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Chinese Hack Attacks on DoD Networks Coordinated
An anonymous reader writes " The Naval Network Warfare Command says that Chinese hackers are relentlessly targeting Defense Department networks with cyber attacks. The 'volume, proficiency and sophistication' of the attacks supports the theory that the attacks are government supported. The motives of the attacks emanating from China include technology theft, intelligence gathering, exfiltration, research on DOD operations and the creation of dormant presences in DOD network for future action. Onlookers warn that current US defenses against these attacks are 'dysfunctional', and that more aggressive measures should be taken to ensure government network safety."
Gee, ya think? China has more than a billion people. I know they're not all running around with shiny new laptops, but come on - this is akin to saying that the majority of low-temperature attacks on the United States come from Canada. Well, duh!
I can make the same "cyberattack" claims about my not-worth-cracking dedicated servers and the dinky firewall machine sitting on my cable modem, too, but that doesn't mean I'm engaged in a "cyberwar" with anyone. The majority of rooted machines trying to root mine are in China. Most of this comes in the form of automated attempts to bruteforce ssh, but I've seen targeted attempts where there's clearly a human on the other end of the wire.
While I don't doubt that DoD machines are probably being targeted intentionally, there's an overwhelming amount of garbage traffic coming out of central and eastern Asia, and it hits everyone. Nearly half of all my rejected SMTP traffic is from Chinese netspace, but most of it's trying to peddle western products to American consumers, the Chinese people have nothing to do with it. China's so full of compromised hosts that whoever's actually cracking DoD machines is probably sitting in an internet cafe in Milan, piping data through some rooted
Oh, and the next person to use "spear phishing" in an article is getting a swift kick in the nuts!
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Time for the US to execute a "phased redeployment" away from the Internet.
Back to uunet or fidonet, where our bits can be safe.
Onlookers warn that current US defenses against these attacks are 'dysfunctional', and that more aggressive measures should be taken to ensure government network safety.
Sure... drop some bombs. What could possibly go wrong?
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I am a civilian contractor for the US government, and I can guarantee that we are hit all the time with attempts to get into our networks on the secret and SCI sides.
However, I would like to know who these "onlookers" are... The defense measures (can't say specifically of course) that we take are plenty effective against all types of attacks we get. One of our top priorities is writing code that is solid and secure. We run scans (again, specifics are classified) nightly to test the security of our infrastructure and applications.
Whoever these "onlookers" are, I would love to hear about how THEY successfully hacked into our network instead of just criticizing with no actual knowledge.
The United States really needs to change doctrine to prevent these sorts of attacks in the future. An assault on government networks by a foreign country should be responded to like any other attempt to impair, hinder, or steal information from the government by a foreign country - with an escalating response based on severity from diplomatic rebukes, cyber counterattacks, sanctions, and ultimately military strikes.
"In God we trust, all others we monitor." -- Unofficial NSA motto
Like bombing the whole of China? (http://politics.slashdot.org/politics/06/01/27/18 57208.shtml)
Shouldn't this be expected? It's not as if this is a surprise. Their systems should be built from the ground up expecting every and any kind of attack.
The US government gives way too much leeway to China in general. They screw with exchange rates, make it difficult for outsiders to do business inside China (Donald Trump even complained), give weapons to our enemies, take our jobs, have crappy human rights record, use mass pollution to take shortcuts and undercut prices, and are not a democracy.
The theory is that free trade will turn them into a democracy. So far its proven to be hooey. Are we going to allow this shit to keep going on decade after decade with the delusion that eating KFC will make them democracy?
Table-ized A.I.
"Attacks coming from China, probably with government support, far outstrip other attackers in terms of volume, proficiency and sophistication" Government support of attacks on DOD networks is not a minor accusation. You would need a lot more evidence beyond potential motives and speculation to suggest that such an attack is government supported.
No sig for now.
I agree that we give China too much leeway in a variety of venues, but things are changing there. They have the special economic zones, which are essentially capitalist, and the government is losing its grip on a lot of places. It appears their accounting rules are becoming more westernized, and with them, more transparency in to their economy.
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
By creating a planetary network, mankind on Planet now has the ability to share information at light-speed. But by creating a single such network, each faction has brought themselves closer to discovery as well. At the speed of light, we will catch your information, tag it like an animal in the wild, and release it unharmed -- if such should serve our purposes.
I wonder how much China would complain if the NSA launched an attack against any confirmed hosts? If there is evidence that computers are attacking use, either live or as bots, can China make a real complaint about us protecting our interests?
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
The DoD should create a firewall rule to automatically drop any packets it recieves from China, North Korea, South Korea, or any of those countries trying to root its machines. On my dad's dinky little small business network with one segment and 10 machines, I saw no less than 300 daily attempts to root the gateway via SSH coming from North Korean and Chinese IP addresses. Now, mind you, I use SSH to remotely administer the gateway. Naturally, the gateway is a secure BSD machine as I wouldn't dare front end a network with a Windows 2003 server. I was dismayed that, in these attempts, the attackers are getting a login and password prompt. Thank God syslog reported that no attempts got past that point. So, I made SSH listen to a non-standard port and added a PF firewall rule to drop ANY incoming connection attempts from Pacific Rim countries. I also checked to see if there were any strange binaries or daemons running and ran a netstat -n to look at activity and there was nothing suspicious. Finally, as an additional safety precaution, I decided I would add firewalls to drop the Microsoft ports in and outbound. Now, instead of reporting access denied, syslog reported copious amounts of dropped packets for about two weeks and then the attacks seemed to drop off altogether. Now I see one only occasionally.
How is not being a democracy a bad thing? They could become a democracy and still do all of the other things you listed. We're a democracy and yet we give weapons to our enemies, give away jobs, have a crappy human rights record, and pollute. Democracy isn't automatically the best government for every country.
Developers: We can use your help.
By 'hackers' do they mean people scanning their networks for machines with no firewall running PC Anywhere with default passwords like Gary McKinnon did?
..and you would attribute these supposed attacks to a specific state sanctioned effort...how?
They have the special economic zones, which are essentially capitalist, and the government is losing its grip on a lot of places.
Capitalism and democracy are not necessarily related. We use to all think that until Singapore proved it a wrong connection.
As far as the government losing its grip, it is local governments that grow powerful due to the money. Thus, it exchanges a national dictator[1] for a local dictator.
[1] There is a better word meaning "multiple dictators in chage", but it excapes me right now. Plus, nobody uses it enough to recognize it.
Table-ized A.I.
those are all true of the United States too.
