Script from my national network radio tech segment last Monday on
Chinese hack attacks on U.S. infrastructure
- - -
So I'd like to kind of cut through the fog on this one, because if you
have a "deju vu" all over again feeling it's because we've talked
before about infrastructure vulnerabilities and hack attacks, and
while none have been the kind of "doomsday" predictions that you hear
about so much, attacks on infrastructure - power, water, etc. are a
very big deal and we've heard about these kinds of attacks by
individuals with purported ties to the Chinese government before.
And these systems are being gradually upgraded to try protect against
these kinds of attacks, which is important to note. Now we also can
observe that it's likely rather naive to assume that other countries,
including Western countries, including most likely our own country,
aren't researching and exploring similar capabilities against our own
perceived adversaries as well. Now apart from the seriousness of
infrastructure attacks and how even if they're not the doomsday type
can still hurt many people, there's another interesting aspect of this
that we don't really hear about very much from our politicians of
either party.
We do hear from both parties lots of stuff about TikTok and DJI drones
and other consumer products that have ties of one sort or another with
China. Sometimes these are even rather baffling and inconsistent.
While both parties have been critical of TikTok despite the firm being
fairly open about changes they claim to have made to address privacy
concerns and such, it can be something of a stretch to figure out how
much worse they may be than any number of other popular apps made here
in this country, when it comes to personal data and such, especially
given the large data broker industry here.
But indeed it gets very complicated. You have various politicians in
both parties taking confusing and sometimes rapidly changing positions
on issues such as should TikTok be shut down if they won't separate
from China. You have politicians trying to ban DJI drone products
which aren't only widely used by consumers but in industry,
agriculture, public safety and so on, even though there doesn't seem
to be any real evidence that DJI for example spied on users or
anything like that.
It's difficult to escape the feeling that perhaps some of these
examples that are talked about so much publicly on a bipartisan basis
by politicians might be more about competition concerns rather than
actual privacy or security concerns. And if that's the case it could
be argued that they should say so, directly. Because again, looping
back to the start of this story, hacking attacks on infrastructure can
be very serious indeed, and it seems like there should be much more
public focus on these kinds of very real, fundamental ongoing risks to
society, rather than so much focus on various of these consumer
products and services where the foundation for concerns seem to
sometimes be rooted more in politics rather than demonstrable ongoing
threats.
There's a famous line that says "choose your battles wisely" and this
especially applies when you're dealing with an economic and technology
power like China, it's best to keep focus on what's most clear and
important -- like infrastructure attacks -- rather than dilute your
arguments with more speculative issues that may make for lots of media
coverage but ultimately may not really advance our interests and
actual safety for us all.
- - -
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
[email protected] (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
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