China’s Cyber Warriors In The News Again

What is up with China? For quite a while I was railing against Google for being so ethnocentric, and Yahoo! too. Now it seems that China's “Army hackers” are in the news again allegedly infecting German ministries with spy programs. German magazine Der Spiegel reported that German government ministries including Chancellor Angel Merkel's office have been infected by these attacks. We reported on this Chinese “hacker army” back in June, and this latest allegation seems to signal a Cyber war that is heating up.

China's response to the allegation was vague and honestly weak considering the implications and their foreign minister Jiang Yu simply said that this type of activity is illegal in China. Now there's a confidence inspiring statement: “Crime is illegal, therefore it does not exist!” The Reuters story linked to a statement online by the minister that essentially says the same thing - this activity is illegal in China.

Germany's Merkel, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabo are scheduled to meet tomorrow and Merkel is expected to press these issues and others including asking China to help with human rights violations in Darfur. I do not mean to sound trite, but isn't that like asking the mice to protect the cheese?

I guess I should post this under weird news or something, but doesn't international politics appear strange to anyone else? In my earlier article China had evidently assembled a legion of cyber warriors that has been counted by the U.S. According to reports from our DOD these units are designed for gathering industrial secrets among other things. Given the sad state of affairs for the average Chinese worker as far as working conditions - I certainly hope they are hacking into the Occupational Safety Hazards Administration to find out what snorting coal dust and soot all day will do to productivity.

In another story here I tried to report on China's part in the global community in as far as their industrial buildup and other issues. The trend in news from China is just taking a bad turn in my view. Sub standard shipments of products, suppression of rights, massive environmental goofs and now more news of using the Web as a virtual battlefield. It just seems to me that China has much larger issues than what Germany is doing. Web 2.0 is the most significant platform for communication, learning, education, entertainment and essentially positive change in a very long time. I think that everyone including the Chinese should utilize it to learn what works and to help people rather than trying to gain some advantage that will end up not helping the people of China.

Cyber-Warfare idiocy is what some people view as a viable Web utility I suppose. China can't even provide safe drinking water and working conditions for her people, but thousands of Cyber Warriors must make sense to someone. I think if we looked at all the data and information on the Web and analyzed the people's progress and mistakes over the last 5 decades, then perhaps the “end user” would benefit more. As usual the “end user” (that would be you and me) is a secondary consideration for people intent on growth for the sake of growth. This is perhaps a discourse for another venue or time, but still news of the probable misuse of a great tool.

A river in China clogged with (no doubt) unshipped Walmart toys. Make war on pollution not Web 2.0