If we screw with the exchange rates, why do we have a trade and credit deficit? As far as being difficult for outsiders to do business, we have one of the most open-to-business countries there is. It is not perfect, but one of the top in that regard. And although we slipped on the human rights with Gitmo etc., it is still far more open a proces than what China has. Our system is a B-, their's is an F. And, our polution regulations are much tougher than theirs. I've been there and seen a red moon directly overhead (it was not an eclipse). True, US regs are weaker than Europe's, but Europe is not the issue here.
Table-ized A.I.
It's like their food: you hack away, but find you are not satisfied after a few hours and have to hack some *more* ;-P
Table-ized A.I.
The theory is that free trade will turn them into a democracy.
This has never been the reason the U.S. promotes "free trade". You shouldn't repeat it without thinking about it.
I often find those postings one-sided. In this case,some posters are readily to advocate the USE of military as a result of this. We have the most sophisticated electronic and information warfare capability in the world and people just tend to pretend that we don't do this kind of information warfare everyday. And whenever other nations are "alleged" to conduct such, those ignorant people just ready to beat the drum of war.
Another thing is, as of now, China doesn't even need to fire a single bullet to beat the crap out of us if we decide to launch a war on them.
China currently has 1000 billion US dollar foreign reserve, that is somewhere 1/5 to 1/4 of ALL US dollar reserve held by foreign countries. At the onset of the war, China will have three options: one is conventional warfare, two is nuclear warfare, three is financial warfare.
Conventional warfare is something US would avoid, think Korean War. Nuclear Warfare is something both would avoid, unless the fat lady sings(the absolute last resort.)
At the beginning, we of course would bomb the crap out of their infrastructure and military installation, given our air superiority, as we did in Iraq. And China knows this and know they would not win in this course of action.
All they need to do is to make a threat or actually dump US dollar reserve on the international market.
Don't think this would happen? Brush up your knowledge of Suez Canal crisis of 1956. That was exactly what happened when British and French forces rapily withdrew after successful military invasion after Eisnehower threathened to sell US reserves of British pound and thereby to collapse the British currency. Of course the British pound was already under pressure after decades of British colonial expansions that spent a lot of money, not unlike the current US national debt of today. Most historians agree the Suez Canal is the major milestone of the demise of British empire.
When you have 25% of another country's currency on the market, that is a pretty powerful hand. All you need to do is dump all that at once onto the international market. It effectively and immediately collapses the US currency and the whole American economy. Do you think other countries will have the capacity and more importantly the willingness to buy those currency. Do you think other nations would be willing to lend us money by buying up treasury bills, knowing our money would be worthless on the market.Hell no. People all over the world will be dumping US dollar like crazy. US stockmarket will crash; there will be endless runs to the bank.
The economy as we know of will cease to exist.
Some people of course will doubt that China woud do this. But when you are been bombed crap out of you a-ss and you are getting desperate. Trust me, you'lldo anything.
This, my friend, is how the war between China and US will play out NOW. But very very unlikely to happen. It is like two big boys on the playground. Of course it is nice to be the only king of THE playground. But sometimes it easier to share it a little with someone as strong as you are. That is, the essence of international relation. Boy, I just hope we don't have some airheads in the administration thinking otherwise.
So for those people ignorant of economy and internation politics, you can stop making those senseless remarks. Brush up on your knowledge before making a fool out of yourself.
Fiefdom?
"My job is to pertect the American people from cyberattack. When we find IP packets that are in that country that are hurting our computers, we're going to do something about it. ... Does this mean I'm looking for a pretext to start a war with China? No. It means I'm trying to protect our computers. That's what that means.
.Hackers, go do this,. but we know it's a vital part of the Chinese government."
Despite our warrantless wiretaps, I don't think we know who picked up the phone and said
Secretary of States Bill Gates added "For the umpteenth time, we are not looking for an excuse to go to war with China. We are not planning a war with China. Yes, we do have contingency plans for wars with every other country in the world, but not China. And even it we did, we have not taken any actual final decisions to act on them in the immediately foreseeable future. We have just sent elint-equipped cruisers to the East China Sea, but those are just there to help Taiwan with its streaming internet video capacity."
In response to a question from reporters as to whether cyberattacks originating from other countries, such as Saudi Arabia, had been observed, Gates said "That's classified information. And besides, who cares? We're not talking about Saudi Arabia, we're talking about China."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
How is not being a democracy a bad thing?
Most democracies are less likely to be aggressive, especially if women vote. For example, the population of China would not likely vote to attack Taiwan, for it would get them nothing but holes in the head in exchange for a rocky island with bad farmland. But an egotistical dictator would. (Of course, W may be one of the rarer exceptions to the rule.)
Table-ized A.I.
Bullshit, that's for US people to be brainwashed by their goverment. To make them more acceptant and relaxed to US opposition to China and to comply with its future plans to cope with the China phenomenon. Don't believe to that bullshit. 95% of what you hear and read is artificial. Attacks happen all the time. Even to insignificant systems like honeypots, imagine DoD.. Furthermore, what's the proof for this? Who says that? The US goverment itself? You must be kidding. Bring the proof. You can't claim things up in the air. alex
... And have the UN come crashing down hard on charges of crimes against humanity, use of WMD's, etc. While the UN may not have the military might to slap the USA around, its member countries, collectively, do, unless the US decided to launch nukes at everyone and bring their own world to an end as well. And I'm sure that a nuclear winter in the vicinity of China would piss off a lot of people - Most notably the Russians, since they're cold enough as it is. Besides, they'll just hack the missiles and reprogram them to make a happy face pattern in the Pacific.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
Who said anything about a war? Just clamp down on trade policy, piracy, etc. Most countries have large tarrifs on China goods. We are the odd man out.
Table-ized A.I.
the military drove technology advances and used their money to get computer systems researched and built to their requirements.
Why aren't they running hardened clients on the inside? Why are they running systems against which phishing is useful? Why aren't they deploying advanced OS technology in which stealing a password or compromising a browser doesn't give away the entire machine?
Not to mention that the whole article doesn't make sense. Either the source IP addresses are in China or they aren't. If they are, why haven't they simply dropped all packets from China, and why are they so convinced that a Chinese IP means a Chinese attacker? If the IP addresses aren't from China, what is their reason for believing it's a Chinese-0wned set of machines?
Someone once posted me a rather hurtful letter from France once. It's only obvious that we bomb the shit out of the French postal service.
I think that's the sort of logic the OP is going for at least...
We didn't need a specific state sanctioned effort to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, why do we need it now?
Like what I said? You might like my music
you didn't seriously think America doesn't do exactly the same thing to everyone else, did you?
Yes, but we pray to Jesus before we do it. Makes all the difference.
Table-ized A.I.
...connected to the public internet in the first place. Most sensitive US DOD sites have armed soldiers guarding the physical gateways. They don't let the general public meander through the grounds. Yet they're doing exactly that with their computers.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
This is most likely a coordinated attack by someone who wants US information (could be any country/organization in the world) and developed a botnet which happens to mostly reside in China, since China's computers tend not to get frequent security updates. The fact that the IP addresses are originating from China indicates that it's probably anyone but China.
However...China-bashing does score political points right now.
The US is just as bad - look at the Australia/US free trade agreement regarding extending patent terms and its affect on generic medicines.
Don't play the human rights card because every nation has abuses eg
What makes you think democracy is so great? The US is the best examples of its failures. At least in China when an official is caught taking bribes/etc he/she is placed under house arrest... too bad that type of thing doesnt happen with pork barreling in the US.
The US has been screwing the world for years, it's about time we had a new superpower to keep the US under thumb.
Excuses Are Like Assholes - Everybody's Got One
There are many examples of why this is incorrect - sugar, steel and beef for a start. Why do you think many US foods are full of a more expensive sweetener made from corn which doesn't taste as good? Geological history has left the USA with sulphur rich coal which results in the cheap steel being of very low quality and unsuitable for some roles (Liberty ships were the most exhaustively documented example). You have good beef - but there is very stong protectionism there. The US pharmacutical industry is another big can of protectionist worms which is indirectly fueling enormous qualitities of spam which you would have noticed. There are reasons behind all this but there is still no reason for people to lie about it and talk about "free trade" - Australia was solidly screwed on a free trade agrement with the USA but our representative stupidly agreed to a time limit and they would take whatever was offered at the end of it.
As for pollution regs - they are getting very tough in China because they have to be.
Thats a fun mastabatory game you are playing there.
Do you seriously think that?
While not a fan of our current policies and actions, if the U.S. decided to tell the U.N. to take a flying-f*ck at the moon, absolutely nothing, aside from a vote to tell the U.S. that other people are peeved at us, would happen. Why?
Like it or not, we are still the big boys on the block; Economically and Militarily.
Do you know how many of those countries that take political pot shots at the U.S. are receiving huge chunks of cash and economic incentives to play nice with us on the economic side of the house? If other countries decided to put the money screws to the U.S. (and economic is arguably the biggest persuader in the arsenal) the U.S. could wreak more havok on them. Yes, it would be difficult for us, but in the long run, we'd come out of that game on top as well.
This is like those old samurai movies. Zatoichi, is attacked by a mob of sword weilding henchmen. The first few guys get cut down fast and horribly. A few more try to rush him and end up dead or maimed. Finally, the big ones, the ones that talk the toughest, take off running, trying to figure out how they can make a deal with him. (Also note: It's always the tough bosses in the movies that send the little guys in.) To finish, the U.N. will talk tough, Venezuela and a few others will take economic action, the U.S. will cut them off. And the French, Germans, Russians, Japanese, Italians, Polish, and Indians will still have their teams in the U.S. making trade deals and wrangling for the U.S. dollar and market.
You see, when the average household makes and spends in a month what 3 Indian families do in a year, and your country depends on the availability of that market, thats too big of risk.
Perhaps that's why the 5th column in the U.S. is so busy trying to wreck the U.S.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Years ago, a Japanese company found that a Chinese operative was attempting to steal info. So they fed her with their formulas for capacitors from the 60's. In particular, several formulas that were well known to fail after only a few years of service. Sound Familiar?
We need to do the same. China is bright enough to not run Windows in their equipment (frightening that USA does on our ships which will be used in defending Tiawan). But we can provide ideas/plans that we will not use or that we found subtly flawed. Basically, disinformation. I would be surprised if we are not doing just that.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The amount of confusion and damage that this could do would be enormous. And it would have the added benefit (to the attacker) of leaving the hard assets (buildings, people) in place, unlike an actual war. These could be simply bought up later, rather cheaply.
There are different ways to root a country. Actual destruction is the most expensive and inefficent approach there is.
The real cause of these cyberspace attacks is that the U.S. government has actively encouraged them. First, the Feds have actually punished Government employees who have tried to stop these attacks. Read The Invasion of the Chinese Cyberspies (And the Man Who Tried to Stop Them) This is a variation on a common theme of the attitude of the U.S. government, unfortunately. Protecting the U.S. appears not to be a priority.
The second biggest problem is that the Federal Government has set up a hostile enviroment to discourage Security Research. Security researches are threatened with prosecution, jail time and civil lawsuits that can bankrupt them. The common occurance is when a Researcher reports a problem with a flaw in a product. There are no Safe Harbor procedures or provisions in any Federal law which allow this to happen so that society in general can benefit.
This has had a rather chilling effort on the IT industry as a whole. There is no safe way to study real cracking, so our students (and industry workers) really don't understand how the bad guys work. This also has the added downside that new technologies are developed without any real understanding (or even concern) of what the attack vectors are. MS Windows is the best known example. Javascript is the second best.
Had the U.S. implemented Safe Harbor provisions, we'd be in far better shape to deal with hostile attacks, throughout the entire industry.
While the offshoring of jobs has had an effect, without the above two points we'd still have this problem. Furthermore, if we had shored up and expanded our efforts in Security Research, we would be a lot more resistant to backoffice exploits.
It is also obvious that security can't be offshored. So if the Federal government had made security a priority, your original point would be moot.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
China is too lucrative a market, that American corporations are pressuring the US government to be lenient with China, despite of all the problems that you listed.
...etc.), and will probably be the next empire.
...
Some decades in the future, China will turn out to be a real and formidable rival (economically, geopolitically, culturally,
Meanwhile, instead of preparing for such a prospect, the US has forsaken the obvious means of combating terrorism, for example intelligence, infiltration, disruption, and targeted strikes, and went into a full all out war on two countries, draining its budget, increasing its dead, and earning it the wrath of much of the world.
Go figure
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
The Chinese government gives way too much leeway to the US in general. We screw with exchange rates, make it difficult for insiders to do business inside China (by staging protests on Chinese policies), give weapons to their enemies, give them crappy jobs with low pay, have crappy human rights record, use mass pollution to take shortcuts and undercut prices, and are not a democracy.
The theory is that voting for one of two old, rich white men makes us a democracy. So far its proven to be hooey. Are we going to allow this shit to keep going on decade after decade with the delusion that eating KFC is the reason why we're so fat?
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Yes tit for tat has been proven to be sucessful historically, first proven in the school playground.
Tit for Tat is the most successful strategy for the iterated prisoner's dilemma.
Granted, that is in a very simplified situation compared to the world at large.
