Pentagon Ups Hacking Accusations Against China 151
wiredmikey writes "A new report from the Pentagon marked the most explicit statement yet from the United States that it believes China's cyber espionage is focused on the U.S. government, as well as American corporations. China kept up a steady campaign of hacking in 2012 that included attempts to target U.S. government computer networks, which could provide Beijing a better insight into America's policy deliberations and military capabilities, according to the Pentagon's annual assessment of China's military. 'China is using its computer network exploitation capability to support intelligence collection against the U.S. diplomatic, economic, and defense industrial base sectors that support U.S. national defense programs,' said the report to Congress (PDF). The digital espionage was part of a broader industrial espionage effort that seeks to secure military-related U.S. and Western technology, allowing Beijing to scale back its reliance on foreign arms manufacturers, the report said. One day later, Beijing dismissed the Pentagon's report that accused it of widespread cyberspying on the U.S. government, rejecting it as an 'irresponsible' attempt to drum up fear of China as a military threat."
Surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this supposed to surprise anyone? And, more importantly, does anyone out there actually believe that the US isn't doing the same thing toward [insert long list of nations here]? I, for one, certainly believe they are.
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Is this supposed to surprise anyone?
I'm actually surprised that China doesn't complain about the US hacking them. I mean, they did complain about Coca-Cola's GPS devices being too accurate . . . and they did complain about US electronic warplanes getting too close to their border . . . but have they ever blatantly accused the US of hacking them . . . ?
Do they not know about it? Or do they not want to let the rest of the world know, that they know about it, and carefully monitor the hacking . . . ?
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Because no body really lost anything due to hacking. Do you really believe anything valuable (for the government and military) is even accessible from the internet? They have internal networks separated from the internet.
The reason the US is accusing China of hacking is simple a way to deepen the impression that the Chinese are pirates of intellectual properties. The US is probably using this as a bargaining chip. China of course has complained about a lot things on the US side but the US media will not re
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Do you really believe anything valuable (for the government and military) is even accessible from the internet?
From my experience, yes.
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But the USA is just and pure. It is the land of freedom, so it's okay if they do it.
Re:Surprising? (Score:4, Insightful)
Compared to a communist dictatorship, yes we are. I am free to talk about how much my government sucks, loudly and with great fanfare. It's not that we don't suck, it's that they suck much, much more.
The question is whether we should continue to prop up their mfg industry which seems to be a major attack vector for their espionage activities. Pre-owned cars have a market, pre-ripped jeans have a market, I'm not sure who the market is for pre-rooted machines.
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The US can always rebuild its manufacturing base and build its own stuff as it once did. Of course the corp profits would be lower, but so would US unemployment numbers so everyone wins?
I believe the US Corporations would rather run the US economy into the ground before giving up any profits.
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What the Russians do when it's time to negotiate is they tout some kind of unfairness in their media for a few months and then just in time for the meetings they forgive but don't forget. Usually it's just a plausible fabrication they believe they'll get away with, but they do it so often it's kind of a ritual by now.
Or maybe the Pentagon really is ignorant enough not to put "botnet" and "proxy" together. Who knows. Not my tax euros.
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I have yet to see any convincing evidence supporting the US claims. It seems more likely that as Al-Qaeda seemed less of a threat they needed a new boogie-man to keep the nation's underwear soiled.
On the other hand we have solid, undeniable evidence of US hacking of Iranian computers.
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convincing evidence
I'm afraid no evidence will convince you Amimojo. Your comment history has a record of you using the argument of "we don't know this for sure" when claims are made with regard to China or Iran, and proclamations of "this shows/this proves ..." when claims are made with regard to the US.
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Maybe no evidence was giving each time the comment was made. I myself are also fail to see any evidence to back these claims up. Until then, it's all propaganda to me. I'm not saying China isn't spying, because I'm pretty sure they do. But still, it's all assumptions, no evidence. It's important to note this, because not too far in the future, all these "facts" will be used to justify something bad.
