A Chinese spy balloon?

 This is further proof China is spying on the U.S. outside of using Eric Swalwell.  However, it's also proof that China's spy satellite program is a little lacking.  A spy balloon?  That's great espionage technology for 1885.  Nevertheless, it may have provided them with valuable intel prior to being dealt with.

Edward Snowden - it's worse than we thought.

When Edward Snowden first emerged as a public figure he seemed to me to be anti-American because of the nature of the information he stole and shared.   But the reality is that he is anti-government-corruption.  There is good and bad in what he has done. But exposing what goes on is definitely a plus for society.  And as it turns out, what is going on is worse than we thought.

Where is the China Exit Strategy?

China has become a global problem as well as an American problem.  They have moved down the path towards being a global military threat.  They have embarked on a predatory mercantilist style of economic imperialism not just in Africa, but also Europe, the Americas and the rest of Asia.  They conduct espionage on a grand scale as well regularly manipulate their currency and steal intellectual property on a similarly massive scale.  Not to mention they have suppressed their own people with both propaganda and physical force. All of this is done by various Chinese entities in thrall of the oppressive, imperialist, expansionist communist regime or by the communist party itself.

Make no mistake, China has become a menace on global scale in the last 20 years in particular.  It has become more evident to some due to the at-a-minimum secretiveness around COVID-19. But it has not opened the eyes of enough people.  Because all the while this has become more and more evident both Republicans and Democrats in America as well as leaders in other nations around the world have shortsightedly chosen to enable China rather than thwart their evil global ambitions. No one seems to look beyond their own short term interest enough to see China as the bad actor that they are on the global stage.

How much do we need to see before we wake up?  If you are not "woke" to this you are part of the problem.

A holistic China Exit Strategy is needed.  With president Trump leading it has been apparent that European countries are willing to join American leadership on some issues.  Not only does the world need a military containment strategy, removing economic and intellectual ties or at least returning them to a balanced reasonable level is necessary and should be the objective. 

Supply chains cannot be moved overnight but they must be moved.  Not everything needs to come back home, there are other countries willing to trade with the U.S. fairly. 

While it's necessary, it won't be easy.

But that's only part of the solution.  A robust policy of trade in high technology goods is need.  Immigration, employment, and education all need monitoring, restrictions and controls put in place.  Chinese hacking needs to be aggressively countered, worldwide.  Chinese immigrants require a different level and type of scrutiny than others.  Embargos may be necessary.  COVID reparations should be provided to affected countries.  World Trade Organization membership needs to be reviewed.  And a pacific counter-alliance between America, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand and potentially other regional nations would be timely.  An alliance of both an economic and military nature would be best.   A jointly funded and managed alliance unlike NATO would provide a level of military and economic security long overdue. 

It's become crucial that president Trump wins the 2020 election because he is the first president since before Richard Nixon to recognize the threat and to want to do something about it rather than have America be the frog in the slowly boiling pot of water as communist China rises at the expense of the rest of the world.  American leadership, and the provision of a liberty and fair, capitalist alternative to free stuff from China are critical now.  It cannot be ignored any longer, we do so at our own peril. 

China espionage of intellectual property continues

Fake Nike.

A recent FBI news release indicates that last week they caught a foreign national trying to steal medical device technology:

...Lu’s secret goal was to use trade secrets stolen from his employer to strike it rich in his native China. However, thanks to an FBI investigation, his plan was thwarted, and Lu is now serving a 27-month prison sentence.

Lu worked for several different U.S. companies, all of which developed high-tech medical equipment, such as clot retrieval tools and balloon-guide catheters. In each job, Lu signed a non-disclosure agreement for his research and development work.

Despite signing the confidentiality agreement, Lu routinely did “data dumps” from his various medical research employers for about three years until his arrest in 2012...

...The investigative team learned that Lu had planned to create and run his own medical device manufacturing company in China using the stolen technology and Chinese government funding. He had even applied for Chinese patents using technology stolen from the American companies. (China’s government creates policies that disadvantage American businesses, and hacking against American companies and interests is a common tactic.)