Even in the schoolyard, though, it's more true than not. If you get bullied and you pop him in the nose *every time* and do not initiate violence yourself, then he'll tend to pick on easier targets. It worked well for me and I got quite a bit of practice since I moved so much as a kid that at the start of most school years I was the new kid.
SIPRNet is mostly separate. From what I've heard, people aren't allowed to move information between SIPRNet computers and other 'insecure' computers at all.
Or perhaps DoD should have secondary network physically separated from internet, where workstations with important data are kept. We do. I'll not go into any specifics, but yeah, we do.
Thank god the folks that are in this field are more intelligent than that. At least the few that I've met...
Frankly, yes. The effects of soft power, barring "breaking point" moments, really can't be measured by any finer unit than decades. When dealing with China, it's probably safest to measure in 20-year increments, at least. Ask yourself: is the China of today honestly no better than the China of 20 years ago? Do you believe that confrontation, antagonism, isolation, or aggression would somehow effect change faster, or improve our overall situation?
Do you really have such contempt for the astonishing amounts of soft power our nation has at its disposal that you can see it as nothing more than "eating KFC"? Just how much longer do you think we can successfully threaten, arrogate, and force our way through the world?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
He may be thinking of oligarchy, but fiefdom is more appropriate.
..."it's about time we had a new superpower to keep the US under thumb."
Be careful of what you wish for my friend.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
...Donald Trump even complained...
He complains a lot worse about Rosie O'Donnell. What does that make her? Besides a big, fa...Oh, I can't.
What?
Since when does 'proficiency and sophistication' lead one to believe a Government is behind something? -shudder-
An evil communist (government supported) hacker but wouldn't a greater volume of attacks be a bad thing? Surely it would make sense to find a single or small number of vulnerabilities and target them, rather than set off alarm bells by using a 'carpet bomb' approach?
It is so obviously wrong to compare one country's exceptional behavior to another's systematic behavior, that you must be either a liar or a fool.
Indeed, look at the very public arguments that Americans are having over the abuses you cited. Do you suppose there are similar arguments conducted in Chinese newspapers over the Tianenmen Square incident?
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
I mean, come on. The military invented the internet. I'm sure with the professional level of paranoia with which the American military structure comes installed that there is simply no possibility that a bunch of internet hackers from China could have any effect whatsoever on the well-being of military security.
Which means only one thing. . .
This story is propaganda. The government wants the public to fear China and to herd people in whatever new direction they have planned.
Anybody who believes this crap is not just a fool, but a dangerous fool, because if you get enough fools believing in propaganda, you get wars.
Iraq was the result of too many fools not waking up soon enough. --And thank-you all for that, BTW. I remember a lot of fools cheering like crazy on this site and others when the troops were first rolling into Baghdad, posters here drunk on war and acting as though the whole thing was a game level of some Westwood production and that the troops would be home in 10 weeks and that it wouldn't end up being a multi-billion dollar Vietnam-esque quagmire which anybody with any real awareness could see coming from a mile away. You were FOOLS! The lies were obvious, and everybody and their dog fell for them. I hope there are fewer fools out there today. --If you were a fool and have woken up since then, THANK-YOU!!! If not, I hope you wake up soon. The world is screwed up enough without a cold-war with the Chinese!
However, based on the number of foolish responses to this story already posted on Slashdot, I don't see how we're going to avoid more dumb conflict. Few things make me angry these days, but fools making the same mistakes over and over when it comes to war and the lies which lead to war is definitely one of those things.
-FL
Ever seen firefly? Perhaps it's an accurate description of the future, all cultures mixed and China + USA are the two world superpowers. Well, either way that may be far off in the future, relatively speaking. Do we not have others superpowers to keep in us in check right now? Undoubtedly USA is #1 in terms of power, but if even one superpower turned on us, would we stand a chance of recovery fast enough to remain the #1 superpower?
If Japan cut off america for electronics, China would gain so much more of the demand, and the supply would significantly decrease, even without hackers is that possibility not enough to keep America in check? I should think that every superpower has a single move that could throw out a leg of every other superpower in the world, because that's the only way they got there.
On the other side of the argument, China is well known for it's debauchery in a political sense, (uh, Tibet?). Is it so wholly unbelievable that this is in fact government influenced? Chances are with all the free information from the government given to us...spoonfed to us, we'll never find out
As for democracy, what country exhibits better democracy than America? Realistically democracy is impossible, but America probably comes the closest, aside from perhaps Sweden and a handful of other--smaller & much more manageable--countries. And as for the last statement, the US has been screwing the world for years? I'm not sure I even need to rectify that, but when all is said and done, have we done ill, or well? Everyone makes mistakes, the US makes mistakes on a grandeur scale, but what about the economy, the stock market, what about all the good that's come out of America?
It's easy to criticize, but much more difficult to really appreciate some of the small mistakes in the grand scheme of things.
I Bleed Scarlet
I did not claim that we have *no* protectionism and no barriers in the US. I am only saying that *compared* to other countries, we are far more open.
Table-ized A.I.
> The theory is that free trade will turn them into a democracy. So far its proven to be hooey.
This has never been the reason the U.S. promotes "free trade". You shouldn't repeat it without thinking about it.
Nonetheless it has been demonstrably true. Compare the China of today to the China the 1987 Tienamen Square incident, and that in turn to the 1969 cultural revolution. That nation is dramatically more free than it was, the government has had to significantly loosen its grip, and there is a rapidly growing middle and upper class who are relatively empowered with respect to their own affairs and the nation as a whole. There is a long way to go yet, but anyone who thinks China has not made improvements in freedom in the last 38 years is utterly blind.
Compare that to two more isolated / non-traded-with communist regimes: Cuba and North Korea. Cuba has at least received trade from everyone but the US, but isolating them from the US has made it fairly impossible to loosen Castro's stranglehold. North Korea has been totally isolated, and as a result still looks very much like it did in the 1960's.
Trying to force democracy/personal freedom before economic stability and freedom is there to support it generally leaves a nation that quickly descends back into dictatorship: compare Russia, where sudden democracy failed resulting in the "Putinization" of their fledgling freedom, and (probably) Iraq.
Economic reform has to come first: the Marshall plan worked because it spent fifteen years economically reconstructing Germany and Japan before letting them off the leash. As a result, they are both successful democracies that get along with the world today. We can't pull a Marshall Plan on China because we can't occupy them. But we can trade with them, and it is having an effect.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
So MS gives China the source code to MS Windows. China starts to attack all the flaws it finds. Government people scratch their heads and still say to use crappy closed source, proprietary, MS-Only software!
Now if the US government used mostly Open Source software, this would not be an issue. The code would be available. The exploits would be found. Fixes would come quick. Not only that, being Open source, the governments top programmers could just fix the crap themselves.
