May 10, 20205 yr Author Article from May 2019 On May 15 the U.S. government put Chinese telecoms giant Huawei and nearly all its affiliates and subsidiaries on an export black list, which prohibits American firms from selling them high-tech products. Much has been made of Huawei’s position in global telecoms and the role it might play in Chinese surveillance of, well, everyone. The American decision largely ends the concern. To this point I’ve tried to stay out of the Huawei battles for a pair of reasons. First, the people who really know what is going on when it comes to global data surveillance either do not talk publicly about it or have a vested interest in lying. In the former camp sits the United States National Security Agency, the institution responsible for monitoring global electronic communications. In the latter is the Chinese intelligence directorate, who would like to monitor global electronic communications. Some background: Back in the 1960s, the American government started collaborating with the U.K. government on a global monitoring system known as Echelon, a sort of semi-public codename for the series of satellites, towers, fiber optic taps, server farms and software backdoors that span the planet. Echelon soon expanded to include the Anglophone allies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, becoming the core of what is known today as the Five Eyes intelligence alliance. Echelon’s original raison d’etre was to battle the Soviets, and in time it found new life in the Global War on Terror. According to informed scuttlebutt, if a communication is transmitted using electrons, Echelon sees it. Or at least it used to. Telecoms have evolved radically in the past half century. Even before the recent fascination of all parties with encryption, the simple fact the United States is no longer the middleman in all telecoms traffic means Echelon is more a tool of yesterday than today, much less tomorrow. Regardless, the ability to scan, read or listen for key words remains essential to America’s tech-heavy intelligence gathering networks. Enter the Chinese, who found themselves behind the Americans by several decades, and that before considering China lacks the alliance system to create anything of Echelon’s depth or scale. Beijing’s bid to catch up is Huawei, a massive telecoms firm which produces everything from the fiber optic cables and telecoms towers of the physical internet to the phones and computers needed to connect. While the internet is an infamously unorganized mass of connections, the modern network has central exchange points where the tributaries of information coming from all over the world become torrential flows. Such "core” systems are what Huawei is after. Control the cores and a spy is wired into everything that passes through it. Huawei’s corporate strategy – which is to say, the strategy of China’s intelligence services – is to grant massive discounts on the installation of a network’s less critical bits on the condition that Huawei can also install and maintain the cores. Beyond the not-so-minor technical fact that there are people beyond China who understand how the internet works and so might object to handing over all their communications on principle, the plan has an amusing political flaw. Like nearly all of China’s tech industry, Huawei is not technologically self-sufficient. It remains heavily dependent upon tech imports from none other than the United States. Which is the second reason why I’ve never taken the Huawei talk all that seriously: The Chinese not only expect the world to pay them to monitor global communications, they expect the Americans to enable the scheme. At first the Americans didn’t take the Huawei plan all that seriously, mostly because it was a seriously stupid plan. Then Huawei had some success using heavy subsidies to convince some countries to install their gear. That generated a diplomatic reaction in Washington. American bureaucrats started warning countries not simply of the dangers they seemed willingly oblivious to, but that any country who used Huawei in their cores could kiss any intelligence sharing with the Americans good-bye. That was enough to shut Huawei out of New Zealand and Australia outright. (The Brits got cute and accepted Huawei gear for their system’s edges, but not their cores, a smug near-miss which undoubtedly infuriated the Chinese to no end.) But three things have changed that have sparked stronger action out of the Americans. First, the transition from fourth- to fifth-generation cellular technology blurs the line between core and non-core systems. Huawei penetration into any part of a cellular system now generates complications and vulnerabilities. Second, despite the risk of communications exposure, enough countries have decided to proceed with Chinese equipment that the