Market politics

[jbcarioca]

I work in a field where I see IP theft daily from Chinese and Russian IP addresses (datacenter security services). I guarantee you that China benefited FAR more than the US did. Especially US workers.

I've never seen a successful Chinese enterprise that wasn't HEAVILY subsidized by the Chinese government. They simply don't believe in a level playing field.

Were you to actually have data it would be useful. I never want to argue that everything Chinese government people do is honorable. However you send paragraph is probably true, I suppose, if you know nothing about any Chinese Enterprises. Zero question that many are heavily subsidized, some even more than are Boeing, Exxon-Mobil and Archer-Daniels-Midland to name only three. Subsidies work in different ways in different places. The Chinese tend to not hide. The US tries to make subsidies that are hard to understand by common people, like 'carried interest' and 'depletion allowances' to name two. ExIm Bank has been another.

I have lived in and worked in more than a dozen countries and have been in financial services in most of them. I observe that every country has unique ways to make the global trade practices uneven. China has never hidden theirs.

I think it is wise to be cautious with broad sweeping generalizations, especially about subjects with which one is not well acquainted. Until I became a participant in large scale project finance I was quite naive. Now not so much.

We have our own stellar examples that we mostly understand. Those are Tesla and SpaceX of course. Both of them have provably lower 'subsidies' than do their primary competitors. Both are accused of driving only because of subsidies, and many people seem to believe those assertions. Then we have Amazon and the famous 'subsidies' from the USPS, which also is believable to people who know nothing about the package delivery business. Sadly it takes a great deal of effort to figure out what is real.

IP theft is of the same ilk, I suspect. I do not have sufficient expertise to actually know in any given case.

 

[bkp_duke]

Were you to actually have data it would be useful. I never want to argue that everything Chinese government people do is honorable. However you send paragraph is probably true, I suppose, if you know nothing about any Chinese Enterprises. Zero question that many are heavily subsidized, some even more than are Boeing, Exxon-Mobil and Archer-Daniels-Midland to name only three. Subsidies work in different ways in different places. The Chinese tend to not hide. The US tries to make subsidies that are hard to understand by common people, like 'carried interest' and 'depletion allowances' to name two. ExIm Bank has been another.

I have lived in and worked in more than a dozen countries and have been in financial services in most of them. I observe that every country has unique ways to make the global trade practices uneven. China has never hidden theirs.

I think it is wise to be cautious with broad sweeping generalizations, especially about subjects with which one is not well acquainted. Until I became a participant in large scale project finance I was quite naive. Now not so much.

We have our own stellar examples that we mostly understand. Those are Tesla and SpaceX of course. Both of them have provably lower 'subsidies' than do their primary competitors. Both are accused of driving only because of subsidies, and many people seem to believe those assertions. Then we have Amazon and the famous 'subsidies' from the USPS, which also is believable to people who know nothing about the package delivery business. Sadly it takes a great deal of effort to figure out what is real.

IP theft is of the same ilk, I suspect. I do not have sufficient expertise to actually know in any given case.

This is a "broad, sweeping generalization" with plenty of data to back it up. I'm under NDA with my clients, but there are thousands of public reports of Chinese corporate IP theft. I'll let you google those.

I could provide you with terabytes of server and network logs. The Chinese and Russian state-sponsored hacker groups are dis-proportionally represented in attempting to infiltrate our clients, and US companies in general.

I guarantee you that if the roles were reversed, the Chinese would be screaming bloody murder. Perhaps that's what we need to do then, just abandon our morals and go after everything they have.

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

Edit: Not worth bringing up old arguments now.

This is a "broad, sweeping generalization" with plenty of data to back it up. I'm under NDA with my clients, but there are thousands of public reports of Chinese corporate IP theft. I'll let you google those.

I could provide you with terabytes of server and network logs. The Chinese and Russian state-sponsored hacker groups are dis-proportionally represented in attempting to infiltrate our clients, and US companies in general.

