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I think the difference is that the West is engaging in surveillance and not sabotage. If the CCP was found to contaminate or corrupt data, that is a far step ab

I think the difference is that the West is engaging in surveillance and not sabotage. If the CCP was found to contaminate or corrupt data, that is a far step above Western norms. Also, the West mostly focuses on international relations and national security concerns, whereas the CCP also participates in economic sabotage and IP transfer. For example, it would be big news for the US to have been caught hacking Huawei, but, the CCP does this all the time to US companies.

free_rms 6y ago
First off, the west's covert activities are not limited to benign surveillance. Second off.. aside from the total lack of evidence, why would the Chinese be interested in sabotage here? American discovery of a vaccine means they can rip it off, they're definitely not gonna be paying anyone for it. If we're selling it at exorbitant prices while they give it away practically for free to African countries, that's a huge win for them. Plus, there's the whole taking care of their people thing. Sabotage just gets in the way, nobody cares who invented it 'first'.
- jorblumesea 6y ago
  > the west's covert activities are not limited to benign surveillance. Compared to the CCP, it's fairly benign. The example you gave, Merkel's phone, is a textbook example. Spy all you want, but we're not stealing IP or sabotaging power grids (to my knowledge). We're not interfering with other countries' covid response or possibly corrupting medical records. > why would the Chinese be interested in sabotage here? Presumably, because it gives China a geopolitical edge in the international sphere. Think about how damaging it would be to not only be the country where the virus started, but also not having a valid vaccine. By slowing down Western vaccine efforts and boosting their own, they can regain the upper hand and make China look strong. "Strong China" keeps those leaders in power, and they'll do whatever they can to project the feeling that they're in control and "better" than the West. Also, China is posturing itself to be a counterpoint to the West, but they need to show themselves as somehow a viable candidate for that. So a wide variety of reasons, but it's easy to see why they would do this.
  - free_rms 6y ago
    > Compared to the CCP, it's fairly benign It would take a book-length treatment to evaluate that sentence, but I don't think it's justified. We've been VERY active, around the whole world, since WWII. China's only started to look past their immediate neighbors recently. I guess 'benign' can do a lot of work for you if you think we're the protagonists of history.
    - jorblumesea 6y ago
      I don't think anyone would ever argue that the West isn't active or that they've never done anything wrong. Obviously there are huge wikipedia articles and hundreds of books on the subject. But from what it seems of what little we know of that world, the US seems to have some kind of value system, and the CCP has almost none. Freedom of speech is a good example. If the US were to spy on a citizen, they wouldn't end up in a concentration camp. The US also encourages its allies, as much as it can, to promote "Western democratic values". For example, we were instrumental in turning South Korea into a democracy, from a dictatorship. So it's not as simple as "US bad china good" or "China bad, US good" but I think it's pretty clear China is a totalitarian system which has few scruples, if any. So that's what we mean by "benign". Some rough understanding of "the right thing". It's not that the US does everything great, forever, because clearly...
      - free_rms 6y ago
        Oof, Korea? Bad example. We spent 4 years fighting, with 3 million casualties, in order to leave the border between north/south in the same place we found it, and install an allied dictatorship for the following 30 years. I guess it worked out eventually, but that's to the credit of the Koreans, not us. We were fine with a capitalist dictatorship as long as the Cold War was on. Did you ever hear about this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising Thousands of protestors killed, by US weapons, while our defense dept was kept in the loop. And I had never even heard of it until I went to fact-check myself about the length of the dictatorship there. Funny. I wonder why.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  > First off, the west's covert activities are not limited to benign surveillance. An annoying thing about pro-chinea respondents is they chuck out these claims without backup. They do it a lot. it's irritating.
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  - free_rms 6y ago