That's all well and good but notice the date of 2012?  This was posted on the FBI's website just this month.  Why the delay? Was this a FISA case, was it public knowledge that Lu had been convicted?   That's one curious aspect of this news release  that otherwise shows China has been unrelenting in their theft of intellectual property.

China still chipping away at American state secrets.

It's like nobody cares anymore.

The cybercrime has reached the point where the FBI has warned American companies about a group of sophisticated Chinese government-backed hackers that has been working for years to steal economic and national security secrets from the U.S. government and private contractors...Part of it can surely be chalked up to what has been called “data breach fatigue.” Presumably the same mindset has infected the nation’s capital

...Last year, the Washington Post reported on a classified Defense Department report that revealed Chinese hackers have compromised the designs of more than two dozen U.S. military weapons systems. The list of impacted programs reads like a catalogue of weapons critical to current U.S. military dominance, including the stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the F/A-18 fighter jet, the Patriot missile system, the Army’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile defense system, the Navy’s Aegis ballistic missile-defense program, the V-22 Osprey, UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, and the Littoral Combat Ship. The Washington Free Beacon reports that other data stolen by the Chinese include the P-8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft and RQ-4 Global Hawk drones.

As the Chinese continue their military modernization while undermining America’s, Pentagon officials have increasingly sounded the alarm that U.S. military technological superiority is at risk. This technological superiority, in the words of Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Frank Kendall, “is being challenged in ways that I have not seen for decades, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region.

I'm sure there are a lot of people who care, but not enough people in the right places, with the right amount of backbone to put a stop to it.

Taiwan`s explosions, China`s fingerprints?

Photo via ABC7Chicago.com

A series of gas explosions in Taiwan has to make you ask yourself about Chinese involvement.  China has been beefing up it`s military, it`s espionage abilities, and it certainly is interested in repatriating Taiwan with China, even though the Taiwanese don`t feel that way.  There`s means, motive and quite likely opportunity as well, as some of the details of the explosion would indicate:

Heavy machinery pulled vehicles from huge trenches gouged by explosions along an underground pipeline in Taiwan's second-largest city that killed at least 25 people and injured 267.

The series of five explosions from about midnight Thursday to early Friday struck a densely populated industrial district in the port of Kaohsiung where petrochemical companies operate pipelines alongside the sewer system under city streets. The cause of the disaster was being investigated...

The explosions were believed caused by leaking propene, a petrochemical material not intended for public use, said Chang Jia-juch, director of the Central Disaster Emergency Operation Center. Chang said the cause and location of the leaks were unknown.

The story includes the following details - it`s a port city where the explosions occurred. The explosions commenced at night. The pipeline is operated by the government, and the result has been that many in the city are now without power.

None of that directly implicates Chinese involvement. And I`m not suggesting that, just raising the possibility. But with China becoming more internationally aggressive, this could certainly be a test of their ability. And if they get caught, so what? It's not like president Obama hasn't backed down from conflict with China before.

China has truly expansionist dreams for the first time in perhaps several millennium.  That does not men they are behind these explosions.  At all.  But it's not all that far-fetched either.

War of the Internets - China vs. U.S.

Cyber-spying has real world implications.

The United States government, perhaps has finally bought a vowel and is starting to take seriously the threat of cyber attacks from foreign nationals - specifically Chinese nationals.  The U.S. government has charged several Chinese military officials, in absentia, with cyber theft related charges.

Yesterday’s indictment of five Chinese officials signals the administration is banking that enough time has passed that it can redirect the worldwide debate over government surveillance toward China’s drive to steal commercial secrets of private companies to boost its own economy.

“We’ve told the Chinese we know they spy on us for military purposes and we spy on them for military purposes, which is what big powers do,” said James Lewis, a fellow in cybersecurity at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “What’s weird is when you spy purely for commercial purposes, and that has to stop.”

This from the same not-ready-for-prime-time administration that was about to give up control of the Internet. Why the about face, and why so quickly after supposedly re-thinking the notion of sharing control of the internet?  And why the specific anger about industrial espionage? Shouldn't the fact that China basically stole the F35 fighter jet blueprints and suddenly has their own version in testing be equally damning.

