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Can the US Stop China From Controlling the Next Internet Age? (nytimes.com)
Tech executives worry China will turn to tit-for-tat arrests of Americans in response to the detention of Meng Wanzhou. And the worries don't stop there. Kara Swisher, writing at The New York Times: Imagine, if you will (and you should), a big American tech executive being detained over unspecified charges while on a trip to Beijing. That is exactly what a number of Silicon Valley executives told me they are concerned about after the arrest this week of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of the Chinese telecom company Huawei, in Canada at the behest of United States officials. "It's worrisome, because it's an escalation we did not need," one executive said, referring to the already tense trade talks between the two countries. "What China will do, given all the existing tensions, is anyone's guess."
No one I spoke to would talk on the record, out of fear of antagonizing either side and also because no one knows exactly what is happening. But many expressed worry about the possibility of tit-for-tat arrests. While everyone focuses on the drama of the arrest -- Ms. Meng was grabbed while changing planes at the airport -- and its effect on the trade talks and stock prices, to my mind there is a much more important fight brewing, and it is about tech hegemony. Specifically, who will control the next internet age, and by whose rules will it be run?
Until recently, that answer was clearly the United States, from which the Internet sprang, wiring the world together and, in the process, resulting in the greatest creation of power and wealth in history. While China has always had a strong technology sector, in recent years it has significantly escalated its investment, expertise and innovation, with major support from the government. That hand-in-glove relationship creates obvious issues, and the Trump administration is right to stop pretending that China does not present a threat both from security and innovation perspectives. Further reading: China summons U.S. ambassador, warns Canada of 'grave consequences' if Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou is not released.
No one I spoke to would talk on the record, out of fear of antagonizing either side and also because no one knows exactly what is happening. But many expressed worry about the possibility of tit-for-tat arrests. While everyone focuses on the drama of the arrest -- Ms. Meng was grabbed while changing planes at the airport -- and its effect on the trade talks and stock prices, to my mind there is a much more important fight brewing, and it is about tech hegemony. Specifically, who will control the next internet age, and by whose rules will it be run?
Until recently, that answer was clearly the United States, from which the Internet sprang, wiring the world together and, in the process, resulting in the greatest creation of power and wealth in history. While China has always had a strong technology sector, in recent years it has significantly escalated its investment, expertise and innovation, with major support from the government. That hand-in-glove relationship creates obvious issues, and the Trump administration is right to stop pretending that China does not present a threat both from security and innovation perspectives. Further reading: China summons U.S. ambassador, warns Canada of 'grave consequences' if Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou is not released.
China as we know it is not going to be around a decade from now. I think the more realistic scenario is some countries will run their own networks under/through the internet that don't follow its centrally-agreed-to rules.
controlling the Internet, which is global.
We really, really need to make a geography-free distributed encrypted storage layer (e.g. IPFS) much more of a reality, so that no country is in control. Preferably with TOR-like obfuscated routing also.
The Internet should become a platform on which we can build global society, economy, and democracy.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I'm a Canadian, and I'm sick and tired of my government rolling over and being America's bitch. First the recent 'NAFTA' re-negotiations, and now this. Sure, Huawei probably bakes report-to-Chinese-goverment functionality into everything they make. And sure, America, and everyone else, has a right to be pissed off. But this arrest comes dangerously close to being an act of war - the US should never have done it, and my government sure as fuck should never have let it happen on Canadian soil. It's necessary to take China's plans for world domination seriously, and to make plans to counter them. But being irresponsible butthurt fucktards isn't the way to go about it.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Arrogance of Americans is astounding. No tit for tat arrests, all strictly letter of the law arrests, just with the most severe punishment possible being applied. Unlike the US where family has become disposable, family is a big thing in China, really big, especially at the top. This was not the arrest of a Chinese executive, this was the purposeful assault on the child of a leading Chinese business leader, which in Chinese reality, also means a leader in politics (you do not get to be one without the other), in order to extort compliance out of the government of China, else what, the daughter of the Chinese leader will be extradited to the US and what raped in one their prisons because rape is deemed normal in prison.
No accidental event, but a plotted scheme to kidnap the daughter of a leading Chinese business leader to extort compliance out of the government of China, seriously, come on, what do you expect the reaction to be from the Chinese perspective. They can do this to one of the leaders, how about other Chinese children in Canadian schools are they safe. The marketing and PR on this in China will be extremely bad for Canada, grabbing the children of executives to extort compliance to US demands, Canada, idiotically did this and no denying it, they knew in advance and already admitted this.
It is not the Chinese government who will act, it is the Chinese people, with just a bit of prodding from the government of China. Individual police officers in China will act upon their own impetus for this attack upon Chinese families, same as for judges and that means consumers as well, will view Canadians and Canadian product very negatively, depending upon how much they are prompted to by public comments by Chinese officials.
This had nothing to do with justice and everything to do with high level corruption in the US government and apparently in the Canadian government and Canada will be paying by far the greatest penalty, ain't nothing going to stop that. Billions in trade gone, at the consumer level in China, negative diplomatic relations with China for years to come, and likely harsh treatment for Canadians anywhere in China, especially Hong Kong and Macau, again the Chinese police and courts, reacting based upon their own feelings for family and how this event will be be perceived and how it is portrayed in China.
US executives who actually work in China, know how much importance is placed on family and how it was an extraordinarily bad idea to kidnap and abuse the daughter of a Chinese business leader (arrest is abuse and make no mistake) which means they are also a leader in Chinese government, just the way it is in China, this to extort compliance out of China. the message, watch out China, we will be arresting your children overseas (no matter how old still viewed as children), top notch messaging American sure to win life long enemies and Canada, oh so fucking stupid.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen