You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘cyber warfare’ category.
China shoots down two B52’s flying through it’s extended air zone.
What now?
The initial reaction would be to retaliate. Strike something of theirs! Expect some nut of the Tea Party to do a stand-up filibuster the Senate and demand nuking Beijing and Shanghai… But they are stupid.
The US is really not in any position to retaliate. We would have to react diplomatically. Pull our staffs, etc, etc,… talk to them through the Russians.
For if we were to launch, we would be launching against a nation smart enough to cybersleath into our NSA, not some dumb Muslim nation locked in the 13th Century. Good chance that not only would we have lost the two planes originally, but our losses would also extend to every single one of our attacking planes. We’d be wiped out. No doubt all our electronic deflections have already been neutralized by the Chinese… Our most effective military retort would be of a submarine at-sea launching of unmanned missiles taking out a minor retaliatory target. But even if that launch was not jammed, once that was over, the extension of airspace would remain, and not be challenged again…..
In any military engagement off its coast, China wins. Pretty much the same way the US would win in enforcing the Monroe Doctrine 2 centuries ago… We have the power here; and you, from way over there, don’t.
So one must use a different perspective.
What is the one thing China most fears… Come on.. you know… It is obvious… Still guessing? Ok, I’ll help you out. China most fears an insurrection of its own people. People who want freedom, privacy, democracy, and those great things we often take for granted. The Chinese willingly let themselves be run by their totalitarian government… At any point, based simply on numbers, ie the number of people in security, and the number of people not, China could rise up, revolt, and rule itself… This scares the Party more than any other threat. They know that whereas the US would certainly not dismember their bodies in a public square, if the revolt got ugly, unlike us the local population would have no qualms in doing so…
Therefore we play to their fear….
The reason China does what it does, is to keep the people happy enough so they don’t revolt. Their economic growth, their development, their capitalism, is all based upon that premise. “If they are happy, we, the Party, stay in control….”
So.
What if we declared economic war? Stopped buying anything from China? China would have to become a consuming nation to survive. Currently China’s wealth is saved and reinvested. Compared to the average US income, which practically buys everything it makes… China buys very little of their own products, those are slated for exports to bring more cash into the country. If the world stops buying Chinese products, then those savings not invested outside of China, need to start buying up the products instead of the other members of the global economy…. That is a short lived proposition. After all, how many shovels will each Chinese buy?
It is further aggravated by China’s demand for raw materials. Food is one. Oil is another. Heavy metals are a third. As each of these become critical, each becomes rationed, the growing restlessness starts whispering that these hardships would never have come to pass, if the regime had not shot down two airplanes that up until a week earlier, had always flown that route with no problem. Now, because of a gross error made by the current regime, millions have to go hungry, aren’t working, and are barely existing… Perhaps the whispering campaign goes, it is time to overthrow the overlords and sue for peace, and get things back to normal?
As China cracks down against this whispering dissent internally, it loses focus externally…
That would be the time to present a show of force. The US then blockaids China. It would take two rings. The outer ring would consist of ships permanently parked outside the range of China’s missiles… Their job would be to impede all international commerce headed to China, boarding and searching every ship… The inner ring would consist of primarily of stealth submarines who would sink or shoot down everything making a mad dash into China…
The Russians would probably take the middle road, most likely benefiting from their proximity to China, but not going as far to alienate the US itself by forming a Sino-Soviet Aggression Pact. It would be impossible to stop all commerce into China. The demand for all goods would make the profit margins of smuggling, impossible to ignore. The Soviets would benefit; Indochina, India, Burma, the Stans, would all benefit, but that amount slipping through, would not compensate for the hurt coming from the Shanghai and Hong Kong docks being empty of commerce….
Sooner or later, a group within the Chinese leadership, would have attracted enough numbers to challenge the military extremists, and something would crack and diplomacy would then become an option….
Point is, the choice to not attack militarily, is not an act of cowardice… it is just so smart. If every American citizen were to follow the Tea Party option and attack China, we would be at a 5 to 1 disadvantage. But if every citizen in China attacked the ruling party and we were on THEIR side, we would have a 20 to 1 advantage….
Attacking China with economic weapons, is no different than surrounding a castle during a Medieval siege and waiting it out….
Super smart. One gets the prize for no cost at all…..
That is why China has erred in its calculations… by thinking only in military terms where it does possess all the cards in its favor…
Unfortunately in war… one does not get to make up all the rules….
We used to joke about how Bush and Cheney always blamed everything on Clinton… The Iraq War… Clinton’s fault. Hurricane Katrina, Clinton’s fault. 9/11, Clinton’s fault…. the National Debt Crises, Clinton’s fault.
Likewise the Republicans have tried to turn that around and when 12/16ths of the National Debt gets correctly attributed to the tenure of one George W. Bush, they like to trombone…. “blaming Bush, again I see…” So that is the humor and why I put the LOL in my title…
I guess it’s an insider thing….. It just made me laugh out loud as I typed it knowing full well I was setting myself up for the same criticism….
It is called Destroy Obamacare. if you are a Republican you know it very well; you keep deleting it out of your junk mail.. If you are a Tea Partier on the other hand, you open it and use it…..
This is what you see….
“ObamaCare is an affront to the Constitutional rights of the people,” it adds. “We have the right to civil disobedience!”
So when the Tea Party yells very loudly that the Obamacare website on being poorly designed, is indicative of the entire program… perhaps you should ask, hmmm…. if there is something they know and aren’t telling? Like a DDoS attack?
Story by Pittsburgh Press. Of course it is easy to point flaws out on the other side, and use it so bolster oneself by saying: “see! Told you we’re the good guys”. Reality is that bad people pop up everywhere so this shouldn’t become the crux or banner of the reform Educational-reform movement.
What it does show, however,… is that the other side, the Charter School movement, is very susceptible to people whose primary goal is to enrich themselves well and quickly.
The charges really come down to a good person thinking that no one would know how much he was making, because the Charter Movement was so messed up organizationally, and therefore it was his for the taking and no one would ever know.
Apparently he wasn’t aware that all his calls and emails could be pulled up at the touch of a button.
Anyways, his policies which are harmful to public education will now not be as effective compared to as if he was still able to convince others over to his way of thinking….
I guess that is a small victory.
The real lesson, is that this rarely happens in public school systems, because there is no money that can be made. Pirates always be lookin’ at the booty….
it is probably time to discuss this.
For years we have quietly known and accepted the negatives of having an NSA. Things like we need it for our protection, or it makes things safer, tended to overide our fears that they know too much already, and I can’t do anything in private anymore…
We accepted that as progress.
However, when you have an organization so secret, that members of Congress are shocked to find out what it is doing, that no one knows who is authorizing who gets spied upon and what, that when brought before the courts for overstepping the Constitution, it can’t be prosecuted because a) it operates under “secret” laws, b) with “secret operations”, c) authorized by “secret courts” …. it is time to shut the entire operation down.
Why do we have the NSA when we have the CIA and the FBI. The FBI covers domestic spying. The CIA covers international spying. So, unless we find out that there are aliens and the NSA is really running the world while we think otherwise, then it probably ought to go.
I find it interesting that those on the far right, and those on the far left are the most outraged by this disclosure. We’ve been stating that news on this blog after the story was broken back in 2007-8 and not one press person cared. I supposed the AP Story opened their eyes this time. Struggling to put a finger on why, I came up with the theory primarily by looking at Congress, that it is the libertarians on left and right who are against, and the conformist, primarily in the center who are acceptive. So this gives us a split where the bottom third and the top third of the political body are opposed to the middle third… If you look at Congress that is exactly how it splits up. Moderates are pro domestic spying, the libertarians are not.
Probably similar is the theory that those beholden to corporate interests are pro-spying, after all, that is normal in the corporate environment; interoffice spying is not limited by any judicial system because it is deemed to be private. Those aghast, tend to fight corporate intrusion from their original political perspective, either left of right.
