Nefarious North Korea

What we find in the North Korean sanctions is there is more than just those transfers at sea that allow goods to enter North Korea even though they are sanctioned.  Preceding the sanctions list by ship and country is a note that is called Sanctions Risks Related to North Korea’s Shipping Practices which is interesting because it tells all the other things that the North is doing besides just getting one of its ships to transfer goods at sea.

1.  Physically Altering Vessel Identification: Maritime vessels meeting certain tonnage thresholds are required to display their name and International Maritime Organization (IMO) number (a unique, seven-digit identifying vessel identification code) in a visible location either on the ship’s hull or superstructure. A vessel’s IMO number is intended to be permanent and should remain consistent regardless of a change in a vessel’s ownership or name. North Korean-flagged merchant vessels have physically altered their vessels to obscure their identities and attempt to pass themselves off as different vessels. These physical alterations include painting over vessel names and IMO numbers with alternate ones.

2.  North Korean Ship-to-Ship (STS) Transfers: STS transfers are a method of transferring cargo from one ship to another while at sea rather than while located in port. STS transfers can conceal the origin or destination of cargo. North Korea operates a fleet of 24 tankers capable of engaging in STS transfers of refined petroleum products and other banned goods. The names and IMO numbers of these vessels are listed in Annex 2, though they are subject to change as North Korea seeks to conceal the identity of vessels it owns and operates.  The attached map shows most of the transfers taking place about half way between Japan and Singapore.

3. Falsifying Cargo and Vessel Documents: Complete and accurate shipping documentation is critical to ensuring all parties to a transaction understand the parties, goods, and vessels involved in a given shipment. Bills of lading, certificates of origin, invoices, packing lists, proof of insurance, and lists of last ports of call are examples of documentation that typically accompany a shipping transaction. North Korea has been known to falsify vessel and cargo documents to obscure the origin or destination of cargo.

4.  Disabling Automatic Identification System (AIS): AIS is a collision avoidance system, which transmits, at a minimum, a vessel’s identification and select navigational and positional data via very high frequency (VHF) radio waves. While AIS was not specifically designed for vessel tracking, it is often used for this purpose via terrestrial and satellite receivers feeding this information to commercial ship tracking services. Ships meeting certain tonnage thresholds and engaged in international voyages are required to carry and operate AIS; however, North Korean-flagged merchant vessels have been known to intentionally disable their AIS transponders to mask their movements. This tactic, whether employed by North Korean-flagged vessels or other vessels involved in trade with North Korea, could conceal the origin or destination of cargo destined for, or originating in, North Korea.

5. Manipulating AIS: North Korean-flagged merchant vessels have also been known to manipulate the data being transmitted via AIS. Such manipulation could include altering vessel names, IMO numbers, Maritime Mobile Service Identities (MMSIs), or other unique identifying information. This tactic could also be used to conceal a vessel’s next port of call or other information regarding its voyage.

Social Media as Persuader

The BBC has a story today that tries, unsuccessfully I’m afraid, to answer a questions many advertisers has asked before them:  Can targeted social media really change behavior of the targets? This is a question that Facebook asks every day for advertisers, but has found the answer is not suited just to advertisers.  Political parties are trying to do the same thing.

In one of my security education speeches, I used to compare the methods of security officers with advertisers.  Advertisers have a target and they want to change the behavior of people in a market segment to get them to buy a particular product.  They are not doing this to get you to be entertained, enlightened, or distracted from your daily routine.  They want you to make a choice when you buy, and that is to buy the product their ad represents.  For you Security Officers, that means something similar.  Given a choice of behaviors, the audience should chose the one that the security rules favor.

How successful are advertisers?  Jerry Thomas at Decision Analyst says:  The advertising industry, as a whole, has the poorest quality-assurance systems and turns out the most inconsistent product (ads and commercials) of any industry in the world.  This might seem like an overly harsh assessment, but it is based on testing thousands of ads over several decades.”  Those of you getting political advertising thrown your way on TV, newspapers, other print media like mail flyers,  etc. know what you do with the stuff you see.  Anyone thoughtfully read that, or watch it with the intent of knowing what it says? Security puts out a lot of stuff just like that.  

But, this group of social media might be onto something in using targeted material for small groups with different messages for each one.  The Russians thought it was worth paying trolls to tailor messaging to certain groups.  Those messages encourage behavior that favored the Russian view of world events, or favored disruption of those who they perceived as enemies.  They got those ideas from political parties targeting of their electorates.  This is a kind of “advertising” that comes from friends, or friends of friends and that is more effective than general advertising campaigns.  But they also create news stories to back up what those trolls are saying.  They use dirty tricks to lie about someone who opposes them.  Just like advertisers paying for good reviews of a product, they pay to have their views presented favorably, and pay for bad reviews of the other companies’ products.  

But, the BBC article does not tell us if the use of social media actually works as a persuader.  Does it actually change behavior?  Does it change enough behavior to make it worth the effort and political backlash that goes with it?  Advertising proves that just because people do it, there is not necessarily a proven effect.  Thousands of ads are not successful, yet are repeated over and over because businesses have always had advertising budgets that have to be spent.   I don’t believe the Russians are any more successful than advertisers as a whole.  At least, I hope not.  

Asked & Answered

I wish the White House Press Conferences would use the term “Asked and Answered” a little more than the spokespersons do.  It is a term I used to have to pay attention to, since many of our military leaders do not like the answer a question more than once in the same meeting.  Usually, it means the people asking the question have not been listening to the questions asked before they get their two questions, nor have they been listening to the answers given to previous questions.

The White House Press Corps has to be the most arrogant group of people ever assembled in one spot on a regular basis.  This current crop has done more damage to the image of the press as a whole than any group ever could have.  They pretend to not hear the questions or responses of anyone but themselves.

I could pick any day as an example, but yesterday they were on the story of Stormy Daniels, the stage name of a woman who is a well known porn star, who says she had sex with the current President of the United States, something he denies.  The sex life of Presidents has always made good news.  So, one reporter asked the question about a payoff given by the President’s lawyer to this woman, the question is answered.  The question had also been answered in press handouts before the session began.  Refer those questions to the President’s personal attorney.  The next two reporters asked the same question phrased a different way, and even though some changed their questions to a new topic, others always came back to this one.  The simple answer is “Asked and answered”, next question.

This group of press has an agenda beforehand that is reflected in the number and types of questions being asked about the same subject.  They want the press conference to be dominated by questions on a certain subject and no other.  They want it to be their news and not the news of White House.  So, we don’t get to hear about the North and South Korea meeting until the very end, and then only briefly.  If you want news, the White House Press Conference is not a good place to get it, unless you are looking for news about the White House Press Corps.

