Three letter agencies are part of politics. For anything this big it's usually all three: 1/ an industry that can benefit from the policy (US-based crane builders), 2/ the government itself (extra port resilience), 3/ vote getting (union jobs for the company that builds them).
It's not a bad thing by the way that there is broad alignment - although it's not necessarily the most efficient or ideal at the global level.
Don't forget how this sets an example, like for Huawei. Expect Americans to urge their European allies to do the same "because security". This can be another blow in the commercial war between US and China, and a potential benefit for the US if it creates a market for their cranes.
Europe and US are allies so there is less (but certainly not zero) risk from US controlling European cranes than China controlling them. Also, US has more controls that would prevent them from abusing the position as easily (i.e. sure the CIA could disrupt the cranes but the bar would be much higher than the bar for China's three letter agencies to do it).
There are other constraints like Five Eyes and bright lines around things like how the US would (usually) ask the German intel agencies to spy on Germans if possible. This is unlike the Chinese who probably have limited access to German intel.
What's interesting is that some of the conversation in the thread immediately turns political: "what's the big deal, it's made in China lol. They don't want the Republicans to pounce!"
And then 10 years later, boom, national security issue. How are Americans ever going to solve these problems when everything is justified by or excused as political bias?
Is that a secret service agent who's struggling to reposition the US flag over the Chinese name brand?
That's absolutely hilarious that the taxpayers are paying for this.
My ex-commie country would also do this when "the great leader" would tour factories and industries. Workers would cover up all foreign brands and pretend all tech is local and production efficiency is 100x what it actually was.
He pulled up the flag and held onto it instead of trying to reposition it. At first, I also found it funny that it was a secret service agent that went there, but then it made sense: with the flag moving like that (it seems it had a somewhat heavy wooden structure instead of just fabric), there would be a risk of the strings holding it breaking, and then there would be a risk that it could fly and hit whoever was talking later at that empty podium. I believe it's part of their job to avoid these kinds of risks.
Pretty silly they tied a heavy wooden frame to it when they could a of just tied a bare flag in 4 points over the Chinese brand without the risk of it falling and injuring someone.
If they don't just re-controller them and replace the entire structure, we've gone insane. China wouldn't care that they're not following contract protocol. Just nationalize them. Really this should have never happened in the first place.
Who owns the cranes, though? Dubai World Ports, in some cases.[1]
China does not, apparently, own any ports in the US directly at the moment, although
for a while COSCO had a terminal at Long Beach.
Worldwide, a huge number of ports are owned by Chinese companies, financed by the government of China, or both. This is unsurprising given the size of China's shipping industry, but it's also part of a policy to increase the worldwide influence of China.
That is an argument for sourcing domestic cranes now instead of putting it off.
Anyway, if he's president again I think he's more likely to pardon himself, illegally perhaps, than to actually pay his debts (with bribe money or otherwise.)
The loan they went after him for in NY was repaid in full, and the bank did not complain about "overvaluation" because they know the risks and did their due diligence. Court agents who got elected on a platform of anti-Trumpism are abusing the courts to try to put him out of business. NYC and possibly the whole state are now banana republic territory where you can be attacked for political reasons. Nobody sane should want to do business there until they prove otherwise.
I’ll take a judge’s verdict on the topic over yours, if you don’t mind.
Trump is on record - in the 2016 presidential debates, no less - claiming that gaming the system (by not paying his fair share of taxes) makes him smart.
Not prosecuting him and holding his feet to the fire is a worse look for NYS/NYC. Not showing undue deference to a former president is actually something the state should be very proud of.
It’s the opposite of banana republic level corruption when you realise that they’re aiming for the (former) king and can’t afford to miss…which they aren’t.
>Trump is on record - in the 2016 presidential debates, no less - claiming that gaming the system (by not paying his fair share of taxes) makes him smart.