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Note to self: use preview to catch typos.
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Re:Surprising? And more importantly.... (Score:1)
Since they shipped all the jobs, technology, investment, and much "defense tech" to China, who truly
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Polite pretense (Score:5, Insightful)
How long do we uphold the polite pretense that China isn't behind the overwhelming majority of real world hacking? How long are we supposed to avoid to avoid offending them and continue to allow them to steal all of our intellectual property that we supposedly value? At least the Chinese government actually bothers to protect Chinese businesses from foreigners unlike the US government which only protects big business. Turn the other cheek, what if your out of cheeks?
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Because Diplomacy
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Because Cheap Labor.
There, I fixed that for you.
Re:Polite pretense (Score:5, Interesting)
Intellectual Property? Like we give a shit. Here's one fine example from U.S. history.
http://www.bigsiteofamazingfacts.com/why-did-president-thomas-jefferson-smuggle-rice-out-of-italy [bigsiteofa...gfacts.com]
During their early years, the United States freely ignored existing European patents and copyrights as we saw fit. Developing our economy took precedence over some Old World kvetching about theft of ideas.
If you have knowledge, let others light their candles with it. - Margaret Fuller
To press China on theft of IP would require a truthful accounting of the cost. Look no further than the BSA [bsa.org] for the depth of deception on the "cost of software piracy". There is no way China would accept valuation numbers like $200 per pirated copy of Windows 7.
It is my fervent wish that the BSA get just what they ask for -- the ability to absolutely prevent people from using their client's software without payment. Think of how many copies of Windows would be installed in China if it was *IMPOSSIBLE* to pirate. Think of a number close to zero.
There would be an utter explosion of growth in FOSS software. If Microsoft wanted to sell Windows and Office they'd have to lower the price to what the market would actually bear -- somewhere most likely around 10% of current prices.
Congress uses those inflated numbers every year to justify all sorts of bullshit. They value of bogus "IP" valuations far outweigh Chinese IP theft.
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I'm not defending the BSA or the like here so stop putting words in my mouth already. By Intellectual Property I'm talking about things like formulas, trade secrets, manufacturing processes and so on. I'm not defending Congresses BSA based math from the **aa's and never would or will.
My point was that the US has been putting it's eggs into the IP basket and then refusing to guard it. After abandoning a manufacturing economy to switch to an IP based economy our leadership is being incredibly foolish. An IP b
Re:Polite pretense (Score:5, Insightful)
Trade secrets, such as formulas and manufacturing processes are the responsibility of the individual companies to protect, not government. Copyrights and Patents are given governmental protection thru legal prosecution because they are, by nature, disclosed to the public. They are published and the protection of secrecy is not available.
We didn't abandon a manufacturing based economy. The United States is the number one manufacturing country in the world, measured by production. What has gone away is the manufacturing JOBS. This is a result of automation as much as outsourcing, and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. Brush up on the history of the Luddite Movement and the Industrial Revolution to understand how futile an attempt at stopping progress and efficiency by refusing to automate is.
If you aren't talking about copyright and patents, then the answer becomes -- do we value the quality process improvements in Chinese manufacturing more than the supposed "theft" of trade secrets? I'd argue the answer is "no". We gain more from the stuff we're buying from China being better quality than we lose in any lost competitiveness.
I'd also argue that the competitive companies in the U.S. are not sitting still. IP that is "stolen" is ever evolving. If a Chinese company takes Process v1.0 and uses it to improve their manufacturing, they're still behind the company who is constantly upgrading their processes and already on Process v3.0. Copying isn't innovation, and innovation is much more important economically than mass production.
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When you count manufacturing facilities on foreign soil owned by US corporations as US manufacturing output the numbers get skewed.
Re:Polite pretense (Score:4, Insightful)
Trade secrets, such as formulas and manufacturing processes are the responsibility of the individual companies to protect, not government.
