Tag Archives: foreign policy

Surrender?

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Recall that the New York Stock Exchange, pursuant to an Executive Order regarding US investors and People’s Republic of China’s PLA-owned or -controlled companies, had begun the process of delisting China Telecom Corp Ltd, China Mobile Ltd, and China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd.

Now the NYSE has walked that back and decided not to proceed with the delisting. Exchange management have chosen to not provide any details or rationale for their, other than that their decision follows “further consultation” with federal regulators. The Exchange’s full statement can be read here; it’s carefully uninformative.

I have to wonder: is this in response to the PRC’s threat to take the necessary countermeasures to resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies? Or is it an attempt to duck away from those threatened countermeasures rather than fighting a battle that needs to be won?

The foregoing was written Tuesday. Now the NYSE has reversed itself again:

it received “new specific guidance” from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Tuesday, which listed the three companies’ American depositary receipts as being covered by Mr. Trump’s order.

Which raises an additional question: who’s actually in charge at the NYSE, since the new specific guidance should not have been necessary.

“Interfering” with Internal Affairs

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The People’s Republic of China is objecting to the Taiwan Assurance Act of 2020 and the Tibetan Policy and Support Act of 2020, which President Donald Trump has signed into law.

The PRC Foreign Ministry’s Deputy Director, Information Department, Zhao Lijian said that the PRC was

“resolutely opposed” to both acts

and

The determination of the Chinese government to safeguard its national sovereignty, security, and development interests is unwavering[]

and that the acts were (OANN‘s paraphrase)

an interference in China’s internal affairs.

Of course, it can be no interference in the PRC’s internal affairs to support an occupied nation, even if it is PRC-occupied. Nor can it be any sort of interference in the PRC’s domesticity to support a sovereign nation that the PRC constantly threatens with conquering and occupation.

Never mind the PRC’s arrogant hypocrisy in its attempt to pressure us regarding our own laws.

National Independence and Military Capability

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Joe Biden (D) has strange ideas regarding this relationship, expressed most plainly in his plans for our nuclear weapons arsenal.

Mr Bidens campaign pledge to narrow the role that nuclear weapons play…stating that their “sole purpose” should be to deter or respond to a nuclear attack.

Biden is willing to have us forced to surrender after being beaten in a conventional or cyberwar, rather than have nuclear weapons available or usable to preserve our existence—and that of our friends—as independent, unconquered polities.

Mr Biden has said that he wants to extend the New START treaty with Russia….

Because extending a nuclear weapons treaty with an enemy nation that routinely violates treaties with us is a good idea. It’s especially sensible after he unilaterally disarms us doctrinally.

No. Neither Biden nor his handlers can possibly be that naive; this can only be a deliberate weakening of our military security. Gives new meaning to Biden’s push for international “cooperation.”

Missiles based in underground silos have long been considered a destabilizing system by arms-control groups….

No, what’s destabilizing is surrendering military superiority—cyber, conventional, or nuclear—to our enemies.

Another Rude Question

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This one relates to Congressman Eric Swalwell’s (D, CA) apparent compromise by the reputed People’s Republic of China spy Fang Fang (Christine Fang).

It seems that Fang hooked up with Swalwell early on, when he was a local politician, and she helped him rise into Congress: fundraising, staff selections, and the like. My question doesn’t relate, directly, to this particular tale.

There is a stock investing technique that centers on gorilla investing. This is a technique that attempts to identify a bunch of companies that are likely to be highly successful while those companies are in their early stages of development. The gorilla investor then pumps money into the stocks of each of those early-identified companies. As some of the companies grow in the market place, and many of them flame out, the gorilla investor bails on the flameouts and adds the money withdrawn from their stocks into to remaining putative gorillas. The process is repeated until only a few gorillas remain, and are true gorillas.

My question is this: are the relevant intelligence and investigative authorities looking into whether the PRC’s intelligence community has been and/or is still engaging in gorilla politician compromise, even actively aiding those most…promising? If so, are those early ones being identified and their histories vetted, with responses for those who still fail vetting?

Limits to Response

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Massive Hack Blamed on Russia Tests Limits of US Response is the headline of a Wall Street Journal piece on the Russian hack of our government and some infrastructure facilities.

Despite its size, a sprawling computer hack blamed on Russia could leave President Trump and the incoming Biden administration struggling to find the right response, former US cybersecurity officials and experts said.

The Russian hack was an overt invasion of the United Space, just as much in cyber space as it would have been had it occurred in physical space. The only limits on our response—the only real limits—are our capacity to respond, and the mindsets of those with the authority to order the response.

Capacity includes our shamefully limited cyber capability coupled with the much lower degree of Russia’s dependence on cyber in its various facilities (military, political, economic).

Capacity also includes, though, political, economic, and physical response venues.

This attack badly wants a more prompt response than economic sanctions are capable of effecting.

 “It’s a hack. It’s a breach. It’s espionage. It’s not an attack,” said former White House and Justice Department official Jamil Jaffer, executive director of George Mason University’s National Security Institute. “I don’t think some major offensive response is warranted based on what we know now.”

And

…the former officials said the intrusions fell more along the lines of classic digital espionage, however brazen.

This insistence on downplaying the severity of an invasion is a major player in our vulnerability to such attacks is an illustration of the weakness of the mindsets involved, for all that Jaffer is not one of those charged with the responsibility. It increases our vulnerability to physical attack.

There needs to come an end to mental weakness, idle chit-chat, and vapid responses and to get serious about such invasions.

Now.