China Expands Cyberspying In US, Report Says 186
An anonymous reader writes "A new report published by The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission wags a finger at the People's Republic of China for conducting Internet-borne espionage operations against United States high-tech companies. The paper, written by defense giant Northrop Grumman, provides a detailed case study of one such intrusion that moved large volumes of sensitive tech data out of a US firm in 2007. From a Wall Street Journal article, '"The case study is absolutely clearly controlled and directed with a specific purpose to get at defense technology in a related group of companies," said Larry Wortzel, vice chairman of the commission and a former U.S. Army attaché in China. "There's no doubt that that's state-controlled."' Wang Baodong, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, criticized the commission as "a product of Cold War mentality" that was "put in place to pick China to pieces." He added: "Accusations of China conducting, or 'likely conducting' as the commission's report indicates, cyberspace attacks or espionage against the US are unfounded and unwarranted.'"
Let me be the first to say it: (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm SHOCKED, SHOCKED!.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm shocked to discover, an emerging world power is spying on the existing world power and is trying to get its weapons technology...
Seriously, this shouldn't even be news. What countermeasures are being taken is a lot more interesting — for both us and the Chinese — but should be kept just as secret for the latter reason...
Re:Checking (Score:5, Insightful)
And America is NOT spying on China?
Northrop Grumman (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't doubt China is spying here, electronically and otherwise. However, it seems like a conflict of interest to have someone who would benefit from escalated military production evaluating our military needs.
Re:Checking (Score:4, Insightful)
And America is NOT spying on China?
Does it matter? Sure - some element is going to be all outraged. After all, who isn't shocked to find gambling going on? But really this is all about pointing out that there is, indeed, an issue that needs to be addressed. And if we don't address it, we have nobody but ourselves to blame.
Why China is Blocked (Score:5, Insightful)
And we fund such activity via lopsided trade (Score:4, Insightful)
go figure. It's like over-feeding a pet until it's large enough to eat you, and then complaining that it's eating you.
Re:Let me be the first to say it: (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, this is NOT an issue between China and America. It is an issue between China and the west. China is not just trying to undermine America, it is the entire west. That includes all countries that are west friendly. For example, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and India are slowly being intimidated. China is now pointing 1000's of missiles at Taiwan. In addition, they have started a new build-up of Missiles, and general military along the Indian border and is trying to lay claim to land that was decided over 100 years ago. They have started to grab water resources and are laying claim to areas of India that rich in natural resources. They did the same thing in 62 just before they attacked. This time, they have 8-10 ICBM launching subs as well as a quickly increasing number of missiles on that border.
Within the next decade, possibly 5 years, China is about to get VERY aggressive.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
dead meme: the usa is controlled by corporations (Score:3, Insightful)
i guess you missed the memo
i see whistleblowing on corporations and where they do evil all the time in western media. the same would be completely covered up and whitewashed in china. do you understand the level of pollution chinese companies get away with in china? if chinese companies tried to pull in the west the kind of crap they get away with routinely in china, the media would start a firestorm. oh, in fact they did: melamine in food, ethylene glycol in medicine, lead in toys...
witness:
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/showcase-65/ [nytimes.com]
look at those pictures. this is what companies get away with in china. if you showed such pictures in the west about a western company doing that somewhere to people in the west are you going to tell me they get away with anything near remotely as murderous in the west? i'm not asking for historical examples, i'm asking for the here and now. plenty of western companies pollute outside the west... and chinese companies just as much if not more now. here in the west, western companies are sued and erin brockovitched to death. while in china its carte blanche, standard operating procedure: poison poor chinese with impunity
and deny this:
one of the most influential and deeply historically entrenched american businesses has been systematically dismantled over the last 20 years in the usa. its media edifice hamstrung and turned against itself, all of its entrenched political players and lobbying and propaganda utterly defeated. i'm talking about the tobacco industry. where's this amazing western corporate control of our lives again?
i am very sick of this meme that companies control everything in the west
of course money has too much influence in politics. as if this is unique to the west, or even the worst in the west. there are actually are laws about crass manipulation. so the money has to flow in soft ways, in indirect ways, and so its not as big a deal as certain propagandized "money controls everything in the west" fools believe. go back a hundred years, when the obsession was with preventing pinkerton gangs from breaking up union demonstrations with kneecap busting, with breaking up business monopolies, with establishing a standardized hours per workweek, from doing away with child labor, etc. meanwhile, in china, its communist in name, but more ultracapitalist than the usa in reality. try to get your stereotypes in synch with reality please
it is in fact the solid truth that in china, companies have much more influence and arrogant assumed right to pretty much murder, while in the west they are regulated and hounded by the media constantly. no such hounding in a government monopoly media in china, regulations only after they prove embarassing and hurt the bottom line in china
"Have you ever considered that it is precisely ultra-nationalism and 'tribalism' that could actually help China be the next superpower and crush the competition? I guess not."
actually, it won't help china. you need to cooperate on the world stage. you assume for some bizarre reason that india, russia, europe, brazil, etc., will simply roll over and take blatant han imperialism without any resistance
Re:there's a nice layer of deniability here (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't necessarily see this as a given in China. Their culture is one that strongly respects authority (it has for the past 3000 years) and doesn't take too kindly to revolutionaries under any government that has ever existed in that country.
