Generational Dynamics World View News

[Cool Breeze]

** 16-Dec-2021 World View: Giving back

> I don't post enough to warrant setting up an account. Now that the
> thin skinned are crying about it, I will make it point not to.

> I find this site an oasis. What John writes about is insightful. I
> have also purchased his book on China.

> Thank you, John.

Thanks for the compliment.

Setting up an account is free and takes 15 seconds. Why don't you
give back, by registering and becoming a member.

Yes, thank you, John.

[Guest]

Just humor me with 1 thing, "Guest"

How old are you, roughly

Gen X

Are you always this obnoxious?

[Cool Breeze]

Just humor me with 1 thing, "Guest"

How old are you, roughly

Gen X

Are you always this obnoxious?

At least you answered. Why is that obnoxious?

It proved my point, by the way.

[Guest]

Just humor me with 1 thing, "Guest"

How old are you, roughly

Gen X

Are you always this obnoxious?

At least you answered. Why is that obnoxious?

It proved my point, by the way.

Yeah, that you are an an insecure weirdo. BTW, I think you got the mysterious "Guests" mixed up...

[Xeraphim1]

Looks like John can add another item to his verified list:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2 ... ack-video

Chinese Spies Accused of Using Huawei in Secret Telecom Hack

(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government has warned for years that products from China’s Huawei Technologies Co., the world’s biggest maker of telecommunications equipment, pose a national security risk for any countries that use them. As Washington has waged a global campaign to block the company from supplying state-of-the-art 5G wireless networks, Huawei and its supporters have dismissed the claims as lacking evidence.

Now a Bloomberg News investigation has found a key piece of evidence underpinning the U.S. efforts — a previously unreported breach that occurred halfway around the world nearly a decade ago.

In 2012, Australian intelligence officials informed their U.S. counterparts that they had detected a sophisticated intrusion into the country's telecommunications systems. It began, they said, with a software update from Huawei that was loaded with malicious code.

The breach and subsequent intelligence sharing was confirmed by nearly two dozen former national security officials who received briefings about the matter from Australian and U.S. agencies from 2012 to 2019. The incident substantiated suspicions in both countries that China used Huawei equipment as a conduit for espionage, and it has remained a core part of a case they’ve built against the Chinese company, even as the breach’s existence has never been made public, the former officials said.

The briefings described to Bloomberg contained varying degrees of detail, and the former officials who received them had different levels of knowledge of — and willingness to discuss — specifics. Seven of them agreed to provide detailed accounts of the evidence uncovered by Australian authorities and included in their briefings.

At the core of the case, those officials said, was a software update from Huawei that was installed on the network of a major Australian telecommunications company. The update appeared legitimate, but it contained malicious code that worked much like a digital wiretap, reprogramming the infected equipment to record all the communications passing through it before sending the data to China, they said. After a few days, that code deleted itself, the result of a clever self-destruct mechanism embedded in the update, they said. Ultimately, Australia's intelligence agencies determined that China’s spy services were behind the breach, having infiltrated the ranks of Huawei technicians who helped maintain the equipment and pushed the update to the telecom’s systems.

Guided by Australia's tip, American intelligence agencies that year confirmed a similar attack from China using Huawei equipment located in the U.S., six of the former officials said, declining to provide further detail.

Mike Rogers, a former Republican congressman from Michigan who was chair of the U.S. House of Representatives intelligence committee from 2011 to 2015, declined to discuss the incidents. But he confirmed that national bans against Huawei have been driven in part by evidence, presented in private to world leaders, that China has manipulated the company’s products through tampered software updates, also known as patches.

“All their intelligence services have pored over the same material,” said Rogers, a former FBI agent who is now a national security commentator on CNN. “This whole body of work has come to the same conclusion: It's all about administrative access, and the administrative patches that come out of Beijing are not to be trusted.”

it seems that this information has been widely shared with other countries which makes you wonder about those countries which are still allowing the use of Huawei equipment. The proposed F-35 sale to the UAE is currently in limbo and the main sticking point seems to be Chinese activity in UAE, especially in telecoms. You have to think about why certain countries have no apparent concern.

[Xeraphim1]

Also on the China front:

Exclusive-China to ban online brokers from offering offshore trading to mainland clients -sources


https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets ... entnewsntp

HONG KONG (Reuters) -Chinese regulators are planning to ban online brokerages such as Futu Holdings Ltd and UP Fintech Holding Ltd from offering offshore trading services to mainland clients due to concern about data security and capital outflows, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The Nasdaq-listed Chinese firms are two of the biggest players in the sector and a ban would block millions of retail investors in mainland China from trading securities easily in markets such as the United States and Hong Kong.

