Do Any of them Listen

“The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.” [Gilens, Martin and Benjamin I. Page, Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, American Political Science Association, 2014; see also from Gilens, Bartels 2008, Gilens 2012. See also Jacobs and Page 2005, which indicates that the general public may have little or no influence on U.S. foreign policy, when the preferences of business leaders and other elites are taken into account.] . 

So, we wonder why Democrats are willing to vote on Impeachment today when most of their own constituents do not favor removing a President that millions voted for with thin, and totally transparent reasoning.  They decry the President for failing Democracy when they look more like China and Russia than what we remember of the United States.  

China Still Recruits at US Labs

Years after one of the most famous cases of a scientist working with the Chinese for the purpose of espionage took place, we have a sobering report from the U.S. Senate (see U.S. Fails to Counter Chinese Efforts to Recruit Scientists, Acquire Research, Senate Report Says) that says Chinese recruitment has not stopped and is still successful.  That includes both the collection of unclassified and classified information.  In my first book, The Chinese Information War (McFarland Press) I referenced Congressional sources saying the Chinese had 80% of U.S. nuclear weapons designs which came from those same labs.  When will they ever learn? 

We have to ask ourselves who the Department of Energy works for.  Is there anyone there who thinks the national labs are run by the academic community?  Do they think the labs are immune from investigation or change?  These are serious issues that continue to be a national disgrace.  

Russians Assasinate Another

The Russians are not shy about killing their former enemies in another country.  This time it is Germany, instead of the UK where the Russians had been busy making headlines and having a number of their agents removed.

According to the Wall Street Journal today (Russia Orchestrated Chechen Rebel’s Murder in Germany, U.S. Officials Say), the victim is a a 40-year-old Georgian who once commanded forces against Russia during a Chechen uprising, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili.  "Minutes later, German police arrested a Russian man attempting to leave the scene on an electric scooter after he discarded a pistol and silencer. " Given the circumstances of his capture, it is a good bet they have the right person.

The Russians, even in the face of being caught red-handed so to speak, will deny any involvement in the killing.  Official press releases will offer alternative ways the person might have died, motives for others to have killed him, and official statements from high-ranking government officials "proving" that it couldn't have been anyone Russian or directed by the Russian government.  It is a little easier to do this time.

At least this guy is not a known GRU agent who is stupid enough to get caught.  He was recently released from a Russian prison, where he had been serving a sentence for murder.  They let him out and gave him a passport with a new identity.  They have used this little trick before with people in mental hospitals.

The victim's routes of travel were laid out for him by someone else.  He rode a bicycle to the park where Khangoshvili was known to get to his mosque, shot him in the head twice in a place with plenty of witnesses around, changed clothes and hid away.  He still got caught.

The Russians are going to have some openings for telling a different story since the shooter is not a GRU agent.  They can deny government sponsorship, though the passport is a liability after just getting out of prison.  They will, of course, say they were glad to be rid of this person.  The French can tell us why they gave this person a visa to travel all over Europe. 

China Manipulation of National Economic Data

There is a good article in the Wall Street Journal today on the manipulation of Chinese economic data.  The title will tell you quite a bit about the content:  China Says Growth Is Fine. Private Data Show a Sharper Slowdown.

Most China followers find the growth China shows a little too optimistic and amazingly aligned with the goals set by the Chinese Communist Party.  For many years Russia had the same problem with harvests and production data.  It should be obvious that there are consequences for not meeting a production target so it is better to meet the number whether there was actual production to meet it, or not.  We know why some people do that, but the U.S. is getting better at getting to the real financial data by some really clever ways.  Included in this article were stories about satellites measuring the amount of electricity being used in certain cities, production data from unofficial sources like banks that loan money for autos, and some U.S. companies with operations in China.  One, Eaton, reported industrial growth was 2.7% but the official Chinese estimates were 5%.  When China's economy is at $13 Trillion, those one or two percent differences can be a lot of money. 

TransPacific Cable Comes Under Scrutiny

Well, you may have already heard that Justice has decided to look into a cable being laid across the Pacific to Hong Kong by Google, Facebook Inc. and a Chinese partner.  It is a little surprising since I raised this issue in my first book, The Chinese Information War, almost 10 years ago.  Chinese  Telcoms have been putting cables in to a lot of places without any notice what-so-ever for longer than that.  My concern then was the number of communications terminal points being controlled by China.  Those points were decrypting bulk transmissions and had access to almost any traffic that came through them.  Or, they could simply divert traffic as they are famous for doing "accidentally" .

Now, seemingly out of the blue, comes this concern for these partners and their cable.  They should have started looking at this years ago, and better late than never is not a good response to the problem.  The US does not pay enough attention to what traffic flows over those cables and it should.  Contractors use them;  government agencies use them.  China redirects traffic from other networks to cables and terminals they control.  I don't think this late coming action is going to help resolve the problems that have developed over the last 10 years. 