I would agree that it's up to them to protect themselves from other companies. But individual companies don't stand a chance of protecting against attacks from the resources available to a nation-state. It is reasonable to expect our government to take action to prevent hacking by the Chinese military and other government sponsored efforts, in the same way that we would it expect it to protect some office building in Hawaii from being burglurized by Chinese special forces.
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individual companies don't stand a chance of protecting against attacks from the resources available to a nation-state
True for China but not true as a statement. 25 corporations bigger than countries [businessinsider.com].
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That's really your argument? Let the Chinese hack us, because rice?
There must be a moral or ethical accounting for today's actions, apart from prior history, or else wars would never end (just for starters). Just as I wouldn't expect to walk into someone's house uninvited and raid their refridgerator, I don't think it's right for others to hack into my computer, uninvited, and take the stuff I have there. At root, that should be pretty easy to comprehend, and I think we can all agree to that.
And I think
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As I responded above, Trade Secrets are not the responsibility of the gov't to protect. It is the sole responsibility of the company that owns it.
Leaving Patents and Copyrights aside, the answer then becomes -- get off your ass, stop whining and properly secure your corporate network.
Companies that bitch about this are just looking to externalize the costs and avoid having to pay for security themselves. I have little sympathy.
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It is still the job of the police to prevent your house being robbed, even if you do a poor job of locking the door.
This attitude in IT of "well, if you didn't secure it properly, you don't deserve to keep it" is just childish victim-blaming.
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You are sadly misinformed. It is by no means the job of your local police to PREVENT your house from being robbed. That is YOUR job. Check with your local police. They are under no obligation to protect you at all.
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It is still the job of the police to prevent your house being robbed, even if you do a poor job of locking the door.
This attitude in IT of "well, if you didn't secure it properly, you don't deserve to keep it" is just childish victim-blaming.
The police do not prevent crime, they deter it by catching and making sure the perpetrators are punished.
While it is a similar concept, it is a fine line. Just because the police exist does not mean one should not bother protecting themselves. You need to help the police help yourself by not making their job impossible.
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Just as I wouldn't expect to walk into someone's house uninvited and raid their refridgerator, I don't think it's right for others to hack into my computer, uninvited, and take the stuff I have there.
Did they erase any stuff from your computer? Did the refrigerator contain the same stuff after the raid that it had contained before it?
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Some of the things on my computer have value relative to their scarcity elsewhere. If I am the only one in the world who has some great idea (or even say, the next Justin Beiber album) then it has much more value than if that same item were emailed to everyone in the world including myself.
I think you're being disingenuous to pretend not to see the argument. If you enter somewhere you're not supposed to be, and exit with something you didn't have before, (and didn't produce somehow while you are there) th
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Further, it's a privacy issue as well. I have a right to keep some things on my computer apart from the public view, just as, when I close the door to my house, I have a right to expect other people not to enter and look around.
Here are some of the tools that allow you to exercise that right: Firewalls. Disk and file encryption. Encrypted password containers. Digital certificates. Intrusion detection software. Properly reviewed and tested open source operating systems, servers, and application software that securely stores and transmits your data.
You don't have a practical right to privacy if you don't close the curtains.
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If you enter somewhere you're not supposed to be, and exit with something you didn't have before, (and didn't produce somehow while you are there) that's theft. That's stealing things that don't belong to you. Why does that seem like such a radical interpretation?
Because according to your interpretation, reading a book and remembering its contents after closing it would be theft as well.
Further, it's a privacy issue as well. I have a right to keep some things on my computer apart from the public view, just as, when I close the door to my house, I have a right to expect other people not to enter and look around.
Well, I won't dispute the issue of personal data. Although I'd like to remind you that you were first talking about "stealing industrial and defense secrets", and suddenly, you've shifted the topic to personal privacy. You're moving the goalposts here.