Americans can no longer just let it roll. In particular, China’s targeting of Five Eyes members – most notably Canada – has snapped the Americans to attention. Third, after seventy years of expressly keeping economic and strategic issues separate in American foreign policy, a more standard intermingling is now occurring – and that puts everything Chinese in the Americans’ crosshairs. Bilateral trade talks with China more or less collapsed last week. I can’t say I’m shocked. At the talks’ onset the Americans laid out a series of non-negotiable demands including an end to cybertheft, an end to forced tech transfer, an end to the hyper-subsidization of Chinese industry, an end to functional prohibitions on American firms’ access to the Chinese market, granting the Americans the right to impose any investigation at any time on any issue without any consultation complete with the ability to impose any desired punishment on any Chinese economic sector. The fact the Chinese even began talks with those swords hanging over them indicates just how weak the Chinese knew their hand was. China exports over four times as many goods to the American market as vice versa and China is completely dependent upon American global security commitments for access to raw materials, energy and end markets. There is no modern China without active American involvement. Last week it became apparent to the lead American trade negotiator – one Robert Lighthizer – that the Chinese were backing off what commitments he had previously convinced them to make. It was Lighthizer’s recommendation to Donald Trump that American tariffs on China be more than doubled May 10. He then put an even bigger set of tariffs in the pipeline to be applied within a few weeks. The Americans’ Huawei announcement has the feel of Lighthizer’s work: he likes to throw the odd sharp elbow and knows his boss is particularly fond of bold, direct, splashy actions that cut to the heart of the issue. That issue is pretty straightforward. The Americans may be done managing the world, but that doesn’t mean they are going to help someone else do it – especially someone who doesn’t have a ghost of a chance of pulling off such a feat without deep and active American collaboration. Better instead to put China in its place. The Chinese, understandably, have proven less than enthusiastic about accepting that message. So the Americans decided it is easier to simply end China’s global surveillance ambitions by killing Huawei’s international position outright. It isn’t very subtle, and if it doesn’t generate the desired Chinese cave-in in the trade talks it makes me wonder what Lighthizer will take aim at next. I’ve got lots of ideas. I’m certain Lighthizer has more.
May 10, 20205 yr On 5/9/2020 at 2:48 PM, Mlodj said: Pettis is missing the most crucial issue here: China simply cannot survive without the USD because no one will accept the RMB in trade. They can’t buy oil, iron, plastics, etc without the USD. If you look at the flow of funds, the dollars they get from the US in trade is put into USD and equivalents to try to prop up their own currency and into raw materials to prop up their economy.
May 13, 20205 yr How much would Trump love to have a state-run media like China where he could control messaging? Then he could have Joe Scarborough imprisoned rather than accusing him of murder via tweet.
May 13, 20205 yr Author This is a rather different view of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Most analysts assume it would be a rout. Quote Taiwan Can Win a War With China Beijing boasts it can seize the island easily. The PLA knows better. By Tanner Greer September 25, 2018, 12:28 PM When Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke to the 19th Party Congress about the future of Taiwan last year, his message was ominous and unequivocal: "We have firm will, full confidence, and sufficient capability to defeat any form of Taiwan independence secession plot. We will never allow any person, any organization, or any political party to split any part of the Chinese territory from China at any time or in any form.” This remark drew the longest applause of his entire three-hour speech—but it’s not a new message. The invincibility of Chinese arms in the face of Taiwanese "separatists” and the inevitability of reunification are constant Chinese Communist Party themes. At its base, the threat made by Xi is that the People’s Liberation Army has the power to defeat the Taiwanese military and destroy its democracy by force, if need be. Xi understands the consequences of failure here. "We have the determination, the ability and the preparedness to deal with Taiwanese independence,” he stated in 2016, "and if we do not deal with it, we will be overthrown.” China has already ratcheted up economic and diplomatic pressure on the island since the 