China's cybersecurity law grants government 'unprecedented' control over foreign tech China's new cybersecurity law will enable its government to discover potential security vulnerabilities of any company doing business in the country, threat intelligence firm Recorded Future warns. The law grants the China Information Technology Evaluation Center (CNITSEC), an office in the Ministry of State Security (MSS), …
That's the way to do IT. Well done, China. Showing universal lead from way out in front.
And you are living in a fools' dream world if you don't think or imagine that your home nation is not trying to deliver the same facility albeit unknown to you by way of covert and clandestine operations ..... aka Stealth Missions.
And, of course, are such Stealth AIMissions in the Command and Control of A.N.Others now impinging upon Extant Nervous Global Systems. MainStream Memes for ManICQ Media Multiplexxing to CodeXSSXXXX.
Such extreme fields of alienation are not for the faint hearted and foolhardy ...... but are certainly worth all SMARTR Attempts at Entries because of the limitless bounty available within Stores ..... Live Operational Virtual Environments.
The Chinese would just love that Program. I wonder whom one would contact for State Contractoring .... or would they be switched on enough to communicate first, and beta test an AI with Quantum Communications LinkD Networks?
A little something exciting to savour over the weekend, El Regers :-)
Hmm, rampant greed vs. self-preservation*
*which, in the short-term means losing out on business, but in long run means you won't have a Chinese knock-off competing for your global market in 10 years time.
Yep, greed it probably is.
If the tech companies all agreed to pull out of China if they insist on this kind of bullying, then what kind of market would be left do we think?
Oh wait.... Errrrrrr sorry.
Make America great.
That sounds better for a soundbite.
won't stop them nicking evey bit of IP developed in the rest of the world and then suing the companies they nicked it from in China to stop them from using 'our Red Flag Developed IP illegally'.
We (the rest of the world) are well and truly *****d.
Let me be the first to welcome our new Chinese Overlords.
won't stop them nicking evey bit of IP developed in the rest of the world and then suing the companies they nicked it from in China to stop them from using 'our Red Flag Developed IP illegally'
Shocking!
Also, identical to how the US used to behave; before they had much of their own IP, they thought using and abusing European IP was a-OK.
That bit of history, ignoring copyrights and patents registered in other countries, isn't taught in any history course in primary or secondary courses. It took a course at the university in the history of American Economics (love the inherent conceit about which America) to come across it. Similarly, it took one on Labor Economics to get the back story (conditions) that lead to the labor related actions of the 1700's, 1800's, even 1900's. We, as a nation and various peoples are depressingly ignorant.
[quote]
regulations come from a mindset moulded by "haunting memories" of when the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded and attempted to colonise China in the early 1900s.
The digital geography of the Middle Kingdom is now sacrosanct and will not be violated as was China's geography physically during the beginning of the 19th century."
[/quote]
Er, that would be the beginning of the 20th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-Nation_Alliance
China was forced to accept European settlements (Hong Kong, Canton) in the early 1900s, at the end of a ship's cannon, and these entrepots, if we may dignify them, sold opium into China and shipped goods out. Chinese authorities fought long and hard to prevent opium from getting into China, but finally it flooded in (yay British empire!). This was the beginning of many footholds gained by the French, Germans, Americans etc, each getting its own autonomous chunk of China's sea border and each used to establish a hinterland of control and domination.
Companies that sell proprietary technology to China will need to decide to do one of the following;
1) Go out of business in the Short Term, by losing a cash stream from sales
2) Go out of business in the Long Term, since their sales will decrease anyway from the competition of products created in China using the Intellectual Property that China has basically stolen, ahem, been given.
Any company that subscribes to this extortion deserves what they get. If Russia and China think they can get along without the West, let's see if they are right.
I remember as a child my father would not buy us toys or gadgets if they were made in China. I use to think he was an idiot, but, as it turns out, he was a genius!
> I remember as a child my father would not buy us toys or gadgets if they were made in China
I remember as a child my father would not buy us toys or gadgets if they were made in Japan. That stuff was tin-plated crap (back then)
Edit: and sadly, I am very old now
If Russia and China think they can get along without the West, let's see if they are right.
Likely the West would suffer to a much greater degree than China if western companies all cut ties with China. Forget all the phones, wireless routers, PCs, TVs and and on and on that are made there. Even stuff that isn't made in China will use some parts that are made in China, or need materials that are mostly made in China.
For example, I'll bet it would hit Tesla hard if all trade to China was cut off. They don't make their cars there, but something that complex has to have a ton of parts and materials that are made in China which would take a long time to find replacements for and complete the necessary re-engineering.
The US GDP alone would probably drop more than China's GDP, though the whole world would feel the pain. The phrase "cutting your nose off to spite your face" springs to mind when I think of the aftermath...
The amount of US export is irrelevant. Even if the US exported nothing it would have a big impact on its GDP, because how is Apple going to have iPhones made that it can sell to US citizens if they are cut off from China. Yes, eventually they can get production up and running elsewhere, but on the scale of their production that doesn't happen overnight or in a few months.
Now multiply that by almost every US based CE related company, plus all the companies making non-CE products that have a lot of CE content (pretty much everyone, from Caterpillar to Boeing)
China needs to acquire technologies it hasn't quickly and cheaply. Probably the time and money spent on creating acceptable pens ballpoint showed that it's better to force foreign companies to deliver the IP directly using the "large market" carrot.
