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Hold on. If a reporter is uncovers hostile, state-sponsored corporate espionage in extant, US hardware, it's "shockingly irresponsible" to report that? The pu

Hold on. If a reporter is uncovers hostile, state-sponsored corporate espionage in extant, US hardware, it's "shockingly irresponsible" to report that? The putative fact that our supply chain is so totally compromised is immediately relevant to everyone. I'm sorry-not-sorry if that's inconvenient for the FBI and Tim Cook. In a context where the geopolitical and commercial forces would all strongly prefer that such things never come to light, I'm on the side of more sunlight, not less.

macspoofing 8y ago
Agreed. There are times when it is ethical for a news organization to either delay or scrap publishing a story with national security implications ... but the standard for that should be very high. This doesn't feel like it is one of those. If the facts as reported are true then it is newsworthy and should be reported. If the facts as reported are not true, then it is a colossal screw-up on the part of the paper as this will cause billions in monetary and reputational damage to all parties concerned.
electrograv 8y ago
It's not that the information is irrelevant, it's that knee-jerk responses to leaked information may be worse than coordinated and planned responses to national security threats. Shining a light on this too early (assuming this wasn't an intentional "leak") could be akin to applying antibiotics to an infection prior to actually knowing what exactly the infection consists of, and discontinuing the treatment too soon (we all know how short the attention span of our news cycles are). It doesn't seem unreasonable to analogize fighting spy networks to fighting an evasive infection: If you attack the infection with a half-baked or inconsistent treatment, you risk just breeding stronger infections that are even better at evading you. Maybe I trust the US intelligence agencies too much, but it seems likely that they know what they're doing here. And so far, I've seen no evidence contrary to my default assumption that they're operating in best faith for the interests of the US and its citizens in this case.

macspoofing 8y ago

Agreed. There are times when it is ethical for a news organization to either delay or scrap publishing a story with national security implications ... but the standard for that should be very high. This doesn't feel like it is one of those. If the facts as reported are true then it is newsworthy and should be reported. If the facts as reported are not true, then it is a colossal screw-up on the part of the paper as this will cause billions in monetary and reputational damage to all parties concerned.

electrograv 8y ago

It's not that the information is irrelevant, it's that knee-jerk responses to leaked information may be worse than coordinated and planned responses to national security threats. Shining a light on this too early (assuming this wasn't an intentional "leak") could be akin to applying antibiotics to an infection prior to actually knowing what exactly the infection consists of, and discontinuing the treatment too soon (we all know how short the attention span of our news cycles are). It doesn't seem unreasonable to analogize fighting spy networks to fighting an evasive infection: If you attack the infection with a half-baked or inconsistent treatment, you risk just breeding stronger infections that are even better at evading you. Maybe I trust the US intelligence agencies too much, but it seems likely that they know what they're doing here. And so far, I've seen no evidence contrary to my default assumption that they're operating in best faith for the interests of the US and its citizens in this case.