2016 election of Tsai Ing-wen and the independence-friendly Democratic Progressive Party. Saber-rattling around the Taiwan Strait has been common. But China might not be able to deliver on its repeated threats. Despite the vast discrepancy in size between the two countries, there’s a real possibility that Taiwan could fight off a Chinese attack—even without direct aid from the United States. Chinese commanders fear they may be forced into armed contest with an enemy that is better trained, better motivated, and better prepared for the rigors of warfare than troops the PLA could throw against them. Two recent studies, one by Michael Beckley, a political scientist at Tufts University, and the other by Ian Easton, a fellow at the Project 2049 Institute, in his book The Chinese Invasion Threat: Taiwan’s Defense and American Strategy in Asia, provide us with a clearer picture of what a war between Taiwan and the mainland might look like. Grounded in statistics, training manuals, and planning documents from the PLA itself, and informed by simulations and studies conducted by both the U.S. Defense Department and the Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense, this research presents a very different picture of a cross-strait conflict than that hawked by the party’s official announcements. Chinese commanders fear they may be forced into armed contest with an enemy that is better trained, better motivated, and better prepared for the rigors of warfare than troops the PLA could throw against them. A cross-strait war looks far less like an inevitable victory for China than it does a staggeringly risky gamble. Chinese army documents imagine that this gamble will begin with missiles. For months, the PLA’s Rocket Force will have been preparing this opening salvo; from the second war begins until the day the invasion commences, these missiles will scream toward the Taiwanese coast, with airfields, communication hubs, radar equipment, transportation nodes, and government offices in their sights. Concurrently, party sleeper agents or special forces discreetly ferried across the strait will begin an assassination campaign targeting the president and her Cabinet, other leaders of the Democratic Progressive Party, officials at key bureaucracies, prominent media personalities, important scientists or engineers, and their families. The goal of all this is twofold. In the narrower tactical sense, the PLA hopes to destroy as much of the Taiwanese Air Force on the ground as it can and from that point forward keep things chaotic enough on the ground that the Taiwan’s Air Force cannot sortie fast enough to challenge China’s control of the air. The missile campaign’s second aim is simpler: paralysis. With the president dead, leadership mute, communications down, and transportation impossible, the Taiwanese forces will be left rudderless, demoralized, and disoriented. This "shock and awe” campaign will pave the way for the invasion proper. This invasion will be the largest amphibious operation in human history. Tens of thousands of vessels will be assembled—mostly commandeered from the Chinese merchant marine—to ferry 1 million Chinese troops across the strait, who will arrive in two waves. Their landing will be preceded by a fury of missiles and rockets, launched from the Rocket Force units in Fujian, Chinese Air Force fighter bombers flying in the strait, and the escort fleet itself. Confused, cut off, and overwhelmed, the Taiwanese forces who have survived thus far will soon run out of supplies and be forced to abandon the beaches. Once the beachhead is secured, the process will begin again: With full air superiority, the PLA will have the pick of their targets, Taiwanese command and control will be destroyed, and isolated Taiwanese units will be swept aside by the Chinese army’s advance. Within a week, they will have marched into Taipei; within two weeks they will have implemented a draconian martial law intended to convert the island into the pliant forward operating base the PLA will need to defend against the anticipated Japanese and American counter-campaigns. This is the best-case scenario for the PLA. But an island docile and defeated two weeks after D-Day is not a guaranteed outcome. One of the central hurdles facing the offensive is surprise. The PLA simply will not have it. The invasion will happen in April or October. Because of the challenges posed by the strait’s weather, a transport fleet can only make it across the strait in one of these two four-week windows. The scale of the invasion will be so large that strategic surprise will not be possible, especially given the extensive mutual penetration of each side by the other’s intelligence agencies. Easton estimates that Taiwanese, American, and Japanese leaders will know that the PLA is preparing for a cross-strait war more than 