Category Archives: defense policy

PRC Provocation

Posted on by
Reply

This episode comes as President Barack Obama (D) continues his retreat from the global stage, a retreat with which Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is completely on board.

Six coast guard ships of the People’s Republic of China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy escorted a large fleet of fishing vessels into the waters around Japan’s Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.  Japan was left to summon PRC diplomats and formally protest, as the Obama administration kept carefully silent on the matter.

Japan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement it filed the protest after Japan’s coast guard spotted the vessels Saturday along with a fleet of 230 Chinese fishing boats swarming around the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands.

Of course, the PRC demanded that Japan not take “any action that could lead to a tense or complicated situation,” notwithstanding that it’s PRC behavior that’s provoking tensions and complications.

This action marks an escalation of PRC aggressiveness in the East and South China Seas since the PRC’s seizure of the South China Sea was ruled illegal by an international court in The Hague, and it’s an escalation encouraged by Obama’s considered silence.

“We Have Lost the Peace”

Posted on by
Reply

Walter Russell Mead had some thoughts while ruminating on some remarks made by Pope Francis as the latter was enroute to Poland.  He quoted Francis:

 …the world is at war because it has lost the peace.

To be clear: Francis wasn’t talking about have misplaced the peace; he was referring to our having lost the struggle for peace—both the struggle that is peace vs war and the struggle for generating out of that peace freedom, prosperity, and stability.

Mead commented:

[W]e have lost the peace. It is an interesting counterpoint to the Democratic establishment’s celebration of itself and its wisdom last night [the third night of the Democratic Party Convention].

Although he’s more confident in Clinton than I am, a point is clear: a Party that hides its head away from the reality of the present situation is a Party that will be hard-pressed to deal with that reality in any productive way.

Honeypots

Posted on by
Reply

In the cyber world, a honeypot

consists of data (for example, in a network site) that appears to be a legitimate part of the site but is actually isolated and monitored, and that seems to contain information or a resource of value to attackers, which are then blocked.

Of course, nothing prevents nefarious persons or entities from using honeypots to draw in honest folks for nefarious purposes.  Purposes like the following.

The trove of leaked Democratic National Committee emails posted to Wikileaks on July 22 has sparked concerns about malware as users access the vast trove of documents.
…
On the day of the leak, Google’s Transparency Report warned users of dangerous downloads from Wikileaks.org. Google has not revealed specifically what was detected….

Malware was detected in the Global Intelligence Files dumped last year by Wikileaks, too.  Further, Wikileaks actually could be a victim in this malware ploy, too: they do little of their own hacking, getting their stuff from other sources.  One of their sources already has been implicated in the recent hacks of Democratic Party IT facilities like the DNC, DNCC, and Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign email servers, along with Clinton’s official State Department business personal email server: Russia is suspected of conducting these particular hacks.

Are these guys—Russians, Chines, ordinary thieves—setting up other botnets?  Setting up sources for stealing personal financial data or data useful for blackmail or data useful for espionage, with these sources to be tapped at a time of convenience in the future?  Setting up something else?

Welcome to the Bigs

Posted on by
Reply

…and to the way the People’s Republic of China treats its foes, Mr President,

Recall that the PRC was resoundingly crushed in a case brought by the Philippines concerning the PRC’s violations of Philippine waters in the South China Sea, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague having ruled, sharply, in favor of the Philippines on all but the most trivial of the charges.

Recall, also, that newly elected Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte had said—repeatedly—that he wanted bilateral talks with the PRC regarding the South China Sea and the items in dispute.

At a cabinet meeting in progress when word of the ruling arrived, one of Duterte’s Ministers said he’d had dinner the night before with the PRC’s ambassador, and that ambassador—before the ruling had been announced—had provided a list of things the PRC required Duterte to say and not say in any press release he might release about the then-forthcoming ruling.  Earlier that same day of the dinner, too, Duterte had met with that same ambassador to assure him that no embarrassing remarks would be forthcoming.  Duterte’s response to that list?

 Didn’t he trust what I told him?

Welcome, indeed, to the contempt with which the Center of Heaven views its foes.

The Iran Nuclear Weapons Agreement

Posted on by
Reply

…after a year.

Two days before the anniversary of the nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers, the Islamic Republic attempted to launch a new type of ballistic missile using North Korean technology, multiple intelligence officials tell Fox News.

That the launch failed is neither here nor there.  There are two far more important factors in play here, beyond the mish-mash of items in the Fox News piece.  One is the Iranian contempt for the agreement; for the Obama administration; and for Secretary of State John Kerry, who “negotiated” this agreement to allow Iran delayed access to nuclear weapons—a delay that Iran is studiously ignoring.

The other factor is that northern Korean technology that Iran is using in its new type of missile.  So much for the Obama administration’s lip service to stopping the northern Koreans from spreading nuclear weapons technology (although, in truth, this is a long-standing lip service failure; Obama is only the latest of the serial lip servers).