Geo Political Risk

[Davexl]

Something more about Trump & Pompeo...

A cold war does not answer China’s challenge

Guarding the west’s interests and values should not mean an ideological confrontation with Beijing

Financial Times
By Philip Stephens

We are always trying to make sense of the present by reaching into the past. Not so long ago, fashionable commentary on the rivalry between the US and China summoned up a sage of ancient Greece. The Athenian historian Thucydides predicted inevitable conflict between an established hegemon and rising power. Now, the favoured parallel for the Sino-American confrontation is the west’s fight against Soviet communism. Neat as it may seem, that analogy is more confusing than illuminating.

The cold war drum is being beaten most loudly by Donald Trump’s US administration. It is easy to see why. Mr Trump thinks his belligerent stance towards Beijing is worth votes in November’s presidential election. Not so long ago he was boasting about striking a trade deal with Chinese president Xi Jinping, Now, as it condemns Beijing on every front, the Trump White House wants to rally US allies to the cause. How better to do so than to draw a comparison with the west’s resolve to defeat Soviet communism. The analogy is as careless of history as it is heedless of present geopolitics.

The US administration’s matchless ignorance was on display a week ago in a speech by Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, intended to set the terms for a united western stand against Beijing. Speaking ominously of “Communist China and the Free World’s Future”, Mr Pompeo prefaced next year’s 50th anniversary of then, president Richard Nixon’s famous “opening” to China.

Perhaps imagining himself as the George Kennan of our times, Mr Pompeo declared that “securing our freedoms from the Chinese Communist party is the mission of our time”. Kennan, of course, was the US diplomat who set the framework for America’s cold war policy of Soviet “containment”. It was obvious from Mr Pompeo’s speech that he had read neither Kennan’s famous “long telegram” from Moscow nor glanced at the once-secret policy papers setting out the purpose of Nixon’s outreach to Beijing in 1971.
Mr Pompeo’s premise was that Nixon’s goal had been to bring Mao’s China into the western democratic fold. On that basis, he said, it was time for everyone to admit that the policy of “opening” had failed.

The record of the negotiations between Nixon’s envoy Henry Kissinger and the then Chinese premier Zhou Enlai tell a different story. Kissinger was an arch realist, scornful of allowing values to get in the way of hard-headed diplomacy. He did nothing to press the cause of freedom. His purpose, plain and simple, was to isolate Moscow.

The parallel drawn between the ambitions of Mr Xi’s China and that of the former Soviet Union is equally misleading. The cold war was a struggle between competing systems. Today’s Sino-American rivalry is a contest between states.

The Chinese regime has grand ambitions. It wants to push the US out of the western Pacific and establish its own hegemony in east Asia. It is a fair assessment that the long-term goal is to replace the US as the world’s most powerful nation. But, to borrow from Kennan’s characterisation of Soviet aims, Beijing is not seeking the defeat of capitalism across the world.

Moscow presented the world with an alternative way of ordering society. It had fellow travellers, allies and agents in established parties across the world. This was a contest that only one side could survive. Beijing thinks in terms of “spheres of influence”. Mr Xi is not anticipating what Mr Pompeo calls the “global hegemony of Chinese communism”.

This is not to deny the obvious clash of ideologies. On that score, however, Mr Pompeo’s rallying cry for freedom is scarcely helped by Mr Trump’s frequent public applause for unpleasant autocratic regimes, including that of Mr Xi. By the account of his former national security adviser John Bolton, the president offered personal backing to Mr Xi for the brutal crackdown against Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang province.

The Communist party’s repression at home is indeed matched by an increasingly aggressive foreign policy: deploying military might in the South China Sea, economic sanctions against governments that dare to criticise it, and an ugly mix of coercion and threats in emerging nations. But its posture is that of the 19th-century great power rather than the 20th-century Soviet Union. It knows, too, that its claims have to be managed in the context of economic interdependence with the west. The Soviets thought they could crush capitalism. China depends on it.

Certainly, America and its allies should speak out about human rights abuses and draw solid boundaries against aggressive behaviour by the Chinese — and be prepared to defend its values and interests in setting the framework for its relationship.

Mr Trump and Mr Pompeo, however, are seemingly ignorant of the most important piece of advice in Kennan’s
dispatch from Moscow. As vital as it was that the west resisted any Soviet advance, the answer was not provocation or war but to ensure “the health and vigour of our own society”.

Kennan’s last sentence might have been written specifically for Mr Trump: “The greatest danger that can befall us in coping with this problem of Soviet communism, is that we shall allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are coping.”

Source: Financial Times

[GTM 3442]

The Finite State can be accessed here:

https://finitestate.io/finite-state-...in-assessment/

Five minutes or so rolling round the internet will throw up a whole bunch more, of varying degrees of sophistication and credibility.

Although why you'd want to pfaff about with spyware etc when you have the option of a simple, virtually undetectable "kill switch" eludes me.

