China behind online attacks on US. F-secure has smoking gun

[J-man]

The US (goverment) is under frequent online attack. China is suspected to be behind many of those attacks but there is not a lot of hard evidence for it. Now f-secure has appeared to have found such evidence. Ironically it's from the Chinese themselves, in a 20 documentary there is:

camera footage of Chinese government systems launching attacks against a U.S. target. This is highly unusual. The most likely explanation is that this footage ended up in the final cut because the editor did not understand the significance of it.

An embarrassment for Chinese, I wonder if the US goverment or China will respond this f-secure blog post...

http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002221.html

 

[Tani Coyote]

We'll raise hairs over it, the stock market will become chaotic out of fear, but overall, we just have too much to lose from war and too much to gain from cooperation.

We will never go to war with China. MAD aside, we also have MADWE.

 

[ArneHD]

We'll raise hairs over it, the stock market will become chaotic out of fear, but overall, we just have too much to lose from war and too much to gain from cooperation.

We will never go to war with China. MAD aside, we also have MADWE.

MADWE? Mexican Aadvarks Demanding Women's Equality? While I appreciate your sentiment in bringing light to this little known movement, I fail to see the relevance to a possible China - US confrontation.

 

[Tani Coyote]

MADWE? Mexican Aadvarks Demanding Women's Equality? While I appreciate your sentiment in bringing light to this little known movement, I fail to see the relevance to a possible China - US confrontation.

Mutually Assured Destruction of the World Economy.

The USA is a huge buyer, China is a huge producer. We are interconnected.

The USSR and USA wouldn't go at it because of nukes. For us, nukes are only part of the equation - not only is war infeasible with or without them, but the entire world economy would surely suffer a blow as a vicious cycle develops.

Everyone is interconnected. When giants like the USA or China fall, everyone else goes down with them.

 

[bhsup]

An act of war, as far as I am concerned. Should we attack? Well, let's just declare war over it, cancel all of our debt with them, forgive them, and then rescind our declaration of war. That should teach them a lesson.

 

[RedRalph]

An act of war, as far as I am concerned. Should we attack? Well, let's just declare war over it, cancel all of our debt with them, forgive them, and then rescind our declaration of war. That should teach them a lesson.

You cannot seriously think doing this would be better than doing almost nothing.

 

[bhsup]

Forgive me, RedRalph. My logic is uncertain, where commies are concerned.

You get mega cool points if you get that!

 

[RedRalph]

Forgive me, RedRalph. My logic is uncertain, where commies are concerned.

You get mega cool points if you get that!

I don't get it but I'm not cool anyway.


I bet the US hacks China's systems all the time.

 

[emzie]

Forgive me, RedRalph. My logic is uncertain, where commies are concerned.

You get mega cool points if you get that!

It would hurt the US worse than China.

 

[Tani Coyote]

An act of war, as far as I am concerned. Should we attack? Well, let's just declare war over it, cancel all of our debt with them, forgive them, and then rescind our declaration of war. That should teach them a lesson.

While this would work if one wanted a cutdown of government, it wouldn't because few politicians do. Without China, we lose a huge source of cash to fund our programs.

We could fund it with taxation... but who'd be for that?

In the meantime, a cutoff of goods likely means a hike in prices. That'd at least keep the war short.

I bet the US hacks China's systems all the time.

Oh most likely. We probably have some sort of secret gentleman's agreement over it. The commanders drink wine together while everyone beneath them is at eachother's throats.

 

[bhsup]

I fail to see how. We basically blow off a huge chunk of our foreign debt, and are in a position to blow off the PRC and cease all financial dealings with them. I am sure the other Asian nations in would love to take up the slack.

We should never have gotten so involved with the PRC to begin with. This is our chance to do something about it and have a reason we can point to.

 

[Tani Coyote]

I fail to see how. We basically blow off a huge chunk of our foreign debt, and are in a position to blow off the PRC and cease all financial dealings with them. I am sure the other Asian nations in would love to take up the slack.

I'm sure they could find other nations to pick up the slack of buying their goods as well.

