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How China Will Use Cyber Warfare To Leapfrog Foes
The Walking Dude writes "A lengthy article published in Culture Mandala details how China is using cyber warfare (PDF) as an asymmetric means to obtain technology transfer and market dominance. Case studies of Estonia, Georgia, and Project Chanology point towards a new auxiliary arm of traditional warfare. Political hackers and common Web 2.0 users, referred to as useful idiots (PDF), are being manipulated through PSYOPS and propaganda to enhance government agendas."
I've long had the feeling that many people claiming to be Americans on this board and elsewhere simply aren't. They make the claim in order to make their America bashing sound more like introspection than an outright attack, and therefore more "insightful" than "trolling".
"I know that every word that man just said is true, because it's EXACTLY what I wanted to hear." -- Space Ghost
It's a lot easier to perform the manufacturing for a competing country and then just copy their design. It amazes me how naive American companies are when they outsource to China and then are amazed when their products are copied.
Except that financially destroying the USA would not destroy the USA's military capabilities. When the USA is faced with a catastrophic economic failure, the course of action will be military intervention, conquering some other nation and using its resources to boost our economy. Case in point, 30 year predictions on oil show major supply shortages, so we invade Iraq.
This is not exactly a new strategy; in the history of the world, whenever a powerful nation/empire is in need of resources, it conquers some other nation in order to obtain those resources.
Palm trees and 8
I'm aghast in the rise of these spiteful comments over the last couple of days. Do you really think this kind of sniping is going to have an effect on the election, now two days away? I now reside overseas and no longer participate in the American political process, so I've got no dog in this fight, but I'd really like to see discussion fora stay civil even when election day is coming up.
But in a real sense America can use all the bashing it can get. Seriously. Time to wake up. The fact that you think it matters whether criticism comes from within or without is, it seems, proof of this. Speaking in the broadest terms, America (corporately, I don't mean every single individual) has developed a tendency to view everything 'religiously' rather than empirically. There are white hats and black hats, not right actions and wrong actions. There are us and them, not cooperative-minded people and antagonistic people. This underlies everything from teaching non-science in science classes, to voting for people you know are wrong for the job because of the party they belong to, to making social policy decisions on the basis of whether or not they seem too 'socialistic' rather than looking at what effect (positive or negative) they would have, to choosing friends and enemies among other nations without stopping to think about their internal structures and agendas.
So, now, having said that, I'm not an American. Does that make me a troll? Because like most other non-Americans I do not want to be your enemy. But the key point is that the reason I don't want to be your enemy is not, if you will, that I'm afraid of afraid of rabid dogs and I don't want to meet your war machine in a dark alley, but because I'd like to see the world become a better place, and it would be just great if America (which used to hold itself up as a beacon of hope in this regard) would at least join in.
So there you have it. I'm un-American. I'm wearing the black hat. Mod me troll and make me go away. Because, I guess, it's easier than understanding that much of the rest of the world—specifically, those parts of it where we still believe that the political process can work and wars should no longer be necessary—has lost its respect for you as a power.
GP's point was that the US is a HUGE importer of Chinese consumer goods, and that if the US economy went under, the Chinese economy would take a massive hit, too. Of course this is arguable, I don't have numbers on exports & imports from china, but I suspect the US isn't quite as important as many would like to believe. Still, there's no point trying to get the US economy to tank when there's profit to be had from it.
True , the US is only a part of it , but if the American economy suffers , there's no doubt the European market will suffer to .
So China wouldn't just lose sales from the US : there would be a global depression. And that will definitely hurt China too.
Slipping shoelaces ?
You are clearly not an American, b/c your criticisms are characteratures of the polar extremes of America that Europeans (not all, just the lazy-thinking ones) love to lampoon and use as examples of American demise to make them feel better about themselves. Few Americans vote party lines (if at all, but that's a different issue), the school boards who put creationism in the science curriculum are quickly voted out of office in the following election (even in Kansas), and I think if you bothered to meet some normal Americans (rather than the party operatives who play ones on TV), you would find that Americans have a very pragmatic approach to everyday life, which includes views on life, business, and policy.
I would also not attach our foreign policy blunders to the collective views of the American people. The administration has consistently been a lone cowboy (pun intended) in this area - very few viewpoints had a place at the table in the last 8 years (even our own secretary of state was sidelined). Many of us lament the moral high ground our country has lost since the end of the cold war because of the lapses in judgment with regards to torture, just war, and diplomacy that a handful of reckless unelected officials with too much power have conducted on our behalf.
"The administration has consistently been a lone cowboy (pun intended) in this area"
It's easy to blame those in power, but as a nation you voted the fuckers in (or at the very least you let them steal the election without massive Ukraine style protests in the streets), so you do bear part of the responsibility.
It's the old Evil-thrives-where-good-people-do-nothing deal.