New Release by US-China Econ & Sec Review Commission

07/11/2019
THE CHINESE MILITARY’S ROLE IN OVERSEAS HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE AND DISASTER RELIEF: CONTRIBUTIONS AND CONCERNS
Over the past two decades, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has expanded its involvement in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR) missions outside China’s borders. Through its contributions to HA/DR, Beijing has provided important assistance to disaster-stricken populations and sought to burnish its image as a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system. At the same time, Beijing routinely allows political considerations to guide its participation in HA/DR missions, violating the humanitarian spirit of these operations and suggesting Chinese leaders may view HA/DR less as a global good than an instrument of influence. Moreover, the PLA has cooperated haltingly with international partners during these missions and at times willfully disregarded best practices for military participation in HA/DR. This report examines the drivers behind the PLA’s increasing participation in HA/DR abroad; the impact, both positive and problematic, of the PLA’s involvement in several recent multinational disaster relief operations; and the implications of the PLA’s involvement in and approach to these missions for the United States.

State Shipbuilders in China

According to an article in today's Wall Street Journal (China to Weld Its Biggest Shipbuilders Into Single State-Run Giant) China is about to combine its two largest shipbuilders, China Shipbuilding Industry Corp. (CSIC) and China State Shipbuilding Corp. (CSSC).  China already has 43% of the world market. 

It looks like size matters in shipbuilding.  S.Korea has a merger of its own (Hyundai Heavy Industries and Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering Co.).  China is combining to more than match what S.Korea, their main competitor, is trying to do.   

All of this is part of a global move towards consolidation using Mergers and Acquisitions.  Apparently big in shipbuilding is not the only consolidation taking place.  The US telecoms are certainly trying to do similar things and pharmas are doing the same thing.  The U.S. has been reluctant to let these go through because it feels some of these affect national security, a problem China doesn't have. 

Russians Deny the Obvious

The Russians seem to stick to stories that are impossible to believe to support denials of their covert operations. 

It was like a reminder today when David Satter had an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that reminded us that the Dutch have not forgotten about MH17, the commercial airliner shot down by Russians. The operators brought over a Buk launcher and took it back to Russia after they did the deed.  The Dutch are now indicting four people for murder and two of them are going to be real hard to prosecute:  "The defendants include Igor Girkin, “defense minister” of the Donetsk People’s Republic, a Russian-backed Ukrainian separatist movement; and Sergei Dubinsky, head of the separatists’ intelligence service..." That didn't stop the Dutch from pushing for the indictment (technically, it is a joint task force but the Dutch lead it).  

The whole thing took place in 2014, and with the news cycle the way it is, almost anybody who followed the story has forgotten about it already.  The rest of the world wants to forget about it but the families of those killed and a few governments won't let it go.  We should listen to them.  

This was at a time when the Russians had a story ready to explain this away within minutes of the aircraft going down.  When that story didn't work very well, they tried a couple of others including one that said it was a Ukrainian jet shooting at Putin's aircraft passing its way.  The Dutch had hard evidence and took almost two years to complete an investigation.  By that time, most of the world's web readers had forgotten why this report was written.  By the time a case is brought (if they can issue warrants and find these guys crossing a border somewhere there is extradition) it will be years more.  It doesn't matter how long it takes.  

The Russians are accountable for this and deny any involvement.  It was a covert operation gone bad.  The cover stories were preposterous and the visible and audible evidence was pointing in a direction the Russians denied.  Their plausible deniability went out the window, but they stuck to stories that were unbelievable.  Russian involvement in foreign elections has followed the same model with the same result.  The Germans, French, and U.S. are pretty unhappy with the Russians and rightfully so.  They are sticking to denials that are incredible.  

APT 10 Did Not Go Away

Several news outlets carried stories about APT 10 getting into several (10) international carriers and using information about phone calls, locations et.al. to track specific individuals.  There even seemed to be surprise that this was going on. 

1.  APT 10 did not stop hacking when they were first identified nor when they were charged in U.S. courts.  As with most hackers, they just change pseudonyms and press on.  Most of them already use multiple on-line accounts anyway so it isn't much to switch to another one. 

2.  China has abused carriers to get similar information from places that used Chinese equipment, but now, with all the trade restrictions, that is harder.  There are many countries questioning buying Chinese network equipment (not just Huawei and ZTE).  It becomes more difficult, so they have to go about it a different way.  The Chinese have never been shy about changing tactics to get what they want. 

3.  The stories are not naming the telecoms and I wish they would.  I think we all want to know if our carrier is so bad at security that the Chinese can get root access into their systems.

4.  How many other countries are hacking the same carriers? 

Chinese Military

For those of you interested in the Chinese military, take a look at the latest panel done by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission last week,  There were a few items worth noting, not the least of which is the growing threat in the region from China's expanding military. 

https://www.uscc.gov/Hearings/%E2%80%98world-class%E2%80%99-military-assessing-china%E2%80%99s-global-military-ambitions

Cyber Attacks on Iran

There are several news outlets (like the Wall Street Journal U.S. Launched Cyberattacks on Iran, today) and the stories are all much the same.  The U.S. is said to have attacked Iran's military in retaliation for shooting down a drone. 

Vice President Pence said "We never comment on covert operations." That is a statement that comments about it even though his intent may have been to not comment on it.  If that is confusing, it is always best to say "no comment" or the old standby "we cannot confirm or deny the existence of any such event" which has been used forever.  Otherwise, other governments know it was a covert operation and can guess who might have done it. 

People in government talk too much. 

China's Alchemists Making Gold

When all else fails, sue.  Huawei, which has been mostly on the defensive since the Trump Administration went after them, has decided to bite the hand that feeds them.  Huawei claims Verizon has not paid it for over 200 patents it licenses.  However unlikely such a claim would be, the timing of it would almost certainly come up in any court in the U.S.  With that many involved, this had to have been going on for more than a year or so.  Huawei ignored it when it was in their interest, but now that companies are starting to exit some of their manufacturing, China decides to retaliate with legal action, thinly disguised as legitimate. 

This is a lesson for other companies who are pulling their operations out of China, a warning given by China, without specifics, last week.  Now we know.  They are going to grind all they can out of these companies with phony patents conjured up in the Chinese patent filing system which takes almost any claim and turns it into gold.  This is going to keep most of them in court for long enough to learn their lesson. 

Nobody is looking at the validity of Chinese patents from an intellectual property standpoint.  Many of those patents are stolen technology repurposed into a new use.  They are bogus.  Time for the rest of the world to take action and challenge some of those patents on the basis of their validity.  

Better than the Russians at Information War

There was an article today about Finland and its training of its young people to recognize fake news and propaganda.  The CNN article describes the details of a program to educate to reduce the number of times the population falls for made up stories and slanted news.  While it is a good article to read, Denmark has shown an similar capability over several years in getting to the root of false stories, the most famous being the debunking of Russian stories pertaining to the shooting down of commercial flight Malaysia Air 17 in July of 2014.  They also exposed an Iranian story of how a mobster killed a person who had a clash with a local customer.  The Danes began removing Iranian diplomats two years before they announced what was really behind the killing of an Iranian dissident.  He was not the victim of organized crime. 

We certainly have something to learn from both of these countries.  Our news media is no longer an independent profession looking for truth.  It has political agendas that slant facts towards one party or another, and no longer sees the need to apologize for mistakes of fact.  Funny that CNN, one of the worst of them for its slanted news stories, would be the one to produce this article.  It would be nice to hope that it bodes well for the future of CNN, but don't hold your breath. 

Russia Upsets Ukraine's Neighbors

The Russians are just nasty.  They are pulling stunts to disrupt relations between Ukraine's neighbors by such things as painting swastikas on the Hungarian cultural center in Uzhgorod and similar instances that give the impression that the Ukrainians don't like Hungarians very much.  They put a grenade into a consulate in the Ukrainian city of Lutsk.  You might think the Russians would have a better way to spend their time, but not so.  They enjoy this kind of thing, even if it is not really all that successful at moving people away from the Ukraine.  It still has plenty of support.  The thought of Crimea does not go away that easily. 

Still, we get a good idea of what Russia's philosophy is with respect to Information War.  Disrupt, damage, slowly influence.  We need to be giving some of their own back for that.  We should be disrupting their own operations and running more of our own.  The EU too. 

For the full story see the Wall Street Journal today

Tools to Report Censorship by Social Media

If, like me, you are censored by your social media you can report it to Congress and the results will be tabulated and presented to the various companies involved. 

https://whitehouse.typeform.com/to/Jti9QH

China Exposed in Venezuela

Reuters has an exclusive on a report of China's investments in Venezuela, most of which benefited a few individuals, but did nothing for the people they were supposed to serve.  In the documented case of China CAMC Engineering Co Ltd, the goal was to provide jobs to many residents who would build new bridges and roads, a food laboratory, and the largest rice-processing plant in Latin America (something one has to wonder about).  It fell quite a bit short of that, but made some politically connected people more rich than they would have been otherwise. 

Part of the lack of success came from the necessity of paying bribes to local officials (indictments showed $100 million just for the rice project).  The Chinese don't seem to have reservations about paying bribes if it gets them what they want.  Only it didn't get them a rice processing plant. 

China has a string of these programs that are outright bribery to meet political objectives.  We saw examples in the Philippines, North Africa, Vietnam, and Cambodia, to name a few.  They are designed to sound like something that will benefit the country in some vague way, but they rarely do accomplish any of the promised results.  What they do is build up debt which cannot be paid, and result in China getting payment of its debt in other types of currency, like ports, infrastructure contracts, or utilities.  Ultimately, it looks just like the Mafia moving in on productive investments and corrupting them. 