So why exactly does the US Government use crappy closed sourced code from MS? How much money is changing hands behind-the-curtains?
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
Odd, somebody cloned my post. Relox watch, anyone?
Table-ized A.I.
Most of it's trying to peddle western products to American consumers, the Chinese people have nothing to do with it
I think I know what you are trying to say, but your statement as written above is probably not accurate..
Most "western products" (including the USA's flag), that I've have seen say "Made in China" on the bottom/back. I would say there would be those residing in China who would be interested in bumping up sales through all possible means.
...a state of emergency and retain office indefinitely!
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Seemingly what you call exceptional is now happening on a systematic basis.
Just remember Tiananmen was several decades ago, it would probably be mentioned more in China had it not been beaten up by the West as some crusade to bring democracy to China which it was not (rather, concerned workers worried about the economic changes that have lead to China becoming the economic heavyweight we know today), secondly, the same thing would have happened anywhere else in the world, the protest went for over a week, they blocked access to the city with buses and were generally distruptive.
Excuses Are Like Assholes - Everybody's Got One
It worked for South Korea. Took ~35 years but eventually the newly created middle class demanded real elections and a non-military government. Meanwhile, the control group up in the North isolated themselves from the world and still has a brutal dictatorship.
Amen. They make stuff well for little money, though, and they've correctly figured out that that is all that matters when corporations run the rest of the world. Don't get me wrong. I have been to China a number of times (going again next month!), have a degree in Asian studies, and find Chinese people to be some of the easiest to deal with in Asia. I like China. But it's time to start holding them to some higher standards.
Considering that the US: 1) Gives weapons to it's own enemies (amongst others) 2) Have a crappy human rights record (e.g. Guantanamo and US prisons) 3) Uses mass pollution to take shortcuts and undercut prices (The US is one of the biggest polluters pr. person in the world) 4) Is not a democracy (Was your last president democratically elected by the majority?) you sure do throw stones while living in a glass house. Mod me as you see fit.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Everybody knows that all of this is - of course - merely a part of fighting terrorism, since industrial and military espionage require different, more sophisticated and technically more complex and costly measures. Calling any of these measures disproportionate is considered heresy.
Sarcasm aside: protect your networks, or prepare to be hacked.
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
The genocide against the Australian Aborigines was systemic.
The US rendition program is systemic.
Guantanamo Bay - systemic.
The comparison is fair.
> The US government gives way too much leeway to China in general. They screw with exchange rates,
No, they don't - they keep their currency pegged to yours. Nothing illegal in that and lots of currencies are pegged against an other. The only problem is that China keeping hers solid against the greenback hurts the US, so what? Nothing says that China has to help the US economy - it's a free world and they can do whatever legally doable to help *themselves*.
> make it difficult for outsiders to do business inside China (Donald Trump even complained),
So? How different is from farm subsidies, compulsory 'buy American' for goverbnment procurement, forcing your IP laws on others and so on? You can do the same, you can build a big barrier in front of Chinese business coming your way. Why don't you?
> give weapons to our enemies,
while you give weapons to their enemies, your enemies and in general anyone who either pays the price or seems momentarily useful for you. Don't forget, Saddam's weaponry was stamped "Made in USA" all around.
> take our jobs,
no, they do not take your jobs. Your corporations are giving them your jobs because they can do it cheaper and you told your corporations that they must make as much money as they can, no matter what. It is the US who is the biggest promoter of 'globalisation', now that's globalisation for you. If the Segate, Maxtor, IBM, Quantum etc harddrives are all made in China, that's not China's fault: ask the companies or your globalisation touting industry groups. Or yourself, how much more would your HD cost if it was made in the US.
> have crappy human rights record,
Indeed. Interesting, though, that say the human records of Saudi Arabia are not much on the agenda. By the way, China has not attacked a single country in the past few decades, unlike the US...
> use mass pollution to take shortcuts and undercut prices,
Um, China's greenhouse polution is the same as that of the US, except that they have 4+ times as many people, so their per-capita emission is actually 1/4 of the American.
> and are not a democracy.
No, they are not. Should they be? Why? Because the US said so? The US that herself is very, very far from being a democracy? Or do you think that what goes around in the US and what the US does is indeed the will of the people?
> The theory is that free trade will turn them into a democracy.
No, that's never the theory behind a free trade agreement with the US. The idea is that the agreement will open a large market to the US with no protection againts US goods. See the Australian FTA, for a recent example. With the Chinese this didn't work - their economy is in par with the US (their GDP is about 84% that of the US) and thus you can't really push them around as you can smaller countries. By the way, the FTA didn't turn Australia into a democracy either.
> So far its proven to be hooey. Are we going to allow this shit to keep going on decade after decade with the delusion that eating KFC will make them democracy?
What is that about them being a democracy? They are having their own system. Yes, they execute even more people that you do (mind you, they have a lot more to choose from). People can't say that the government is bad. You can walk in a T-shirt that says that the government is stupid. So? If you think that that's democracy, that's really sad. I think democracy starts somewhere along the lines of not trying to force your ideology on others but let them decide what they want for themselves? As in not spreading "democracy" with bombs? Or by putting the interest of the *people* (that's the 'demo-' bit in democracy) in front of the interest of businesses or a selected few? Making the people control the government (now that's the -cracy bit) rather than industry lobby groups? They just use a different form or level of oppression, that's all.
Not even addressing how many of these have Internet, and how many of those are "sophisticated" users, we're talking about Chinese government hackers here. How many Chinese there are is irrelivent.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
without delving into the details of firefly, it was set to look at times like an old western, and at others to look like the futuristic societies we imagine in sci-fi novels. either way, it's besides the point..but you should watch firefly.
I Bleed Scarlet
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
...like the one you've made today, I wish they had a "+5 Flamebait" rating on /. Sometimes the pot needs to be stirred.
When Nero burned the coliseum and blamed the fledgling Cristian faction, many people knew it was a red herring and yet did nothing while thouseands were tortured and killed. Flash ahead to 1933, the Reichstag fire in Germany. During the Leipzig Trial, the German officials blamed the communist party for the fire, though it is widely believed that the German government itself started the fire to justify a war. Cue world war 2. The year is 2001: several steel buildings supposedly collapse from fire damage, of all things, though a steel and concrete building has never collapsed from fire damage in the history of the world. The alleged culprit? Generic terrorists from the Middle East, with substantiated connections to the US government. Look where we are now.
Being passive is the same as being permissive. If we are not actively opposing these tactics, it's the same as supporting them. And like our predecessors, history will judge us harshly.