The Importance of Authentication

There was an article today in the Wall Street Journal that reminded me of the problems with deterrence for the kind of events that Russia has created by trying to undermine and influence governments in other countries.  In the U.S. many of the press corps is focused only on Russian involvement in the US national election of 2016, when the Russians have been equally busy in trying to influence Germany, England, France, Italy, and almost any country on its border.  NATO is always a target for them.  As the response to the Russian use of a nerve agent in an assasination attempt in England has shown, a number of countries are starting to think alike in deterring Russia from doing that again.  judging from the subdued response from the Russians, even they know they have gone to far on that one.  As this article points out, a nerve agent is one thing, but political meddling is something else entirely.

When Russian hackers created a false news story about the Lithuanian Defense Minister, they used that story to spread a worm that could take over the computer of anyone who accessed the story on line.  This is a trick the Chinese used in the Great Cannon to discourage their own people from accessing news sites outside of China.  [When Russia was working on its own internal controls for its Internet, it got help from Chinese experts, so there was bound to be some transference of technical capabilities between them.]  Their capabilities make it more difficult for anyone who accesses the Internet to avoid being infected with trackers, penetration tools, and other criminal things that we find hard to avoid.

This is a hard thing to get together on, especially if we focus only on Russia.  We should look first at how to make the Internet a safe place for people who use it.  That nerve agent scared people because it might have infected many more than just the victims.  Cyber infections are making the Internet a dangerous place without putting any of the victims in the hospital.

The companies that need to do a good deal of the work are the ones that profit the most from having a safe Internet, yet they have done next to nothing about authentication anywhere in the web of networks that are out there.  Third party agents are taking control of many of our networks so a source with a story in the Middle East may be a trap that allows my computer to be compromised by somebody in Russia or China.  I can’t stop that.  My service provider might be able to if it gets help from Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, et al.  But none of them can do it alone.  Facebook, Twitter and a few others have already found that Russia bought more ads on its sites than it wanted to admit.  But they also used fake humans to promote causes, help organize events, or influence media stories.  Mark Zuckerberg is not a very sympathetic leader, but lets not blame him for all those ills, when there is almost nothing he can do without any authentication of his users.

Qatar, Russians, the Trump Campaign

I have another Russia-Trump Campaign story for you, only this one sounds like it might be something else entirely.  There is a story in the Wall Street Journal that purports to tell a simple story.  A Republican fund-raiser, Elliot Broidy, for the Trump campaign is suing Qatar because, he says, Qatar saw him as a thorn undermining Qatar's case with Washington and decided to discredit him.  To do that, they hacked some of his email relating to work he (and apparently his wife) did for the United Arab Emirates and, over the last few weeks, released to the press.  Some documents were altered before being released.  Broidy's lawyers say the forensics trace back to Qatar.

The connection to the Russians is hard to follow, but is said to be through another lobbyist, George Nader, an associate of Broidy with considerable work for the UAE.  Nader was questioned by Special Prosecutor Mueller investigation about a meeting between a "Russian executive" and a Republican donor, Erik Prince.   If this story is ever going to get any traction it has a long way to go to fill in the blanks to a Russian connection.  I think there might be one, but it certainly isn't what everyone is thinking.

This doesn't sound like something Qatar would do.  This is, in fact, the playbook of the Russians.  They hack firms doing work in Washington, figure out which ones are working against them, and see what they can do to slow down or stop their activities.  They steal emails, falsify some of them to suit their needs, and release them to the public.  In October, Qatar and Russia signed a military technical agreement that shows their mutual interests in the Gulf.  The Kuwait News Agency says this agreement was signed "in the presence of Vladimir Putin".  They are cooperating, and maybe since they do, they can launch a couple of cyber initiatives too.  I'm not saying the attacks came from Russia, but I would say their fingerprints are all over it.  They get the added benefit of helping Qatar and slamming another Russia-Russia-Russia story at the Trump Administration.

Russians Go Home

Reuters is carrying a Story today That says the following:

British Prime Minister Theresa May, welcoming the show of solidarity, said 18 countries had announced plans to expel Russian officials. Those included 14 European Union countries. In total, Monday's announcements affected more than 100 Russian diplomats - the biggest Western expulsion of Russian diplomats since the height of the Cold War.

So, maybe this will get the attention of Russia’s leaders who seem to think they can do anything they want and have no consequences.  I wonder how you say you are sorry when you try to kill somebody with a nerve agent.  There doesn’t seem to be a word for it in English or Russian.  

Crowd Size Matters

We see in the local marches downtown in Washington D.C. that size really does matter to everyone.  My friend went to march of our Lives, and observed that the crowd size was not what he thought it would be.  He got a seat on the Metro going in and coming out, a sure sign that there were not that many people present.  The organizers said 850,000 came out, but CBS, The Hill and FOX are all saying the number was closer to 200,000.  Please note that is a big difference.

In Washington, you can just about get somebody every day to protest something.  We have seen press coverage of these small (less than 20 people) events get framed in closeups that show the signs and protesters yelling, but never show a view that will allow people to say, “There are only 12 people there.”  These days there are professionals who can estimate crowd size to within 15%, which to me doesn’t sound all that good, but there is a lot that goes into that estimate I guess.  There are generally about 7-10,000 people downtown on any weekend day, so they have to factor that in.  Twenty million visitors come to Washington every year.  That would make a big crowd, so we are glad they all don’t come at once.  We could never get a Metro seat, if that happened.  

But, political clout comes from numbers and not wishful thinking.  The real number of marchers is not going to raise a lot of interest in Congress who see those busses lined up and can count pretty quickly.  They can tell if the crowds are listening or just going along for the ride and having a good time.  If you want to make a point in Washington, that point is best made with accuracy and votes that can be counted.  Making up numbers will not do it.

Making Up Stories for “News”

There is a good article today in the Wall Street Journal about the stories coming out of Russian news services trying to explain the assasination attempt on Sergei Skripal, so that “anybody but Russia” gets blamed for the events that took place in England.  In my third book, I wrote about the Russians elaborate stories surrounding the shooting down of a commercial airliner in the Ukraine.  They said, of course, the Ukrainians did it trying to shoot down Putin’s aircraft.  Not even Russians believed that one, so they just put out more until they found some that worked for their own population.

Now we see the same thing again, to deflect blame from the obvious source of the crime - Russia - to anybody else.  There are some imaginative stories being told as truth here, but they are something else.  The usual standby has already emerged - The British did it to embarrass Russia.  Not even the Russian news services can possibly believe that one, but they throw it out there knowing a few of their own people will believe that conspiracy theory.  The second, he died of natural causes and the people at his hospital just thought he was still alive.  That is creative but not very practical since all we have to do is asked about his death which hasn’t happened yet.  The third was that it was close to the plot of a new TV series in England, so mass hysteria has overcome the UK where television plots are real for everyone who watches.  This one has traction, so they ride this for as long as the news cycle allows.  Truth does not matter - plausible stories are the currency in political warfare.