This is in reference to using the same legal loopholes that other rich people use, including rich liberal celebrities and politicians. He's not wrong, he was being honest about what rich people do. Liberals don't even admit they're filthy rich most of the time. What is "fair"? That is an opinion. We don't have to pay according to any random person's idea of fairness. We have to pay according to the law.
The bank here had no complaints, and they would have if there was an actual problem. I don't care what some TDS having judge says about that, and neither should you.
Didn't they, one by one, stop doing business with him? That's pretty damning. Plus, his guilt was proven in a court of law. Does it matter that no bank took him to court before this? Look at the size of punishment - some $350M over the course of the lifetime of his company.
Could a bank have looked at the number and decided that going after Trump for an average amount of 5-10 million dollars every year wasn't worth it? It's just better to stop doing business with him. It isn't like Trump was stiffing them for a billion dollars a year.
> TDS having judge
NOW we are reaching banana republic status when regular people like us start doubting the trustworthiness of institutions like the court system with no evidence of corruption.
Wondering if you have the same concerns about the Delaware DA (Trump appointee) prosecuting Hunter Biden or Richard Hur (R lawyer) claiming Biden has poor memory and is easily confused. Are they suffering from BDS or are they just telling it like it is? And what makes you sure that either answer you choose will not be contested by someone else like you?
> neither should you
Like I said before, I'll take a judge's opinion on this than wakawaka28's.
The whole episode reminds me of “Give me the man and I’ll give you the case against him”. Given the universal practice of inflating valuations in New York and even lying about square footage on commercial leases, James should be filing a lot more civil suits.
Clinton, Bush (to a lesser extent only because of the obsession with the Middle East) and Obama sold out to China. Trump started the course reversal that Biden has astutely continued and whoever doesn't lose the next election is likely to introduce harsher restrictions.
The only difference between Trump and every other person who wants to be a president/senator is he was actually persecuted for corruption. Good they went after him. Next go after everyone on the Senate arms committee for insider trading
I would say even Biden sells out to China, but less than the others perhaps. We will continue to sell out to china as long as we continue the moral high ground of equality within our borders but equality doesn't matter outside our borders. Contrary to popular opinion, what we need to do is adopt the idea of inequality even within our borders - not through slavery or barbarism but by reducing minimum wage, reducing social programs, reducing taxes, and stopping the influx of illegal immigration. Then we won't have to sell out to China.
Like how Hillary approved the sale of Uranium One? Give me a break. If Trump was going to sell out he would have done it the first time around. After 8 years, they got nothing on him except bogus charges. They're going after him over a loan he paid back, in which the bank had zero complaints and both parties followed customary procedures. Here's your rape victim btw: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/06/25/stunned_a...
The Rule of Law includes provisions for national security and for contracts violations. They can break a contract and pay compensation without literally replacing cranes.
If Chinese cranes are an issue at all, then re-controllering extant cranes is just a half measure and the proper solution is to make sure we have a suitable source for cranes in the future. Might as well give that domestic crane source some business now, and work out any problems now rather than kicking the can down the road.
Major infrastructure resources should be open source in the sense that the full source should be available to the owner/operator of the infrastructure (not free, just available). Should apply to any national infrastructure deemed critical for defense.
Of course it should. And anyone with IQ with more than two digits
knows this. But here we are, in a situation where corporate interests
and national security are vastly at odds. Wait until proprietary AI
really hits home.
I think the title buries the lede... FTA, the cranes have sensors that can track the origin and destination of a container. The US military, which reasonably would want to unload cargo at any port in the USA, does not want their logistics to be trackable by anyone but them. It would seem that currently if they wanted to send or receive a shipment of secret goods, their options are increasingly limited as to where it can be routed.
Yes, that is the actual issue. Here's the relevant part of the story.
>The U.S. military has been concerned about the cranes for years and has made efforts to skirt ports with the China-made cranes as best as possible, according to the senior U.S. military commander who oversees the military’s logistics operations.