This is where our policies that try to change trade behavior in China are so difficult to solidify.  They don't play by the rules of international trade or the norms of commercial business.  We can identify what kinds of activities we would like to see from China but those behaviors are significantly different than what the business and political practice of the country.  Imagine trying to get a mob boss in Boston to stop running prostitution, loan sharking, or illegal gambling operations.  We usually arrest them rather than trying to move them into legal businesses.  That won't work in international trade. 

The White House thinks taxing them, in the form of tariffs, is the right answer, but that is like trying to tax illegal operations.  That would require legalizing the behavior we are trying to stop. 

How China Steals Tech

The US China Economic and Security Review Commission has published a good summary of how the Chinese are stealing technology from the United States.   How Chinese Companies Facilitate Technology Transfer from the United States

I know this sounds like something that is commonly known, the report is worth reading because of the examples that don't tell the same stories you read in the press every day.

Chinese Censorship Shows Trade Position

There is an article today in the Wall Street Journal (Beijing Media Urge Calm on Trade)
that shows what the Communist country really thinks about the trade negotiations it is having with the US. 

While the politicians and press on both sides of the issues speculate about how the trade talks might go, the Chinese censorship engine is telling their people to remain calm.  This article says they are reducing stories that might inflame the rhetoric, prompting stories that might lead to criticism of the central government or result in banning or restricting sales of US products in China.  We can still remember the iPhone incidents which were incredible displays of bashing or burning iPhones because Apple wouldn't cooperate with Chinese rules for data.  These were totally manufactured scenes, unless we believe that a person would destroy a $700 phone he had just purchased based solely on a principle that would not affect the average user.  Those kinds of displays cause people to change their purchasing choices and have longer term affects than the Chinese really want. 

What can we infer from this kind of restraint?  This is not going to be a long negotiation with serious consequences for both sides of the industrialized countries.  China caused the US to seek other manufacturing venues for some products (Cambodia for tennis shoes is a simple example) and that is something the Chinese would like to avoid.   

Hong Kong's New Extradition Bill

When I first heard that Hong Kong was about to pass a new extradition bill, I didn't even bother to look it up because the Chinese had been operating as if they already had one.  Now, I can appreciate the significance of it because of a brief published by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.  The briefing points out that is not just Hong Kong citizens who can be extradited the Chinese mainland, but anyone who lives there.  So bankers, and financial institutions will find themselves being hauled off to a Chinese court for doing something the Chinese don't like. 
Any company currently doing business in China should read this brief.  It is only a beginning of the use of law to meet their political objectives.  They do it internally but they are reaching out to other lands they control and applying the same laws to anyone who disagrees with them.  It is one thing to be censored, like my blog is in China, but it is entirely something else to do what they did with the booksellers in Hong Kong - Hauling them off to be intimidated in holding cells and threatening their futures if they didn't stop selling books that were banned on the mainland. 

Calling Each Other Liars

When I worked on the Hill it was not permitted to call another Member a liar.  If a staff person did it it would be hard to retain your job.  Congressmen were supposed to be ladies and gentlemen who did not do such things in public. There were some ways around it, but most Members didn't bother.  It was easier to just avoid it altogether.  It was possible to run ads saying a person voted for "starving children", to "reduce wages" when that was not the case at all, but that was not a lie, per se.  It was a matter of political interpretation.  They used to describe conflicts between each other beginning with the words, "My good friend and esteemed Member from South Carolina said..." 

There is a new element to this now that I really don't like.  Nancy Pelosi called Bill Barr a liar for expressing an opinion that was different than hers.  She could have said his interpretation was not correct, or that he did not follow the law as written, or that he was mistaken, but she didn't.  She called him a liar. 

Now, in point of fact, Barr is not a Member and she did not violate the rule of calling another Member a liar.  But, when did it become important for any administration's representative to agree with the positions of the majority leader, or be branded a liar?  Knowingly and willingly making a false statement is a lie.  The person who does it is a liar.  That definition does not fit the circumstances where two individuals disagree on a conclusion. 

The Chinese in Jamaica

I ran into a woman this past week who lived in Jamaica and travelled to the U.S. for business.  She was interested in my first book, and knew my name because of it.  She said I should have done more inquiries into the Caribbean because the Chinese were using the same techniques in the Belt and Road initiative in Jamaica than they were using in North Africa. 

She said the Chinese got deep into domestic politics by buying local political officials who were corrupt enough to sell their souls to Chinese businessmen who bought buildings and brought in Chinese labor that wiped out most of the competition and created monopolies in local business.  I told her this sounds like what they did with economic zones in Vietnam.  She said it was to her too. 

They bred themselves into the local population and it is not hard to find a generation of mixed race individuals in key positions throughout the country.  Businesses now have Chinese owners, that once had Jamaicans in those jobs.  They own the utilities and the telecommunications ( she was attending a telecommunications conference) and very few of her friends believe the Chinese are doing this out of the graciousness of their collective hearts.  She pointed me to a few sources that might help clarify both the situation in Jamaica and a few of the other island nations in that region.  That can be a chapter in my next book. 