This reminds me of US news services like CNN, FOX, and MSNBC who create news where there is none, then comment on that made news with an incessant stream of commentators.  The truth is out there, but it is lost in a long string of stories that are “based on fact” but interpreted to be something else entirely.    This is not about news, since these stories are developed by intelligence services and fed to news outlets that work for the government as distributors of Russian stories.  I wish the US news services had the same excuse.  They look more like the Russians every day.

Iranians Indicted for Hacking (Continued)

Iran has been hacking US Universities and other places.  Excuse me for not reacting to what we have known for several years since LinkedIn and others were hacked by the same folks.  See two stories on this, one from the Wall Street Journal, and the indictment itself.  Both are worth reading.  I will have more on this later this weekend, because there is much more to tell.  By the way, the WSJ article has pictures of the indicted individuals, which I thought was better than having just the names listed.  People in the US may know these guys (yes, they are all guys).

All worked at Mabna Institute which we would have a hard time finding out anything about, since they don’t seem to be found on a website.  It was founded by two of the gentlemen charged, with the purpose of stealing intellectual property from Universities.  They targeted 100,000 professors and controlled 8,000 accounts. I guess they don’t need a website for that, but they do need two to sell the data through.

The guys did their work for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and other government agencies in Iran.  They hacked 144 U.S. Universitities, and 176 other Universities  in 21 different countries, 47 Companies (foreign and domestic to the U.S.), several U.S. government organizations, the UN and the UN Children’s Fund.  In an accompanying speech, Rod Rosenstein says, “These nine Iranian nationals allegedly stole more than 31 terabytes of documents and data from more than 140 American universities, 30 American companies, five American government agencies, and also more than 176 universities in 21 foreign countries,” said Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein.  “For many of these intrusions, the defendants acted at the behest of the Iranian government and, specifically, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.  The Department of Justice will aggressively investigate and prosecute hostile actors who attempt to profit from America’s ideas by infiltrating our computer systems and stealing intellectual property.  This case is important because it will disrupt the defendants’ hacking operations and deter similar crimes.”   We would have to wonder about that last part.

The Justice Department believes that there is evidence to prosecute this crime, which is something at least.  They can also be charged with conspiracy and any number of lesser offenses of hacking and stealing information.  It would nice to know what they were after.  These 8000 accounts of professors must have been related to some academic areas that would prove interesting reading.

Allies

At last I have an alliance with a news outlet that favors doing away with the EB5 visa.  Bloomberg Announced today That it favors abolishing that visa program.  Now, we just need a few politicians to jump on board.  Of course they are the ones benefiting the most from the existence of it, so that next step is harder than the first.

China’s Political War Peeks Out

The US White House brings tariffs on Chinese goods and the President speaks to reciprocity of trade rules.  There is no agreement among US political elites on the veracity of tariffs as the acceptable approach, yet they seem to get choked up when asked for workable solutions that don’t involve tariffs.  Amid all this, China decides to respond with tariffs of their own on Midwest agriculture products.  They are focused on the voters of the Midwest who largely went with President Trump.

This is political warfare.  China can shift its trade policies on a dime because they are a centralized government.  They can seek other sources of pigs and soy beans and buy them awhile as the US generates enough pressure to change its mind.  They will help those who want to do that, you can bet.  They can live without for as long as it takes.  Those voters in the Midwest have elections coming in November.  They will revolt and back Democratic candidates  if the have a surplus they can’t sell.  This has nothing to do with the economics, and everything to do with changing US policy by manipulating the views of people outside their own country.  We will see if they are right or not.  If we don’t want to allow them to win, we can agitate for a change in policy, or do what I will do, eat more cereal and pork.

Brennan after Trump

Never in the history of the CIA has a former Director said a President was “playing nice” with Russia because they knew things about him that would harm him.  First of all, even if t were true it would be so sensitive that it could not be disclosed to the public.  Second, anyone with a brain could guess that the CIA probably has lots of things on every leader of our adversaries that would make interesting reading.  Not many want to find out what those things are.  Brennan needs to keep silent, as most exDirectors do.

Facebook’s South Korea Data

Facebook is being fined for rerouting data from South Korea to Hong Kong and the US without warning users.  I was surprised by this for several reasons, but the idea that users get notified when their services are rerouted was really eye popping.  See story at Did anyone ever see a warning notice that said “Your services are now being rerouted to another country” ?  Really?  Our services get rerouted all the time to other countries and none of those clouds or vendors using them, ever says anything.  South Korea is really breaking new ground here.

What really concerned me was routing data to Hong Kong where Chinese censorship applies.  Can we assume that traffic was being intercepted by censors, reviewed, and stored.  Lots of data from South Korea would then be available to Chinese intelligence.   Facebook probably didn’t even think about that.  That makes them careless or stupid.  You pick.

Best Buy Cuts Ties with Huawei

So, in the annals of Huawei, we had AT&T dropping sales of their smartphones, and now Reuters is saying Best Buy has dropped Huawei products.  We had the stories yesterday about Canada, Australia and South Korea raising their interest in what Huawei is up to.  This is really starting to pick up steam, and it is not just about domination of the world’s 5G market.  The interest in Huawei is about espionage, or some other aspect of national security that nobody is talking about.  I have never seen a secret in Washington so well protected.  That’s good, mind you, but curious.

When the U.S. Commerce Department cited ZTE for violations of the Iran UN sanctions, another company was involved and there was speculation at the time that it was Huawei.  The Obama Administration never took action against Huawei nor ever mentioned the second company that was violating those sanctions.  I always wondered why, since they must have known who the other company was.  I checked OpenSecrets for political donations to Obama and found nothing - maybe less than nothing, since Huawei gave very little money to anybody.  Such a large company, and it gave only $1700 in the 2016 Presidential race. That is hard to believe.  So, either the second company was not Huawei, or the $400,000 in lobbying money went to good use.  Even small companies spend more than that.

Suspicion of Huawei Spreads

Interesting article on Huawei comes from the Wall Street Journal.  See article here. It says that there are concerns about Huawei and national security in Canada, Australia and South Korea.  That may not seem like a big deal but it is the first time anyone besides the US has made the claim that Huawei was any more of a risk than any other company.  Nobody yet has exactly what the US knows about Huawei and why it is a threat.  The accusations against it are vague and imply that Huawei might be able to spy on us.  Of course there are many companies that might spy on us, so there has to be more.

Comparative Walls

There is some concern about the height of the proposed border wall between the US and Mexico.  It will be around 30 ft , though that will vary with terrain.  It will intimidate some folks who try to scale it.  Nancy Pelosi, a minority leader in the US, thought that was not the American way.  She may be right in that.  I did a quick comparison with another wall that is 20-23 feet high.  Not quite as intimidating but quite a bit wider.  That wall was the Great Wall of China which is 5,500 miles long.  That is about twice the length of the border.

