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The US Waged A Secret Cyber War Against North Korean Missiles (tampabay.com)
Early Monday morning North Korea fired four ballistic missiles into the sea of Japan, lending a new urgency to Saturday's revelation from the New York Times of America's "secret cyberwar" with North Korea. Slashdot reader Frosty Piss summarizes its suspected effects succinctly: "Soon after ex-President Obama ordered the secret program three years ago, North Korean missiles began exploding, veering off course, or crashing into the sea."
The Times reports the program was started when Obama "concluded that the $300 billion spent since the Eisenhower era on traditional anti-missile systems...had failed the core purpose of protecting the continental United States," with tests of missile interceptors showing an overall failure rate of at least 56%. But after interviewing government officials, the Times concludes that the U.S. "still does not have the ability to effectively counter the North Korean nuclear and missile programs." Options include escalating the cyber and electronic warfare, trying to negotiate a freeze, asking the Chinese to cut off trade and support, or preparing for direct missile strikes on the launch sites, "which Obama also considered, but there is little chance of hitting every target." The New York Times article concludes: The White House is looking at military options against North Korea, a senior Trump administration official said. Putting U.S. tactical nuclear weapons back in South Korea -- they were withdrawn a quarter-century ago -- is also under consideration, even if that step could accelerate an arms race with the North.
The Times reports the program was started when Obama "concluded that the $300 billion spent since the Eisenhower era on traditional anti-missile systems...had failed the core purpose of protecting the continental United States," with tests of missile interceptors showing an overall failure rate of at least 56%. But after interviewing government officials, the Times concludes that the U.S. "still does not have the ability to effectively counter the North Korean nuclear and missile programs." Options include escalating the cyber and electronic warfare, trying to negotiate a freeze, asking the Chinese to cut off trade and support, or preparing for direct missile strikes on the launch sites, "which Obama also considered, but there is little chance of hitting every target." The New York Times article concludes: The White House is looking at military options against North Korea, a senior Trump administration official said. Putting U.S. tactical nuclear weapons back in South Korea -- they were withdrawn a quarter-century ago -- is also under consideration, even if that step could accelerate an arms race with the North.
North Korea appears to be super-unstable right now. The chubby one can't get along with his Chinese masters, and lacks a good understanding of what is important. His underlings don't respect him, understand that the outside world is better (at least, the high-ranking ones do). He keeps them in line by killing them but that doesn't work for very long.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
> "Slashdot reader Frosty Piss summarizes its suspected effects..."
Oh, how I have lived for this day!
If the US really took control of the NK missiles the best options would have been to let the weapons have a roughly normal path during the tests (so that NK doesn't suspect anything), and, only if there is a real conflict, redirect them to the sea.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
It seems you're attaching an Obama motive to everything, which I assume mirrors Trump's attempt to talk up Obama as the super secret leader preventing Trump taking power.
A quick reality check here, your guy is terrified that his conversations in Trump tower were recorded. US spies in Russia were arrested shortly after he got access to the unredacted pee memos which included the Russian sources names. Those spies Putin had arrest were likely those same sources for the memo. So of course Trump is terrified the FBI recorded his calls, because if he passed the names of those spies to the Russians, then he's guilty of espionage against the USA.
So did Obama order him spied on? Well there would be a classified FISA order that Trump could declassify if it existed. And he hasn't declassified any such order, so his tweet is either totally false, or he's committing espionage by revealing existance of a classified order.
Except of course the FBI deny such an order exists, and the Rubio says there was no such order, and Trumps own spokesman saying they won't say anything else about it unless Congress orders and investigation.... i.e. they have nothing to back it up. So we know by the lack of Trump's arrest he's just lying yet again.
It's fun watching a president implode, but really, trying to save him with partisan rhetoric won't fix the problem. If you're a Republican, then clearly Pence is your man, and Congress do not need to impeach the vice President if they choose not to. They can simply impeach Trump, and we move on and forget this abberation. Pence can be the grownup who takes Trump's place and we put this mess into the past.