>The Chinese can track the origin, destination and other data of the U.S. military’s containerized materiel to determine exactly where the military is shipping it, Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, the commander of U.S. Transportation Command, told the Journal last year.
> just remove the RFID radios and cameras from the cranes
Because they require these to work.
> or just not allow them to call home?
I can't say for sure, but I believe they already don't call home: this is also why building a solution to block them from "what if they started to call home" doesn't work.
Just guessing that the software forces you to put in tracking information for every item. If it can't read it, you'll have to input the stuff manually. I bet they make that interface painful too.
If they don't call home, then the foreign interests wouldn't be getting the data, I think? If the concern is access to inferred logistics and crane telemetrics, then the solution would still seem to be removing access to the data or retrofitting new controls systems to the cranes, and not replacing the entire crane.
Or just design a container whose RFID identity changes between being loaded onto the ship and being unloaded at the next port, making tracking impossible.
Could be as simple as telling the captain of the ship to swap the RFID modules between two containers during the voyage.
Like any system that is "monitored", it also presents the opportunity
to feed disinformation to an adversary; what's labelled as submarine
technology heading for one place is really anti-drone weaponry
heading to a different front thousands of miles away.
Indeed you are right. And I was once laughed out of security meeting
for suggesting that allowing certain nations to build the control
systems for one of our nuclear power plants might have issues.
TBH, I think the laughter was very, very nervous and I distinctly
heard the sound of a penny dropping.
Even if you swap RFID identities during transit, the location of each container on the ship doesn't change much during any voyage, so this wouldn't materially change things: the tracker just has to update the ID references with the locations of the containers in the unloading port.
Since the cranes "know" the physical location of each container when it is loaded and unloaded, I suspect the CCP can update their container tracking software ~100X faster than the Pentagon can implement a decent RFID-changing system.
> >The Chinese can track the origin, destination and other data of the U.S. military’s containerized materiel
Everybody can do that. Here are sites for tracking a container.[1][2]
Many people need to know where containers are. Ship operators, ports, railroads, truckers, customs officials in multiple countries, customs brokers... It's not usually a big secret.
The military may operate outside the commercial system at times, but probably with their own vessels.
It has often struck me that intelligence could also be gathered using civilian infrastructure. There are a lot of cameras out there, things like cars are tracked. Overall traffic movements, particular images showing something like a military vehicle, and an individuals private vehicle's movements can all yield a lot of information if a lot is available.
That ban on installing their equipment on government property is a good idea, but they are all over the place, often on entrances to large buildings so lots of views of streets.
Which is why the forced digitalisation of everything, accompanied in almost all cases by centralisation, poses very big strategic risks that almost no-one in a position of power is willing to openly talk about.
In the Eastern-European capital where I'm living (EU and especially NATO member bordering Ukraine) the local mayor's office has implemented a parking verification system which involves a few Town Hall cars driving around with "AI"-cameras attached and filming almost everything on sight, automatically identifying number-plates. I'm pretty sure that that system and the data stored there is a lot less secure compared with what some special security service would have put in place, and, yet, the data stored in there (basically the real-time locations and identification of almost all the cars in the downtown-ish area of this NATO capital) is just as important as anything held by said security services and labeled as "state secrets".
Pretty sure it would be a EU GDPR violation to record and store everyone's vehicles and license plates in public spaces without their consent if there's no surveillance warrant.
Bucharest. This is the article about it [1], in Romanian but google translate can help, and especially you can see a photo of one of those cars at the very start of the article.
Because last time I checked illegal street parking in Bucharest is still a shitshow where all drivers just park wherever they want because the chance of the police actually fining them is super small.
So is that more for show and fearmongering drivers to not park illegally or do they actually issue and chase down fines now?
You park on a designated place and you have to pay before the AI car comes and catches you, if not, presumably you get a fine. There are still some “manual” check-ups done by people walking on foot and checking your car plates in that grand central system of theirs, those can also give you fines.