I guarantee you that if the roles were reversed, the Chinese would be screaming bloody murder. Perhaps that's what we need to do then, just abandon our morals and go after everything they have.

Ever heard of script kiddies? Those automated vulnerability scanning scripts are all over. Heck, even my home network generates thousands of attempts DAILY, and I have NOTHING worth stealing in my network! Your logs are worthless and you should've known better than to rely on that as evidence of foreign sponsored IP theft.

 

[bkp_duke]

Edit: Not worth bringing up old arguments now.



Ever heard of script kiddies? Those automated vulnerability scanning scripts are all over. Heck, even my home network generates thousands of attempts DAILY, and I have NOTHING worth stealing in my network! Your logs are worthless and you should've known better than to rely on that as evidence of foreign sponsored IP theft.

Of course I've heard of script kiddies. I would not be good at my job otherwise. Scripts are easy to block, you ever heard of "fail2ban" and other firewalls?

The ones I'm referring to are much more sophisticated than script kiddies.


Let me ask you this, how many times has the FBI asked you for assistance with an investigation regarding a foreign actor? My company, we have referred our findings to agents on multiple occasions.

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

Of course I've heard of script kiddies. I would not be good at my job otherwise. Scripts are easy to block, you ever heard of "fail2ban" and other firewalls?

The ones I'm referring to are much more sophisticated than script kiddies.


Let me ask you this, how many times has the FBI asked you for assistance with an investigation regarding a foreign actor? My company, we have referred our findings to agents on multiple occasions.

script kiddies don't have defined IP pools, so it has nothing to do with my firewalls (nor fail2ban) blocking them. It's about the identification of sources of attack. The FBI isn't going to ask me for assistance, because it's painfully obvious that I'm not a targeted victim. However, they would also investigate if you ask them to. I had filed a complaint about an AT&T incident a number of years ago, and the FCC looped me into their investigation. No serious issues were ultimately found, so the case was closed. That is to say, that law enforcement being involved isn't always a sign that something is wrong.

Saying all that isn't to say that China and Russia are NOT engaged in corporate espionage (which they'd have to be to get a leg up in the global market place - remember Samsung and the iPhone clone? oh wait, that's our democratic ally South Korea!), it's just to point out that the issue isn't as rampant as you've made it out to be. And most definitely shouldn't be used as justification to condone abuse of power and tyranny.

 

[bkp_duke]

script kiddies don't have defined IP pools, so it has nothing to do with my firewalls (nor fail2ban) blocking them. It's about the identification of sources of attack. The FBI isn't going to ask me for assistance, because it's painfully obvious that I'm not a targeted victim. However, they would also investigate if you ask them to. I had filed a complaint about an AT&T incident a number of years ago, and the FCC looped me into their investigation. No serious issues were ultimately found, so the case was closed. That is to say, that law enforcement being involved isn't always a sign that something is wrong.

Saying all that isn't to say that China and Russia are NOT engaged in corporate espionage (which they'd have to be to get a leg up in the global market place - remember Samsung and the iPhone clone? oh wait, that's our democratic ally South Korea!), it's just to point out that the issue isn't as rampant as you've made it out to be. And most definitely shouldn't be used as justification to condone abuse of power and tyranny.

Bank fraud, child porn, extortion of corporate entities. Yes, EVERY time the FBI worked with us it was for something VERY illegal. Our networks are not . . . your home network.

And there are plenty of ways to track intrusion, fail2ban would be just the top layer to help us get a laundry list of botnet IPs. Once those are identified, we have been known to reverse hack one of the bot drones to attempt to identify the command and control server(s). We also employ stack tracing, file checksum evaluation, etc.

It's funny how you try to critique / criticize but in the end come around and basically say the same thing that I said from the get go. Thanks for the confirmation.

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

Bank fraud, child porn, extortion of corporate entities. Yes, EVERY time the FBI worked with us it was for something VERY illegal. Our networks are not . . . your home network.

