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U.S. orders closure of Chinese consulate in Houston, angering Beijing
- _JamesA_ 6y agoThey almost immediately started burning documents[1]. > "All I know, it's illegal to have open burning in the city of Houston like that," Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña said. [1]: https://www.chron.com/houston/article/U-S-orders-Chinese-Consulate-in-Houston-to-15425646.php?cmpid=hpctp https://www.chron.com/houston/article/U-S-orders-Chinese-Con...
- kediz 6y agoIt might be a common practice for consulate to do that: Russian consulate in SF did it in 2017 in response for an eviction related to "Russian gate" [1] The U.S used shredder to destroy document in Iran in 70s but Iranians were able to piece back the document to get intel from it so I guess the intelligence community learned a lesson there. [1]: https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/why-was-the-russian-consulate-in-san-francisco-burning-1038018627906 https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/why-was-the-russian-consu...
- fermienrico 6y agoShredding is absolutely fine. The modulating factor is the size of the pieces and total number of pieces that are shuffled. The problem scales with N^2 (?). If the shredder shreds with 1mm particles, it will be pretty much impossible to piece it together and it will depend on how each page mixes with other particles. Even if the particle size is 100mm, if you throw those pieces in a pile of 500 tons of paper, and shuffle it sufficiently, then it will be impossible to piece together the original source.
- HeavenFox 6y agoI heard that if you have a large number of document to shred on short notice, shredder overheating becomes a real concern.
- grugagag 6y agoFire does it better
- fermienrico 6y agoAgreed.
- basementcat 6y agoReminded me of the DARPA Shredding Challenge. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Shredder_Challenge_2011 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Shredder_Challenge_201...
- redis_mlc 6y ago> Shredding is absolutely fine. After the Shah of Iran was overthrown, the US Embassy shredded documents. The next government hired an army of women, presumably weavers, to successfully reassemble the documents.
- bawolff 6y agoI'm pretty sure most consulate's would do the same. They by definition work with documents that are diplomatically sensitive.
- totalZero 6y agoAt some point Beijing is going to fire back. They have a lot of leverage over our global corporations. Rather than making token attacks on them while continuing to consume the goods they make, we should smile and be friendly while methodically moving our manufacturing demand closer to home. There is plenty of cheap labor in Latin America.
- redis_mlc 6y ago> At some point Beijing is going to fire back. Good, let them. That will ensure there's no doubt that we need to decouple with them. > we should smile and be friendly while methodically moving Japan has already started that with mfg. We should do that too, along with unwinding their hegemony over port facilities world-wide. China is literally copying what Japan did in WW2, except with US capital instead of invasions.
- lazyeye 6y agoWe should also spend some time focusing on the utterly incompetent leadership over the previous decades that led us to this point.
- jrs235 6y agoCorporate or government leadership?
- fermienrico 6y agoBoth are in bed with each other. If USA were strategic and had sound economic policies, the government would pass bipartisan laws that prevent an authoritarian regime from gaining the leverage that GP is talking about. It is not too difficult to just look at the trade deficit with China. Not just USA, China has a huge amount of leverage with every nation in the EU, Switzerland, Australia, India, vast APEC region, Korea, Japan and South America. Just look around you and find out what's not made in China.
- xupybd 6y ago
- iask 6y agoHey you! Look over there...woot! Won the election. Didn’t Mr. Bolton said that China was asked to help with re-election? If that’s the case then this is just another political distraction. J
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- myopenid2 6y agoPot calling the kettle black. What an utter joke of a country.