It's better for the environment when they don't have to fly so long.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
America won't invade, if anything they'd strike with Tomahawks and airstrikes. And if you mean literally China will try nuking American forces, then that's pretty unlikely as I am sure the leaders in Beijing understand quite well that if they ever did do that, they'd have approximately 30 minutes left to enjoy breathing. Probably more like 10 though, as I'm sure if things were hot enough in the Korean Peninsula to warrant airstrikes and Tomahawks, the US Navy would have a couple of SLBMs in the area to pop out short quick nuke strikes if things go to hell.
In other words, no. They won't. Not a lot of people are fans of the US's military industrial complex, but few people with any sense would deny that same military is absolutely capable of country/world ending retaliation if it goes that far.
Russia deployed a spy ship off Delware, while Trump was defending Flynn's ties to Russia.
Russia violated the medium range missile ban, Trump was attacking Netanyahu as deflection at the time.
It's interesting spin to link Trumps whishlist item of a massive nuclear buildup, to Russia, as though its for use against Russia, or a negotiating tactic with Russia, but no such negotiation exists and no such tough line against Russia exists.
Or leak a story that says the US has been hacking North Korean missiles and causing them to fail. Then sit back and watch the North Koreans work overtime to find the security holes and/or arresting suspected traitors, slowing down their missile program.
Number of countries invaded and bombed by China since ww2: 1, the US 16.
Oh learn some history.
China invaded India.
China invaded Vietnam
China shelled Tibet
Plenty of bombing during the Korean war.
Lots of bombing of Taiwan
Burma
They fought the Soviet Union, believe it or not
Mongolia
XinJiang
China has border disputes with half a dozen countries. They are not happier players on the world stage.
By supporting this despotic regime for more than half a century, the Chinese will have to accept the deployment of a (more advanced) missile defense system (THAAD). While I'm sure they're going to retaliate against the South Koreans (and America?) possibly through a boycott and diplomatic sanctions, the South Koreans may have no choice but to try to improve their defenses. If you were faced with a nuclear attack wouldn't you be willing to suffer a bit economically in order to get a better defense?
Of course if the Chinese push too far or the North Koreans convince the South that their defenses are useless then we may see the worst possible outcome for the Chinese (and probably everyone); South Korea will build the bomb. This is different from the U.S. having some tactical nukes place in South Korea but presumably under control of the U.S.; a S. Korean nuke will make it very clear to North Korea that if they bomb Seoul that North Korea will be completely and utterly wiped out. It won't matter to the South if the North can strike the U.S., they won't care. Of course there's a very good chance that once both Koreas have the bomb that Japan will quickly follow suit, 2000 years of animosity isn't forgotten that easily. This will greatly complicate China's domination of Asia because they'll always have to worry about a catastrophic (even if suicidal) conflict with their formerly vassal states. For example, if China and Japan then got into a serious dispute over the Sendoku islands the whole world would hold its breath.
One of the reasons why this is coming to a head now is that North Korea realizes that South Korea is without an effective government. The president has been impeached and is awaiting a ruling from the high court to make it official. In the meantime, the interim leader doesn't have the political capital to make big decisions without the mandate of an election. So North Korea is pushing and pushing and is trying to see what it can get. Unfortunately for them (and everyone) the only person they could negotiate with is someone who's grasp of the truth is tenuous and he is erratic to put it mildly (especially at 3am, twitter time). So there's a giant game of chicken being played blindfolded.
If the American missile defenses were reliable then perhaps this could all be avoided; the North Koreans could threaten all they want but a nuclear warhead couldn't make it to American soil. This was the essence of the American position; the Americans realized it's much harder to intercept short range missile/cruise missile attacks traveling the 50km from North Korea to downtown Seoul (2 min. flight time). So despite the nice visuals of Patriot missiles hitting Scuds, the U.S. told the South that when (not if) North Korea could nuke Seoul, we'd retaliate for you with our nukes. That capability kept the North from having a real threat. Now however, the thought that the U.S. would retaliate for South Korea becomes less credible when North Korea can then (in theory) take out Los Angeles or Washington D.C. Everyone realizes this, so if the North gains a credible ICBM capability and if the U.S. lacks a credible defense, the American guarantee is gone and South Korea is left to the wolves (North Korea). Hence the panic over the inadequacies of the American missile defense/desire for better local defense.