The status quo benefits both of us, pure and simple. We get cheap goods and a steady flow of cash to support our excessive lifestyle, they get tons of cash back with which to develop their nation.

Of course, China wins either way because their government actually knows how to make good financial decisions.

 

[emzie]

I fail to see how. We basically blow off a huge chunk of our foreign debt, and are in a position to blow off the PRC and cease all financial dealings with them. I am sure the other Asian nations in would love to take up the slack.

We should never have gotten so involved with the PRC to begin with. This is our chance to do something about it and have a reason we can point to.

It's not as if the debt is an IOU written to China. It's treasuries. If war broke out, China would liquidate their US treasuries and all the sudden America would be unable to do any borrowing whatsoever.

 

[J-man]

An act of war, as far as I am concerned. Should we attack? Well, let's just declare war over it, cancel all of our debt with them, forgive them, and then rescind our declaration of war. That should teach them a lesson.

That would mean you lose AAA (or AA+, according to S&P) status.

 

[Flying Pig]

Everyone's attacking everyone online; the British MoD did an interview for the BBC a few weeks ago which quite casually said that they're literally under constant cyber-attack all day, every day. It's something of a gentleman's playground for now, since nothing serious has ever happened from it and nobody gets hurt, so let's not rush to talk of real war just yet.

 

[Theige]

It's not as if the debt is an IOU written to China. It's treasuries. If war broke out, China would liquidate their US treasuries and all the sudden America would be unable to do any borrowing whatsoever.

That isn't true. If China tried to liquidate all their treasuries they'd have to sell them at a huge loss. Interest rates would spike, how much is uncertain, but there would be plenty of buyers, not the least of which is the Fed, which already owns more treasuries than China and whose ability to purchase treasuries is seemingly unlimited

 

[Thoughtful Thug]

Look to me this isn't a direct attack on United States at all. Just another usual attack on a outlaw "religious" organization (Falun Gong) that the government of Beijing are known to do.

 

[choxorn]

An act of war, as far as I am concerned. Should we attack? Well, let's just declare war over it, cancel all of our debt with them, forgive them, and then rescind our declaration of war. That should teach them a lesson.

I did that in Civ and then nobody would trade with me anymore.

 

[Samson]

Forgive me, RedRalph. My logic is uncertain, where commies are concerned.

You get mega cool points if you get that!

I am not convinced liking star trek makes you cool these days, or ever really...

 

[Elrohir]

I bet the US hacks China's systems all the time.

Yeah....and the fact that we don't hear about it very often could (And to my mind, probably does) indicate that we're just better at not getting caught.

It's not as if the debt is an IOU written to China. It's treasuries. If war broke out, China would liquidate their US treasuries and all the sudden America would be unable to do any borrowing whatsoever.

I don't think it's be that severe. You can't just unload $1.1655 trillion in treasures that easily. (Unless you want to sell them for a fraction for what they're worth -- and even then, it takes awhile.) Since a war between the US and China would probably be over in a matter of days, if not hours, I bet they'd hold onto almost all of it. I imagine they'd try and dump a lot of it in the medium and long term, but frantically trying to unload a couple trillion dollars worth of bonds isn't the greatest idea in the world. And besides, while it would probably drive up interest rates, I think we'd survive -- treasures are trading at rock-bottom rates; even a severe shock wouldn't send them sky high.

And besides, even in the event of war, they wouldn't want to trash our economy. If we go under then that's going to hurt them incredibly, too, and I think the Chinese leadership is far too pragmatic for that. More likely they'd try and accomplish their goals (Take Taiwan, break an embargo, whatever prompted the war) and end it. They don't want a protracted war -- especially since the US navy effectively rules the world. If we wanted to put a stop to the overseas shipping of Chinese goods, we could. There's no winners in this scenario, and the Chinese government's smart enough to know it. (So if there's a war, I bet it won't be as nasty as people think. It's why we're playing footsie on the interwebs -- it's a nice way of screwing with the other guy without blowing the whole international system we've built up to hell.)

Edit: xpost Theiege!