CNN Calls it a Coup

Venezuela has entered a new phase in its standoff between the forces of Maduro and Juan Guaido .  CNN is calling this a coup, phrasing the actions of the elected leader as a overthrow of the dictator.  Sometimes I think CNN is AT&T's worst nightmare.  The President of AT&T says he sees no bias in the way CNN reports news.  What is this, if not bias? 

China in Space and New Trade numbers

The US China Economic and Security Review Committee has recently published two new reports and the quarterly.   https://www.uscc.gov/ . They are both good reading.  "  In January 2019, U.S. exports of goods to China fell 27.5 percent year-on-year to $7.1 billion—a record-setting decline; the monthly U.S. trade deficit in goods with China totaled $34.5 billion."  Interesting that our deficit is still high, even with a record decline.

The China space report is worth the time.  The Chinese are showing real interest in space dominance and are putting a good bit of money into space.  In case you wondered about it, that experiment on the far side of the moon has a lot of interest since we can't actually see what they are doing there.  They could be building a space station for all we know.

Russians Want Unredacted Mueller Report

The Russian Intelligence services are going to be hard at work to get that unredacted report drawn up by the Special Counsel's Office.  If you look at the parts that are redacted, most of the reasons are Harm to Ongoing Matter, which means, if disclosed the information would negatively impact the criminal prosecution of a case under investigation. Having many instances of this in the past, I can tell you that is a big umbrella, but a necessary one. 

Suppose we have a simplified drug case that involves a person on drugs, a distributor of drugs in Cleveland, a distributor of drugs in Mexico, and a cartel of drug dealers operating under local government protection.  We indict the dealer in Cleveland and allow the buyer of drugs from that dealer to testify about where he bought these drugs and from whom.  It's dangerous, but he does it. 

We put that together with months of audio and video collected during a court-ordered surveillance.  We got that because we did not announce the arrest of the drug buyer when he was first detected.   We could, if we wanted and were short-sighted, stop there and take this guy to court, arrest his supplier and bring that to a Grand Jury for an indictment, try them both and announce a great victory against drug suppliers in one city.  This is what a lot of jurisdictions do because they want prosecution points for someone running for political office and that is the only picture they see. 

Or, we could do a search of our friendly associates, usually drug task forces, and see if they had any cases ongoing involving this same group or groups that get their drugs from the same sources do.  This takes a lot of time but we can start to get to where those drugs are coming from and who is behind distribution to them.  Getting higher up takes even more time, but at that level, you get a good deal more government intelligence. 

Now put together all the things you have and write a report about it for the FBI. 

 In this case, it is largely things surrounding the indictment of Russians who participated in one campaign to influence the 2016 election but there is a lot of other information that comes from asking for intelligence related to that subject.  That is what the Russians want.  How did the surveillance occur and who was detected during that time?  We could just hand that over directly by publicizing everything we have on this in our report, or we could make them guess and wonder what was coming next.  You get our original sources for the drug bust and the distribution center in Cleveland, killed.  Some people who want publicity for their own glorification over secrecy won't mind.  Nobody looks at them and says, "You killed that poor guy." I wish we did. 

Mueller Report can be Downloaded from Justice

I have had a lot of trouble finding the actual report where I could download it.  It will save time if you go to https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf  

Russian Manipulation of GNSS

The Russians are manipulating their GPS-like, GNSS according to a report at C4.   They indicate a number of Russian spoofing incidents have occurred and have a map of those events.

Feinstein Had Chinese Government on Her Staff

May this story escaped my notice before, but today William Barr being questioned by Lindsay Graham, said Diane Feinstein was told she had a Chinese government representative on her staff and she fired him when she got the warning.  This is not the usual discussion of the Budget Committee but it was entertaining.  It left us wanting to know more about this incident. 

The Washington Post did report it this way:

"Imagine if it emerged that the Republican chairman of the House or Senate intelligence committee had a Russian spy working on their staff. Think it would cause a political firestorm? Well, this month we learn that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) had a Chinese spy on her staff who worked for her for about 20 years, was listed as an “office director” on payroll records and served as her driver when she was in San Francisco, all while reporting to China’s Ministry of State Security through China’s San Francisco Consulate. The reaction of the mainstream media? Barely a peep...."

I have to agree that it was not widely reported.  This guy was well placed in this Intelligence Committee leader's office in California and chauffeured her around.  Not a good thing to have the ranking member being driven around by a spy.  How do they keep this kind of thing quiet? 

Espionage or Not?

An article in Ars Technica said the woman in the Mar-a-Lago intrusion had enough counter surveillance stuff in her hotel room to make sure nobody was monitoring her.  That is a spy, no matter what anyone else says.  They can wonder about it all they want, but this is the way spies work, if they don't want to get caught.  She must have been in there before and thought she could do it again. 