Really? Every huge corporation out there is transferring their crown jewels of high tech research to them, *gratis*. Every big manufacturing factory is closing shop, and in a lot of cases, crating up the machine tools and sending them there. We are telling domestic techs/engineers and scientists that they will shortly not even be needed, as they will be replaced "cheaper", and guess where? And yes, this means defense contractors as well, serious major high tech transfers go on daily, and if not directly, then to israel, where they get away with re-selling it. Oh, *rewarded* with further financial aid to boot. Every huge research university in the US has a plethora of Chinese students. They are undergoing brain wipes before they go home? I don't think so...
Give it up! This is a big fat joke! there is no "national security", we've even given up national sovereignty, they don't care about the borders-nothing, just their wall street profits, no matter what it takes. Most gain in the shortest period of time, that's all, nothing else matters to them.
It doesn't matter any longer. The US has been sold down the river by the profits at any costs globalists, they dig that chinese two class society fascist model, full technology with full totalitarian control. Maximum money and maximum power, what megalomaniacs always strive for.
It makes no difference if a few low level DOD computers get hacked, all they are doing is verifying the info *they already have been given* on a silver platter by the "bottom line" globalists and their sock puppet toady politicians.
First and foremost, Americans aren't the only people losing their lives in Iraq. Racism is for fools.
Second of all, we are talking about a government which we know lies as a matter of course. So taking the body counts they offer as proof in any sort of argument makes little sense. --Having learned from their experiences with Vietnam, the government now conceals the number of U.S. Service people wounded or killed in Iraq. There have been more than 3000 American casualties.
Consider also that a significant part of the war is being fought by 'private contractors' (a fancy name for mercenaries) whose deaths are not recorded by the official stats and whose own public records are almost certainly false.
Body armor has also improved much over the last thirty years. Many of the same kinds of wounds received in Vietnam led to death whereas we now have thousands more American kids coming home missing arms and legs than we did from Vietnam.
Thirdly, just because the official casualty statistics in Iraq and Vietnam do not happen to match on the front page of the New York Times does not mean that the two wars have no other significant parallels. Those who cannot see the parallels are either blind or are deliberately not looking.
Fourth, NONE of this discounts my primary points; that propaganda and ignorance on the part of the populace are what to war. --We are now seeing the same tactics with regard to China. These are my main points.
Fifth, and finally. . . You say that bashing the war is sheep-like behavior. Sorry. Wrong. The war was started by those who were blind and foolish. The Administration lied. This is an uncontested fact. (Or rather, the facts are only contested by fools who cannot see reality when is is posted directly in front of their noses. Not even the Bush Administration is trying to sell the WMD's line of bullshit anymore. Not that it matters; fools are willing to accept any new lie which they put forth.)
Sheep are NOT those who see the lies and refuse to believe them. Seeing a lie
I have lots of reasons to connect to Chinese IPs, where else will I download my non-dubbed "must avenge my mother's death" kung fu flicks from? I could buy them, but then I'd have to leave this chair.
Not that this was an overly serious post to begin with, I guess I'll start off by saying that's "masturbatory". But anyway.
The United States of America, as a country, is wholly dependent upon other countries for its own prosperity. Look around you; Virtually everything that you can afford to buy is manufactured in China, (SOMETIMES) Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and so on and so forth. Most of those electronics are also designed in Japan (Sony, Hitachi, Pioneer, Panasonic, Nintendo), Europe (Philips), Korea (Samsung, LG) and Taiwan (ASUS, MSI, Biostar, DFI). Why? Cheap labour. Do you realize how much it would cost to purchase a television whose manufacture was solely performed in the United States, with well-paid workers and stricter quality standards? Let's just say there's no such thing as a $20 DVD player in that sort of world.
Like it or not, there is a massive amount of interdependency between the United States and the rest of the world, and there isn't a whole lot that the average American could do with their lives were the United States to end the rest of the world as we know it, or even just cut off contact. Not only that, but the aforementioned brands that people in the 'States use every day would cease to exist in American society. Considering that these electronics companies are pretty much the staple of our electronic consumption for both appliances and entertainment, that means that entertainment as we know it would also take a nosedive.
As I type this, I'm using an Acer computer, with an ASUS motherboard, an LG optical drive, a Microsoft optical mouse (made in China), a Philips 17" CRT, and a Siemens (Germany) DSL modem. Were I living in the United States, and the USA simply decided that it were to isolate itself from the world, all of those things would simply cease to be. Well, that's not entirely true. Existing products would obviously still be around, but when it comes time to buy something else, or if one of those components should fail, I'd be SOL, especially since I don't know of any motherboard manufacturers based in the United States who make AMD motherboards.
My point is, American industry is mostly on the ropes as it is - General Motors, for instance, is scrambling to keep up with cheap, efficient imports of increasingly higher quality. Chrysler is now merged with Daimler-Benz, a German company, meaning that if ties with the EU were cut, the fate of Chrysler in the USA would be in question.
Like it or not, imported goods are a vital part of any economy, and arguably especially the USA's. Economic sanctions would devastate the American economy, and as far as that goes, I wouldn't underestimate the strength of the EU, China and Russia militarily. While not strictly a superpower even combined, they have more than enough nuclear weaponry to glaze over the entire US mainland, and China has more than enough manpower to launch a sustained conventional assault on the United States, as well.
While I highly doubt nuclear weapons will EVER be used by any sane government, it's still in the USA's best interests to avoid pissing off the neighbors.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
I hope you're not French....
-- Posted from my parent's basement
As a webmaster for several popular sites, I can attest that most probes\hack attempts\spambots come from net-blocks within China. I do wonder if it is a trick to get all of us to block all China traffic, so that it helps the Great Firewall?
We are not a democracy. We are a republic.
Bush did win the majority on the last election.
China is not known for its enviromentalism either or human rights record.
OMG, this is gonna be *SO* *MUCH* *FUN*! I'll just bounce off of 7 random zombiefied boxes in China, and keep on attacking US .gov stuff. I can start a freaking war. How cool isn't that!
Bhahahaha.
You want to start a war with china.
Bhahahahahaha.
Oh man that's rich. Haven't the republicans learned anything from iraq?
evil is as evil does
If the US Federal government wants to get serious about cyber-security, they should refrain from firing competent staff such as Shawn Carpenter for doing their job. Current US law hinders counter-intelligence operators from gathering information and countering these attacks, since it is illegal to gain unauthorized access to the perpetrators' machines!
This means that security personnel who are doing their job to combat these attacks risk losing their job and even criminal prosecution.
Although Shawn Carpenter lost his job at the Sandia National Laboratory, he was eventually awarded $4 million for his termination which was found to be"malicious, willful, reckless, wanton, fraudulent or in bad faith."