And there are plenty of ways to track intrusion, fail2ban would be just the top layer to help us get a laundry list of botnet IPs. Once those are identified, we have been known to reverse hack one of the bot drones to attempt to identify the command and control server(s). We also employ stack tracing, file checksum evaluation, etc.

It's funny how you try to critique / criticize but in the end come around and basically say the same thing that I said from the get go. Thanks for the confirmation.

Yes that's great and all, and how does that translate to proof that Chinese companies benefit more from government support than US companies do? You've raised the issue that you have TB's of logs showing hack attempts from chinese IP addresses, to which I explained how that isn't proof, and then you went off on a tangent about your qualifications.

Summarizing:
- foreign corporate espionage exists (you think US companies are clean and haven't engaged in hacking attempts of their competitors?)
- sovereign espionage exists (I'm sure the CIA and NSA are only defensive entities! /s)
- industry subsidies exist

The presence of all those things do NOT justify the abuse of power that Trump has been using! Starting and maintaining a trade war with China has been a farce and a distraction. The economic reality of China as manufacturer of the world is a result of their government's focus. The decision to outsource TO China is corporate America's fault. We're reaping what we've sown.

 

[bkp_duke]

Yes that's great and all, and how does that translate to proof that Chinese companies benefit more from government support than US companies do? You've raised the issue that you have TB's of logs showing hack attempts from chinese IP addresses, to which I explained how that isn't proof, and then you went off on a tangent about your qualifications.

Summarizing:
- foreign corporate espionage exists (you think US companies are clean and haven't engaged in hacking attempts of their competitors?)
- sovereign espionage exists (I'm sure the CIA and NSA are only defensive entities! /s)
- industry subsidies exist

The presence of all those things do NOT justify the abuse of power that Trump has been using! Starting and maintaining a trade war with China has been a farce and a distraction. The economic reality of China as manufacturer of the world is a result of their government's focus. The decision to outsource TO China is corporate America's fault. We're reaping what we've sown.

LoL. You changed the subject and went on the tangent, I just went with it. Just like people that politicize science, you want to pick and chose little shards of truth and yet you avoid seeing the full picture. Typical trees for the forest mentality in order to "win the argument at all costs".

FACT: there is FAR MORE IP theft from US companies to China than vice versa. Care to dispute that readily-googleable statement?

FACT: I would support ANY President on this issue that came down hard on China. Tump, Biden, Roger Rabbit. I could care less ON THIS ISSUE what their political affiliation is. Fact of the matter is, the current administration is the ONLY one to grow a backbone and do anything of consequence about it. Hell, I would be perfectly happy to cut trade off 100% with China. I guarantee it would hurt them far more than us (unless you care to dispute trade imbalances). I'm not a Republican and I think Trump has F-d up a lot of things, but on his stance with China, I'm 100% behind him. The Chinese regime respects only one thing: a show of force.


The one thing we do agree on: Corporate america brought a significant portion of this pain on themselves by outsourcing manufacturing to China in pursuit of lower costs. Those that did so, should be punished where it hurts - in their wallets.

 

[Intl Professor]

LoL. You changed the subject and went on the tangent, I just went with it. Just like people that politicize science, you want to pick and chose little shards of truth and yet you avoid seeing the full picture. Typical trees for the forest mentality in order to "win the argument at all costs".

FACT: there is FAR MORE IP theft from US companies to China than vice versa. Care to dispute that readily-googleable statement?

FACT: I would support ANY President on this issue that came down hard on China. Tump, Biden, Roger Rabbit. I could care less ON THIS ISSUE what their political affiliation is. Fact of the matter is, the current administration is the ONLY one to grow a backbone and do anything of consequence about it. Hell, I would be perfectly happy to cut trade off 100% with China. I guarantee it would hurt them far more than us (unless you care to dispute trade imbalances). I'm not a Republican and I think Trump has F-d up a lot of things, but on his stance with China, I'm 100% behind him. The Chinese regime respects only one thing: a show of force.


