How are we NOT at war with China?

[CoonDawg]

K, Chinese relations have been sour for, well... ever. I don't know of many times in history when we got along. There have been ransoming situations, even military action. However, every single day they are bombarding us systematically with cyber warfare. Why is this not seen as an act of war?

I suppose we hear about them on us all the time because we live in a free society, and we may be doing even more damage against them, they simply don't report it to save face. However, even so; China is hacking the ******* pentagon. How is that any different than swarming it with a platoon? In fact, I'd say it's worse. They can get a lot more information digitally than they can physically.

If you're smart, you would be pursuing a career in something security-based. Programmers, networkers, quantum computing, etc. might be somewhat saturated now, but when we have a full-on electronic war, you're going to have money thrown at you by government officials to remedy the problem.

[Dzhon]

Espionage isn't considered an act of war. In fact, it's basically how great powers compete in the nuclear age.

That's good advice about the cyber-security profession, though.

[HoboAssassin]

They weren't even sure if it was the Chinese government, its just speculation. I'm not saying it couldn't be, but thats what I read on the Fox news article- the first article that popped up. I don't feel like posting cuz i have finals and am **** busy, but yeah.

[CoonDawg]

This is hardly news, I don't know why you're looking for news articles.

Dzhon (I almost called you Darvin), we're not talking about just a "har har, we hav ur censos statz!" or "lawl, nuke codes", we're talking about them gaining access to our power grids, which happened a few years back.

Unfortunately, I think the U.S. government is far behind in the cyber game. I mean, when an autistic middle-aged man who believes in UFOs hacks the U.S. government 97 times, it's time to forfeit. I think the primary reason for this is like Darwin explained it: It isn't necessarily the strongest species that survives, but the one most responsive to change. Well, the U.S. government is made up of a bunch of old men that probably don't even know what CD stands for. They are really, really good at war tactics, and controlling the public, and they're pros at spending money, but computers are a generation ahead of their time. China, on the other hand, has seen what the digital world can offer, and it also realizes that the world is going to be vastly different in 10 years. They're preparing their offenses (and defenses), figuring out plans of action, and exploring a new world. The U.S. just keeps trying to build faster jets. They're stuck in the past.

I was considering joining the Army as a Information Systems tech, figuring it would be a wonderful way to learn computer set-up and security. I looked it up, and everyone who did it said it was essentially a joke. Sure, the military has spiffy explosions, but their deployment of computer systems is supposedly a blasphemy. 'Course, I have no first-hand account of this, but what I've heard isn't encouraging. If I do join, it would be in an unrelated field.

Further proof is a couple months ago, Al Qaeda intercepted UAV video feed. Did they decrypt it? No. Did they steal hash keys? No. Did they somehow gain access to U.S. servers? No. Was the video feed unencrypted? Yes. Could anyone intercept unencrypted video? So much so that there's consumer software for it. Only $29.95.

Whoever thought that ANYTHING coming or going from something as important or expensive (or potentially dangerous) as an unmanned aerial vehicle shouldn't have at least 256-bit AES is on dope. I hope whoever designed the control systems got his hide stripped.

[Cripple]

On that last point, if you look at the way Obama ran his internet campaign, I suspect it's fair to say that a generation that understands computers and their importance is just starting to come to power. China are arguably ahead in those terms (rather than in terms of raw technological ability) but the gap's not too big that it can't be closed.

Also, what Dzhon said. This is the modern world. Great powers don't go to physical war anymore. It's kind of like people growing up. Back in primary school you had fights with people who annoyed you, then, as you got older, the fights got more serious - as you grew up you became capable of doing a lot more damage; fights meant that people started to get seriously injured. Then maturity came, or at least enough of it to realise that there were other ways to attack your enemies than physical violence - we've all seen people turned against someone by someone that person had pissed off, I'm sure (aggressive diplomacy), or vandalism or slur campaigns against someone (cyberwarfare and esponiage respectively - obviously these are only loose analogies!). Equally, or even more unpleasant than a fight, but not so direct. To bring it back to nations, there's too much at stake these days for developed nations to fight each other (MAD etc.), but there's been a long history of spy wars being fought between such powers (the whole cold war!) where the capture of whole rings of spies wasn't justification for war, but raised the stakes and led to retaliation of the same kind.

Which is worrying, actually. It suggests that this new cyber war will probably escalate if we haven't yet become mature enough for both parties to back down - and, if they can't get along, at least be polite to each other (which involves not attacking the other nation's interests!).

[CoonDawg]

Which is worrying, actually. It suggests that this new cyber war will probably escalate if we haven't yet become mature enough for both parties to back down - and, if they can't get along, at least be polite to each other (which involves not attacking the other nation's interests!).

Again, we have no idea if the Chinese attacks are provoked. I'm not naive enough to think that the U.S. isn't heavily into the spy game, but China, as far as I know, has never made a single accusation against us for cyber war. So from the evidence before me, China is just throwing rocks at us and we're shrugging it off.

[Cripple]

I can't believe that these attacks have occured without the US doing something about it. There's probably a bunch of people working on counter-attacks. But the nature of the two countries makes it easier for China than the US to conduct this kind of attack.

[Ravager]

The US government can't tell if it's a Chinese citizen that's hacking them or if it's the government. There's no way of knowing.

[CoonDawg]

The US government can't tell if it's a Chinese citizen that's hacking them or if it's the government. There's no way of knowing.

Some little chinese kid does not hack Google, let alone for the sole purpose of viewing the accounts of Chinese Civil Rights activists. Grow a brain.

Besides, China has an iron grip on their internet. They would know what is going on.

[Cripple]

The US government can't tell if it's a Chinese citizen that's hacking them or if it's the government. There's no way of knowing.

Some little chinese kid does not hack Google, let alone for the sole purpose of viewing the accounts of Chinese Civil Rights activists. Grow a brain.

Yeah, although our conspiracy theorist with aspergers' syndrome managed a pretty good job on the Pentagon and NASA computers when he was searching for evidence of UFOs. For that matter, I read an interview with him where he mentions that the system really is wide open - as in, he could see the IPs of all the other people looking at a particular secret file at the same time as him, and a large proportion of them were registered in the gulf states, the middle east, China, eastern europe... it just so happens that he's the only hacker the US can actually get at.

[CoonDawg]

Google =/= yk2 Pentagon. The pentagon is retarded, Google is one of the most elaborate, successful and secure places on this planet. Again, it wasn't just Google that was hit. They claim 20 other organizations were targeted.

[Cripple]

Hmm. Imagine what you could do if you took over google's cloud...

MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahaha...ha... ha...  ha...  ...ha.

OH SHI-

[Ravager]

Google =/= yk2 Pentagon. The pentagon is retarded, Google is one of the most elaborate, successful and secure places on this planet. Again, it wasn't just Google that was hit. They claim 20 other organizations were targeted.

Still can't prove that the Chinese government did it.

[OcularisInferno]

Don't you know never get involved in a land war in Asia? Also, never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

[RA]

Don't you know never get involved in a land war in Asia? Also, never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

Awesome!