[Davexl]

The Finite State can be accessed here:

https://finitestate.io/finite-state-...in-assessment/

Five minutes or so rolling round the internet will throw up a whole bunch more, of varying degrees of sophistication and credibility.

Although why you'd want to pfaff about with spyware etc when you have the option of a simple, virtually undetectable "kill switch" eludes me.

Guess the 'kill switch' is the nuclear option, the idea is to listen in, as for all vendors equipment. Wonder how Samsung would do with a similar assessment?

Problem is, with Huawei out of the way now, the world becomes a whole lot more dangerous in a bifurcated world. China & the US are now less dependent on each other which makes the possibility of war higher, if not inevitable at some point IMO anyway.

We'll see...

[Zaphod]

This article represents the kind of stupidity and paranoia coming out of the Trump "regime",
such is the US' desperation to demonise Huawei at all costs.

So much for Fair Global Competition!

Imagine how the US would respond if Intel Corporation's global chip fabrication was totally threatened?

Totally unsubstantiated security risks based on ignorance over how your common Router works.
Until recently, almost all Routers has easy default access usernames and passwords, to allow the user to manage the router, and to allow the ISP eg Spark & Vodafone to remotely manage the Router on your behalf. And they attempt to call this "Backdoor Access".
This "backdoor access" was deliberate, all Router manufacturers have done this,
almost all of them are manufactured in China in any event, not just Huawei!

No security concerns whatsoever, it would be commercial suicide to do so - totally unsubstantiated...

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/25/trum...ttle-plan.html

There is some equivocation surrounding the definition of the term “back door” within the context of IT security professionals, however in this case I am not sure that what the administration have outlined in the article is the actual issue causing them to pressure nations away from using enterprise-grade Huawei equipment.

Having said this, utilisation of default authentication credentials is a common method to gain access to routers by individuals, hacking groups and nation states (NK & Russia being a prominent examples). While most routers and other network devices do allow passwords to be changed as part of the configuration process, some have been discovered to still accept the default password subsequent to change. Others have additional non-documented administrative accounts enabled. Others still utilise internal webservers containing known vulnerabilities many of which are unpatchable. In this context, it could be argued that this is a “back door” method of gaining access to the device.

Once compromised, a number of attacks can take place, such as enrolling the router or (typically) IoT device in a botnet to launch a targeted attack designed to bring down essential systems, to help spread malware (particularly crypto-ransomware in NK’s case), or to probe internal systems for confidential, classified, or proprietary information.

So while these are real risks, there must be other issues at play with relation to Huawei.

[Davexl]

Thanks Zaphod, the Finite State report on Huawei, describes in some detail what these technical issues might be, and yet the UKs Huawei Cyber Security Centre earlier on deemed such issues as 'manageable'. See post 70 above also...

below,

The geopolitically significant Chip Fabrication Wars, with TSMC playing piggy in the middle between China & the US

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/31/t...ntl/index.html

[Davexl]

Meantime -

While US-China joust in a 5G tech war, neither superpower can compete with Europe or Japan in industrial robot production

https://asiatimes.com/2020/08/us-chi...al-robot-race/

[Raz]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-tipping-point


"The 230,000-strong New Zealand Chinese population is diverse, not all are from mainland China, and those who are, voted with their feet. New Zealand politicians need to show this population that they are interested in representing all of them, not just a wealthy minority connected to the CCP."

[Davexl]

Simply put - This is what is exercising minds in Australia right now:

South China Sea: Inside China’s plans to claim ocean dominance

https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/south-china-sea-inside-chinas-plans-to-claim-ocean-dominance/news-story/e5e0c0b8ce3ba0c03cc1262ea0bdbd3f

In more detail from the SMH - 3 Aug 2020:

Why is the South China Sea such a hotspot?

https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/why-is-the-south-china-sea-such-a-hotspot-20200727-p55fxh.html


AND,

This is what should be exercising New Zealanders' minds right now:

There could be an existential threat to NZ within the next 5 - 10 years - I hope that's wrong...

New-Zealands Dangerous Strategic Apathy in an Uncertain Age

https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/ne...uncertain-age/

If you love your country, please read this article - these issues cannot be ignored any longer...

There is still time for New Zealand's Defence establishment to respond - they are fully aware of this situation but are doing next to nothing to upgrade our actual combat capability.

Australia has upped their 10-year Defence expenditure by 40% - When is New Zealand going to respond ? - It takes political pressure from ALL of us...

[Davexl]

Just who really speaks on behalf of the Philippines? - President Duterte (for China)
or its Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr and Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana (for the US)

I wish they would make up their minds!

"Duterte bans exercises with US in South China Sea"

https://asiatimes.com/2020/08/duterte-bans-exercises-with-us-in-south-china-sea/

[Davexl]

Update on public knowledge of China's capabilities...

China can launch nuclear counterattacks within minutes, ex-PLA officer says

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/20...clear-weapons/