And when I say damning, I mean both of the Chinese and of American counter-espionage capabilities.  Let's face it, the U.S. is getting its behind handed to it by the Chinese in the realm of espionage and whether it's the Obama arrogance that is causing a disbelief of the facts on the ground or just the lack of capabilities of the various espionage agencies in the U.S. that prevents things from getting better, the problem is still that things are just not getting better.

These charges are window dressing designed to make the president look tough on Chinese espionage, just in time for the midterm elections oddly enough.  Just this weekend I was chirping about how the U.S. needed some muscle in its electronic surveillance despite the privacy issues that surround the spying (granted, with no easy answers available to fix things), and today these stories break.  While the focus has been on terrorism, China and Russia have not gone away, they are both resurgent (or trying to be in Russia's case).  But charging a few low ranking military personnel is no solution.  All it is going to do is to anger China, while accomplishing nothing.

China of course, has reacted:

China’s decision to suspend its involvement in a cybersecurity working group with the U.S. after being accused of commercial spying threatens to undo efforts aimed at finding common ground to tackle hacking.

China halted the dialogue and threatened further retaliation after the U.S. indicted five Chinese military officials yesterday for allegedly stealing trade secrets. China’s Foreign Ministry called the U.S. move a “serious violation of the basic norms of international relations,” while China’s State Internet Information Office likened the U.S. actions to “a thief yelling ‘Catch the thief.’”

I expect that the president might use this as a springboard for some proposed legislation (sans details of course), to protect the U.S. from Chinese aggression.  If we do see it, rest not assured because it is merely a ploy to get votes.

EXIT question:  With Bill Clinton having been such a cozy president for the Chinese to work with, there's one more reason not to have Hillary win the White House in 2016.  Will anyone in the media make the connection?

Relief. Or worry.

In a way, I'm glad that the NSA has the knowledge to do these sort of things.  It provides me with a sense that America is not ceding the cyber-warfare space to the Chinese.  On the other hand, this is freaky scary that this capability exists since it is ripe for abuse by an overzealous agency or entire administration in Washington.

Via the NYT:

WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the United States to conduct surveillance on those machines and can also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks.

While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet, according to N.S.A. documents, computer experts and American officials.

The technology, which the agency has used since at least 2008, relies on a covert channel of radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted surreptitiously into the computers. In some cases, they are sent to a briefcase-size relay station that intelligence agencies can set up miles away from the target.

 Somebody needs to get a handle on the holistic discussion around technology and the legality of what is permissible and not, what is ethical and what is not, before technology gets so far out in front of decision-making that the answers are foregone conclusions before they can even be discussed and debated in public.

Because you can do it does not mean you should do it

Do your job.

The United States government has long had the technical ability to electronically gather phone and internet records of anyone they felt the need to monitor.  They didn't always do it though.   The government under the Patriot Act expanded it's ability to monitor communications, electronic or telecommunications. It was intended to focus on threats, not on everyone in the country.

Finally - Someone Paying Attention To China's Espionage

America is asleep at the wheel on debt, on illegal immigration and of course on China. I've argued that something needs to be done about China and their efforts to not play fairly in the global economy (most recently here or here).

Maybe though someone is waking up, as National Review's Rich Lowry discusses on Fox News today:

I don't think any rational person wants a trade war with China, but in too many arenas the United States appears to be going down without a fight, or even standing up for it's own interests.  That has got to stop.

Numbers Stations

Some Friday creepiness for you.

What is a numbers station, and how does it relate to conservative politics?  According to Wikipedia,

A numbers station (or number station) is a type of shortwave radio station characterized by their unusual broadcasts, which consist of spoken words, but mostly numbers, often created by artificially generated voices reading streams of numbers, words, letters, tunes or Morse code. They are transmitted in a wide variety of languages and the voices are usually female, although sometimes men's or children's voices are used...

It has been reported that the United States uses numbers stations to communicate encoded information to persons in other countries. The State Department operated several stations, such as KKN50, that broadcast similar "numbers" messages.

Here's a news item from a few years back discussing numbers stations.  From Cuba, to the CIA to Israel, Sweden and the Lincolnshire Poacher (an English numbers station), these things are still out there.