    It's not 'pro china' to have surface familiarity with some of the CIA's greatest hits. They tried to kill Castro with an exploding cigar, no joke, like Looney tunes.
    - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
      Claim something; back it up (or at the very least mention it). Nebulous accusations are unhelpful - why do you do them? As for Castro - if it's true ("at least one source asserts it to be simply a myth" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_cigar#CIA_plot_to_assassinate_Castro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_cigar#CIA_plot_to_as...) then a 60-year old looney-tunes plot on one man is very different from, say, illegally trying to annex an entire city illegally in the present. Or Uyghurs by the million. Anyway, ff you say something, provide a citation.
      - free_rms 6y ago
        No.
        throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
        Why not? Is providing evidence for claims too much an imposition?
- thejynxed 6y ago
  Sabotaging the effort of others would actually be something that fit into Chinese political philosophy in this particular case, seeing as how much appearances mean to their long-tail strategy of global dominance and promenance. China being first with a working vaccine doesn't seem important to us, but to them? Fantastic PR for their next round of buying up desriable parts of Africa.
vkou 6y ago
> I think the difference is that the West is engaging in surveillance and not sabotage. 1. Stuxnet. 2. What makes you think this is not surveillance? 3. What makes you certain that CIA black budgets are not spent on sabotage? They don't exactly let anyone audit them...
- jorblumesea 6y ago
  1. Iranian nuclear capabilities are a "legitimate target". For whatever that is worth. We're not sabotaging medical records or taking down Tehran's power grid. 2. Textbook definition of surveillance is watching and collecting. "Active measures" are "spy stuff" but usually far outside of the scope of intelligence collection. 3. Fair point, no way to know. But from what has come out from PRISM/NSA leaks, it honestly looks that the US intel community is mostly postured for data collection.
  - vkou 6y ago
    > We're not sabotaging medical records or taking down Tehran's power grid. Has China sabotaged anyone's medical records, or taken down any power grids lately? > Fair point, no way to know. But from what has come out from PRISM/NSA leaks, it honestly looks to be just purely surveillance. Snowden was an NSA contractor, the NSA would not be responsible for sabotage, their raison d'etre is passive surveillance. The CIA would be, and nobody's dumped 50 TB of random powerpoints from their Sharepoint deployment. However, various leaks over the years strongly imply that they do conduct sabotage - directly, or by funding saboteurs.
    - free_rms 6y ago
      We did have the Church Commission.
blackrock 6y ago
You seem to have rose colored glasses on, in thinking the west does not do things to sabotage others. 1. Stuxnet was active sabotage. 2. Some Chinese antivirus company, Qihoo360, found signatures of computer viruses in China, that matched CIA field programs. Then, the company got placed on the Entity List. Go figure. 3. All the recent propaganda against Huawei seems to be very sabotage oriented. There was evidence that the United States had already stolen Huawei source code, and actively developed tools to hack it. But, whenever someone brings this up, the justification, is that it’s perfectly legal for the United States to do it to others, because it’s enshrined in our laws, but somehow, it’s not ok for others to do it to the United States. Go figure.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  1. Maybe. I thought it was Israeli but maybe. 2. Provide a reference for this (and other) claims please. 3. "All the recent propaganda against Huawei seems to be very sabotage oriented" That might be economic warfare but I wouldn't call it sabotage. > There was evidence that the United States had already stolen Huawei source code yeah, yeah, back it up please. Don't throw out claims. > But, whenever someone brings this up, the justification, is that it’s perfectly legal for the United States to do it to others, because it’s enshrined in our laws Show me someone in the US government saying that.
lappa 6y ago
>I think the difference is that the West is engaging in surveillance and not sabotage. This isn't true though. Pretty much all countries with the capability and incentives to perform cyber attacks do, including the US. For example, US attacks on Russian power grid: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/15/us/politics/trump-cyber-russia-grid.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/15/us/politics/trump-cyber-r... US attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Olympic_Games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Olympic_Games

