Helping Other Big Brothers Go High Tech

Dino writes "BusinessWeek has an interesting article about the export of high-tech equipment to China's security forces, and the dilemma that it creates. On the one hand, there is the desire to increase exports to a country with which there is a trade imbalance. On the other hand, we face a situation in which the technology can be used to track dissidents and unauthorized religions. Restrictions have been enacted since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre to prevent exports intended to the Chinese security forces. However, the restrictions have been applied narrowly, and effectively prevent only low-tech exports such as handcuffs, helmets, fingerprint powder, and tear gas, while DB software, two-way radios, DNA analysis gear, and video probes, are allowed."

Comments

Very Interesting Rewording

[Anonymous Coward]

The actual headline in Business Week's article in the linked article is "Helping Big Brother Go High Tech ", yet the slashdot headline is slyly reworded to "Helping Other Big Brothers Go High Tech".

I wonder this was just an innocent mistake or if the submitter intentionally reworded this to imply there are other big brothers we are helping. If so, let's see the evidence, otherwise this slight modification of text comes out of the pages of Animal Farm.

Hmm..

Free market

[gethoht]

The free market attitude is what dominates us policy(except for huge subsidies to oil companies, tax breaks to mega corps, etc...)

Profit will always trump most other ideals in business today.

If you think about it . . .

[DrMrLordX]

. . . nearly anything could potentially be used in the repression of free thought and free religion in China. Dealing with the Chinese at all, under any circumstance, could easily be construed as indirect support for China's totalitarian political infrastructure. Why split hairs over database software and DNA testing equipment? If you're going to be dealing with them at all, you've got to accept the risk that something you sold them might eventually be used to track down, restrain, or even torture a political dissident or practitioner of unsanctioned religion. It's China, what do you expect?

Besides, if American firms don't sell them what they want, they'll either buy it elsewhere or rip off a foreign design and make it themselves.

Who is Scarier?

[Skewray]

Really, is high tech scarier in the hands of China's gov't, or the USA's? I bet most people in the world think the American gov't
is pretty scary right now.

Re:Re-evaluate. Pretty please.

[thegnu]

Another carrot proffered naively by the US in hopes that China will "come around" and re-evaluate its currency?

I think the US Government has been fostering this conception we have that they're stupid so we don't see blatant attempts to aid and abet their Big Bretheren as such, but as vast miscalculations. All Donald Rumsfeld will need to do in the future to dispel any thoughts that there may have been malice aforethought will be to spit out some more confusing nonsensical tirade about hot air balloons and how an ape could get sattelite imagery and sell it to the chinese.

An excerpt from my novel, 2008 (not as catchy a title as 1984, but I'm trying):
"Ah," we said, "Poor old man. He's going ferking batty."

So, what confuses me is that if you say the current government we serve under doesn't care about us, people get their panties in a bunch. However say, "Feudalist govts were horrible, evil oppressors," people agree. If you say, "The Roman govt was a horrible and evil oppressor," people agree. If you say, "The Nazis were horrible, evil oppressors," people agree. If you say the Russian govt, the Serbians, the Japanese warlords, the Egyptians, pretty much everyone and his goat's grandmother in the middle east, India, Oprah, Kim Jung Il, or Saddam, people say, "Evil! Evil! Evil!"

So. Our government is a massively organized, oppressive military force bent on clouding our judgement, keeping us complacent and stupid, and harvesting our resources and lives for their own desires. They have no regard for our lives. They only want our water--new rule, if you haven't read Dune, you don't get to read /. They have no regard for the children. They are poisoning us, injecting us with experimental drugs from the time we're born, eating food out of our children's mouths, stealing candy from every baby. They are destroying our land, they are poisoning our streams killing every natural means of sustenance on the face of the planet. And yes, with the expansion of the NSA spying program, the integration with online medical records, the ability to arrest people warrentless, without bail, and without explanation, I am scared. Let us please stop worrying about China, because there is so much work to do on our side of the table, and nothing we CAN do on theirs.

(I'm not really writing a novel)

Re:Perception & reality

[smilindog2000]

Worrying about exporting this stuff to China is dumb. We already export:

- Cash. We invest more in China than the rest of the world combined.
- Jobs. Our loss is their gain.
- Internet filtering, courtesy Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft.
- Chip manufacturing technology (indirectly through Taiwan)

SMIC, China's largest semiconductor manufacturer (built on US technology) is listed on the Nasdaq. For some stupid reason, politicians in Washington don't think the Chinese are capable of building advanced computers, routers, or weapons. There's a perception of US superiority, due to good old Yankee Know-How. Give me a break.

Why we allow US companies to censor web sites in China, I have no clue.

What about the 'other big brother?

[houghi]

What about the comapnies who help the US governement spy on their people? Are the bad, or are they patritic?

I don't have a problem with anybody selling anything to China. I do have a problem with the Chineese policy and politics and I would love to see an embargo that forbids any country doing business with that country.

Yet an emargo needs to come from the country, not from the company.