As for the parking in Bucharest, things have definitely changed in the last 2-3 years, especially because of technology. The main Town Hall and some of the district Town Halls (we have six) have realized that charging people for parking money is a very handy tax, and because tech has made it a lot easier to put in place and to enforce it’s basically free money for them.
When you park there you are obtaining a permit (paying with money/app/SMS/abonament) which, quite surprisingly, is tied to your license plate number.
If they implement 'parked, didn't paid' then they are storing the license plate number for some time (at least a day, or a next day).
Anyway, this is a public space and license plate numbers are a public information (just like the names of streets), which can be associated with an individual but until they are - they are not personal information.
>Anyway, this is a public space and license plate numbers are a public information (just like the names of streets), which can be associated with an individual but until they are - they are not personal information.
The fact that the vehicle is in a public space is irrelevant, and the names of streets are an obvious straw man.
Article 4(1) of the GDPR is quite clear as to what constitutes personal data:
> ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;
The fact that the natural person is identifiable by absolutely anyone (the motor vehicle licensing agency), not just the passers-by looking at the license plates, makes the license plate number personal information.
> The fact that the vehicle is in a public space is irrelevant, and the names of streets are an obvious straw man.
Oh noes, now I can't publish a map with St. StreetName on it! Because Mr. Incognito lives on St. StreetName, 31!
>> ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;
> The fact that the natural person is identifiable by absolutely anyone (the motor vehicle licensing agency), not just the passers-by looking at the license plates, makes the license plate number personal information. 1
No. Associating Mr. Whatshisname with a license plate number is a personal data. The license plate number itself is not. Otherwise you should go and blur/mask all the streetnames in all the photos made in EU ever. Or disband every motor vehicle licensing agency in every EU country.
And another edit: is [0] a personal data? Should Wikipedia Foundation be punished for even having that data?
If we're talking about burying ledes, it seems the real story here is that the US doesn't appear to know how to make cheap, high quality container cranes. That seems vaguely like it should be a security concern in itself; if the US isn't cost-competitive enough to build cranes for US ports, what exactly is going to happen in a war? If the US is seriously worried about fighting China then they're at a real disadvantage because China has all this heavy industry they can repurpose to a war effort.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZPMC says the same Chinese group are going to be building a new Bay Bridge in San Francisco. And they (ZPMC) don't even have bridge building experience! I'm going with a US v. USSR style defeated-before-the-fight-starts scenario here favouring China.
> US doesn't appear to know how to make cheap, high quality container cranes
The US doesn’t know how to make cheap, high quality hardware as far as I can tell. Basically every time I’ve recently looked for a piece of somewhat specialized hardware, especially if it’s at least a bit electronic, it’s from China or Taiwan. The cheap sketchy hardware comes from China. The slightly more expensive apparently nice stuff comes from China or Taiwan (but is oddly hard to buy — apparently these companies have not mastered distribution?). The really nice expensive stuff has substantially less informative spec sheets, comes from US-based companies, and is actually a nice package wrapped around almost-stock gear from China or Taiwan.
Even brand new innovative things “from the US” outsource to ODMs in China or Taiwan.
For some reason the US doesn’t seem to have nice contract manufactures or ODM shops and also seems to lack the expertise needed to cost-effectively design or manufacture power electronics.
At the highest of levels, if two parties are at war the one with the most resources wins. That is obviously a gross oversimplification as millennia of tactics demonstrate, but for the sake of argument just hold the thought for a moment.
If the US supply chain isn't cost effective, then it'll have to commit multiple times the resources of the adversary to win. If the US supply chain becomes inefficient enough, at some point the US becomes unable to win. The US doesn't have multiple times the resources of China when it comes to overall manufacturing, so under that oversimplified model the US just loses any direct war - and apparently their military budgets are similarly sized right now [0], so if China is much more efficient at manufacturing (more than about 2x) they might have an edge even at present spending without being on war footing.