Returning the subject of this article, the reason why the American defenses don't work (reliably) comes down to simple physics. My physics professor at Harvard was one of the ten(?) members of the scientific commission evaluating Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense system. (Having been given top secret clearance he told me about a trip he had to the Groton, Connecticut sub base into the bowels of one of the "boomers" (SLBM subs) where he was led into a giant space with huge tubes running from floor to ceiling. The admiral escorting him turned to him and said, "Professor Horowitz, you're in the same room as a 200 H-bombs". He told me that basically the problem of hitting a bullet
I suggest to any interested parties that they read Victor Cha's book "The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future". Cha worked for a lot of different US administrations in dealing with North Korea and having actually been there and participated in negotiations, he has an insider's look at things.
Basically, China has more influence than they are willing to use, but not as much as outsiders think. China paid a real price in blood to defend the North in the Korean War. One of Mao's own sons was killed in the conflict, although if you look up the information about this, you may realize that he put himself in jeopardy when it happened. China seems to have used what I will call a brute force approach to the war after entering it, but simply throwing huge amounts of soldiers into battle and suffering horrific casualties, but winning enough ground to push UN forces back about to the current dividing line. Even though the vast majority of the Chinese Communist Party leadership either were kids when this happened or not born yet, the CCP does still like to bring this up. They still drill into school children in China about how Mao himself lost a son in the conflict.
The Soviet Union and China had been vying for position and influence in North Korea and Kim Il Sung was a master of playing them off each other. In fact, the whole reason they have nuclear weapons is because the Soviet Union gave them their reactors and the technical know-how that led to them developing the weapon. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Boris Yeltsin immediately cut off all aid to North Korea, leaving China to look around and sort of say "What just happened?" China picked up the slack in terms of providing aid. Some of this is because of the shared legacy of the Korean War. A lot of it is that China benefits big time from North Korea's existence. North Korea has a lot of rare earth deposits which China gets at a huge discount for helping them. And as North Korea borders a Chinese province with a very large ethnic Korean population (China took it by force from an old Korean kingdom almost 800 years ago), China fears that if the North Korean government collapses, there will be a humanitarian crisis and tons of illegal immigrants will flee into China in desperation. China is telling the truth when they say they want stability in the peninsula and when they say they want it denuclearized, but China sees the status quo as totally in their favor and views all changes as bad outcomes for China, so there are real limits as how far they will push things. Here's what China fears if North Korea collapses.
1) A huge influx of refugees will cross the border, causing China to have to spend large amounts of resources to feed and house them and it will take away from using these resources to keep their own population in check.
2) International aid organizations will likely demand access to China to help, which China doesn't want.
3) North Korea's nuclear weapons could end up in South Korea's hands, which China doesn't want.
4) A united Korea would definitely be a US ally. It could be that instead of the US leaving, that the US ends up having military bases in the former North Korea and thus are right on China's doorstep.
5) China will no longer get North Korean rare earths at a bargain price. In fact, there may be so much resentment towards China for helping to prop up the North Korean government that those rare earths go anywhere but China.
China realizes that eventually the North Korean state will collapse. But they hope to push that date as far into the future as possible as, like I said, they view all post-North Korean outcomes as very bad for them. Note too that China is very good at the duplicity game of telling outside countries that they need to do something which China itself is unwilling to do. I get that they don't like THADD going to South Korea, and personally I think that sending it there should never have been made public, but their lack of interest in really turning the screws on North Korea has led to this and they seem unwilling to accept their own responsibility here.
That argument holds no water. What was, doesn't have to be. Europe has waged wars across the globe for millenia too. Greece was once a world power. France and Germany were often embroiled in wars with their neighbors lasting decades. Britain once had so many colonies they spanned the whole globe. None of that is relevant to the now.
Right now, Japan is faced with a severe population aging problem and their economy is entirely tied with the region and the world. They have no interest in declaring a war unless provoked or forced.