What the NSA does, watch everything to discern what is happening to increase its chances of survival, is not new. Intelligence has been the secret success of many an empire. Knowing what someone will do before they do it, is pretty comfortable in a world where in a day, we probably pass within 10 feet of 10,000 people (that includes inside our vehicles).
That is what all governments with the capacity, do. The biggest argument against it, is that it is un-American. Sure we have the “ability” to do it, but do we have the restraint, not to…
America has always been ruled by restraint. When Washington was entreated to be the King, he restrained and said no. When the heads of Europe all bet that Washington would invent a method to stay in power, he restrained, and government turned over peacefully. When the US was left in charge of a broken Europe, it put it back together and went home. The only country to invade another and give it back willingly to its original owners.
We had a scare in Boston a while back. Did the NSA protect us then? It’s a secret, no one knows. In Newtown 26 bodies littered the floor of an elementary school. Did the NSA protect us then? When a gunman burst into Aurora firing into the audience, did the NSA protect us then? When Gabby Gifford took a bullet, where was the NSA? Did the NSA protect us then?
That is the point. We are always in danger. But our personal lives are more at risk if our private information should fall into a competitors hands, than being victim of a terrorist. In Boston just 2 people died. In Newton 26. But each and every one of us, is at risk that selective information from ones past, can be used in secret to smear each and every one of us, should it fall into the wrong hands.
What would happen if we shut the entire agency known as the NSA down? A big nothing. They overstepped. It is not knee-jerking anger to respond “Shut them down right now!” It it calm, cool reasoning tipping the balance, that points out simply that is the right way to go.
Oh, wow! My $100 dollar bill is made from one hundred dollars worth of paper too…. Awesome!!!
(in case you didn’t know, this was Twittered out of the RNC overnight.) It will probably be pulled in the morning…. They were really serious thinking that money, actually uses its worth of material… ) Here’s a new joke. How do you give a Republican a stroke? Ask him how a $100, a $10, and a $1 dollar bill can be the same size and thickness and worth different amounts.)
The new owners of Ohio’s voting machines under the brand name HART Intercivic is none other than Tagg Romney the son of one of the candidates Mitt Romney… This brand was one of two targeted after 2004 as being highly corruptible. The infamous Diebold was the other.
The first question is WHY?
The obvious answer is to throw the election.
The second question is HOW?
This is an old clip made 6 years ago after the truth that in 2004, Ohio Republicans flipped a Kerry Victory over into one for Bush. Their method was so send Ohio’s precincts vote totals to Republican headquarters to be tallied. The server was SmartTec based in Chattanooga Tennessee, the same which handled all GOP traffic. Ken Blackwell was never prosecuted because the prime witness was killed in a inexplicable plane crash en-route to the trial.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GamR4y_ykA0&feature=player_embedded
This is America’s Achilles Heal.
Oddly only two counties in Ohio use Tagg’s companies machines. (Green on the map above).. Hamilton and Williams Counties. Williams County appears to be primarily Republican, just this last primary voting Rick Santorium over Romney by a ration of 46 to 26%. Its primary ballot was sparse in Democratic contests, full in Republican, a good sign of which way that county votes.
In the Tea Party Election, 2010, here is how each county voted in the Kasich-Strickland contest. Hamilton… Kascich won by 143,000 to 132,000 and in Williams, Kasich won over Strickland by 6600 to 4900…..
We all know that Ohio can be close. Nothing demonstrates that more than analyzing two districts in Hamilton County, where Tagg’s voting machines will be used for his fathers election….
Those two districts are called Cincinnati 2 and Cincinnati 3. What you are about to see, is my taking the raw data off of the voter returns after the Obama wipeout in 2008 and comparing it to the Tea Party coup in 2010. I think that after examining the data, the motive behind taking his over control of this private company will be clear….
Here is the comparison.
