Tag Archives: defense policy

An Area for Sales Increases

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We must be on the right track.  Now it’s time to push the pace.  The People’s Republic of China doesn’t want us to sell to the Republic of China the wherewithal to defend itself against aggression, not even the pittance that is the $1.4 billion arms deal that the Trump administration is contemplating.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang on Friday said Washington should immediately stop the sale to avoid harming relations with Beijing.

He said the deal would severely damage China’s sovereignty and security interests and runs contrary to Washington’s commitment to a “one-China” policy.

That’s risible.  Leaving aside whether good relations with the PRC should come at a cost as steep as meekly abandoning an ally and friend would be, what’s harming those relations is the PRC’s constant drumbeat of threat against the RoC; the PRC’s occupation of international waters and of islands that belong to the sovereign nations surrounding the South China Sea to the east, south, and west (although the RoC has conflicting claims to some of those islands); and the PRC’s aggressions against Japanese islands in the East China Sea.

Further, there’s no threat to any “one-China” policy.  There’s only one China on the Asian mainland, and there’s only one China on the island of Taiwan.  No one is arguing otherwise.

Our next step should be to help the RoC to upgrade their defense forces and equipage into something that truly can defend the nation.

It’s About Time, Ollie

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In a move met by applause from at least one congressman, the Energy Department announced a pilot program for research into domestic mining of rare earth elements.

Rare earths are minerals critical to computing technologies and to various military and civilian sensor technologies.  China currently dominates the production and market for these elements, with about 85% of the world’s production from its domestic mines.

Another major source for rare earths, not yet exploited, is the South China Sea floor.  Part of the purpose of the PRC’s seizure of the South China Sea and of its island-building and militarization of those constructs is to control access to those rare earths and to reserve them for itself.

The US has about 13% of the world’s total reserves, but very little of this is in production: mining efforts aren’t extensive because it hasn’t been economically feasible (or yet politically necessary) to mine seriously.  Instead, we’ve been buying our rare earths almost exclusively from the PRC.

We’re very late to this production party, but with Secretary Rick Perry’s announcement, we need to jump in with both feet.  This is another area where we have to cease our dependence on our enemies for our own prosperity.

South China Sea Nonsense

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In response to Secretary of Defense James Mattis’, on his recent trip to the region, calling out the People’s Republic of China for its aggressions in the South China Sea, the PRC’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, had this to say.

China’s defense is for safeguarding China’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity[.]

This, of course, is nonsense, since the People’s Republic of China has no territory, and so no territorial integrity or sovereignty interests, in the South China Sea.

She went on to criticize us for our “Cold War mentality.”  If the PRC is truly concerned about a new cold war, it should desist from making one and withdraw from its occupation of international waters and islands.

Disingenuousity in Asia

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Japan is working with the US to develop its own ballistic missile defenses, including one that can defeat incoming ICBMs.  The People’s Republic of China doesn’t like that.

Addressing a monthly press briefing at China’s Defense Ministry recently, spokesman Ren Guoqiang said Japan’s development of advanced radar systems designed to counteract incoming ballistic missiles would have a negative impact on strategic stability and damage trust between nations in the region.

Because a sound defense is a destabilizing threat to peace.  Because every nation being able to defend itself means no one can trust anyone—there’s no offensive threat with which to force “trust.”

Sure.

Never mind that, in addition to the PRC’s rapid development of its own nuclear offensive capabilities, including mobile ICBM systems and tunnel systems in which to secrete them; the PRC’s aggressions against Japanese islands in the East China Sea; and the PRC’s active occupation of the South China Sea and other nations’ islands within it, the PRC has been actively supporting (successfully) northern Korea’s drive to develop its own nuclear weapons and (nearing success) northern Korea’s drive to develop missile systems—including intercontinental-capable missiles—with which to deliver those nuclear warheads.

No, the only thing being destabilized is the PRC’s ability to threaten, to intimidate, other nations.

When Were They Not?

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All IT Jobs Are Cybersecurity Jobs Now goes the headline on a recent Wall Street Journal article, and the subhead reads The rise of cyberthreats means that the people once assigned to setting up computers and email servers must now treat security as top priority.

It’s like these folks—both in the IT arena and in the reporting media—have just had an epiphany.

The global “WannaCry” ransomware attack that peaked last week, and has affected at least 200,000 computers in 150 countries, as well as the growing threat of Adylkuzz, another new piece of malware, illustrate a basic problem that will only become more pressing as ever more of our systems become connected: the internet wasn’t designed with security in mind, and dealing with that reality isn’t cheap or easy.

No, it wasn’t.  But it’s not the Internet that’s at the heart of these failures.  It’s the company connections to the Internet, and the corporate human employees who aren’t being trained in how to handle the company’s connection to the Internet that is at the heart of these failures.  IT has—or should have had—security at its heart from the time the first companies connected themselves to the Internet.

Even if nation-level espionage might not have been on the minds of private enterprise, the proprietary nature of company information and the fact of corporate espionage are as old as corporations.

Christopher Mims, in his article at the link, offered some sound advice for today.  That the advice should have been obvious yesterday in no way invalidates it for today.

  1. Retrain IT staff on security—or replace them. In today’s world of ever-multiplying threats and dependence on connected assets, all IT staff must now be cybersecurity staff first.

Indeed.

  1. Push everything to the cloud. It used to be the job of IT personnel was to build and maintain the tools employees need. Now, pretty much anything can be done better with a cloud-based service.

I disagree with this.  The cloud is no more securable than a corporate’s internal network—and when (not if) the cloud gets hacked, it won’t be only one company’s stuff that gets stolen or held hostage.  Even if it’s only a company’s internal cloud that gets hacked, the whole of the company’s innards get exposed.

  1. New IT investment will need baked-in security.

Can I get an amen, brothers and sisters?