60 days before hostilities begin. They will know for certain that an invasion will happen more than 30 days before the first missiles are fired. This will give the Taiwanese ample time to move much of their command and control infrastructure into hardened mountain tunnels, move their fleet out of vulnerable ports, detain suspected agents and intelligence operatives, litter the ocean with sea mines, disperse and camouflage army units across the country, put the economy on war footing, and distribute weapons to Taiwan’s 2.5 million reservists. There are only 13 beaches on Taiwan’s western coast that the PLA could possibly land at. Each of these has already been prepared for a potential conflict. Long underground tunnels—complete with hardened, subterranean supply depots—crisscross the landing sites. The berm of each beach has been covered with razor-leaf plants. Chemical treatment plants are common in many beach towns—meaning that invaders must prepare for the clouds of toxic gas any indiscriminate saturation bombing on their part will release. This is how things stand in times of peace. As war approaches, each beach will be turned into a workshop of horrors. The path from these beaches to the capital has been painstakingly mapped; once a state of emergency has been declared, each step of the journey will be complicated or booby-trapped. PLA war manuals warn soldiers that skyscrapers and rock outcrops will have steel cords strung between them to entangle helicopters; tunnels, bridges, and overpasses will be rigged with munitions (to be destroyed only at the last possible moment); and building after building in Taiwan’s dense urban core will be transformed into small redoubts meant to drag Chinese units into drawn-out fights over each city street. To understand the real strength of these defenses, imagine them as a PLA grunt would experience them. Like most privates, he is a countryside boy from a poor province. He has been told his entire life that Taiwan has been totally and fatally eclipsed by Chinese power. He will be eager to put the separatists in their place. Yet events will not work out as he has imagined. In the weeks leading up to war, he discovers that his older cousin—whose remittances support their grandparents in the Anhui countryside—has lost her job in Shanghai. All wire money transfers from Taipei have stopped, and the millions of Chinese who are employed by Taiwanese companies have had their pay suspended. Our private celebrates the opening of hostilities in Shanwei, where he is rushed through a three-week training course on fighting in the fetid and unfamiliar jungles of China’s south. By now, the PLA has put him in a media blackout, but still rumors creep in: Yesterday it was whispered that the 10-hour delay in their train schedule had nothing to do with an overwhelmed transportation system and everything to do with Taiwanese saboteurs. Today’s whispers report that the commander of the 1st Marine Brigade in Zhanjiang was assassinated. Tomorrow, men will wonder if rolling power outages really are just an attempt to save power for the war effort. But by the time he reaches the staging area in Fuzhou, the myth of China’s invincibility has been shattered by more than rumors. The gray ruins of Fuzhou’s PLA offices are his first introduction to the terror of missile attack. Perhaps he takes comfort in the fact that the salvos coming from Taiwan do not seem to match the number of salvos streaking toward it—but abstractions like this can only do so much to shore up broken nerves, and he doesn’t have the time to acclimate himself to the shock. Blast by terrifying blast, his confidence that the Chinese army can keep him safe is chipped away. The last, most terrible salvo comes as he embarks—he is one of the lucky few setting foot on a proper amphibious assault boat, not a civilian vessel converted to war use in the eleventh hour—but this is only the first of many horrors on the waters. Some transports are sunk by Taiwanese torpedoes, released by submarines held in reserve for this day. Airborne Harpoon missiles, fired by F-16s leaving the safety of cavernous, nuclear-proof mountain bunkers for the first time in the war, will destroy others. The greatest casualties, however, will be caused by sea mines. Minefield after minefield must be crossed by every ship in the flotilla, some a harrowing eight miles in width. Seasick thanks to the strait’s rough waves, our grunt can do nothing but pray his ship safely makes it across. As he approaches land, the psychological pressure increases. The first craft to cross the shore will be met, as Easton’s research shows, with a sudden wall of flame springing up from the water from the miles of oil-filled pipeline sunk underneath. As his ship makes it through the fire (he is lucky; others around it are speared or entangled on sea traps) he faces what Easton describes as a mile’s worth of "razor wire nets, hook boards, skin-peeling planks, barbed wire fences, wire obstacles, spike strips, landmines, anti-tank barrier walls, anti-tank obstacles … bamboo spikes, felled trees, truck shipping containers, and junkyard cars.” At this stage, his safety depends largely on whether the Chinese Air Force has been able to able to distinguish between real artillery pieces from the hundreds of decoy targets and dummy equipment PLA manuals believe the Taiwanese Army has created. The odds are against him: As Beckley notes in a study published last fall, in the 1990 to 1991 Gulf War, the 88,500 tons of ordnance dropped by the U.S.