Check to See if you are Blocked in China

You can do a simple check to see if the Chinese block your website at https://www.comparitech.com/privacy-security-tools/blockedinchina/

My Blogger site is blocked in every site they tested.  Not a big surprise, but it is still nice to know and not have to guess.

Huawei Not Responsive to Security

The UK has recently said there are security flaws in some of Huawei's products, not because they were necessarily built in to allow attacks, but because they were identified and not corrected by Huawei.  Lots of companies have this problem, and it was one of my greatest frustrations when working for the government.  Huawei is different than the usual company. 

The story says this:  "In the report, U.K. officials said they were particularly concerned that Huawei hasn’t implemented companywide cybersecurity practices that it vowed to put in place in 2012, the same year a report from the U.S. Congress labeled Huawei a national security threat."  How many identified security flaws are allowed to go for 7 years before they are patched?  Not many.  Companies start to lose customers when people find out they are not responsive to fixing flaws in their software.  They start to get the idea that Huawei doesn't care about those holes and may be allowing them to remain for the very reasons the US government has accused them of working for the Chinese intelligence community.  

Grand Jury Testimony

We have a few Congressmen who think it is not important that are contemplating releasing the Muller report in its entirety which includes Grand Jury testimony.  I was on the Starr Grand Jury which looked at one case - President Clinton's activities in Washington D.C.  We met one week a month for 18 months.

It is not as simple as it appears to be.  There were 3 Starr Grand Juries - one in Maryland, one in Washington D.C. and one in Virginia, each looking at potential crimes committed in their jurisdictions.  All of those were combined in the final report and we never saw the others unless we needed to see parts which related to our cases.  The final report is much more inclusive than any single Grand Jury ever hears.

Lots of people testified, some reluctantly.  A few would leave and consult with an attorney because none are allowed in when they testified.  A few were giving us "canned" statements that were obviously not spontaneous.  Some of them were not able to answer follow-up questions very well and looked confused.  That doesn't show up in written testimony.  We thought a couple of them were lying, but we had little to go on except a feeling that what they were saying was a lie.  This is the nature of juries that decide guilt or innocence ( a Grand Jury doesn't) but the feeling that a jury has only shows up in a verdict.  You can see none of the non-verbal cues that go with that testimony in a transcript.

Most of all, some people who were more involved than in concealing or contributing to potential crimes were not indicted.  It would have been better for the public to not know who those people were or, in one case, what that person had done.  The absence of an indictment of one person can limit what can be indicted in another part of the case.  That is why Grand Jury information is protected the way it is.

Before you say, "Well, that's OK."  I don't think those reluctant witnesses think like that.  They didn't want to testify.  None of them were criminals.  But, saying who they were could expose them to political retribution, or loss of a job, for telling the truth about what they know.  If you want to stop witnesses from every testifying without a subpoena this is the best way to do it.  If you want to make sure you never get the whole truth from a witness, this is the best way too.  Never mind the people who get indicted, this is for the ones who testify.  These Congressmen have no appreciation for what it takes to tell all because they don't ever have to.  

Clapper says Report Not done Without Obama's Help

In praising President Obama, former DNI Clapper says the original intelligence report referencing Russian interference in US elections of 2016, was directed by Obama.  That report did not find that the Trump Campaign conspired with the Russians. 

What is more surprising is the link to CIA Director Brennen as the person papering the halls of Congress with the salacious dossier.  Devin Nunes pointed that out earlier this week. 

The two together show a dangerous politicalization of the Intelligence Community, which includes the FBI which had several of its best and finest removed for their actions.  That is partly the fault of the politicos in Washington, but equally a part goes to the willingness of senior leaders to engage in politics rather than stick to business.  Having been in the Intelligence business most of my career, I find it odd that so many have allowed themselves to become part of this.  It is shameful and deserves some special attention and oversight, something it will never get while Democrats remain in charge of the House of Representatives. 

Blocked in China

You can do a simple check to see if the Chinese block your website at https://www.comparitech.com/privacy-security-tools/blockedinchina/

My Blogger site is blocked in every site they tested.  Not a big surprise, but it is still nice to know and not have to guess.

Chinese influence on the World's Press

A good report on Chinese methods to limit access to news and espouse its own views to the world.  Interesting because it was written by journalists and not politicians.