Cincinnati results 2008
Cincinnati 2 A-X 2555 Republican
Difference 4169
Democratic 6724
Turnout… 70%
Cincinnati 3 A-K 366 Republican
Difference 3884
Democratic 4250
Turnout….68%
Now 2010 Kasich/Strickland
Cincinnati 2 1809 Republican
Difference 1899
Democratic 3708
Turnout … 41%
cincinnati 3 314
Difference 2020
Democratic 2334
Turnout……. 41%
Margin of victory 2008 8043
Margin of victory 2010 3919
Potential gain……….. 4124
Kasich won Ohio by as little as 77,000 votes. In these two districts alone, compared to 2008, was 4124 or 5% of the difference. Imagine the same results in a much tighter race?
The obvious Republican strategy is to keep voter turnout low in districts voting 98 to 99 percent in favor of Obama. The easiest method is to control the apparatus upon which votes are placed and counted. If one glances above one sees the difference between 40% and 70% turnout. This is already happening in Williams County. The county board has failed to comply to the Ohio Secretary of State’s requirements for achieving the necessary minimum number of voting units. The reason is because Hart Intercivic has voter machines to sell, but not to rent. The impoverished rural county could certainly afford a lease of more, but not the direct purchase of the new expensive machines. As a result, confusion will prevail, as precincts are combined to double up on Tagg’s company’s voting machines.
If the voting machines are capable of rearranging the votes in these two districts, Ohio could go red if the election is under a 10,000 voter margin. As the video above shows, it is impossible to trace. Gee, the same number of republicans voted, “but wow, look at how few Democrats voted this time. What a drop in turnout. Blacks sure didn’t show the outpouring they did for Obama 2008. Ha, ha, guess that means even they don’t think Obama is up for the job.”
That’s odd most of inner city Cincinnati’s poll workers will tell us;“we thought turnout was rather high! I guess they just didn’t vote for a president, probably just left it blank, that’s all….”
America gets up in arms when it’s privacy issues are at stake. How dare you know that about me! However when someone slips through our net and blows up a building or car, they exclaim, how did you not catch him in time?
Soon to be announced if not already out there, is our nation’s now no longer classified Trap Wire System. In the reports of its inception this package was held up as the ultimate surveillance tool. Cameras across the country would capture data from cities, highways, tolls, parks, public arenas, and everywhere else there is a camera, encrypt the data, then send it to a central point where it gets incorporated with all other data already compiled on every citizen. That data including public on line events such as dating services, chat rooms, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, as well as corporate files, employee rosters, and the vast cesspool of corporate data gleaned each and every time you use your credit card.
On every adult citizen, a computer can spit out a file of facts that even that citizen doesn’t know… The computing power is unparalleled. You are sitting at the stoplight, and for no reason a camera goes off, you think weird, no one tripped it. and instantly your face has been identified, your file pulled, and a program knows you buy Colgate toothpaste 39% of the time. And it knows you are on Zoloft. Your credit score is 593. And you are cheating on your spouse of 27 years with a 19 year old who gets something from Victoria Secret every month…..
A song comes on the radio and your mind jumps to it and you go on never thinking of that random event again…….
Of course there is the other side of the story. You pull up to the light right beside the dufus mentioned above. The same thing happens. You wonder too. Your picture triggers an alarm because your image was last seen in the lower Philippines having been traced there from Manila before paying for the boarding of a private boat off Gov. Lim Ave, then going dark 18 months ago. The alarm is because you were once an acquaintance on the third level of a Detroit sheik who propagated militancy. The file shows you worked with explosives on construction sites, you were terminated at one time being blamed for some missing C4. You denied you had anything to do with it. The camera notes that your car is low in back, and alerts other cameras on the route your are traveling that you will soon be entering their view. Your facebook page shows you liked Iran and support Assad of Syria. Your high school psychological profile says you were quiet and brooding. Your license plate is registered to a car reportedly at the gas station on Rt.273 undergoing lengthy repairs. You are unmarried. You don’t date, and your credit card has a large cash balance, yet you spend very little and that is only on food, gas, and a furnished apartment in Christiana Meadows. As you drive by a transponder, your new phone signal gets captured, and all your calls are now being pulled up. You spoke with a person of high interest, 2 times this morning, for a length of one minute each. Your visage is updated to all local cameras and all transportation portals, and put at the top of each face recognition program. Someone is dispatched to scout your apartment.
You see. That is the dilemma. We enjoy our safety, and abhor our loss of privacy.
If you haven’t noticed already, on your emails sometimes you have these buried within the routing: Abraxas and the others you see will say, Stratfor…. Bloggers are very used to seeing these on a rather regular basis. They are everywhere across the net.
One thing noticeable during the Olympics was that the Brits live this way all the time. They are used to it and prefer the cameras and intrusive software over a coordinated attack on their trains. And no one can blame them. But what the Brits have, and we don’t, is a set of rules regarding this capturing of information. If someone violates this code as did Murdoch, then the ramifications are severe; perhaps bringing down an entire corporate empire. The CEO, Vice President, and quite a few others all charged with illegal actions.
And that is the lesson we need to take. Accept the surveillance but know that if anyone, anyone breaks the code of privacy… you are going to be filthy rich for the rest of your entire life at their or their employer’s expense…. For if that is truly the case, going back to the original story up top, if you got busted for your too hot to fail 19 year old lover, and lost your spouse, for $83 million, you really wouldn’t mind too much… My bet? You would see it as a blessing in disguise. And if you still loved your spouse, don’t worry. When you are worth $83 million, she won’t go far.
This has to become the future of surveillance. Here is why.
I’ll use Facebook as an example. I can always tell when one a friend has to hand over their password to their employer. Whereas they used to be so lively, responsive, and fun, they suddenly stop posting anything showing their personality. Their presence on line becomes reduced to “look at my kid”; “here is my dog”. Whereas you used to be able to talk to them about their spouse, their parents, how they were feeling, how they liked their job, how they were doing in the lover department, how their head was, what hopes and dreams they possessed, how drunk they got, suddenly their presence is as chilled as someone passing Checkpoint Charlie in the 60’s. There is a rigidity that they must conform to. There is a corporate mentality that they must express, and most deal with it by staying silent.
That is not what America is about. America is about freedom, about life…. about liberty….. and about the pursuit of happiness…… What once was open air on the internet is now poisoned with carbon particles, so much so that it is hard to breathe.
We can’t lose our nation’s fun-loving identity. And we can’t stop protecting ourselves by our newer and newer technology. So, what we can do (and we can easily do this), is not to constrain the surveillance, but penalize any misuse of the data that gets captured.
And make the punitive damages so huge, so grand, so big, that American citizens will actually enjoy having their privacy breached when it comes time for the judge to make the monetary judgment. Which means we need to rethink all things private, and that includes the intrusiveness of the press into private lives…
I’m always saddened when someone suffers because of something got out of control on their social media, and everyone gangs up on line, saying, “well, you shouldn’t have put it on the internet.”
Really? REALLY? A person should never have a light moment with an acquaintance, one of those few joyous moments we as people treasure forever, because someone they don’t know, someone they never met, might hack into their account, and spread it across the world?
That is ridiculous. The internet IS us. If we want a fun moment, we have the right to exercise it.. Back when I was growing up, laws were passed and on the books to control the positions that went on within the bedroom. That has fortunately faded away into being ridiculous. The same needs to happen on the internet. And the easiest way, the simplest way, is to have huge, gigantic fines, ones that are so big they will bankrupt anyone, and everyone who breaches another’s privacy.
So what if some entity knows you use Colgate 39% of the time. If no one else ever knows that they know it, as far as impacting anything in the real world, their knowledge of that minutia, doesn’t matter.
We need to start the process. We first announce the problem; we offer a solution; we educate the public; we elect responsible legislators, we pressure responsible legislators, we get legislation signed, and then, we relax and really enjoy the rest of our lives.
It is past time that our personal privacy be now given a price tag that is equal to what it is worth. Something in the range of tens of millions comes to mind….. Hell, you can get $90 million for spilling hot coffee in your lap…..