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"If you enter somewhere you're not supposed to be, and exit with something you didn't have before, (and didn't produce somehow while you are there) that's theft. That's stealing things that don't belong to you. Why does that seem like such a radical interpretation?"
"Because according to your interpretation, reading a book and remembering its contents after closing it would be theft as well."
No, because authors intend for you to read and remember what they write - that's the point of their writing books. Ag
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I wouldn't be so quick to swallow what government tells you to swallow. My first instinct is that both governments are sowing the seeds for the next "cold war", possibly even with collusion. As history has proven over and over again, it is prudent to take every single word that comes out of their mouths with a bucket full of salt.
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How long do we uphold the polite pretense that China isn't behind the overwhelming majority of real world hacking?
As long as we uphold the myth almost as many attacks originate by the USA for from the USA.
How long are we supposed to avoid to avoid offending them and continue to allow them to steal all of our intellectual property that we supposedly value?
I don't know probably until the economy collapses so much of the rest of trade relationship and financial relationship with China is based on various fictions I see no reason this should be different.
At least the Chinese government actually bothers to protect Chinese businesses from foreigners unlike the US government which only protects big business.
Citation please? From my observations working for a multinational with Chinese subsidiaries and talking to people there, corruption is pretty rampant. The business that get 'protection' are the state owned enterprises, and the ones that pay large enough bribes. China might have lots savings in the way of Federal Reserve notes, but in terms of resource availability, sustainability, and social stability is probably as much a house of cards as we are here in the US.
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Until one side or the other has an economic collapse and/or a revolution. Then you declare "victory", lose lots of opportunities brought by peace, and deal with blowback from proxy wars. At least, that's what happened with the USSR.
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How long do we uphold the polite pretense that China isn't behind the overwhelming majority of real world hacking?
They probably aren't, given that there are lots of other kinds of people hacking out there:
- The NSA and US Air Force Cyber Command.
- Israeli's intelligence agency Mossad (Most notably Stuxnet)
- Former Soviet bloc mobsters
- For that matter, the Russians
- Anonymous
- Script kiddies
- Spammers
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How long do we uphold the polite pretense that China isn't behind the overwhelming majority of real world hacking? How long are we supposed to avoid to avoid offending them and continue to allow them to steal all of our intellectual property that we supposedly value? At least the Chinese government actually bothers to protect Chinese businesses from foreigners unlike the US government which only protects big business. Turn the other cheek, what if your out of cheeks?
HEAR HEAR! A hearty Flag Salute to you! Let's institute some strict Cyber Spying Laws that only apply to US citizens! We should Outlaw the use and creation of Hacking Tools! I don't care if you're a "security researcher", you're making tools for the Enemy to use against us! Hacking tools should only be made in secure military secured facilities, or no one will be safe. We CAN NOT Let this Chinese Threat sleep. We implore Congress -- A preemptive strike against the Chinese Cyber Army is needed. Th
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We can keep it up for a while if needed. The trick is to know more then you let on.
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Hackers from China != China, just as hackers from USA != USA. So, can you now please prove that China (meaning the government of China) is behind the majority of real world hacking?
And stop using this stupid term "intellectual property" which could mean just about everything (which is why it is used usually). If I download a mp3 without paying it's called stealing intellectual property. If I hack a defense contractor and steal the design docs of their new bunker busting laser canon it's also called stealing
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Why would any computer with sensitive information on it be connected to the internet?
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Get off your Anti-American high horse jackass. The Chinese freely hack people the world over and I never claimed that this was either exclusively an American problem or that American were the worlds only inventors.
Internet Dispute (Score:5, Funny)
Dear China,
Do you even lift, bro?
Not sure why this isn't a declaration of war? (Score:2)
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They will hack European computers to access US based ones
Re:Not sure why this isn't a declaration of war? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is it not a declaration of war. Hm, let me guess... because signals intelligence is not a declaration of war?
