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The first half of the article refers without exception to this "Chinese operation." Only in this sentence in the middle of the article do they point out that th
by arthropodSeven 6y ago
The first half of the article refers without exception to this "Chinese operation." Only in this sentence in the middle of the article do they point out that there's only circumstantial evidence to attribute it to China:
> But as with the Russian SolarWinds hackers, investigators have yet to identify who exactly the Hafnium hackers are—beyond Microsoft's assertion that they're state-sponsored and operate out of China—or to pin down the full extent of their motivations.
Obviously, countries do this kind of thing all the time. And an operation of this scale is likely to come from someone with government resources. But it continues to bother me that the requirements for attribution of these attacks never rise above the level of hearsay.
Is nobody even slightly skeptical of Microsoft? The company that eagerly collaborates with the alphabet soup agencies gets to write off an exploit in its own software, courtesy of Chinese state hackers, when we all know _for a fact_ that the NSA pays these companies to keep such exploits around for their own use.
It's one thing to acknowledge that one explanation is likely; it's another thing to give up on skepticism entirely.
- fc373745 6y agoIs state driven media possible in the US? If so, is it possible that the mass accumulation of hatred for the Chinese is a byproduct of state driven media?
- axguscbklp 6y ago>Is state driven media possible in the US? I'm sure there's some of that, but I suspect that even if there wasn't we'd see much the same results. In the US, the state and the mainstream media are essentially the same thing. The people who run the state and the people who make up the mainstream media are part of the same social circles, they go to the same restaurants, they tend to have the same worldviews.
- chrisjharris 6y agoAccusing a group within China of hacking, and hating the whole of China, are two very different things.
- kortilla 6y ago> hatred for the Chinese The equivocation of hatred for the Chinese and hatred for it’s government is itself Chinese government propaganda. Any time criticism comes up of the actions of their government, the deflection method is to say it’s just hatred for the Chinese. This is done to prevent the Chinese people from realizing that people in the West are on their side and they are not their government.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bllguo 6y agofunny that you say this as we are witnessing an uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes. you can't seriously think that nobody conflates the two? and people in the West assuming they know best is as much of a problem as anything else. you're not on their side, you're speaking as if you're above them
- hayst4ck 6y ago> you're not on their side, you're speaking as if you're above them This is a common sentiment with American conservatives. They think liberal people look down upon them from their ivory towers. Honestly, they do. Your average conservative is malnourished with a fox news media diet and isn't educated enough to critically think about their own positions, you can't even engage in a rational conversation with most of them. The GOP at large is a bad faith party who rules for power and dominance, not for the improvement of peoples lives. Rhetoric is their weapon not reason. While liberals are not in favor of white supremacy, religion, or "easy fixes" they do favor policy that would benefit the average conservative person. In the sense that liberals want to see conservative peoples lives meaningfully improve, liberals are on the side of conservatives. In the sense that liberals want to preserve conservative culture and reinforce their world views, liberals are clearly not on the side of conservatives. China has it's own Han supremacy problem (just like America has a white supremacy problem), and while the west is not interested in supporting Han supremacy, I think the average [educated] westerner does want to see the average chinese persons life improve, just not at the cost of Taiwanese lives, Uigher lives, Tibetan lives, or Hong Konger lives, and not at the cost of our own prosperity.
- Isamu 6y ago> mass accumulation of hatred for the Chinese What are you referring to? You mean articles that attribute hacking to actors with connections to the PRC?
- crocodiletears 6y agoThe intelligence community has been known to direct and cultivate media assets. [0] Less directly, much of news reporting is dependent upon access to exclusive and sometimes anonymous sources. There's little to prevent some of those sources from being honeypots meant to indirectly manipulate reporters into parroting a given narrative. Even so, I doubt that antipathy towards China's being driven by any centralized authority. We're entering an era of great power competition with the country, its (ostensible) ideology has historically existed in opposition to the US, and many still see it as the poster-boogyman for the hollowing out of American industries. There's always been tension, and ever since the Trump administration began imposing tariffs and clamping down against Chinese IP and technology theft, it's incidentally become more present in the public's consciousness. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird