Progressive-Democrats and Open Borders

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Recall the illegal aliens who stormed our border near El Paso, TX, broke through the concertina wire barrier, and physically assaulted the troops who were there to defend our border, overrunning them and successfully breaking into our nation.

A group of over 100 migrants attempted to enter the US illegally by rushing a border wall Thursday, breaking through razor wire and knocking over guards in the process.

The Biden administration has responded to that break-in:

Despite the commotion, the city of El Paso’s migrant dashboard showed 743 people had been released from custody and into the US on Thursday.

This is Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden and his Progressive-Democratic Party syndicate telling all illegal aliens to come ahead on in. It doesn’t matter if you assault our border guards on your way in, come ahead on.

This is something to keep in mind come November.

Responding to PRC Hackery

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The British government, as I write Tuesday morning, is set to publicly accuse the Chinese state of hacking Britain’s electoral register.

What’s at least as important, though, is this bit:

What to do in response is a conundrum, especially for smaller Western democracies such as the UK that are trying to balance courting investment from China while calling out its alleged abuses.

That’s a problem that’s straightforwardly enough solved: stop accepting investment from the PRC. Stop doing any business with the PRC or any of the enterprises domiciled in the PRC or any non-domestically domiciled enterprises that are affiliates of PRC domiciled enterprises. All that’s needed—and it is a hard task—is the political will to make the necessary moves.

Then there’s this:

A recent UK government foreign-policy paper described China as “an epoch-defining challenge” to the international order. However, it has held off widespread sanctions against China, fearing an economic backlash. The country relies on China for the imports of components in [a wide range of] products….

Even in the face of that realized enormity of the PRC threat. It’s easy to see, in hindsight, that exposure to economic backlash could have been avoided by not letting themselves become so dependent on an enemy nation for economically critical items in the first place. However, the lesson from that hindsight must not be to do nothing going forward. The correct lesson must be to start taking steps to eliminate that dependency. And then, stop doing any business with or within the PRC or any enterprise affiliated with such.

That goes for the US, too.

On Sunday, Chinese Premier Li Qiang delivered a keynote speech before the top executives of Apple, McKinsey, Qualcomm, and other multinationals at the China Development Forum, a government-sponsored economic and business forum held each March in the Chinese capital.

It’s shameful that American companies continue to toady up to an enemy nation with our own nation under even more determined and widespread cyber attacks by the PRC than the UK. Apple, McKinsey, Qualcomm, et al., aren’t at the forum just to hear Li’s pear-shaped tones, or to get the cachet of a subsequent audience with PRC President Xi Jinping. They’re currently actively doing business in the PRC, and they’re only at the forum and at the Xi audience to learn the parameters for doing further business there.

It would be appropriate in our own situation for the Federal government to take steps to divest itself of any relationship with American companies that do business with or within the PRC or any enterprise affiliated with such.

A Time for Choosing

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Europe’s nations—particularly those not directly bordering on Russia—are finally figuring out that Russia is as much a threat to them as it is to Ukraine.

…the cost of building robust defenses able to withstand a potential US pullback is so great that it threatens Europe’s post-Cold War social model.

And

Achieving the military spending that some politicians and experts say is needed would force European members of NATO to start reversing big post-Cold War increases in social spending.
“You have to rearrange the social contract,” said Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, who has warned that Russia will eventually attack NATO countries if it isn’t defeated in Ukraine.

Any US pullback from NATO or from Europe at large is, or should be, less a factor in their choice between social welfare and their self- and mutual defense than the continuing refusal of fully 40% of those NATO members to honor their financial and equipment commitments vis-à-vis NATO.

That refusal is those nations’ own betrayal of their fellow members since their refusal severely weakens the collective alliance.

Separately, but closely related, chatter about a US pullback from NATO or from Europe at large sounds like a Leftist conspiracy theory to me. After all, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s out loud questioning of America’s future in NATO has in fact been the motive force behind getting many more of Europe’s NATO members even to begin to honor their financial and equipment commitments to NATO, after 50 years of “pretty please” had achieved nothing but too many member nations’ overt decisions simply to freeload off American treasure and blood.