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Slippery slope. You don't want to set the bar for acts of war too low; especially if we engage in the same acts. That being said, maybe it's time for a grassroots counterattack?
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I understand that China is a trading partner but in so many other spheres (human rights, pollution, animal cruelty, IP theft, etc etc ) they're a disgrace and yet they always seem to get a pass, unlike some other countries the US has gone to war with over nothing.
In most of those spheres US is not far behind, if not ahead. If a foreing country with big oil reserves was doing what US is doing with Guantanamo would had been invaded by now (and thats the "over nothing" they do war lately, don't confuse the excuse for the real motivation). And US came second in pollution recently, and that was partly because most US companies do their pollution elsewhere now. And please, lets not touch real IP theft.
If the US blocked all Chinese IP addresses, what would be the worst that could happen?
US would not be able to monitor social activity of all china citizens,
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Government morons - just fix the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Null route all the Chinese networks, problem solved. Worked great on my mail server, amount of spam I got dropped massively.
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Null route all the Chinese networks, problem solved. Worked great on my mail server, amount of spam I got dropped massively.
The attackers aren't idiots. They'll just start using proxies.
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true, but why make it easy for them?
Of course, if fed.gov wasn't a giant pack of idiots, they wouldn't have this problem in the first place.
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true, but why make it easy for them?
Of course, if fed.gov wasn't a giant pack of idiots, they wouldn't have this problem in the first place.
If it's currently easy to identify traffic from China by IP network, blocking those networks would make identifying traffic from Chinese attackers more difficult since it would never come from a known Chinese network. Also, are you saying the federal government should be running private companies' Internet security as well as their own? The fact that agencies have been penetrated does not necessarily mean they're idiots. Network security is hard and no computer is completely safe unless it's switched off an
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I blocked the US and it worked even better [spamhaus.org].
So disconnect and quit using the fucking cloud... (Score:2)
..when dealing with anything you want to keep secret, and your problem is solved. Internet security has always been and always will be, sheer fantasy for gullible managers.
Any questions?
why did sensitive networks get connected at all? (Score:3)
answer: dumb bastards who have the sense of a paper clip. if you don't want to have your hard drives in the morning paper, you don't put them on the Wacky Wacky Webbiepoo. the old joke was you disconnected all cables to the computer, buried it 50 feet deep in concrete, and put crew-served weapons over it if you wanted security.
turns out it isn't a joke, folks. total separation. anything you want scrubbed and publicly availiable, you sneakernet it over to the other machine room on the other side of the
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anything you want scrubbed and publicly availiable, you sneakernet it over to the other machine room on the other side of the Pentagon.
That's what the Iranians did (well, except for the Pentagon part) and even that didn't save them from Stuxnet.
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True, the user is always the weakest link.
"Oh I just found a shiny thumb drive in the parking lot... I know, I'll plug it in to the PC I use to monitor the centrifuges."
It's not hard to envision a government employee/military worker/civilian contractor here doing the same thing.
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answer: dumb bastards who have the sense of a paper clip.
tink...tink...tink...
It looks like you're writing a diatribe. Would you like help, you insensitive clod?
Sorry...that kind of just wrote itself. ;-)
Propaganda (Score:1)
Accusations made by US gov towards foreign countries, especially powerful ones, should be taken with a whole lot of salt.
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Especially when the US engages in wholesale spying on EVERYONE. Looking back in history we had the U2, SR71, secret spy sats, etc...
The planes you mention (both) were specifially developed for spying on the Soviet Union during the cold war. If you want me to believe the Soviets were innocent bystanders during that period I have a bridge I would LOVE to sell you.
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No need to attempt to sell me a bridge, instead re-read where I stated "and pretend they are not doing the same to you".
BTW, I listed those two plans for that explicit reason (cold war period).
The point was the US has a long history of spying, and there is no reason why one should assume other nations are not dong the same.
But the US is not "assum[ing] other nations are not dong the same". They're saying that China is! The difference is that the USSR was an enemy, and China is supposedly not.
