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Mum's the Word On Google Attack At Davos
theodp writes "BusinessWeek reports that the cyber attack on Google was the elephant-in-the-room at the annual meeting of world leaders in Davos. 'China didn't want to discuss Google,' Josef Ackermann, CEO of Deutsche Bank AG and a co-chair of this year's World Economic Forum, said in an interview. China's Vice Premier Li Keqiang made that clear, he added. Even Google CEO Eric Schmidt didn't bring up China, and Bill Gates was mum on the topic in an interview. The reluctance of companies to talk about China illustrates the pressure on them to protect their business in the country, while the US government doesn't want to upset Chinese investors, said Andy Mok of Red Pagoda Concepts LLC. 'People have their commercial interests,' explained Deutsche Bank's Ackermann."
So they can just get away with it, right? Somehow I think what's -not- being said is far more interesting. I think the perpetrators will end up with more on their hands than they at first suspected when a bunch of IT powerhouses decide to start randomly hosing key pieces of their information infrastructure.
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Of course no one wants to bring up politics in an interview. When companies do, or even have speculation about certain political affiliations usually they are boycotted by one group or another.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Davros is attacking a meeting of world leaders?
It seems like the Daleks are always doing that. That gods Jon Pertwee was there before. What are we going to do now?
This just goes to show what levels of disclosure and topics of discussion will be sacrificed in the name of securing commercial and privatized interest. Business as usual, nothing to see here folks, move along...
This is the nature of the beast, and the trend in globalization. I am seeing countries continually regressing in the moral and ethical obligations, a degradation of honesty, transparency, and openness all in the name of making more money. Will we ever see the end of these practices? I don't believe in my lifetime, if ever.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
People have their commercial interests
Well, yes, I guess that's what was missing in the Cold War. If Russia was making cheap plastic toys for Wal Mart, perhaps the US would have permitted the placement of missiles in Cuba, in order not to make people nervous. Dumb Russians, they really lost the Cold War because of Communism. Chinese are seemingly smarter, and have understood that they can do anything as long as they provide with cheap labor to the West's consumers. I guess in a couple of years they'll be able to invade Taiwan with no more consequences than some really stern speeches from various so-called world leaders.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
The extent of this attack was unclear, but figure every major US corporate/government net was at risk. Figure any intranet relying exclusively on firewall rules was penetrated (1 man on the inside with a USB rootkit and you are compromised.) Compare the cost of one M1A1 tank to an intern at a US company.
If this was a government sponsored attack, figure half the major US intranets are now compromised to some degree.
China is already manufacturer to the world, and within a few decades they will lead *everything* - scientific research, they'll be the biggest economy, the biggest market, and the most powerful military.
It's idiocy to get on their bad side or lock yourselves out of their market. Smart players will play by China's rules and not try to upset them.
The thing a lot of people don't get is that morals don't matter in international politics and business. "Might makes right" *does* matter. It's nice to have warm fuzzy morals, but when those morals come up against reality, that and fifty cents will get you a cup of coffee. It's not the "right" side that wins, it's the most powerful side. China knows this - they're nothing if not smart and forward thinking.
The only question is whether the USofA will fall from its position as the world's superpower with any kind of grace, or whether it'll make life hard for everyone else as it falls.
and the most powerful military.
The US spends more money in total than the next dozen or so nations combined: http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending#InContextUSMilitarySpendingVersusRestoftheWorld
Note how the US is just slliiiiiiiightly less than half of that pie chart, and the United states spent 5.8 times what China did in 2008. Let's also not forget who is embroiled in two wars- Iraq and Afghanistan.
Per capita for the US, looks to be about $2500 in 2004, now $3200: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PerCapitaInflationAdjustedDefenseSpending.PNG
Why not have a look at where that places us relative to everyone else? For some reason "Nationmaster" doesn't list the US, but here you can see that figure is $1000 more than the next-highest, Israel (all the figures are from 2004): http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/mil_exp_dol_fig_percap-expenditures-dollar-figure-per-capita
GDP-wise, America outspends at a percentage twice the world average; Russia actually beat the US relative to GDP on a couple of occasions, but that probably has more to do with Russia's GDP being in the toilet.
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ms_mil_xpnd_gd_zs&idim=country:USA:CHN:GBR:RUS&tdim=true&tstart=567993600000&tunit=Y&tlen=20
Please help metamoderate.
Not to be the devil's advocate here, but wasn't it also extremely profitable to be helping out Hitler once upon a time? Are commercial interests really a good justification for what's going on?
This is not an area for business to make judgements on. Business will do what is legal, and no more. This is an area for governments to step in. Why not make it illegal for corps to engage in business practices that would be considered unlawful outside the jurisdiction? That would fix a lot of these ethical problems. The way it is now, a moral corp cannot afford to be outdone in China by an amoral one.
Corps should not be left alone in making judgements on ethics. The most recent lesson on that isn't Nazi Germany, btw. It happened as recently as this decade, when Mr. Greenspan trusted banks to make the right decisions.
As far as I can see, there is no grey area here.
not to challenge China, an important global market, about cyber-attacks on google when there's no significant evidence that they were responsible. The first thing we did was accuse them, but since they deny culpability, and there isn't any evidence to contradict them, bringing it up again is at least arrogant and probably xenophobic too. If proof of their involvement surfaces, maybe then we'll have something to talk about.
It truly is a back-handed complement that people have no qualms trashing America in their public comments. It's as if they are saying "we don't like you or some of the things you do, but you aren't truly big enough bastards to retaliate against us."
Truly evil regimes like China and Russia get different treatment.
And if you are truly idiotic like Hugo Chavez, you get visits from Sean Penn and kudos from Oliver Stone.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Since we've destroyed the power of the UN and the World Court, we won't even have symbolic legal recourse.
Neither of those entities have ever -had- real power. The UN has had some very minor paper power - that which people like to point to and mumble about "international law" (a non-existent fallacy) - but the world court is nothing.
There is no legal recourse at the sovereign level. That's the meaning of the word. The only recourse is militaristic, and China will not be invading the US. Nor will the US be invading China. Both are sad, pathetic, fantasies of bizarrely twisted and broken minds.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
Oh, you can bet it's being discussed. Just not publicly. That's why people go to Davos in the first place, to have the ability to discuss things privately.
The only responsibility Google has is to make a profit. That's what "corporation" means.
Actually, no. The word literally means "embodiment", which is the essence of its legal definition. A corporation could exist for the explicit purpose of losing money, giving it to charity, spreading the gospel, etc. Whatever the shareholders prescribe.