-led coalition did not destroy a single Iraqi road-mobile missile launcher. NATO’s 78-day campaign aimed at Serbian air defenses only managed to destroy three of Serbia’s 22 mobile-missile batteries. There is no reason to think that the Chinese Air Force will have a higher success rate when targeting Taiwan’s mobile artillery and missile defense. But if our grunt survives the initial barrages on the beach, he still must fight his way through the main Taiwanese Army groups, 2.5 million armed reservists dispersed in the dense cities and jungles of Taiwan, and miles of mines, booby traps, and debris. This is an enormous thing to ask of a private who has no personal experience with war. It is an even great thing to ask it of a private who naively believed in his own army’s invincibility. This sketch makes sense of the anxiety the PLA officer manuals express. They know war would be a terrific gamble, even if they only admit it to each other. Yet it this also makes sense of the party’s violent reactions to even the smallest of arms sales to Taiwan. Their passion betrays their angst. They understand what Western gloom-and-doomsters do not. American analysts use terms like "mature precision-strike regime” and "anti-access and area denial warfare” to describe technological trends that make it extremely difficult to project naval and airpower near enemy shores. Costs favor the defense: It is much cheaper to build a ship-killing missile than it is to build a ship. But if this means that the Chinese army can counter U.S. force projection at a fraction of America’s costs, it also means that the democracies straddling the East Asian rim can deter Chinese aggression at a fraction of the PLA’s costs. In an era that favors defense, small nations like Taiwan do not need a PLA-sized military budget to keep the Chinese at bay. No one needs to hear this message more than the Taiwanese themselves. In my trips to Taiwan, I have made a point of tracking down and interviewing both conscripts and career soldiers. Their pessimism is palpable. This morale crisis in the ranks partly reflects the severe mismanagement of the conscription system, which has left even eager Taiwanese patriots disillusioned with their military experience. But just as important is the lack of knowledge ordinary Taiwanese have about the strength of their islands’ defenses. A recent poll found that 65 percent of Taiwanese "have no confidence” in their military’s ability to hold off the PLA. Absent a vigorous campaign designed to educate the public about the true odds of successful military resistance, the Taiwanese people are likely to judge the security of their island on flawed metrics, like the diminishing number of countries that maintain formal relations with Taipei instead of Beijing. The PLA’s projected campaign is specifically designed to overwhelm and overawe a demoralized Taiwanese military. The most crucial battlefield may be the minds of the Taiwanese themselves. Defeatism is a more dangerous threat to Taiwanese democracy than any weapon in China’s armory. Both Westerners and Taiwanese should be more optimistic about the defense of Taiwan than is now normal. Both Westerners and Taiwanese should be more optimistic about the defense of Taiwan than is now normal. Yes, the Taiwanese Army projects that it can only hold off its enemy for two weeks after the landing—but the PLA also believes that if it cannot defeat the Taiwanese forces in under two weeks, it will lose the war! Yes, the disparity between the military budgets on both sides of the strait is large, and growing—but the Taiwanese do not need parity to deter Chinese aggression. All they need is the freedom to purchase the sort of arms that make invasion unthinkable. If that political battle can be resolved in the halls of Washington, the party will not have the power to threaten battle on the shores of Taiwan. Tanner Greer is a writer and strategist based in Taiwan. Twitter: @Scholars_Stage
May 16, 20205 yr At this point we just need to D slap them and be done with it. If it weren't for us they wouldn't have a world-wide market to peddle their ish, and they've been ungrateful for it.
