Tag Archives: politics

Bar Them

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It turns out the hacks into various cloud-based services and cloud providers by the People’s Republic of China was far more extensive in depth and breadth than heretofore reported.

They came in through cloud service providers, where companies thought their data was safely stored. Once they got in, they could freely and anonymously hop from client to client, and defied investigators’ attempts to kick them out for years.
Cybersecurity investigators first identified aspects of the hack, called Cloud Hopper by the security researchers who first uncovered it, in 2016….
A Wall Street Journal investigation has found that the attack was much bigger than previously known. It goes far beyond the 14 unnamed companies listed in the indictment, stretching across at least a dozen cloud providers, including CGI Group Inc, one of Canada’s largest cloud companies; Tieto Oyj, a major Finnish IT services company; and International Business Machines Corp.

Disgustingly, the cloud providers spent their efforts trying to cover up the breaches rather than working effectively to contain them and eject the spies.

Investigators in and out of government said many of the major cloud companies tried to stonewall clients about what was happening inside their networks. “It was like trying to pin down quicksand,” one investigator said.

Those companies should see their customers walk away, and those companies should be boycotted—and not only of their cloud “services.” They’ve demonstrated that none of their products can be trusted because the companies themselves cannot be trusted.

The government’s response? One example:

Officials at the Department of Homeland Security grew so frustrated by resistance by the cloud companies that they are now working to revise federal contracts that would force them to comply with future probes….

This is the wrong answer. Those contracts should be canceled for cause (obstructing a criminal investigation comes to mind), and those cloud companies barred from doing business with the government. Answers to Requests for Proposals that include these companies as partners or subcontractors in the answers should be rejected, too. Some of the cloud providers became more cooperative after government—ours or overseas—pressure, but that’s not enough.

Cut them all off.

And develop offensive cyber weapons and use them against the PRC’s intelligence, military, and political establishments.

Only Progressive-Democrats

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“Iowa nice:” what Iowans have a reputation for doing—being willing to go out of their way to help a struggling neighbor, a visitor, or a stranded motorist.  It’s a practice for which Iowa citizens have a deserved reputation. And so do the citizens of Texas, Utah, all across the South; indeed, in most regions of the US. We Americans, in the main, just try to help each other.

Yet, this, during the runup to the Progressive-Democratic Party primary campaign Iowa caucus:

As [Progressive-]Democratic presidential candidates crisscross this state ahead of the Feb 3 caucuses that start the nomination process, they are trying to balance distinguishing themselves from each other with respecting that Iowa tradition.

Only Progressive-Democrats would consider Iowa nice and candidate distinctions to be competing interests requiring “balance.”

Hmm….

Countering Interference

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The Republic of China has passed a law aimed at blocking the People’s Republic of China’s efforts at interfering with the RoC’s elections, which will occur 11 Jan.

Passage gained urgency after RoC opposition parties—especially the KMT—nominated candidates who openly and enthusiastically support “reunification” with the PRC and after the PRC’s influence over RoC media companies became overt.  The PRC has been

providing campaign funds and even mobilized support on social media for candidates from the main opposition Nationalist Party (KMT)….

These elections, with President Tsai Ing-wen expected to be reelected despite PRC interference, make this an especially fragile time for the nation.

It would be good if the rest of us openly supported the RoC’s efforts at maintaining its freedom: talking freely in support of the RoC, sailing navy flotillas through the Taiwan Strait with port calls along the way, increasing economic ties and restoring diplomatic ties, sailing close to and overflying PRC-occupied islands in the South China Sea, and on and on.

“New Strategic Weapon”

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Baby Kim, MFWIC of northern Korea has told us all that he’ll soon unveil one of these. Timothy Martin, writing in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, speculated that it’ll likely be something along traditional lines.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the world will witness a “new strategic weapon” from the isolated regime in the near future as he sees little reason to stick with his country’s suspension of testing long-range missile technology.
But Mr Kim left vague whether the new weapon would be a nuclear test or an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Maybe it’s neither. Maybe it’s a cyber weapon, a broad suite of malware, perhaps, or a collection of mini-EMP devices. Either of those, or their combination, could paralyze us, leaving us not on our knees, but prostrate and helpless, given the lack of effort our government and our defense establishment have put into developing defenses in that milieu, and far more so and at far less cost to northern Korea than some bombs or missiles.

Reduced NBA Viewership

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The TV ratings of National Basketball Association games are down by 15% compared to last year.

Some folks ascribe this to fewer folks subscribing to television generally. Others blame it on geography:

Many of the league’s best teams are on the West Coast, meaning their games end after some viewers in the East have already gone to bed.

Yet others assign at least some of the blame to injuries, especially to marque players.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver blames in on a “broken” pay-TV system.

All of those would seem to be factors in the public’s decreasing interest in the doings of the NBA.

I have to wonder, though, how much of the drop is due to dismay over the NBA’s despicable behavior toward the Houston Rockets’ GM tweeting in support of Hong Kong protestors and to contempt for the league’s disgracefully obsequious kowtowing, from Silver, through team management, on down to players on the floor, to the People’s Republic of China government.