The one thing we do agree on: Corporate america brought a significant portion of this pain on themselves by outsourcing manufacturing to China in pursuit of lower costs. Those that did so, should be punished where it hurts - in their wallets.

Just to straighten the record a bit, the Obama administration erected a trading coalition to compete with China's, dismantled by Trump, which was far more effective than the witless wonder's simple minded tariffs. But then he believes they are paid by China and thus are of no effect on domestic prices.

Maga means war on US consumers, as well as ordinary workers. Ask a farmer about this sometime.

One of my teacher's maxims was "international relations are a two way street." Bullying China which most Americans are wont to do is a short time high, like all bullying. Peace, friendship, cooperation, mutual advantage, are risky, but the payoff is worth it for the clear of heart. Think like Elon. Don't be a knee jerk, solve problems. Look at how China treats him, bearing in mind he likely has no intention importing Teslas for the US market.

 

[bkp_duke]

Just to straighten the record a bit, the Obama administration erected a trading coalition to compete with China's, dismantled by Trump, which was far more effective than the witless wonder's simple minded tariffs. But then he believes they are paid by China and thus are of no effect on domestic prices.

Maga means war on US consumers, as well as ordinary workers. Ask a farmer about this sometime.

Funny, our family owns a 7th generation family farm. Farmers are probably not the group you want to take anti-MAGA propaganda to, it would not be welcomed.

Also, I would LOVE for you to post proof of your assertion that Obama's "trading coalition" had any effectiveness at all. Everything I can find, even in the Obama WH archives, did not age well on that front (WTO judgments won by US - still nothing changed, anti-dumping tariffs - China dumped more goods, Chinese labor rights - that went no where, IP theft - increased). As was typical with Obama on China - lots of talk, little action, and no results.

 

[bkp_duke]

And because of this, all of us who happen to have a US Post Office within driving range should show up on Saturday August 22 at 11:00 AM local time to demonstrate our support for this vital, constitutionally-mandated service.

The extremely liberal Washington Post doesn't agree with you:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...hing-conspiratorial-happening-postal-service/

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

The extremely liberal Washington Post doesn't agree with you:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...hing-conspiratorial-happening-postal-service/

WaPo being liberal [or conservative] doesn't matter, but the opinion piece obviously isn't. It's funny that the writer made no mention of the changes that the postmaster implemented that are counterproductive to the efficient operation of the post. Citing the election processing deadline, and yet ignoring the removal of almost 700 sorting machines, as the cause of "potential election issues" is disingenuous.

And remember, that's an opinion piece, so it carries almost no weight of facts, so no point in discussing it.

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

LoL. You changed the subject and went on the tangent, I just went with it. Just like people that politicize science, you want to pick and chose little shards of truth and yet you avoid seeing the full picture. Typical trees for the forest mentality in order to "win the argument at all costs".

FACT: there is FAR MORE IP theft from US companies to China than vice versa. Care to dispute that readily-googleable statement?

FACT: I would support ANY President on this issue that came down hard on China. Tump, Biden, Roger Rabbit. I could care less ON THIS ISSUE what their political affiliation is. Fact of the matter is, the current administration is the ONLY one to grow a backbone and do anything of consequence about it. Hell, I would be perfectly happy to cut trade off 100% with China. I guarantee it would hurt them far more than us (unless you care to dispute trade imbalances). I'm not a Republican and I think Trump has F-d up a lot of things, but on his stance with China, I'm 100% behind him. The Chinese regime respects only one thing: a show of force.


The one thing we do agree on: Corporate america brought a significant portion of this pain on themselves by outsourcing manufacturing to China in pursuit of lower costs. Those that did so, should be punished where it hurts - in their wallets.

I didn't change the subject. I used my server logs to point out that your server logs don't count as evidence.

Everything else I'm fine with, but for different reasons (e.g. corporate theft of US IP by US competitors would show up in the google results as well, but impossible to filter out in a meaningful way).

I'm not thrilled with Obama's results either, but that was at least done with the recognition that any action had far-reaching repercussions, unlike the bull in the china shop that we have now.