May 18, 20205 yr Author F Saudi Arabia FBI finds link between Pensacola military-base gunman and al-Qaida by Eric Tucker, Associated Press, Updated: May 18, 2020- 12:08 PM The gunman in a deadly attack at a military base in Pensacola, Fla., last December was meticulous in his planning and had been radicalized overseas for at least five years, U.S. officials said Monday. The FBI learned of the contacts between the gunman, Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, and an al-Qaida operative after breaking the encryption on cellphones that had previously been locked. Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Chris Wray held a news conference to announce the developments in the shooting late last year at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, in which a Saudi Air Force officer killed three U.S. sailors and injured eight other people. Alshamrani, who was killed by a sheriff’s deputy during the rampage at a classroom building, was undergoing flight training at Pensacola, where members of foreign militaries routinely receive instruction. The Justice Department had previously asked Apple to help extract data from two iPhones that belonged to the gunman, including one that authorities say Alshamrani damaged with a bullet after being confronted by law enforcement. Wray said FBI agents were able to break the encryption without the help of Apple. Law enforcement officials left no doubt that Alshamrani was motivated by jihadist ideology, saying he visited a New York City memorial to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend and posted anti-American and anti-Israeli messages on social media just two hours before the shooting. Separately, al-Qaida’s branch in Yemen, released a video claiming the attack. The branch, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, has long been considered the global network’s most dangerous branch and has attempted to carry out attacks on the U.S. mainland. In January, U.S. officials announced that they were sending home 21 Saudi military students after an investigation revealed that they had had jihadist or anti-American sentiments on social media pages or had "contact with child pornography." Barr said at the time that Saudi Arabia had agreed to review the conduct of all 21 to see if they should face military discipline and to send back anyone the U.S. later determines should face charges.
May 18, 20205 yr Well, Trump has some very nice buildings there so we need to maintain good relations with the Saudis.
May 18, 20205 yr Author Just now, Mike030270 said: Why was the title changed? Didn't make sense to start a whole new thread, especially since the thread was already dedicated to overseas relations.
May 18, 20205 yr 16 minutes ago, Dave Moss said: Well, Trump has some very nice buildings there so we need to maintain good relations with the Saudis. So Trump's puppet Barr released this info without his knowledge?
May 18, 20205 yr 47 minutes ago, The_Omega said: So Trump's puppet Barr released this info without his knowledge? I doubt it.
May 18, 20205 yr 5 hours ago, Dave Moss said: Well, Trump has some very nice buildings there so we need to maintain good relations with the Saudis. Actually IIRC when the Saudi Crown Prince called Trump to tell him that the Iranians just bombed an oil facility (taking more oil offline than was done in all of WW2 combined), Trump told him that he was going to a rally and would deal with it after. Also what stopped Saudi Arabia from flooding the oil market was the US telling the Saudis that if they continued to do so the US would remove all US military capabilities from Saudi Arabia.
May 19, 20205 yr 4 hours ago, Bill said: Actually IIRC when the Saudi Crown Prince called Trump to tell him that the Iranians just bombed an oil facility (taking more oil offline than was done in all of WW2 combined), Trump told him that he was going to a rally and would deal with it after. Also what stopped Saudi Arabia from flooding the oil market was the US telling the Saudis that if they continued to do so the US would remove all US military capabilities from Saudi Arabia. If you’re trying to convince me that the U.S. is standing up to Saudi Arabia, I’m not buying it. Trump and Pompeo kiss up to the Saudis every chance they get.
May 19, 20205 yr 1 hour ago, Dave Moss said: If you’re trying to convince me that the U.S. is standing up to Saudi Arabia, I’m not buying it. Trump and Pompeo kiss up to the Saudis every chance they get. The Saudis were literally attached by a foreign government and we told them to F off. Ffs I hate Trump as much as the next guy but dear lord how much of the I still use the EMB's #1 Cliche do you need to drink n
May 19, 20205 yr Foreign Affairs? I thought this thread would be about Trump and Russian prostitutes...
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