

US CyberSpies

[TaGirl_Keri]

And the US doesn't do this? You lot are starting to believe your own BS

If one player is insane, committed to WWIII. . .

[NOPteron]

Firstly, it was called the 'Iron Curtain' because that's what Churchill ( iirc ) perceived/named it to be, back at the end of WWII. . .

As for escalation, China's Communist Party knows that North-Americans are expendable, are whiney, have no guts ( poke hard and we cave-in, see Iraq war for evidence of that, and also Vietnam -- has-to-do-with politics rather-than military-commitment or survival-commitment being our basis ), haven't got the guts to wage WAR
( autonomizing the locals means waging war,
helping locals remain dependent so We are Big & Important
is waging-battle, not waging-war.
In Vietnam, I think it was the Aussies, or the South Koreans, can't remember which, who waged war while the rest of us waged battle. . and lost the war )
. . .

In short, the Chinese Communist Party knows that if it comes to battle between China and North America, North America loses much-more ( fails more, breaks more, gives/caves-in to hurt/mindlessness/nonproduction more ) than China can, and that's that, and the Chinese Communist Party protects its survival by that path.

War Is Not Far from Us and Is the Midwife of the Chinese Century: Leading CCP official argues for exterminating U.S. population

CCP Official Claims Sino-Japanese War Possible by Year's End

. . and everyone knows about CCP making it clear that
just as gov't-enforcement destroyed Tibet in 'repatriating' it, they've threatened Taiwan with nuclear incineration if Taiwan doesn't obey repatriation, too ( Chinese corpses better to the Party than independent Chinese are ), so if CCP's threatening US of A, Japan, AND Taiwan with War Real Soon Now,
then they're agitating to get butchering and the moment/excuse hasn't catered to 'em enough, and that's the ONLY delay. . .

It looks like they fear for their Party's position/survival, and are willing to conflagrate China & Rest Of World to get that position's importance protected, to me. . .

Political-motivation ignites wars and "police-actions" to protect its incumbent special-interest-groups' habit, and neither Lives nor Reality matter or can-stop that from continuing to be the case, as our history shows

WWIII is a "when" question, not an "if" question, and it'll be manufactured by human-ignorance in order to enforce^h^h^h^h^h^h^hprotect Order/Authority/Obedience/Conformity, however it's actuated, since nothing changes. . .
and appeasement didn't prevent WWII, in case anyone needs reminding. . .

Spy - CounterSpy

[Anonymous Coward]

The CIA and related spooks have NEVER attempted to break into Chinese computer networks and systems - true or false? The U.S. Government has never sent representatives to Hacker Conferences to recruit potential hackers - true or false?

No more secrets

[carsamba]

If only.. It is naive of me to hope so, but nothing worthwile is ever easy.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 30 years

[infolib]

It would be inaccurate to characterize the EU as an economic superpower in the same league as the United States

Check again The EU has a higher GDP than the US. (Lower per capita, but that's not the point here.) And when it comes to trade agreements eg. in the WTO the EU acts relatively cohesively.

As for the Turkey-Russia-Iraq expansion I completely agree with you. Just getting Turkey in will be really hard and Russia and Iraq are so much further down the list.

I'm not so worried about a strong welfare state that you are - in fact I'd like to keep it here and I think it's possible if done right. For many years OECD analyses have consistently doomed the danish economy but it's still quite ok and better than many of the bigger EU countries. I'm not sure how to implement it EU-wide though. (And I'd really prefer some independence for the nations in this manner).

Heads roll as ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Heads roll as China's President Hu asks as to why he first learned of this on /.

Re:Geopolitics of the next 30 years

[Colin Smith]

"I'd like to say that the currency float you mentioned was a good thing, but there isn't a single economist who sees it as anything other than an empty political gesture. All they did was let it "float" within very narrow bounds, defined by them, with essentially no impact whatsoever on the real underlying exchange mechanics."

It's allowed to appreciate, or depreciate in value significantly over time. The limitations imposed act as a low pass filter, preventing large short term swings. At the current rate of appreciation, it looks like it's moving about 3%->5%/year. The boundary conditions limit maximum theoretical move to about 35%/year. When we are talking about economies and 1.3 billion people, 35%/year is not an empty political gesture.

What we're seeing is a gradual liberalisation of the Chinese economy, political liberalisation will follow as the wealthy middle class develops. The chinese are not stupid or rash, they know it takes time to change. In a decade or two, China is going to be by far the largest economy in the world, the USA and EU will be in comparison, satellite economies.

how in the world is that off-topic?

[Travoltus]

We're discussing the ramifications of hacking into US military systems. What's up with the moderation here??

Re:Geopolitics of the next 30 years

[Retric]

Japan's growth has been limited by its lack of natural resources, it's ageing population, and it's excessive investment in infrastructure.

Now China is a long way from having a population as old as Japan but they are getting older.

It's also a long way from being excessive in the amount of infrastructure it's setting up but with the amount of available land it should be able to avoid a lot of the truly wasteful practices.

Finally with a lower population density there is much more available resources to feed it's economic growth.

If it keeps growing, as fast as it is right now it's still about 50 years from having an equal per capita income as the US, but that's so far off it's hard to predict what's going on. For the next 30 years it should be able to fuel it's economic growth off of the western world after that it's anybody's guess.

Similarities

[sdirrim]

Isn't this nearly the same as Chinese Websites Used As Launchpads For Cracking , but actually saying that it WAS China? couldn't it just be American hackers using Chinese proxies?

Duh!

[CFMLSpecialist]

Why don't we just take the big important supercomputers with all our government secrets off the internet?