free_rms 6y ago

First off, the west's covert activities are not limited to benign surveillance. Second off.. aside from the total lack of evidence, why would the Chinese be interested in sabotage here? American discovery of a vaccine means they can rip it off, they're definitely not gonna be paying anyone for it. If we're selling it at exorbitant prices while they give it away practically for free to African countries, that's a huge win for them. Plus, there's the whole taking care of their people thing. Sabotage just gets in the way, nobody cares who invented it 'first'.

jorblumesea 6y ago
> the west's covert activities are not limited to benign surveillance. Compared to the CCP, it's fairly benign. The example you gave, Merkel's phone, is a textbook example. Spy all you want, but we're not stealing IP or sabotaging power grids (to my knowledge). We're not interfering with other countries' covid response or possibly corrupting medical records. > why would the Chinese be interested in sabotage here? Presumably, because it gives China a geopolitical edge in the international sphere. Think about how damaging it would be to not only be the country where the virus started, but also not having a valid vaccine. By slowing down Western vaccine efforts and boosting their own, they can regain the upper hand and make China look strong. "Strong China" keeps those leaders in power, and they'll do whatever they can to project the feeling that they're in control and "better" than the West. Also, China is posturing itself to be a counterpoint to the West, but they need to show themselves as somehow a viable candidate for that. So a wide variety of reasons, but it's easy to see why they would do this.
- free_rms 6y ago
  > Compared to the CCP, it's fairly benign It would take a book-length treatment to evaluate that sentence, but I don't think it's justified. We've been VERY active, around the whole world, since WWII. China's only started to look past their immediate neighbors recently. I guess 'benign' can do a lot of work for you if you think we're the protagonists of history.
  - jorblumesea 6y ago
    I don't think anyone would ever argue that the West isn't active or that they've never done anything wrong. Obviously there are huge wikipedia articles and hundreds of books on the subject. But from what it seems of what little we know of that world, the US seems to have some kind of value system, and the CCP has almost none. Freedom of speech is a good example. If the US were to spy on a citizen, they wouldn't end up in a concentration camp. The US also encourages its allies, as much as it can, to promote "Western democratic values". For example, we were instrumental in turning South Korea into a democracy, from a dictatorship. So it's not as simple as "US bad china good" or "China bad, US good" but I think it's pretty clear China is a totalitarian system which has few scruples, if any. So that's what we mean by "benign". Some rough understanding of "the right thing". It's not that the US does everything great, forever, because clearly...
    - free_rms 6y ago
      Oof, Korea? Bad example. We spent 4 years fighting, with 3 million casualties, in order to leave the border between north/south in the same place we found it, and install an allied dictatorship for the following 30 years. I guess it worked out eventually, but that's to the credit of the Koreans, not us. We were fine with a capitalist dictatorship as long as the Cold War was on. Did you ever hear about this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwangju_Uprising Thousands of protestors killed, by US weapons, while our defense dept was kept in the loop. And I had never even heard of it until I went to fact-check myself about the length of the dictatorship there. Funny. I wonder why.
throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
> First off, the west's covert activities are not limited to benign surveillance. An annoying thing about pro-chinea respondents is they chuck out these claims without backup. They do it a lot. it's irritating.
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- free_rms 6y ago
  It's not 'pro china' to have surface familiarity with some of the CIA's greatest hits. They tried to kill Castro with an exploding cigar, no joke, like Looney tunes.
  - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
    Claim something; back it up (or at the very least mention it). Nebulous accusations are unhelpful - why do you do them? As for Castro - if it's true ("at least one source asserts it to be simply a myth" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_cigar#CIA_plot_to_assassinate_Castro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_cigar#CIA_plot_to_as...) then a 60-year old looney-tunes plot on one man is very different from, say, illegally trying to annex an entire city illegally in the present. Or Uyghurs by the million. Anyway, ff you say something, provide a citation.
    - free_rms 6y ago
      No.
      - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
        Why not? Is providing evidence for claims too much an imposition?
thejynxed 6y ago
Sabotaging the effort of others would actually be something that fit into Chinese political philosophy in this particular case, seeing as how much appearances mean to their long-tail strategy of global dominance and promenance. China being first with a working vaccine doesn't seem important to us, but to them? Fantastic PR for their next round of buying up desriable parts of Africa.

vkou 6y ago

> I think the difference is that the West is engaging in surveillance and not sabotage. 1. Stuxnet. 2. What makes you think this is not surveillance? 3. What makes you certain that CIA black budgets are not spent on sabotage? They don't exactly let anyone audit them...

jorblumesea 6y ago
1. Iranian nuclear capabilities are a "legitimate target". For whatever that is worth. We're not sabotaging medical records or taking down Tehran's power grid. 2. Textbook definition of surveillance is watching and collecting. "Active measures" are "spy stuff" but usually far outside of the scope of intelligence collection. 3. Fair point, no way to know. But from what has come out from PRISM/NSA leaks, it honestly looks that the US intel community is mostly postured for data collection.
- vkou 6y ago
  > We're not sabotaging medical records or taking down Tehran's power grid. Has China sabotaged anyone's medical records, or taken down any power grids lately? > Fair point, no way to know. But from what has come out from PRISM/NSA leaks, it honestly looks to be just purely surveillance. Snowden was an NSA contractor, the NSA would not be responsible for sabotage, their raison d'etre is passive surveillance. The CIA would be, and nobody's dumped 50 TB of random powerpoints from their Sharepoint deployment. However, various leaks over the years strongly imply that they do conduct sabotage - directly, or by funding saboteurs.
  - free_rms 6y ago
    We did have the Church Commission.

blackrock 6y ago

You seem to have rose colored glasses on, in thinking the west does not do things to sabotage others. 1. Stuxnet was active sabotage. 2. Some Chinese antivirus company, Qihoo360, found signatures of computer viruses in China, that matched CIA field programs. Then, the company got placed on the Entity List. Go figure. 3. All the recent propaganda against Huawei seems to be very sabotage oriented. There was evidence that the United States had already stolen Huawei source code, and actively developed tools to hack it. But, whenever someone brings this up, the justification, is that it’s perfectly legal for the United States to do it to others, because it’s enshrined in our laws, but somehow, it’s not ok for others to do it to the United States. Go figure.

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
1. Maybe. I thought it was Israeli but maybe. 2. Provide a reference for this (and other) claims please. 3. "All the recent propaganda against Huawei seems to be very sabotage oriented" That might be economic warfare but I wouldn't call it sabotage. > There was evidence that the United States had already stolen Huawei source code yeah, yeah, back it up please. Don't throw out claims. > But, whenever someone brings this up, the justification, is that it’s perfectly legal for the United States to do it to others, because it’s enshrined in our laws Show me someone in the US government saying that.

lappa 6y ago

>I think the difference is that the West is engaging in surveillance and not sabotage. This isn't true though. Pretty much all countries with the capability and incentives to perform cyber attacks do, including the US. For example, US attacks on Russian power grid: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/15/us/politics/trump-cyber-russia-grid.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/15/us/politics/trump-cyber-r... US attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Olympic_Games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Olympic_Games