Got this note today from a longtime observer of technology and the politics of national security states in response to my asking him to be on an IPA news release. These were his immediate thoughts:
Sorry, I'm doing two other presentations this week and cannot take on a radio assignment.As to the facts of the matter, this seems like pretty routine intelligence gathering employed by every power with the capacity to do so, especially the US/UK/ Australia joint signals intelligence alliance. So far, it does not appear to have been sabotage.It has been publicized for at least 2 reasons: 1) some ops were conducted against the NY Times and other institutions sophisticated enough to detect it, and were then reported as a news story. It then became fodder for every computer 'security' specialist, every DoD hanger-on worried about sequestration of budget, and everyone else with an interest in promoting Cold War-type paranoia.2) there is a particularly intense publicity campaign presently underway against Chinese telecom giant Huawei. Huawei is a serious competitor to AT&T and other large suppliers of telecom equipment. All such companies insist they never, never engage in espionage nor cooperate with nation states in secret operations. None should be believed, of course -- though that does NOT mean that every paranoid surveillance fantasy is true. Anyway, there is no more reason to trust Huawei than there is to trust AT&T.A much more immediate threat and practical to US citizens and businesses comes from huge privatized databases that are generically called 'big data'.On a military/political 'national security' level, China is far, far behind the US in any type of military technology or delivery capacity, except for protracted combat on the Asian mainland -- in other words, China's military is a powerful defensive force.Nevertheless, there is obviously a great deal of money and political gain to be made by demonizing China in US politics, and plenty of entrepreneurs will make use of the situation.