OK. I obviously didn’t see “Despicable Me 2” or I
would have known that the song I was on about yesterday was from it the film,
that I believe my daughters all saw last summer with their grandma. Culturally ignorance is OK, till you
broadcast it. I spent some more time
poking around with Pharell and saw the song listed on his album as “Happy from
Despicable Me 2”. Early in his career,
he rhymed. Some of the hooks were cool
but nothing hit me. Now this album that
‘Happy’ shows up on seems to have been released this month. Expectations high, but disappointing to my
ears. Nothing else speaks to the primary
tune’s infectiousness. This tune I have
on now, “It Girl” is OK. Most of the other’s
left me flat. Ahh well. I’ve retreated to home base. It’s 1956 and the Philadelphia trumpeter, Joe
Wilder is playing away at “Cherokee.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Wilder
Sunday at home. Threw
out some boxes. Cleared up a room so we
could move some furnishing over into it.
Now the way out to the back is cleared.
This was pressing. We had some
people drop in last night and kicked off the barbeque for the first time of the year and
nothing was ready. Mash up of guests,
languages, ages nibbling away at my grilled eggplant, beef shanks and black
been burritos. Just writing about it all
is making me hungry for lunch. I’m
tempted to go cut off a hunk of cheese.
But I’ll press on till this is done.
Now we learn that the NSA had for years been able to successfully hack
Huawei and monitor senior leadership’s communications. Operation “Shotgiant” was trying to find
conclusive evidence that Huawei worked in collusion with the Chinese military. Now Huawei is learning the perils of Shanzhai-ing Ciscos’s router
designs. This must have allowed for a
comparatively easy mapping for how to penetrate their system and unfettered
ability to: 扒头探脑[1]
The NSA is trying to draw the distinction that this is merely for
national security purposes:
“A White
House spokeswoman, Caitlin M. Hayden, said: “We do not give intelligence we
collect to U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or
increase their bottom line. Many countries cannot say the same.”
Perhaps this is true. Indeed,
it would be difficult to imagine the intelligence being leaked only to certain
companies for corporate benefit. But it
isn’t impossible to envision that such things do take place; under the guise of
national security, national favorites are chosen. Pre-Snowden though, we would have publically
maintained that the U.S. government would absolutely not hack foreign entities. Now we have to manage a more challenging
pirouette.
One recalls the dead pan way that, pre-Snowden, Chinese
officials replied to charges of hacking: “We are the world’s biggest victims of
hacking.” They were probably
correct. Congress investigated Huawei
and ZTE for two years with this program and were unable to prove any conclusive
ties to the military. This, in itself,
with all their secret access seems remarkable.
On the balance, one would have thought proving such a thing, if you
truly can monitor senior leadership calls and emails, would have been fairly
straightforward. We assume the ties are
there, now just be patient and secure some evidence. Perhaps the wall they keep from military ties
is more solid than we thought. That, or
they are extremely cautious about such things, assuming themselves hacked from
the outset. Apparently Chinese hacking
has multiplied in the time since Snowden.
Not much left to discuss, now that we’ve lowered the moral playing field
the way we have. Everyone can focus on
defense.
Meanwhile China is watching the situation in the Crimea
closely. A disruption to U.S. hegemony
is generally a good thing for China Inc.
But not at the expense of maintaining its long stated policy of non-mutual
interference. Philip Bowring writing for
the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong raises a point I hadn’t considered as
well. What does this mean for China’s
sense of its role as the protector of ethnic Chinese in far flung lands? Is this a precedent for China to leverage
when considering its role in South East Asia?
For now, they still do not have the ability to project power over such
distances. But one day. http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1455025/china-crimea-lessons-must-be-heeded
I marvel at the courage and discipline of the Ukrainian
soldiers that so far, everything has happened without any shots fired at
anyone. I get depressed considering all
the progress made at normalizing relations with Russia over the last 25 years
is now washing away and familiar old stereotypes resume their prominence. How much more likely for such a thing to
happen to China. And with the cultural
otherness even more profound and the economic might that much more commanding,
the fall out from any such action would be all the more dramatic and
lasting.
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