European nations’ need is to understand very clearly and forcefully that those nations that choose social spending over national defense will, in the end, have their social contract dictated to them by their conquerors. That immutable principle applies equally forcefully to our nation.

More Revisionist History

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The Food and Drug Administration has decided to remove social media posts and online materials commentary that overtly disdained and recommended against the use of Ivermectin as a Wuhan Virus infection treatment.

It’s good for the FDA to correct its dismal performance regarding Wuhan Virus treatments, but trying to pretend—even if its pretense is public this time—its dismal performance never happened by deleting those posts is just dishonest. The honest thing to do would have been to bring those posts back to the fore and append to them the FDA’s corrections regarding Ivermectin’s efficacy and safety.

Unfortunately, the move to alter history and deny the occurrence of actions that had plainly occurred, rather than treat the misbehavior honestly, comes as a result of a law suit settlement in which the sole plaintiff agreed to the revisionist move.

That’s how deeply embedded dishonesty about our recent history has gotten in our society.

Cyberattack Culpability

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The Federal government is warning States regarding a series of cyber attacks against water distribution networks that have been carried out, and that the primary attackers are the People’s Republic of China and Iran. EPA Administrator Michael Regan and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan wrote a letter to all of our State Governors, in which they wrote in part,

Threat actors affiliated with the Iranian Government Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have carried out malicious cyberattacks against United States critical infrastructure entities, including drinking water systems.

And

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored cyber group known as Volt Typhoon has compromised information technology of multiple critical infrastructure systems, including drinking water, in the United States and its territories. Volt Typhoon’s choice of targets and pattern of behavior are not consistent with traditional cyber espionage. Federal departments and agencies assess with high confidence that Volt Typhoon actors are pre-positioning themselves to disrupt critical infrastructure operations in the event of geopolitical tensions and/or military conflicts.

They added by way of emphasis,

Drinking water and wastewater systems are an attractive target for cyberattacks because they are a lifeline critical infrastructure sector but often lack the resources and technical capacity to adopt rigorous cybersecurity practices.

What particularly drew my eye in their letter, though, was this, which Regan and Sullivan also pointed out as one of the reasons for the IRGC’s choice of targets:

In many cases, even basic cybersecurity precautions—such as resetting default passwords or updating software to address known vulnerabilities—are not in place and can mean the difference between business as usual and a disruptive cyberattack.

Which brings me to my bit about culpability. [A] common type of operational technology used at water facilities where the facility had neglected to change a default manufacturer password. This has to be especially important given the number of lives that depend on reliable potable water. It’s also the case that there is no excuse whatsoever for IT types, or anyone else responsible for maintaining a computer network or any of its subnetworks, being so lazy they can’t even be bothered to do so basic a thing as changing passwords away from factory preset defaults, defaults that are, by design, widely publicized precisely so that those who’ve newly purchased such a device can gain access and change the default password to something else and thereby deny those not authorized easy access.

Thus: it’s time to start holding IT managers whose networks are penetrated because they affirmatively chose not to bother to replace default passwords with very strong passwords not just accountable, but culpable.

Current criminal negligence law centers on offenses that occur

primarily in situations involving the death of an innocent party as a result of the operation of a motor vehicle by a person who is under the influence of Drugs and Narcotics or alcohol.

The key is death of an innocent party, and that innocent party part includes all Americans using our potable water infrastructure or any other critical infrastructure: natural gas distribution, for instance, electricity distribution, heating oil pipelines, and so on. Those primary situations, though, should be easily enough modified to include the potential for death when something so central to life as access to water or to any of the other critical infrastructure deliverables is criminally disrupted. The presence or not of death should only inform the severity of the sanction, not the existence of the criminal negligence.

This criminal negligence culpability with its stern sanctions should apply to IT types responsible for subnet management as well as, not instead of, the overall IT head.

The problem extends beyond mere deaths of users of our water or other infrastructure systems. Prolonged disruption will—not can—severely and negatively impact our national security, our ability to defeat an infrastructure cyber attack or any other attacks done in concert with infrastructure disruption.