Embarrassing Creepy Tech

There are three stories in BBC News coverage today that made me cringe.  They were all discussing an area of technology that has passed me by - sex dolls.  In the first story the Paris council is trying to decide if operating a sex doll rental agency is the same thing as operating a brothel. [They finally decided it was not]  The other two are about two other countries, China and the U.S. that have allowed companies to get to the deployment stage with life-like facsimiles of women.  The Chinese withdrew theirs after two days of operation.  The U.S. story had pictures, and this was the first time I had ever seen one of these dolls.  Much to my surprise, they were a lot more realistic than I would have guessed a lab could produce.  They are not Blade Runner quality, but much better than we could imagine given the robots that are currently for sale.

Maybe we are much closer to a robot that looks and acts human than anyone could have guessed.  That was always the domain of science fiction.   Speech synthesis is getting better all the time, though we can still tell we are talking to a machine that answers the phone and asks for the serial number of my computer.  But it is getting better, and in labs even better still.  I can make a conversation between two people by good synthesis, but an analyzer can tell it is artificial.  The human ear may not be that good.  Imagine political officials talking before an election and the “transcript” posted in the New York Times.  After the fact, we could analyze the whole thing and say it was a fake, but it would be too late for the election.  We could always hope the New York Times validated the “recording” before they published anything.

This is an area that suddenly got creepy.  Aside from my wife saying, “Why are you reading articles about sex dolls”, the whole area is open to a wide variety of ways someone could pretend to be me.  We once got in a lot of trouble by photoshopping an image of my boss shaking hands with the Russian leader.  It was a little too realistic for his liking.  But Facebook friends have turned out to be Russian bots, and Twitter feeds are fake news generated in foreign intelligence service.  They used real names of real people to pretend to be them.  In the context of artificial intelligence that has to be creepy.  Somebody can create a narrative about me and use my statements to support that narrative.  I didn’t make those statements, but have a hard time with denial when:  there they are, in print.  The creation of a dossier of facts is just the beginning of a much more insidious form of artificial life.

Russian Information Warfare

I came across something that is interesting reading.  It was written for NATO by Keir Giles and its title is the Handbook of Russian Information Warfare.  It has a few things about how the Russian General Staff thinks about Information War and how that might enter into our thinking about what the Russians have been doing in the national election. 

Complications in Hong Kong

The Wall Street Journal had a story last week that made me think of the Cold War all over again.  It was on the North Korean front companies in Hong Kong.  These are companies that the US and UN sanctioned in trying to crack down on trade between North Korea and the rest of the world.  It is a really difficult thing to do.

As the Journal points out, Hong Kong is made for ease of business development.  You can register a new company in a couple of days and be off and rolling on whatever it is you do.  China has used Hong Kong as a base for many of its intelligence related front companies, and uses the same addresses for many of those.  At least eight years ago, Congress presented a study that showed 35 companies operating from a single address.  Most of them had officers that were relatives of Chinese intelligence officials, something the Chinese have stopped doing since then.  The Journal article identifies a small home listed as the address of a shipping company that was passing cargo off to a North Korean vessel.  The guy who lived there doesn’t own ships and has no dealings with the North.   If anyone had Google-mapped the address they would know there were no company there.

Now, they not only don’t use relatives, they locate the companies in other countries like Panama where they can be discovered other ways.  We have all heard of he Panama Papers which exposed a number of front companies being operated for various evasion and tax reasons.  The Chinese can hide their front companies among those with little chance of detection.

What we need to focus on is not the front companies but the fact that they are Chinese, and many related to Chinese intelligence agencies.  The leadership of China signs UN agreements to bar North Korea from getting any support, while the Intelligence Services of China facilitate the exchange of oil and other products to the North.  Certainly the Central Government knows what is going on.  This two-faced approach allows China to say they are cracking down, and smile, knowing they are really not.

Dictators for Life

With the election of Mr. Putin for another six years, and the appointment of Mr. Xi for life, we have the solidarity of leadership over two main allies in the war against the United States.  Putin has now run Russia for 18 years, and Xi doesn’t have to keep track anymore.  He gets to be there until he dies or is overthrown, usually the same thing for lifetime appointments.  We probably should not imagine a term limit for Putin either.

The South China Morning Post has an editorial today that says it is now more likely that there will be increasing tension with the United States, and the appointment for life will at the root of it.  A long list of possible consequences leads to the conclusion that a dictator for life needs and external enemy and the U.S. is it.  That would go the same for Putin.  The US helps keep both of them in power by making them look good to their own people.  They slap the face of Europe and the US in Crimea, Asia and the US in the South China Sea.  The nationalists in both countries see that as a good thing and love their leaders for it.

They can interfere with elections in other countries knowing they cannot be overthrown in their own. They can build up their militaries and push them into confrontation with the West, probing and testing the resolve of divided allies who can’t get together on much of anything.  If Putin and Xi continue their cooperation - a very successful cooperation - both economic and political gains can be had for them.  Life must look good to both of them.

Russians in the Power Grid

David Sanger and Nichole Perlroth are two of the best writers on cyber because they have really good Washington sources.  Because of that, I was a little surprised to see a story from them that points to Russian penetration of the US and European power grids.  I had some of those stories in my first books nearly five years ago.  Several countries have tried this, not just Russia.  The objective is what the Russians see as battlefield preparation.  If they are going to fight, taking down the power grid is a logical step.  The Chinese threatened atmospheric explosion of a nuclear weapon which does the same thing.

I am against mixing this kind of activity with interference with the national election.  It is not current, or new.  Trying to use nerve gas to kill someone in another country is nasty, but not new either.  What did the countries of Europe and the US do to North Korea when they did it?  Russia has tried to interfere with US elections before using what they call active measures, but they were not made public until many years after they were done.  Intelligence services knew about them but kept quiet.  This is different because the Russian denials are paper thin and disclosed by both political parties.  All that does is make Russia look good to the Russian speaking world.  They love it, and may have helped promote it.

This is what happens when you stick your finger in the eye of your peers.  They drag out everything you have been doing for the past few years and whack you over the head with it.  They won’t love that, but it is justice of sorts.

Trump Admin Hits China on Laws

This should come as a surprise to nobody, but China is stealing technology by passing laws that require the government to get proprietary technology, which they then pass along to state-owned companies to build competing products.  Then, they deny doing anything of the sort.  Of course their credibility is a little low, as a Wall Street Journal article shows today.  New tariffs are coming.

China does this in the name of national security.  They are so afraid that some company will field a product that steals information from Chinese citizens that they have to review these processes to protect their own people.  It has the sound of a reasonable program to protect national interests, when it is just a scam that puts Chinese interests above all others.  It is organized, nation-sponsored theft of proprietary technology on a scale rarely equaled by anyone other than Russia in the 1980s, and they were not nearly as good as China is now.  On the surface, that is the story.