So what does this have to do with conservative politics? Not much really, unless of course president Obama wins re-election and short wave radio becomes the only way to communicate for the last of the true freedom fighters in America. Some on the fringe right seem to think this sort of outcome is not as far fetched as you'd think. But it is far fetched. And if it really isn't, well fringe guys, you're welcome for the idea on how to communicate under the new overlords.  But really, I just thought it would be cool to share a video or two on an odd subject.

Still interested?  Here's a lecture at Delft University in the Netherlands on Numbers Stations (in English).

China: GhostNet spying threat

The Times is reporting further about the GhostNet cyber-spying effort and that it is being run out of China.

A cyber spy network operated from China hacked into classified documents on government and private computers in 103 countries, internet researchers have
revealed.

The spy system, which investigators dubbed GhostNet, compromised 1,295 machines at Nato and in foreign affairs ministries, embassies, banks and news organisations across the world, as well as computers used by the Dalai Lama and Tibetan exiles.

The work of Information Warfare Monitor (IWM) investigators focused initially on allegations of Chinese cyber espionage against the Tibetan exile community but led to a much wider network of compromised machines.

IWM said that, while its analysis pointed to China as the main source of the network, it had not been able conclusively to identify the hackers. The IWM is composed of researchers from an Ottawa-based think tank, SecDev Group, and the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies.

Espionage is going on all the time but typically without proof. This is a smoking gun that China is spying on over 1200 computers in 103 countries. The spying was done using traditional malware techniques, and with an ever spreading number of computers being infected. But the implications of what could be done were far stronger -it even went beyond removing classified documents.

"Almost certainly, documents are being removed without the targets’ knowledge,
keystrokes logged, web cameras are being silently triggered, and audio inputs surreptitiously activated."

This sort of activity requires a strong response from the United States and from Western countries in general. Unfortunately with President Obama trying to shill to the Chinese to buy more American debt securities, the amount being in the trillions, a strongly worded rebuke is likely not forthcoming. Instead of sanction, about the strongest wording we can expect from the administration is something along the lines of 'concern about the reports if they are indeed true.'

That's not what the free world needs from its leadership.

Putin power grabbing again

According to a story in Reuters this morning, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is still moving to consolidate his power base and silence his critics. Speaking to the FSB (the successor to the KGB), Putin had angry words for his country's foes. He has frequently used Western security services (spies) as a rallying point for Russians. Now he's warning 'foes' against trying to destabilize Russia during a the broadening economic crisis facing Russia.

And in a classic look-what's-going-on-over-here-in-my-left-hand-so-you-miss-the-big-picture maneuver, Putin warned "Any attempts to weaken or destabilize Russia, harm the interests of the country will be toughly suppressed". With that statement Putin effectively also warned dissenters against opposing him, while possibly distracting Russians from the economic crisis that is happening under his watch. The crisis in Russia is potentially far more acute than in the United States, as the plunge in oil crisis impacts a Russian export and government revenue quite strongly. Russia is highly dependant on oil exports, and compounding the problem is the continued structural weakness of the Russian system. Russia does have substantial reserves but the spectre of foreign nationals infiltrating Russia always helped Putin's popularity during previous election cycles Putin was running in.

By distracting the country, Putin is hoping to open for himself another opportunity to consolidate his power. It's been speculated that the financial crisis would be leveraged in order to increase control over key strategic assets reversing the actions of the 1990s, when the state sold off major assets to wealth private sector citizens in exchange for loans. Whether this reversal is done via economic leverage or by force, it's clearly another step away from any pretense of democratization in Russia.

Putin seems intent on turning Russia into a police state with himself as the head. That Putin clearly longs for a return to the former Russian glory days of the Soviet Union is of no consequence. What Putin is desirous of most is absolute authority. Whether that comes in a communist state as some believe he longs to repair, or as a fascist style police state doesn't matter. Putin is working on consolidating power for himself in a country, that while diminished, still is a substantial international player, with nuclear warheads and empire ambitions. It's a dangerous situation for any international interest, and with the looming threat of the rise of China as an economic powerhouse, an unwelcome and potentially dangerous distraction for America.