The US intelligence community and Federal beaurocracy needs to wise up. National secrets are leaking like a sieve while the shortage of qualified operators continues to increase, and the beaurocrats are too busy covering their asses and fighting turf wars to do anything about it.
If you can prove they're government backed, drop the gateways to China flat. It'll make some U.S. businesses scream, and maybe make them less likely to spend money in China. India has almost as many consumers and they speak English (sorta).
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
After the Iraq WMD fiasco I don't trust the US to know its ass from its elbow when it comes to these sorts of things.
The standards of evidence are obviously so low that nowadays all you have to do is imagine a threat and suddenly it's real and all sorts of circumstantial evidence points to it being true.
Lol?
The US is just as bad - look at the Australia/US free trade agreement regarding extending patent terms and its affect on generic medicines.
If that's the best you can come up with, then maybe you should leave the debating to the grownups. This is bush league compared to the stuff stalinist countries like China have pulled off.
Don't play the human rights card because every nation has abuses eg
Some abuses harm hundreds maybe even thousands of people, and some abuses harm a billion people. There is such a thing as scale to consider here.
What makes you think democracy is so great? The US is the best examples of its failures. At least in China when an official is caught taking bribes/etc he/she is placed under house arrest... too bad that type of thing doesnt happen with pork barreling in the US.
Democracy is clearly superior for one obvious reason. It's far more efficient for everyone to run their own damn life. And open societies like the US are better defenses against corruption than anything China currently boasts.
The US has been screwing the world for years, it's about time we had a new superpower to keep the US under thumb.
Here's a little known secret. Most of the world isn't being screwed by anyone other than themselves. It'll be that way no matter what is a superpower.Yes. and because of that, many US (and british) companies ship junks to China, which is cheaper than processing them in US.
Please, tell us about these "other countries". Name one.
Pick 3 countries that you feel have more open trade and business policies than the US. If the US is in the middle or bottom of the pack, then 3 should be easy.
Table-ized A.I.
Every Chinese connected to DoD computer and tried logging one password. After one million tries DoD computer agreed that password is 'Mao'
to compromise a Chinese government computer, they like to use Red Flag Linux, which is set up to log you in as Root with no password by default.
... nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
--
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
"Why are they running systems against which phishing is useful? Why aren't they deploying advanced OS technology in which stealing a password or compromising a browser doesn't give away the entire machine?"
They are probably deploying vista as we speak, that will fix her right up...
Got Code?
They don't - they start out at 2, and use their advantage in replies to posts like mine which require a little "alternative" thinking but are easily shot down with comments like the World Delivery Service just above there.
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
This post should have gotten a +6 Hilarious, gogo blind patriotism.
Exactly- wait until all the Chinese compnies start trying to sell their iPod knockoffs here (Meizu already started), then the US (or more likely, the US with a large push from Apple) will start doing something about China .
OSx86 FTW
Hey, at least TRY to post something intelligent. You obviously know NOTHING about how the CCP operates both now, and in the past.
Life is not for the lazy.
Political theory designates the Madisonian Republic (the government of the US) as a form of democracy. Likewise, parlimentary republics may also be called democracies. Justification: these republics form a subset of representative democracies, whereby the public directly or indirectly elects officials to represent their interests within a legislative body. That legislative body is responsible for creating (and, in the parliamentary model, executing) laws in accordance with the interests of the public. Note, however, that a republic merely designates a government whose power is derived from the people (usually through social compact). The effect of this being that while the Madesonian model requires a republican government to exist, the parliamentary model does not. For more information concerning this, one could compare the UK's Magna Carta to the Federal Constitution of the USA. The Constitution derives its powers from the people ("We the people..."), while Magna Carta defines rights granted to the people from the monarch. Both are democracies, but the UK is not (by definition) a republic. You may have intended to mean that the US federal government is not a direct democracy, but what you said is a far cry from that interpretation.
I realize at this point that no one will probably read this post. Nevertheless, as the original poster, I feel a bit insulted that people blew my comment into something that is not. I never said nor insinuated that we should go to war or escalate to war with China, my comment was much bigger than that.
As someone who has a degree in security studies and works in this field, I understand the importance of doctrine. I never once said we should do anything, I said the United States should change its doctrine. That is a world of difference.
The international system, ultimately, is an anarchy - power is the only thing that keeps it in check. Often times, these days, power is exercised collectively and through international institutions (UN, NATO, etc). Nevertheless, the ultimate arbiter of whether states "behave" or not, is who has the biggest stick (both hard and soft - hard power is military power, soft power is mostly economic power but has been extended to mean cultural and diplomatic power as well). The UN Security Council holds the weight of law only because it is assumed that the five permanent members - the U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China - collectively about 90% of all power in the world - will back the resolutions up with their power. All states want more and must constantly protect their turf. Power is most often exercised as an implication - the U.S. is important and holds weight in the international system because of its power - it does not need to exercise it regularly for everyone to listen to them.
The Department of Defense can often use doctrine as a deterrent. The very act of putting a documented response on the books from a state as enormously powerful as the United States can often dissuade states from even testing them on whether they choose to follow through with it. As an example, during the Cold War, the United States had a doctrine of nuclear retaliation for a conventional Soviet attack against Europe. Given the potential costs, the Soviet Union chose never to test the United States' resolve on that doctrine.
In this case, an established doctrine for responding to organized assaults on military computers could have a similar effect. The Chinese pale in comparison to current U.S. power. If China persists in its assaults, and I can basically guarantee that these are really state-to-state level attacks because it is well known that China conducts these operations globally (and yes, while the U.S. does conduct these operations, it is widely perceived that China does so much more often and much more intrusively/obviously), then having a doctrine may prevent them in the future. Once the doctrine is in place and we leak it to China intentionally, they launch a cyber attack like always - then we respond as per doctrine - say, by a public diplomatic rebuke. They persist, and we follow the next thing the doctrine tells us to do - say, launch a cyber counterattack that disabled some state computers for a day. China will not persist, because the potential costs of escalating further outweigh the gains of launching the attacks in the first place.
The international system is not a big campfire circle of people singing songs and playing nice, it is a constant game of chicken. Ninety-nine times in one hundred, the mere threat of the U.S. looking at a state in an unfavorable way will get them to behave in a friendly and acceptable manner towards it. The United States, like any state, has to protect its turf.
"In God we trust, all others we monitor." -- Unofficial NSA motto
A Horse ... of Course
... after the fact.
... The book, your new thriller is called "Break Point," set in the year 2012, a kind of asymmetrical warfare is prophesied here, dismantling of global communications, information systems. How about this, just out of the blue, a week ago China shot one of its old satellites out of orbit. Is this a cautionary tale or is it informed fantasy, or how would you describe it?
We're so good
Cleanup on isle 9.
A lot of our security people and experts in critical fields are now writing "thrillers" to get their messages across so they don't have to fend off the legions of second rate gun-slinging pundits.
(See comment about "chapter two" - PRICELESS)
Countdown with Keith Olbermann
Jan 22, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16771741/
OLBERMANN: Joining us now with his own intelligence assessment Richard Clarke, top counter-terrorism adviser to presidents of both parties, chairman of GoodHarborReport.com, and now author of the new techno thriller "Break Point."
Sir, great pleasure to have you here. Pleasure to meet you.
RICHARD CLARKE, FORMER COUNTER-TERRORISM ADVISER: Great to be on. I love your show.
OLBERMANN:
CLARKE: It's meant to project us forward into 2012 so we can start thinking about the issues that I think we'll be facing then. China blowing up a satellite occurs in chapter two. I think we need to think seriously. There's a whole series of issues, Keith, that the administration is ignoring because it's playing hardball, and 99 percent of the time is worrying about Iraq. And that's sucking all of the Oxygen out of the room.
One of the many things that it's ignoring is cyber security. And everything we do depends on the security of cyber space. The administration is doing nothing to secure it.
OLBERMANN: Are these easily managed problems right now, that you address?
CLARKE: They're not easily managed. China is building cyber warfare units. The Chinese general said publicly that if we get into hostilities with the United States, we will reach out through cyber space and turn off the American electric power grid. From what I can tell and what I learned when I was in government, that's possible.
OLBERMANN: If we don't do it first with another blackout.
--------
Former U.S. Cyber Security Czar Richard Clarke Discusses Data Security
Richard A. Clarke, Chairman, Good Harbor Consulting, LLC
http://www.goodharbor.net/about-clarke.html
http://www.comnews.com/cgi-bin/story.asp?story=73
Featured speaker Richard Clarke, the internationally recognized expert on security - including homeland security, national security, cyber security, and counterterrorism - shared his views on IT security threats faced by Fortune 500 companies today and new threats on the horizon. Among Mr. Clarke's key observations were:
Today's IT security threats are increasingly focused on stealing valuable data. In this environment, relying on outdated measures like focusing exclusively on perimeter security is insufficient.
Corporations vastly underrate the value of data within the enterprise. While much of the media has focused on consumer credit card data and social security numbers, the theft of proprietary company information can be just as damaging. Organizations must begin to recognize the value of sensitive data stored in a corporate database like pricing models, customer billing and payment information, trade secrets, and valuable R&D intellectual property.
The risks from data leakage, cyber terrorism, and industrial espionage are real. To stay ahead of these threats, corporations must act quickly and decisively to know what risks exist within their enterprise; harden their existing IT infrastructure; and monitor ag
~hylas
Well the theory about economy, development and their relationship with democracy is wrong. What happens is democratic systems (we do not have any real ones active currently with possible exception of Switzerland but better appoximations than western ones we do not have) stearing processes are messy and take long time - in China to the contrary: the juidicial process is fast (seems at least one franch presidential candidate likes that) not to say speedy. Take any so called Asian Tigers for example - their rule is authortarian (in Chile it was for quite some time) their economy is as free as any other i.e. there are institutions that control it and development fast. Take India and compare with China (there is no other example of similar size) and you will see that pace of progress is much slower in India.
Interesting also that the major development in EU and in North America last century had something to do with Germans insisting on fighting twice and then governements of Europe busy rebuilding their countries with huge infrastructure projects etc. Chinese do the same now. The difference is that they learned how to develop their economy and have no interest in democracy and human rights.
This will go wrong if it is not to change. History shows that authoritarian regimes, when start having problems at home, export them with their armies. That is the problem with China. We do not know which way they chose - only associations with history. If somebody says Chinese are evil s/he is wrong. If somebody says that we cannot trust their governement s/he is absolutely right.
The same applies to Russia. I laugh every time some moron like Schroeder (that ex-Chancellor of Germany) says that we can rely on Russians - well we can of course - I am not sure however whether this does not mean bigger and more powerfull armies. There is no point in unprovoked hostility but that does not mean we can allow ourselves to be unprepared.
"I never said nor insinuated that we should go to war or escalate to war with China"
Yes you did.
"The international system is not a big campfire circle of people singing songs and playing nice, it is a constant game of chicken."
Of course not. Like you said you are either the fucker or the fuckee. We are soon to become the fuckee as china plays us like a rag doll with their two trillion dollar surplus of US dollars. All they have to do is to exchange those for euros and they will collapse the US economy. So this means we can't do jack shit to them except to kill them and they can kill as just as easy.
evil is as evil does
So much for the Interstellar Ark:
2 14.shtml
http://science.slashdot.org/science/07/02/18/1359
Only when humans decide to get out of and deprive governments and wealthy of the "defense" industry will humans have money and worthiness of being allowed doe DESERVE an interstellar ark.
Elevating Chinese attempts to breach a DOD (or any government) database to the level of military attack is just ASKING for excuses to wage war. Since vastly many interconnected ties exist in economics, land, and employment schemes, traditional war would be immensely devastating not only to average workers but to the wealthy land owners, property owners and even the high tech companies.
I call madness. Oh, and don't forget the US DOD is probably running stealth "attacks" on Chinese, Russian, French, Canadian, Australian, UK, Venezuelan and innumerable other nations' databases and networks, friend and foe alike.
remember, there are at least to sides to every story. Stop making Chinese out to be the big bad guy. Any nation with something to fear will do what China is known to have been doing for years, and what many informed as well as ignorant "red-blodded 'merkuns" overlook when the US is exposed for doing the same things. In the end, it's specious, corrosive human conduct. If all these people focus on poverty, disease, hunger, underemployment, and other things (like lessening the causes of reactive terrorism), then maybe we can concentrate as a collective on pursuing interstellar travels.
The database and network attacks will be less of a problem if the networks are not accessible via internet junctions. More honeypots need to be set up, more honeynets need to be spun off, and less classified information should be available.
Hell, I suspect that these things HAVE been done, and that the reports many of you armchair politicos (you know who you are-- just informed enough to be barely credible) and the rest of us see are the "leaked" stuff which was generated from logs of Chinese (and other nations') penetration attempts and successes against honeynets and honeypots, and the reports are just mostly useful for facilitating creation of domestic antipathy toward or or mistrust of the Chinese, or whomever is the boogieman of the quarter.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
There isn't necessarily much of a distinction between "chinese government supported" and "commercial spam botnet operator". Someone like the Chinese government could easily contract with the spambot operators to get the latest sploits. It's not like either party is noted for their scruples.