But that really isn’t all there is to it, because some companies do not cooperate with this policy and openly resist turning over some of their technology.  Apple and Cisco did it for a long time.  Microsoft gave China its own version of Windows X to do with as they please.  It is the companies you do not hear about that bother me.  Plenty of companies have turned over technology without protest, saying “it’s the law”, not thinking about the future of their company products.  Those competing products, some with the same hardware and software as the originals are not exactly the same.  Those slight variations allow China to spy on the world, using the technology given to them by companies operating there.

Second, if they don’t give up this technology and do everything they can to avoid calls for it, the Chinese steal it outright.  One of the biggest manufacturers in China avoided giving over their operating system for many years by not allowing it to be housed in a building specified by local Chinese leaders.  They knew if it went into that building, it would be stolen by government officials.  They worked around it for a long time, but it was eventually stolen anyway.  They worked hard to make a new product that was better - and not in the hands of the Chinese.  Now they watch for those copies showing up on their own hardware.  It is a brutal game that is hard to win,, but it is a game that has finally met a government willing to call them on it.

Where are the Boards of Directors in all of this?  Some are silent;  some shrug it off;  some resist.  The ones who made the most money in China are more than happy to cry foul when tariffs are imposed.  They should have been looking out for the proprietary technology that allows them to make that money.

Linking Arms Against Russia

There was a nice touch today in the release of a short joint statement from Germany, France, the UK and US over the Russian assassination attempt in the UK.  White House release.

Releasing it together shows some solidarity on a very simple subject - the use of chemical weapons to achieve an objective - something Russia and Syria have repeated over and over.  They don’t seem to mind what the world thinks about killing children with chemical weapons, but maybe now they will understand that the line crossed twice was a bit too much.  There is going to be a reaction, and consequences the Russians could not have foreseen.  Diplomats have been expelled before.  Business ventures cancelled.  Harsh words have been exchanged.  Those usually are diplomatic things that nobody pays any attention to.  This time, it has a different feel.  The US is imposing additional sanctions on Russia.  More will probably follow.  It just doesn’t feel the same as those diplomatic games played by countries trying to sound like they care, but not really caring.  I’m not sure it will deter the Russians from doing this kind of thing in the future, but they sure will be more careful than they were on this one.  

China Gets More Restrictions

I often thought that the best way to find out how people feel is to ask them, but in China that doesn’t work very well.  With censors looking over your shoulder all the time, it seems like an oppressive culture to live in.  Imagine not being able to say what you want about your government.  That would drive people in the United States to unruliness.  Only now, China is becoming even more restrictive.

Imagine that you are a school teacher and the local Democratic Party leader says those comments you made to your students the other day are unpatriotic.  You need more education and we are going to help you out.  They remove you from school and put you in a detention center run by the Party, not by the local police.  There you are “corrected” until you realize that even things you say to children get back to the state.  What can you do?  Don’t say those things again and do what the Party tells you.  That is exactly what will happen under new rules in China today.  

Tell me that is a better system than almost anywhere else on earth.  A man who defected from a repressive regime when he was 14, told me he could tell the difference between a man who was free and one who wasn’t.  “They act free”, he said.

I saw a BBC reporter trying to interview people coming out of the conference in Beijing and some of them literally ran from her, rather than be questioned about what they thought about the conference.   The Chinese do not act free, probably because they are not.  More restrictions eventually lead to conformance.  The only alternative is revolution.

NOKO and Iran Nuclear

There is a good opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal today that talks about the nexus between the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran.  That relationship will bear on the meeting between the US and North Korea in May.

The Iranians, we all remember, have a deal to hold off their nuclear program in exchange for cash from the Obama Administration and other benefits yet to be decided.  It was certainly not a good deal if we allow Iran to attend testing of weapons and delivery vehicles in North Korea.  They have done that.  

Richard Goldberg and Mark Dubowitz put together some interesting likenesses in Iran and North Korean weapons, though they did leave out the contributions of Pakistan to all of this development.  It wasn’t just these two that got together.   They are also rightly critical of the EU in allowing the Iran nuclear agreement to put weapons grade processing capability in Iran so they can do the development on their own.  The Iran Nuclear Deal, so touted by President Obama, was never characterized as a “good deal” by anyone.  But as a reminder, their conclusion is this:  “ The path to a denuclearized Korean Peninsula thus runs through Tehran.”.   

Nothing in our world is more complicated than the secret development of nuclear weapons, which in North Korea, was aided by Chinese companies which were also sanctioned by the United States.  The Chinese have been allowing their businesses to go around  sanctions on Iran (ZTE was named, but there was one other unnamed company) and directly helping North Korea.  That keeps this cozy arrangement going.  Somewhere in there, the Russians are probably involved too, since they are such good buddies with Iran.  So, who benefits in having a nuclear armed North Korea and Iran, both of whom have openly threatened the United States and Israel with nuclear attack?  “Not us” says everyone involved.  Don’t believe it.  

Britain Responds

Well, the government in the UK came down hard on the Russian diplomatic corp moving out 23 over an attempted assassination using nerve gas developed in Russia.  That may sound harsh to some but it was no more than most countries would do if they had two of these on their soil while the Russians sat on the sidelines saying they didn’t do it.  They were thumbing their noses at Britain, while almost everyone in the world knew they did it.  “Show me proof” said Vladimir Putin.  We aren’t showing you anything, the Brits say.  And, by the way, take back your diplomats.  I wish the rest of Europe reacted the same way.  The Ukraine would be rid of those Russian volunteers.  Maybe the US President could take note too.  The Germans and French might take a lesson here too.  Had enough of Russian interference?

Buying Immigrant Visas

There was a story today on something entirely different than immigrant visas, that points out how Russian immigrants are allowed to remain in the UK.  They buy $2.8 million in UK bonds and they get a long-term visa that allows them to live there as residents.  This seems like a good deal, if you have that much money in the bank.

I have been complaining for years about the same kind of program in the US, the EB-5 Visa program.  I think that is worse, because it gives a person a quick path to citizenship and allows them to contribute to political parties as if they were US citizens.  That is authorizing political meddling in all kinds of local politicians’ elections.  The Chinese even admitted that they take advantage of it.  Ninety percent of all EB-5 Visas are Chinese.

Is this what democracies have become?  We allow foreign individuals to buy their way into our countries?  Citizenship for hire.  For all those people who came to the US and UK and waited for the time to pass until they could apply for citizenship, then applied and waited longer, we are sorry you are poor.  Chinese and Russian rich people get to cut to the head of that line, cheapening the whole process for everyone else.

Xi Jinping is Not My President

A story on BBC yesterday got my attention because it talks about the sudden springing up of posters in English and Chinese saying Xi Jinping is Not My President.  These spread from US universities to those overseas.  It is a little ironic that the Not My President movement in the US was directed at Donald Trump.  It was also ironic that one of the targets of Russia during the US election last year was that same group.  Russians gave them money to help stage rallies.  Yes, they funded them on both sides of the issue, but Not My President was one of the biggest contributions.