- Exporting the “Chinese media model” 
 Combatting “hostile” Western forces
 “Made in China” media events
 Censorship and surveillance: successful exports
Cambodia aligns its media with China’s
 Disinformation and harassment: Chinese-style “sharp power”
2 - Chinese propaganda in the 21st century 
Journalists doing the Party’s bidding
Chinese chatbots dream of America 
The world’s biggest prison for journalists 
 China’s media: heavyweight arrivals on the international stage 
INTERVIEW - “Africa: Chinese media’s laboratory” 
Belt and Road... and media 30 Training foreign journalists in China: a charm offensive
 INTERVIEW - Can you really learn journalism in Beijing?
“Tell the China story well”
3 - Trojan horse policy
 Advertorials “with Chinese characteristics”
 Investing in foreign media
Taiwan’s China Times adopts the Party line
 Art of commercial blackmail
4 - Resistance strategies
 Democracies react
 Two journalism defence initiatives
 RSF’s recommendations

Immigration, Yes

There are two interesting studies on immigration that Pew released in January.  The first says the US population believes that immigration strengthens the country.  The second says that most of the world, including the US, favors immigrants who are high-skilled.  That makes the immigration issue more difficult for the poor, unskilled labor that is coming across the border on the US southern border.  I think this says more to our elected leaders than the din of public comment about "immigrants" who vary quite a bit by education and workforce skill.  We cannot lump them all together and say what we want in the way of legislation to solve the immigration problems. 

Chinese Educators put US Teachers on Notice

In an article of the typical Chinese approach to the rest of the world, The Wall Street Journal has an example of how Chinese businesses try to implement public policy on places not in China.  For a simple example, the Chinese are pushing US teachers to show Taiwan as part of China.  Get over it.  The US is not going to teach it that way in schools just because China thinks it is necessary.  It is the height of arrogance. 

Taking the Next Step Against Chinese Muslims

There is an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal today about the next step against Muslims in China.  This article points out China has started to destroy communities - tearing them down - and rebuilding them into high-rises.  Whether this is a good thing or not is subject to some interpretation. What they are doing is erasing a way of life - the village - and replacing it with vertical residences that isolate individuals and get them off the street where they communicate. 

We used to live in a neighborhood with a number of immigrants and embassy staff from the Middle East.  We were surprised at how many people did their business outside the office, literally standing outside to talk to people as they came by.  We don't see that much in Falls Church.  We had high-rises all around us and lived in one, and the occasional vendor would walk the common areas shaking hands and introducing themselves.  It seemed odd, but not threatening.

We don't hear much from the human rights advocates about what China has done to the Muslim population.  It is good to see the Journal writing about it.

Note:  I forgot to mention the picture in this article.  It shows how bit some of the camps are.  Row after row of barracks as far as the eye can see with support buildings and a city built up where one did not exist before.  This is a really big business.  As one of my friends said the other day, "If any other country in the world put a million Muslims in detention centers, there would be an uproar.  Not so with China."  It shows the power China has over the world press. 

Chinese Theft of Trade Secrets Made Easy

This is the best article I have seen on how Chinese espionage and theft of trade secrets actually works.  It is a couple of months old and I read it when it first came out.  There is a previous post on it.  I was glad to see it has finally been released for general viewing. 

https://www.wired.com/story/us-china-cybertheft-su-bin/?mbid=BottomRelatedStories_Sections_2&intcid=inline_amp

More Chinese in Camps

There are several articles today about camps in north-west China.  The numbers of "terrorists" arrested by China seem to have a link to their religion and not their political affiliations.  Pictures show a small number of handguns seized during these arrests.  One, I noted, was a flintlock which is not really a very dangerous weapon in a gun fight.  The Chicago Police seize more weapons than that in a short sweep through the neighborhoods.  There are supposed to have been 13,000 terrorists arrested.  That is a big number if they really were terrorists. 

Blogger link

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9033304048882784982#allposts

Hearing on Russia-China Cooperation

he U.S.-China Commission will be holding a hearing entitled “An Emerging China-Russia Axis? Implications for the United States in an Era of Strategic Competition” on Thursday, March 21, in Dirksen Senate Office Building, Room 419, starting at 9:30 AM.

US Aids Ukraine Navy

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the U.S. is helping to build up the Ukrainian navy to help them with Russian efforts to squeeze them in the south where they have ports.  The Russians seized ships and crews which have not yet been released after four months.  Anywhere else, this would be an act of war, but we don't hear the UN or the EU saying this is even an international incident. 

Brits Give Some Back to Russians

Good story in the Wall Street Journal about what was done to counter am organized information attack on the UK. 

" The British response to last year’s attack on the Skripals, however, gave the Kremlin a taste of something new. As Russia launched its disinformation campaign, the British struck back. They took the Russians to task at the United Nations, expelled Russian diplomats, rallied support among European and North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners, and set up a central communications team to coordinate the release of details about the two men linked by closed-circuit television footage to the attack. "

China's New Ownership Restrictions

While we have been hearing about all the wonderful changes China is making, leading up to the trade agreement, we might look at what China has not done.  There was a short article in the Wall Street Journal that reminds us that there are many more restrictions on foreign entities in China than elsewhere. 

"Beijing caps foreign shareholdings for onshore stocks at 30% in total, and 10% for any single shareholder. Chinese stocks are growing in importance to global investors, but outsiders face other constraints in betting on Chinese markets, including trading suspensions and a lack of ways to hedge their risks through futures and options."

This is just one small example of how China is a great at asking for foreign concessions on trade, but is often unwilling to make them themselves. 