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we had the U2, SR71, secret spy sats
And thanks to those we're not standing in a pile of radioactive rubble. It's ignorance of a potential adversary's military capability that's most likely to lead to instability and even more excessive than usual arms buildups. Eisenhower wanted the U-2 because it was ignorance of Soviet capability that lead to the "bomber gap" claim and an enormous US nuclear buildup. Eisenhower was later frustrated because the secret nature of the U-2 flights meant he couldn't tell the public that all the talk of a missile
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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The Terrorists are Funding Free and Open Source Software made by Cheap Chinese Labor in order to Devalue the sacred Intellectual Property made by American Industry! If we fall off the Fiscal Cliff there will be no Funds to Save us from the Armies of the Pot Smoking Freetardians and their legions of Homosexual Concubines! Do you want your children to live in a world where Child Porn is distributed by Slant-Eyed Ladyboys with Neckbeards to further the Terrorist agenda?!
Act now! Vote Yes, on the LIBERTY
Let's Troll 'em! (Score:5, Insightful)
I say we request that businesses and government agencies (especially ones we know they've gone after) set up poorly secured areas with misinformation about "important" projects and such.
Not only do we get them with misinformation, but try to bury them with gobs of data in the form of poorly scanned (un-OCRable) image files.
(Yes, I know the plan probably has flaws, but a boy can dream.)
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proof not speculation (Score:3)
what's interesting is that these people are claiming that the attacks *originate* from china, and that therefore, logically as well, it MUST be the chinese government that instigated these attacks. noooOoo: unless the U.S. has access to the entire world's internet traffic plus all communications globally including mobile phones, telephone lines and every single server and electronic device, there's absolutely NO WAY that they can prove that accusation - period.
why not? because even if an attack "appears" to originate from within china, all that means is that the traffic is coming from an IP address that's inside the china boundaries. and that's *all* it means. it does *NOT* mean that there is not SOMEONE ELSE who is OUTSIDE of china who has compromised that machine and is using it as a DDOS hacking jump-point in order to deliberately mask their true location [and identity].
the hacking could even be done through servers that are compromised and happen to have access to a telephone or a 3G dongle. dial in, initiate attack: you'd never be able to ascertain the identity of the attacker [unless you had access to china's telephone network records].
for all we know, the hacking is actually being instigated by the CIA as a means to have an excuse to justify yet another war or yet another round of political maneuvring.
even if it's random usage of compromised machines rather than intentional misdirection, the percentage of computers compromised by viruses world-wide is quite likely to have a disproportionate number of IP addresses originating from china simply through sheer numbers of people in china who have computers.
there are plenty of foreign governments who would have an interest in the kind of information being claimed to have been sought. why does it *have* to be china that's doing the attacking?
Re:proof not speculation (Score:5, Informative)
The type of analysis used to reach this conclusion includes far more information than source IPs. Based on the wealth of attack data available to even some of the smallest security providers, it's not tough to eventually paint a pretty good picture of China (their military, especially) as a core of generally nefarious network activity. A single IP isn't enough to place blame, but billions of packets over years of activity are definitely enough to attribute a significant volume of the world's hacking directly to the Chinese.
Source: I do a significant amount of network traffic analysis specifically for security.
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I do a significant amount of network traffic analysis specifically for security.
On Slashdot that will probably lead to accusations that you have no idea what you're talking about.
Re:proof not speculation (Score:5, Interesting)
unless the U.S. has access to the entire world's internet traffic plus all communications globally including mobile phones...
Stop being an idiot. I set up a simple OpenBSD name server back in the mid 2000's, about 2008 I noticed an unusual amount of acitivity on it. It had been attacked and comprimised, and whomever did the attacking had re-purposed it to do name serving to asian servers. I easily tracked the trail back to China. Its not fucking rocket science, and secured in my mind that if the Chinese were willing to attack a small name server in a dusty corner they'll certainly attack US Gov. servers. Stop being an apologist for the Chinese you shill.
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it does *NOT* mean that there is not SOMEONE ELSE who is OUTSIDE of china who has compromised that machine and is using it as a DDOS hacking jump-point in order to deliberately mask their true location [and identity]
First, what the hell does this have to do w/ DDOS? We're talking about spying.
Second, suppose Dr. Evil is hacking machines in China to hide the true source of the attacks. Why is he only using machines in China. Why not Russia or Canada or Elbonia? It would be much better for Dr. Evil to choose machines around the world so we couldn't just block Chinese IP addresses and be done with it. This is a case of Occam's razor: if the vast majority of the attacks come from China, then they're probably perpetrated
Those who hack win (Score:1)
Those who can't hack it anymore whine.
What kind of a stupid statement is that anyways? (Score:1)
Of course China spies on the US, much like vice versa. It's hard to choose which of these countries deserves my sympathy less.
Hypocrites (Score:1)
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Simple solution: import tariffs. (Score:2)
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-- H. L. Mencken
Import tariffs drive up the cost of goods to US consumers and reduce exports. An import tariff is an export tariff.
Look. IP--patents--were invented in the 17th century "to promote the social interest": the purpose of IP is to provide incentives to innovate, because innovation benefits us all. In the 17th century a term of 15 years was thought adequate for an IP monopoly.
The "metabolic rate" of business has incre
And the solution is .. (Score:2)
And the solution is not to host your critical and military capabilities on such a flakey OS
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US: We've upped our accusations, now up yours!
Re:You better watch your back bro.... (Score:4, Insightful)
[sarcasm]Yes, like forcing the United States into a real finical crisis is a good idea for China Self interest.[/sarcasm]
China buys US Dollars to keep their own economy stable. Also the United States is their biggest buyer. Put all Americans in the poor house, you have lost your own economy.
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Minor nit:
according to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_partners_of_China [wikipedia.org]
The EU is actually their biggest partner, we're #2. Still, lose the US and that's nothing to sneeze at.
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Now get back to propping up our economy and owning most of our soverign debt.
Care to back that up with a source? They are the largest foreign holder of debt but that is far from owning most of our debt. China owns about 8% of public debt [wikipedia.org].
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Now get back to propping up our economy and owning most of our soverign debt.
Care to back that up with a source? They are the largest foreign holder of debt but that is far from owning most of our debt. China owns about 8% of public debt [wikipedia.org].
China's exports by country [wikimedia.org] - US buys 20% from China.
Also China runs an year-on-year positive trade balance [tradingeconomics.com]
US goods trade: total [census.gov] showing a deficit since at least 1989.
Goods trade with China only [census.gov] - deficit again
Gotta ask yourself the population of which country would suffer the most if the trade between the two would suddenly stop?
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...China is not trying to actively harm America, but rather to upgrade its technology by cheating...
China mowed down 2000 of its own students during Tienamen Square protests for free speech. They've also occupied Tibet since 1959, claiming a 1000 year-old country is a runaway province. They continually threaten Taiwan with invasion and strong-arm Japanese fishing boats all the time claiming they are fishing in Chinese waters, and are arguing with Japan now about some uninhabited islands Japan has administered for 1500 years. And they aren't trying to harm anyone? Good luck with that.
Re: (Score:1)
There is also the Chinese invasion of Vietnam aka the Sino-Vietnamese War in the late 1970s.
Re: (Score:2)
Would Tibet be better, or worse off without China and why (curious, not that i have an opinion).
Bravo, you just invalidated all of your previous points regarding my reply. Have a nice, blind, life.
Re: (Score:1)
While I understand that it feels bad to have your secrets copied, it seems to me that China is not trying to actively harm America, but rather to upgrade its technology by cheating - i.e. copying US technology for free.
... a method first perfected by the USA, and which Alexander Hamilton named "the American System".