Now, I wonder if the Russians are still funding it, this time with Xi as the target.  I thought Russia and China were the best of friends.... Maybe, whoever is doing this knows a good idea when they see one.  Soon we will see Vladimir Putin:  Not My President posters on the streets of Russian villages.  I would love to see them in the south of Ukraine and all the NATO countries that border Russia.  Will someone start a crowd funding site for that?

Narrowing Down Russian Role

The British have come a long way in a short time in narrowing down the role of Russia in the assasination attempt on Sergei Skripal and his daughter, due largely to putting two and two together with some intelligence they already knew.  The BBC published that account today in what will surely be a movie in a few months.  It has a little of everything.

The blame falls on a poison that was developed in Russia and tested in Uzbekistan, where in 1999 the US had access to the site and helped decontaminate it.  The Russians could not have chosen a better poison to use and knew that it was traceable to them.  They deny doing anything, but want to be seen as the culprit.  That makes perfect sense if you want everyone to know what you did, but still want to deny doing it.  “Show us your proof” said Mr. Putin the other day to a reporter, when that was the last thing he would really want.

This was a message to other spies who might want to work with someone in another country - we will find you and you will die a horrible death.  That has been done before in Britain, and they didn’t like it much the first time;  they are really not going to like it this time.  This was reckless, has one policeman in the hospital who came into contact with the victims, and could have affected many more.  People may die and never know what killed them.  This poison, Novichok, was designed to be hard to detect and resistant to some of the common treatments for nerve agents.  It is typical Russian bravado - in your face with this poison.  Yes, you can identify it and by the time you do, it will be too late.  Message sent.   Let’s see what you can do about it.

If it were me, I would expel the Russian delegation from Britain and close the embassy.  Then, stop buying anything from Russia.  It would be harder to pull off another stunt like this without support in the location where it was being carried out.

Broadcom Deal Goes Down

President Trump put an end to the deal for Broadcom to take over Qualcomm and its future in 5G.  The story today in the Wall Street Journal lays out a couple of things not previously known about the case.  Most everybody who reads business news knows that the U.S. was concerned about the Chinese taking over U.S. capabilities in chip making, after they bought six companies in 2016-17 and  tried to buy others.  The President also nixed the Caynon Bridge Capital Partners’ deal for Lattice Semiconductor.  There were accusations, explained in the article, that Caynon Bridge tried to hide its involvement with the government.

First, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) was very clear in a letter filed with the SEC that its concern was still with Huawei “and other Chinese companies” involvement with 5G technology.  We very rarely get to see any of this kind of documentation with a CFIUS case because everything is kept a state secret, or business private.  This letter makes it clear that certain stipulations were put on Broadcom, and one of them was the move (redomicilization - a rediculous term actually used in this kind of case) to the U.S.  Since nothing had been done to actually move the headquarters and incorporate in the U.S., doing it now was clearly and attempt to make CFIUS review impossible.   CFIUS does not generally review cases of US companies buying US companies.  

Second, there was some indication that “there may be opportunities for the companies to work together” which is something we should also be aware of.  When CFIUS headed off Huawei in the purchase of US technology companies, Huawei got around that organization by doing teaming arrangements and joint ventures with the companies they could not buy.  They got the technology they were after - and a good deal more in a couple of cases.  So, the end of the agreement to buy is not the end of the concern over Chinese involvement in the US technology sector, particularly chip sets.

Enter Intel, which has made noises like it was interested in buying Broadcom.  That is a bad idea, though CFIUS would have a more interesting time of it if that deal was proposed.  Intel does a good deal of its chip manufacturing in China, a concern we should have after some of those chips turned out to have a flaw that allowed more anyone into a computer who knew how the flaw worked and could get access to the computer.  It may be a US company, but that should not be enough to allow it to dominate the world market in chips for cellphones.  There are national security concerns equal to the Broadcom purchase in allowing Intel to buy Qualcomm.  

All this tells us is that the Chinese have learned their lessons with Huawei and CFIUS.  They are willing to change their own rules when operating outside China to allow them to buy up the chip market and control it.  They know what they have been caught doing and what CFIUS limitations are most important.  They are trying to take advantage of every law they can.  No wonder the US Congress is proposing expanding the role of CFIUS in the US.

Russians Try to Stop Romney

Interesting story yesterday in the Wall Street Journal about how Russian bots were being directed to try to keep Mit Romney from becoming Secretary of State in the new Trump Administration.  I’m not sure the secondary reference to the New Yorker article on Christopher Steele is worth looking at, since it is biased and misleading, but the Journal article is pretty even in its coverage.  There is also a nice video clip embedded in it that shows how the Russian trolls got information from a number of people.

I was reading the House Intelligence Committee report on the Russian involvement in the US election and it numbers for the troll accounts and numbers of US people who saw them.  Facebook had 120 pages built which were likely seen by126 million people.  Twitter has around 2700 accounts that generated 1.4 million tweets.  Google had about 1100 videos viewed by about 300,000 people.  How much influence this could have had is speculation, but t it does show how a small investment can reach a large audience.  It also shows that the Russians have not stopped their campaigns- they just modified them.  We should do more to disrupt them and keep their agents off of our social media.  DOf course that media has to cooperate with the US Intelligence Community for that to happen.  Let’s start a Facebook page for that!

Of course, if you read my blog, you know I think these numbers were intentionally underestimated by the vendors involved.

Huawei as a Target

There are a few articles this week about the continued US interest on Huawei.  The beat on this story has not changed very much, but something is different.  The US is taking a closer look at the Broadcom- Qualcom purchase, stopped the Federal government from buying Huawei smartphones, and expresses a fear that Qualcomm which licenses its chips to Huawei could be damaged by have them restrained by Broadcom.

There is more to this than these kind of statements that express fears of what might be “if”.  That doesn’t happen anywhere else.  There was a 2012 report cited that mentioned Huawei had connections to Chinese intelligence and could not be trusted.  I suspect there is much more known about Huawei than is contained in a 2012 report.  There must be evidence that Huawei is actually doing something that aids or supports their intelligence services.  We are not going to find out what that is, because it is a state secret.  I think there is a better way.  If they are doing intelligence gathering we should know about it so we don’t buy Huawei smartphones or routers.  Our domestic companies should be buying something like that either.  You remember the old commercial with the theme “ Where’s the beef?”  This is a product of having a centralized government that has been prone to use commercial companies to spy on its own citizens and extend that to other people who use Chinese hardware.  Not very nice, and not something we should keep hidden.