The Russians Never Stop

It is possible to believe the Russians have done quite a bit of disruption in the U.S. by bots and real people pretending to  be somebody they aren't.  But, really they did stories on children's vaccinations?  Yes, they did. 

Both sides of the argument on whether the vaccinations are good or bad for taking with minimal risk.  It turns out the Russians did fund these campaigns and actually got the target audience to reconsider getting them for children.  That led to outbreaks of measles that were difficult to control.  This is the kind of Information War we could do without.  When they go after children, we need some help in finding them so we can do them physical harm.  Sometimes it is enough to just recognize what they are doing so we can be better prepared;  sometimes we want to have retaliation; and, on a few rare cases, we want to hurt someone who does this kind of thing.  This is one of those times.

Huawei's Little Lambs

Nice the hear that Huawei will not  "be victimized like silent lambs" an image that is more rhetorical than legitimate dialog.  Huawei has an innocence campaign pushing to convince the world that it is "just like any other company" - not influenced by the Communist Party or the State.  The problem they have faced is that is not believable. 

The Chinese think if they say something long enough, repeating it in different ways, it will become truth to most of the world. First, the US government already knows the truth of that influence and what Huawei is doing at the behest of the intelligence services of China.  This suit against the US government is a thinly disguised attempt to force the US to disclose some of that knowledge in public.  It won't happen, and the Chinese know it.  This is not something that is allowed to be shown in public proceedings.  If the Federal government decides to be sued (not a given by any means) they are not going to drag our intelligence services into court to prove what we know about Huawei.  That is a national security issue.  Other countries understand these kinds of secrets, and as hard as the Chinese try to say "there is no proof that Huawei has done anything", those countries know a good bit about what Huawei has been doing. The US shares intelligence with them. 

The New McCarthyism

I grew up with McCarthyism in my school.  McCarthy eventually got his when people woke up
to the ethics of what he was doing.  We can only Hope the fate of Jerrod Nadler is the same.

Facebook Nails Chinese Companies Creating Fake Accounts

It seems Chinese companies have been creating fake accounts for use in influence campaigns.  The Journal says, "Starting in 2017, the companies marketed and sold fake accounts in large quantities through six websites with similar domain names to Facebook such as myfacebook.cc and 9xiufacebook.com, according to the complaint filed Friday in San Francisco federal court." 

You have to say these kinds of accounts are far from covert since they are advertised and openly sold.  We can applaud Facebook for doing something about it, but this kind of thing appears to be
simple exploitation for profit and not anything tied to a real government campaign of influence.  Governments don't advertise accounts for use by anyone who can afford them.  They hide the owner and the people using them with fake names and dummy addresses. 

Former Director CIA Speaks about Huawei

Secretary of State Pompeo spoke about Huawei's connections to the Chinese intelligence services and is owned by the state.  Huawei has long said it was an employee owned company and was not managed or influenced by the Chinese government but in this sentence Pompeo puts that to rest: “Huawei is owned by the state of China and has deep connections to their intelligence service. That should send off flares for everybody who understands what the Chinese military and Chinese intelligence services do. We have to take that threat seriou

The New York Times ran a series of articles about Huawei and how the US knows what Huawei really does and where it gets its tasking.  If you missed it, Huawei is about to try to sue the U.S. government which is clearly an attempt to try to expose how the U.S. knows anything about Huawei and how it is motivated and controlled by China's central government. 

New Huawei Indictment

It's long but worth reading just for the spelling out of charges that Huawei faces.  https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-telecommunications-conglomerate-huawei-and-huawei-cfo-wanzhou-meng-charged-financial

China Steals Secrets, Then Uses Them for Profit

One of the steps we miss when we think of the theft of trade secrets by China is how those are being used to benefit Chinese industry.  They don't just steal this stuff for fun.  A case in Tennessee tells how that is done. 

"Details of the conspiracy are included in the indictment on file with the U.S. District Court.  The indictment alleges that You, Liu, and a third co-conspirator formulated a plan in which You would exploit her employment with the two American employers to steal trade secrets and provide the information for the economic benefit of trade secrets the Chinese company that Liu managed, which would manufacture and profit from products developed using the stolen trade secrets.  In exchange, Liu would cause the Chinese company to reward You for her theft, by helping her receive the Thousand Talent and another financial award, based on the trade secrets she stole, and by giving You an ownership share of a new company that would “own” the stolen trade secrets in China.  The conspirators also agreed to compete with U.S. and foreign companies, including some of the owners of the stolen stolen trade secrets, in China and elsewhere, by selling products designed, developed and manufactured using the stolen trade secrets.

So, it appears the charges outline several things:  (1) the Chinese are knowingly stealing trade secrets and paying people to do it (2) they file Chinese patents on things they steal (3) they use the stolen information to build new items based on the Chinese patents.  I wrote about this in my first book, some 10 years ago.  They haven't stopped and no agreements are going to stop it any time soon.