Companies should just choose to show the Middle Kingdom the Middle Finger, and start to move manufacturing elsewhere.
"So have the Chinese actually invented anything original since the Compass circa 1100 A.D.?"
In 1979, China implemented IP laws. Prior to that, all IP was the property of the Chinese government and there was not much incentive to invent anything. From 1979 to just the past few years, there were laws, but little to no enforcement. In the past few years they have stepped up their enforcement of IP laws. Makes sense. When they had no IP of their own, they weren't much interested in protecting any IP. Now that they do have some, as a direct result of allowing some capitalism in manufacturing, they are suddenly interested in protecting IP.
China is about to hit a brick wall.
Their economy is massive on housing, which is a large bubble about to burst. The wage rises in China have reached a point whereby Chinese business owners are trying to set up factories... even in the USA. People are trying to move their money out of China before the economy blows up... hence the purchase of sections of London, etc. but the Chinese government have banned export of currency. It's got so bonkers there that it is illegal to ship cameras out of the country... a friend is having to go to Hong Kong simply to get it in the post to me.
Even if they have the IP, they aren't going to know what to do with it, because their domestic market is quite different to the West. Personally, China is the last place I'd be looking to do business at the moment, especially with the massive anti-foreigner sentiment going around. I think there was a video going around with, basically, "fuck you foreigner" or something like that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKyWmMKSdds The younger generation are waiting for the two generations above them to die off, and then they'll be able to form a more moderate line.
Another of the problems is that despite being a communist country, it is commercial interests that are in control; hence all the pollution caused by coal industry has kept running, despite all the governments promises to the increasingly angry people. There's going to be big, big trouble, in big China... coming soon to a communist near you...
The citizens in the western hemisphere are so focused on greed and political agendas, nobody cares Russia and China sits back while we fight amongst ourselves. They don't even have to bend over to pick up the pieces from our internal scuffles... we do it for them, handing them piece after piece with a smile.
We've killed manufacturing in the west, because we'd rather pay a little bit less; without worrying about the quality of the product... or the loss of our own local economies.
It's not that simple, even highly developed countries like the US can't play catch up that quickly, for example the rare earths biz, since at least 2010 the yanks have been trying to get their rare earths mining and production working because it is a strategic necessity but they are still dependant on a lot of production from China.
Two decades of investment and building infrastructure might get a couple of underdeveloped countries in play but who is going to make the investment and how to decide where.
But there might, just might, be a shortage of Rare Earth's being mined outside of China. It is true that there are lots of underdeveloped countries left to develop, but, most of those are underdeveloped for good reasons. Even IF such a thing could be agreed upon, it will take decades to "replace" China.
So, I Bet, "the rest of the world" will screech and whine some in public while quietly sucking it all up and getting along with the program in private!
I'm actually surprised that it took this long for the Chinese government to make such a law.
The US government openly spies on the whole world. The only privacy protections USA has is for American citizens. There aren't any restrictions at all for spying on foreigners.
The Internet originated in USA. Which means that a lot of the Internet infrastructure is located in USA. And this gives the US government a huge advantage over other countries in spying on the whole world, including people living in China.
China isn't the first or the last to make such a law. It doesn't make sense for any country to let USA spy on them, the way Edward Snowden has revealed a few years ago.
This kinda thing has been going on for a while in other countries... although the indication that this government may use the vulnerability findings in a offensive way may not be the same end results for countries that have been doing this for almost a decade.
Because if China is allowed to reverse-engineer Apple, Microsoft, et. al...
NATO and CERT are likely to construe those technologies as inimical to Europo-American security and block them from sale in the EU and US (and UK once the UK is no longer in the EU.)
It's possible that this is less about gaining other people's IP than limiting domestic competition with imports of foreign goods.
China wants Western money more than Western tat so they may be playing a short sighted game to reduce imports while maintaining exports.
Of course it may bite them in the arse in the long run if the west stops buying their products.
NATO can go fuck themselves. Everybody in the EU knows that NATO just wants to justify its mostly futile existence at every opportunity (and not much else besides). Getting in the way of Business is not going to help NATO a lot here. And the US? ... Who Cares? Anything they say is only for the glory of the golden chimp in charge!
All your IP are belong to us
The "West" may be about to find that the joy of being able to buy shiny things cheaply comes at a terrible longer term price.
Clausewitz once said War is the continuation of politics by other means and I suspect that the Chinese may have realised they can avoid the messiness of war by "industrial aggression". The later thread about Chinese smartphone cable-maker chucks sueball at Apple is but another example.
There needs to be a united front against these types of laws. International companies must stand together and commit to not providing source code. If one is sued, band defensive funds together and pull out together if necessary. This is effectively China's trade war against international vendors. It needs to be understood that your organization's source code will be shared with competitors in China. Stand firm that there is no option for sharing source code if your company wishes to survive.
So, presuming that said foreign-devil company can actually identify their current source code, what's to stop them running it through a "change every tenth character to 'x'" routine, and handing it to the required bureaucrat?
Or, even better, a tweak that would make the copied tech blow up, if used?
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