CNN off the Rails

I had not watched CNN for any length of time since the national election a year ago. Today I watched it for several hours to see if it had improved a little.  Not so.  During that period, there was only one story that did not involve President Trump.  I mean that literally, not figuratively.  CNN is absolutely fixated on the President.  All the stories were negative towards the President, two of them inferring that he was a liar, or a representative lied for him.  That was followed by analysts who talked about the stories that were told, each with a different angle on the lies.

I wonder what has happened to professional standards in journalism.  Journalistic integrity has gone out the window.  CNN no longer pretends to be unbiased .  They no longer want to find the “truth”.  They seem to be bent upon defining it.  It is disgusting.

China Spends More on Internal Security than Defense

I saw a couple of articles today on the subject of China’s budget that recognized it is spending more on internal security than Defense - about 20% more.  Josh Chin did the story for the Wall Street Journal.  They have focused quite a bit of their increases in Xinjiang and Tibet, where local police have new technologies (he left out facial recognition which is expanding quickly in China), and numbers.  The comparison numbers are said to be equivalent to internal policing in the U.S. though I doubt those numbers.  Forbes has an article on policing that shows much less spending in the U.S. than those cited for China, though a few major Cities like New York exceed those amounts per person.  Outside the major cities, nowhere near those amounts are being spent.

It is hard to make a comparison on internal security in the US and that of China.  The US does not do the kind of internal security - it doesn’t issue national IDs; it dosn’t require travel permits to go from one part of the country to another;  it doesn’t have the facial recognition infrastructure or DNA databases that China has;  it doesn’t have the censorship roles of policing and enforcement of social media content.  Those have to be very expensive to maintain.  It is no surprise they spend more on internal security than defense.

Russia Poisons Another Spy

Reuters has an article today about a former spy,  Sergei Skripal a former GRU Colonel who gave up several Russian spies to the UK, but now is in the hospital with some ailment that affected not just him but his daughter, who was with him at the time.  Both were passed out on a bench in Salisbury UK.  People in hazmat suits came to the park to round up what they could.  That is not good for the neighborhood.  He came to live there after a spy swap reminiscent of the Berlin Bridge, that took place in Vienna.  The Russians got back some Russians caught in the US, a long story that surely will get more attention now that Skripal has seemed to be caught in the same type of incident that left Alexander Litvinenko dead from radioactive poison.  Nobody ever said the Russians were subtle.    

I should mention, the Russians deny doing anything, as they continue to do in Litvinenko’s case. The Russians deny meddling in the US election and in forcing their way into the south of Ukraine, so they have little credibility.  

Update;  Reuters said in a story today the Britain will pull out of the World Cup in Russia if it turns out that the Russians were being Skripal’s attack.   A high-level meeting will occur internally to discuss actions if it turns out the Russians were responsible.  Let’s get bets at our local bookmaker on whether it was the Russians or not.  That’s not a bet even they would take.  

Qualcomm-Broadcom Reality

Qualcomm is a U.S. company being purchased by a foreign company, Broadcom.  That is where the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) comes in.  By all indications, Broadcom has  already received requests for information from CFIUS before we knew CFIUS was involved.  There is not much new in that.  CFIUS tends to keep things close until a vote is taken, just to keep political maneuvering from trying to influence a decision.  The US government has asked Qualcomm to delay its annual shareholder’s meeting for 30 days while the case is considered.  Qualcomm was set to vote on six new Board members favored by Broadcom.  That would have made the job of a takeover much easier.

What the Wall Street Journal says here is really interesting from a technology leadership standpoint.  If the purchase goes through, Qualcomm can be influenced in an area of great concern to future generations - 5G.  Regulators are concerned that Broadcom might cut R&D on 5G, leaving the field open for Huawei.  Huawei is not exactly CFIUS’ favorite company, having blocked most of its planned acquisitions in the US because it is linked to Chinese intelligence services.  There is a lot more going on there than just this, but that is enough to make this harder to do than even Broadcom thought it was going to be.

Complicating it further was Broadcom’s comments about moving its operations to the US.  That could, if they incorporated in the US, make CFIUS review impossible.  It just can’t happen soon enough to influence how this deal goes. Planning to move to the US doesn’t count in a CFIUS review.

There was also some speculation in these two Wall Street Journal articles that The US Treasury Department drug its feet on getting a CFIUS review.  Why? - would be a good question for Treasury.   The claim in these articles is that the deal had not gone through.  That is not a prerequisite, as the previous inquiries to Broadcom show.  The CEO at Broadcom had done his preparation well, meeting the the President the day before the deal was announced, with the speculation that Broadcom would move to the US.  That gave the President a big win by having a foreign company moving to our shores.  They have had a year for that to take shape, but we haven’t heard about a location search, incorporation plans, or any of the usual movements that go into getting the company settled in.  There is enough intrigue in this to make a movie, but the Huawei connection is the most of it.  The US has some reasons for not trusting Huawei that we don’t know about yet, and it would be really interesting to find out.

Transshipping Chinese Steel

All I heard yesterday on the news shows was that China supplies very little of our steel and tariffs were likely to only hurt our allies.  That is a bogus argument.

We already have tariffs on Chinese steel, (Somehow that seems to have gotten lost in the discussions), and in response to those the Chinese think they are clever by sending their surplus steel to other countries which then export to the US.  They got caught doing that with steel in Vietnam and aluminum in Mexico.  These are transshipping on a massive scale (6% of the market in aluminum held in Mexico) to avoid paying tariffs already in place on Chinese steel.   Sometimes they say they are doing it to have the steel treated in processes that could be done more cheaply in China, but can’t be and still maintain this farce.

In a world market, any metal is a zero sum game.  The Chinese oversupply, and keep prices down.  They subsidize growing mills that should have been closed years ago.  The prop up companies that use steel and aluminum because they are state owned, so they keep their prices down and compete unfairly in all kinds of markets that use these metals.  All of that product gets into the world market and keeps prices low, while increasing dependency on subsidized metals coming out of China.  Every country in the world knows what is going on but wants to pretend that this is a good thing for world trade.  It isn’t.  It is a good thing for Chinese trade, but given the volume of steel they produce, I wonder if that is even true anymore.  It must be an expensive game to play.  The US wants to make it even more expensive to play.

Facebook Fails Exams on Russia

The Wall Street Journal had a piece yesterday with this title:  Tone Deaf: How Facebook Misread America’s Mood on Russia.  It was right on the mark, though it doesn’t seem to have caught the attention of anyone at Facebook.  Facebook is still maintaining that the ads placed on its medium had no effect on the national election - even that it was not intended to have an affect.  The may be more accurate on the latter point than the press is giving them credit for.  Russia played both sides of the political spectrum against the others, stirring up trouble and dissent.  They obviously didn’t really care who won.  And, they haven’t stopped this onslaught of actions against the sitting administration. Had Hillary Clinton won, it would be no different.

Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter all have something to hide here, and they have been crudely ineffective at doing that.  They are getting money from ads paid for by foreign interests who want to help disrupt the US ability to govern.  They allow foreign interests to establish accounts in the US, thus appearing to be US political groups.  Politicians in the US have done no favors to any of us by cooperating and encouraging any attempt to disrupt governance.  Both major parties have had a hand in helping them out.    The Russians are appealing to the basic political institincts of groups of politicians who say, “Anything to win.”

What is missing from all of this is loyalty to the country first.   That goes for Facebook, Google, Twitter and the rest of them too.  They fancy themselves to be global entities with high standards of content, when they can’t rid themselves of live suicides, common murder, torture, and political groups that don’t want to be heard on an isssue as much as be seen.  They are perfectly willing to censor people who hold political views that deviate from their own, but they can’t or won’t censor ones who disrupt their country.  The US Intelligence community should be working with them to root these groups out and stop the interference.  On the flip side, they should be working with the US Intelligence Community to do just that.  

China Bars UN Sanctions on Ships

As I said in a previous post, there are more sanctions coming on ships that off-load cargo to North Korean ships on the high seas.  This little trick allows trade with North Korea to go on while everyone facilitiating the trade votes against it in UN resolutions.  The United States proposed 33 ships be prevented from coming to any port.  Nineteen of them are North Korean.  Those that aren’t are to be deregistered.

China has blocked a vote on the resolution from the North Korean sanctions committee at the UN, which absurdly requires a unanimous decision.  Nothing in diplomacy can be done if the decision has to be unanimous.  Probably, some of those ships are Chinese.  They don’t mind sanctions if they don’t involve China.  Yes, that is hypocritical.....but not as hypocritical as voting for sanctions and then violating them.

Taiwan Travel Bill

The Chinese have called the Taiwan Travel Bill, passed by the Senate and sent to the President for signature, everything from “a violation of the One China Policy”, to an act of war, though we the bulk of commentary is directed at Taiwan.  A 2005 Anti-Secession Law says China will intervene to stop Taiwan from attempting to go its own way.  That would be interesting because the US has a mutual assistance treaty with Taiwan.  See Reuters story

Putin’s “New” Missiles

The Russian leader is Saying he has developed a nuclear missile that would be able to get through the defensive missiles of the United States.  What surprises me about is speech was his claim has been true for many years, but he chose now to make a public statement about it.  This is pure, unadulterated political posturing before his upcoming election.  “Look how much we have done to stick our finger in the face of the USA.”  Except the technology was around before Putin came to power, and we have always said our missile defense systems were not designed to defend against the Russian capability.  It sounds like he is speaking to a home audience of nationalists.  He will certainly get their vote, but not much attention from this side of the ocean.

Police Accuracy Test

There is a video of police in San Francisco who are trying to talk to a person in a trailer on a public street.  Two small caliber rounds are fired their way, and nearly every policeman draws a gun and fires back at the trailer.  Nobody hits anybody in the exchange.  It seems like the San Francisco police should spend a little more time at the firing range.  Sixty-five rounds and nobody hit the person firing the shots.  My mother could shoot better than that when she was 93.

Leverage in China’s Trade Position

Before every major visit of Chinese officials to the United States, the Chinese hold separate meetings with business friends to discuss matters of mutual interest.  So, Liu He visited yesterday with James Dimon and David Solomon, two of the biggest financial sector leaders, and a number of others who willing to listen.  He is there to talk about opening market channels for businesses in China, knowing full well that aluminum and steel tariffs are likely to be coming.  The President is meeting with Aluminum and Steel manufacturing leaders while his Treasury Secretary and Trade Representative meet with the Chinese leader.  As I said yesterday, this has been a long time coming because the trade in Chinese metals has been recognized as a problem since 2015.

These little side meetings before visiting the White House are not very subtle reminders to US businesses that they depend on China for some of their revenue.  Having a “trade war” however unlikely that is, is not a good thing.  U.S. businesses will suffer from that kind of action, just as they might gain from opening up more avenues for trade in China.  That has been promised often, but little has happened.

These are pretty smart business people in all of the groups getting together.  They know China has done little to open up its trade, continues to finance its State owned enterprises, steals our technology and uses it to compete in world markets.  That does not stop the back-door attempts to get our own corporate leaders to do their influencing for them. They don’t go to just anybody;  they want people who will favor their positions on trade, and talk to the White House about doing the same.  The difference in this White House is a focus on the numbers i.e. they keep trade numbers and follow what the Chinese have really done, not just what they have promised.  We know they are big on promises but do little after.  It is the same slight of hand that allows them to vote for UN sanctions on Iran and North Korea, but violate them at every turn.  Those promises are no longer credible.

Fancy Bear in Germany Again

The Russian Fancy Bear has been hacking its way to stardom for the last few years, mostly through taking up political causes and doing Political Warfare.  They are attributed to the Russian GRU.  In my last book, The New Cyberwar, I described some of the things they were doing in Germany that got the German government mad enough to complain about it to the Russians.  The whole series of events went beyond just hacking, and included harassing German government speakers during speeches, writing articles about German leaders and political positions, and probably much more we haven’t seen in the press.  They certainly hacked the Democratic National Committee in the US, the World Anti-Doping Agency (at the time they were publishing a report on the Russian Olympic doping scandle) and hotels in seven major cities.  The BBC story today links them to a “limited” attack on the internal German government networks, on a 2015 incursion into the lower house of the German parliament, and on attempts to get into the Christian Democratic Union, the ruling party in Germany.  They probably did all of those things and a lot more.

They will continue this type of hacking until they get some stiff resistance from the allies, all of whom have been attacked at one time or another.  The Russians have never met an election they don’t want to be involved in, mostly just to stir up trouble.  They were into Brexit, the French national election, Germany and the US, just to name a few of those already known.  So why haven’t those countries gotten together and stuck a pin in this balloon?

The new generation of political figures does not know the history of Political Warfare and does not pay attention to the rules.  There are rules, though you will not see them written down anywhere.  The first rule is never bring down something you need to use to gather intelligence.  Hackers, particularly China’s own, have the capability to bring down the Internet, but don’t because they need it.  Hacking politicians is not new, and is done by almost every country with hacking skills.  But, the rule always was that this information would be used for its intelligence value, not broadcast on Wikileaks or in news outlets.  The Russians and Chinese seem to have broken that rule over and over.  They will continue to do that until the people affected get together and stop them.  Our current view offers no deterrent to continuing to meddle in every country that holds a national election.

We need to collectively smack the Russians hard enough that they get a message to stop interfering in the internal political parties of the collective group.  Is there any doubt that there is technical capability to do that?  There has not been enough discussion of what should be done to get that message across, and agreement on which countries will take action on behalf of them all.  This is not rocket science we are talking about here.  It is political will.  Germany, France, Great Britain and the United States have the cyber capability to make it clear they want this kind of activity stopped.