If you are comparing that to the USA.... America was founded by a revolution, by pig-headed individuals who didn't respect authority and almost always thought that its leaders were a bunch of morons and idiots that were barely tolerated because somebody had to do the job. It still is the case today. That folks in the 1960's and 1970's in America questioned authority has more to do with a younger generation who actually studied their own history and realized what America was really about. Bowing down to authority has rarely been considered an American trait.... even when Americans are found in other countries.
The USA in the 1940's and 1950's rallied to a strongly nationalist tendency because most intelligent people realized that the very existence of the American Republic was at stake and if something wasn't done to stop the scourge of the enemies of America, that they could end up being dead and everything that they held dear to themselves ruined. That happened after 9/11.... but ultimately it was proven that Al-Queida was a joke of a threat and that the larger threat was the U.S. government itself. That opinions differed in terms of how the citizens of America should deal with the threat of the government against its own citizens has not been focused or even of the same mind also says a whole lot about the diversity of opinions about the topic... and much about the current political climate in America as well.
China is a much more different place, and even "revolutions" tend to take on a much more ordered and structured form... such as the events of Tiananmen Square of a couple decades ago. Given the same circumstances and motivations in America.... the tanks that came to disperse the crowds for a similar kind of event happening on the Washington D.C. central mall (the area between the White House and the Capitol Building with all of the monuments) would have been demolished from improvised explosives and other heavy calibur weapons. It certainly would have been a bloodbath of a far larger kind.
i have been to china (Score:4, Insightful)
even the most skeptical about the government's censorship excesses are still completely nationalistic. for example: it is not questioned, in the least, that tibet is part of china
with a straight face, tell me a chinese director could make a "dances with wolves" style movie about chinese troops in tibet, and that such a movie would as widely praised and be as popular with chinese citizens as the real "dances with wolves" was with americans
Re:Checking (Score:4, Insightful)
Objection! Relevance!
Didn't anybody tell you as a child that two wrongs didn't make a right? Regardless of the US' spying capabilities, the issues brought up in the article are still issues.
Especially since China is spying on US companies, while the US is (probably!) only spying on Chinese government/military networks. (Which, while arguably morally wrong, is at least accepted as a fact of life.)
Re:Why spy anyway (Score:1, Insightful)
The third world war has been going on for at least the last two or three decades.
Except this time the armies are companies and the weapons are simply currency.
Re:Checking (Score:3, Insightful)
Ha ha. Very funny. We're talking about defense contractors here. Effectively, they *ARE* part of the government. In the same way that some of the semi-private companies in China that the US spies on are effectively part of the Chinese government.
The line between government and private corporation is very blurry these days (and always has been, for 'defense contractors').
why in your mind (Score:3, Insightful)
do you equate political dissent with hooligans intent on smashing windows?
do you really think that me writing my political opinion on a website is the same as some yahoo throwing bricks at police?
why do you think these are remotely the same:
1. the police control a handful of anarchist idiots who can't be reasoned with, feel they have a right to destroy things, and don't understand anything except physical force
2. the government monitors, filters, and punishes any and all political expression by anyone in the country
that's the difference between the west and china
do you have an ability to appreciate the difference? do you really think the level of control in china is anything remotely near that in the west?
because the west has to control a handful of destructive hooligans in pittsburg: this in your mind is the same as a government which filters and controls ALL media and internet expression by EVERYONE? really?
and as for the sound cannon: this is new technology meant to control anarchist idiots nonlethally, without using bullets. in other words, an advancement in nonlethal confrontation. but apparently, just because its a new technology, this is a rationale for your criticism. pffft
Re:Checking (Score:2, Insightful)
And America is NOT spying on China?
You know, I have been teaching my daughter logic and we have been studying false arguments. We just covered tu quoque - thanks for the example!
Re:Checking (Score:3, Insightful)
Spying also leads to corruption and blackmail, both of which readily escalate into violent crime. So you are exposing the development of criminal elements within other countries, people who will lie, cheat, steal and kill, in order to profit via industrial and government espionage. There is also a well recognised tie between organised crime and private espionage 'contractors', so you are also supporting the concept that governments sponsor organised crime in other countries and, well, tough luck for all the innocents who get harmed along the way.
When governments institute laws that attempt legalise the criminal activities of their agents in other countries, they are bound by the criminal injustice of those laws and the activities they promote. These concepts are all bound to the idea, that other countries citizens are somehow sub-human and are not entitled to justice and thus can be exploited, for what ever purpose profits your country.