Firms are likely to be notified of a ban in "the coming months", said one of four sources who spoke with Reuters. All sources declined to be identified as they were not authorised to speak to media.

Futu and UP Fintech, in business since 2011 and 2014 respectively, allow mainland clients to open offshore accounts using personal information such as ID cards, bank cards and tax records.

Both are registered with the Securities and Futures Commission in Hong Kong but that permit does not extend to the mainland. No mainland licence exists for online brokerages specialising in cross-border trades, the sources said.

Looks like China is clamping down harder of ways people can get funds out of the country. Along with this you can see the coming delisting of Chinese stocks on the Hong Kong and NY exchanges and even the controls on bitcoin mining though the latter can be at least partially excused by the energy crunch China has been facing.

[Xeraphim1]

And in more evil empire news:

Russia Lays Out Demands for a Sweeping New Security Deal With NATO

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ru ... ntnewsntp

Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergey A. Ryabkov, offered new details about the demands in public for the first time on Friday in a video news conference in Moscow, amid a Russian troop buildup near Ukraine’s border, raising alarms from security analysts who said the requests seemed all but impossible to accommodate.

The demands went far beyond the current conflict between Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. And most were directed not at Ukraine, which is threatened by the troop buildup, but at the United States and Ukraine’s other Western allies.

They included a request for a NATO commitment that it would not offer membership to Ukraine. The Russians also want the alliance to halt military activity in the Caucasus and Central Asia and they demanded that NATO remove all military infrastructure installed in Eastern Europe after 1997.

In short (HaHa) Putin is still trying to resurrect the Soviet Union. Everything that Russia once had still belongs to it and the people living there have no say in anything because... Putin.

I don't advocate getting into more wars and would prefer we exit most of the ones we're still engaged in. But I also think that Russia is a clear danger not just to its neighbors but to other countries as well due to the downstream effects of its actions. It might be better to settle the Russian question sooner rather than later. Failure to do so will lead to bigger problems down the road. of course I have no confidence in the Biden administration to do the right or even the prudent thing. I'm bracing myself for yet more disappointment.

[Cool Breeze]

I often wonder just how "good" or "noble" the people think the US is, those that vilify other countries. Other countries have issues, no doubt, but it's borderline absurd to me if you are talking about "bad" countries to include anyone but the likes of China and NK, and even China can be understood to be doing what is in its interests - but they are rather disgusting example of commies coming back to haunt the world, yes.

[Cool Breeze]

But I also think that Russia is a clear danger not just to its neighbors but to other countries as well due to the downstream effects of its actions. It might be better to settle the Russian question sooner rather than later.

How are they a "clear danger" and what would you do to make the world better, with regard to this "clear danger"?

[Xeraphim1]

But I also think that Russia is a clear danger not just to its neighbors but to other countries as well due to the downstream effects of its actions. It might be better to settle the Russian question sooner rather than later.

How are they a "clear danger" and what would you do to make the world better, with regard to this "clear danger"?

Russia under Putin has been on a revanchist path for more than 15 years now. It meddles in the affairs of all of the former component states of the USSR to one extant or another. A good example is Georgia where it is sponsoring break-away states (enabled by Russia's invasion) that no other country recognizes. Or consider Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova existing only due to Russian support. Or consider destabilizing efforts against Estonia and Latvia supposedly to support ethnic Russian citizens on those states. Not to mention the big one, of course; the invasion of Ukraine, the theft of Crimea and the continual sponsorship of armed rebellion against the Ukrainian state. Note that Russian would consider any of these acts a casus belli.

Or we can consider the support for the Assad regime in Syria which by prolonging the civil war but not actually solving it led to ISIS which affected other nearby countries. Or consider its support for others of the very worst countries on the planet; the only countries that Russia is actually "friends" with.

What can be done about it? I honestly don't know. I do no that I'm not interesting in dying to defend Ukraine or in sending other Americans to do so, but short of that I think steps need to be taken to both deter Russia and if it proceeds, to punish it mercilessly. I'm thinking expulsion from the SWIFT network for one. Maybe closing the Dardanelles and Baltic seas to its ships. Perhaps freezing every foreign asset belonging to important and maybe even unimportant persons in Russia.

Without the clear expectation of extremely painful consequences, Russia will continue in its bad behavior. Even then I don't know if Putin will even care. He's getting old and he may be willing to throw the dice since he's not going to live all that much longer; he's already almost 6 years past the average for men. But, other Russians know this too and if they see things like this coming to bite them in the butt, maybe they can start taking some of the power away from Putin.