And that's what's grown ups have to do. Accept the compromises, because the alternative means EVERYONE loses. Republicans have long thought that taking a hard-line stance was the answer, and now they get to see that it's not. Given what you know now with 3 years of Trump, are you really going to take the stance that Trump has led this country better than Obama?

 

[bkp_duke]

WaPo being liberal [or conservative] doesn't matter, but the opinion piece obviously isn't. It's funny that the writer made no mention of the changes that the postmaster implemented that are counterproductive to the efficient operation of the post. Citing the election processing deadline, and yet ignoring the removal of almost 700 sorting machines, as the cause of "potential election issues" is disingenuous.

And remember, that's an opinion piece, so it carries almost no weight of facts, so no point in discussing it.

Defense of a US Gov institution always cracks me up.

You guys are supposed to be supporters of innovation and doing things better, for cheaper.

Ya know, like what Elon does:

Better, for cheaper, is the antithesis of USPS.

 

[bkp_duke]

I didn't change the subject. I used my server logs to point out that your server logs don't count as evidence.

Everything else I'm fine with, but for different reasons (e.g. corporate theft of US IP by US competitors would show up in the google results as well, but impossible to filter out in a meaningful way).

I'm not thrilled with Obama's results either, but that was at least done with the recognition that any action had far-reaching repercussions, unlike the bull in the china shop that we have now.

And that's what's grown ups have to do. Accept the compromises, because the alternative means EVERYONE loses. Republicans have long thought that taking a hard-line stance was the answer, and now they get to see that it's not. Given what you know now with 3 years of Trump, are you really going to take the stance that Trump has led this country better than Obama?

I log a hell of a lot more than the firewall. Last time we handed data over to the FBI, our logs were key to getting a child pornographer convicted and sentenced.

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

I log a hell of a lot more than the firewall. Last time we handed data over to the FBI, our logs were key to getting a child pornographer convicted and sentenced.

You didn't answer the question. Given hindsight, would you rather have Obama's "ineffective" leadership, or Trump's? Because I often see this mis-guided republican view that Obama was weak, because he compromised and negotiated instead of being steadfast in his position. Bully's aren't leaders, they're thugs.

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

Defense of a US Gov institution always cracks me up.

You guys are supposed to be supporters of innovation and doing things better, for cheaper.

Ya know, like what Elon does:

Better, for cheaper, is the antithesis of USPS.

I know of NO one (democrat nor republican) who ever claimed that government was either cheaper nor more efficient, only that it was necessary. Not sure where your straw man came from?

 

[bkp_duke]

You didn't answer the question. Given hindsight, would you rather have Obama's "ineffective" leadership, or Trump's? Because I often see this mis-guided republican view that Obama was weak, because he compromised and negotiated instead of being steadfast in his position. Bully's aren't leaders, they're thugs.

Can I "pass" on that question? LoL.

I really REALLY thought Obama was over-hyped compared to what he actually did.

Trump . . . he's a bull in a china shop (pun intended). Some things he "breaks" you love it. Many of them, you cring (COVID, Environment).

 

[bkp_duke]

I know of NO one (democrat nor republican) who ever claimed that government was either cheaper nor more efficient, only that it was necessary. Not sure where your straw man came from?

No straw man. Just connecting the dots. There is adamant defense of USPS "business as usual", but no one seems wants to acknowledge that it is a horribly inefficient institution with no motivation to improve. Bringing someone in to try to fix it pisses off the half of people not in power at the time. It's a lose lose situation from that standpoint.

 

[JRP3]

Bringing someone in to try to fix it pisses off the half of people not in power at the time.

Dismantling sorting machines and removing mail boxes is not trying to "fix it". It's also pissing off more than half of the people not in power, there is bipartisan support to stop what Trump's lackey has been doing.

Mitch McConnell under bipartisan pressure to recall Senate over USPS, stimulus
Bipartisan majority of Americans want more money for Postal Service: Reuters/Ipsos Poll