Ok, so now we snap back to reality where there are other factors than just manufacturing efficiency and the US military is presumably in better shape than China's. But you can hopefully see now how without overwhelming manufacturing the US needs to maintain big strategic, organisational and technological advantages over the Chinese military to compete with them. They can't outresource someone with similar resources (for which we have GDP and manufacturing output as proxies) and much more efficient processes.
Value generation in modern "mid-tech" (elevators, cranes, machinery and tools in general)
is 50% in services, including software. You would need to make whole new company to develop and service systems for retrofitted Chinese cranes.
Bending metal to crane shape is not that expensive. Delivering full system with automation and maintaining it is.
Of course this has not gone to courts yet but it seems similar to what the US did on steel - claiming national security and then deliberately stuffing the Arbitration process when the first court ruled against it.
Pointing to another country’s human rights issues to distract from your own can be whataboutism. Everyone should strive to implement human rights regardless of what anyone else is doing.
Deciding not to strictly follow a trade agreement when the other party of that agreement is doing it all can to avoid the spirit and letter of the agreement is not whataboutism. That’s just a reasonable response.
My point was that WTO membership doesn't require countries to compromise their security. Neither the US nor China are violating the spirit or the letter of the WTO Agreement by placing national security restrictions on sectors they consider critical.
> when the other party of that agreement is doing it all can to avoid the spirit and letter of the agreement
I hear this claim often about China (particularly from Americans), but I think it's very far from being true.
China underwent massive, extremely painful reforms in order to join the WTO, on a scale that would be difficult for most Americans to imagine. For example, China basically built an entire intellectual property legal system from scratch. Or another example: China split up numerous large state-owned enterprises and forced the resulting companies to operate on a for-profit basis, which meant that tens of millions of workers lost their jobs and many more lost benefits.
I think most of the exaggerated statements about China not caring about WTO rules stem from a basic misunderstanding both of how the Chinese economy works and what WTO rules require.
There have been lots of hacker for hire companies from around the world. You want to embargo India because of Appin, Italy for Hacking Team, Israel for NSO Group? If you are worried about "state-backed hackers" I mean... what is the NSA again?
It depends on which products we're talking about. China now is like Japan was in the 1970s-80s. Japan had a reputation for making cheap, shoddy products, but it was actually rapidly moving up in quality.
China still has a surplus of rural residents to make work for, I don't see quality being a non-problem until that labor pool dries up (which should be too long). For example, Chinese-made Toyota is still much lower quality than Japan-made Toyota, mostly because the former still relies on less automation than the latter since SOE majority JV partners are tasked by the party more with creating jobs than with creating quality product.
> China still has a surplus of rural residents to make work for
It also produces more STEM PhDs than any other country, and now leads the world in rankings of high-quality research output.
> Chinese-made Toyota is still much lower quality than Japan-made Toyota
Yet Chinese-made and -designed automotive batteries are among the most advanced in the world, and China is quickly becoming a leader in the development and production of electric cars.
Again, it very much depends on which products we're talking about. China produces both cheap junk and world-leading products.
> It also produces more STEM PhDs than any other country, and now leads the world in rankings of high-quality research output.
And the rest of the world still benefits from that output as much as China (emigration shot up during/after covid).
> Yet Chinese-made and -designed automotive batteries are among the most advanced in the world, and China is quickly becoming a leader in the development and production of electric cars.
Battery production isn't really something you can get villagers to do alone. Otherwise, the quality of Chinese cars is pretty consistent across brands (so so, China's chabuduo culture), but it doesn't matter much because auto shops/repairs are still pretty affordable.
> Battery production isn't really something you can get villagers to do alone.
You seem to think that China is still a backward agrarian society.
> Otherwise, the quality of Chinese cars is pretty consistent across brands
Quality varies immensely. China has never manufactured internationally competitive internal-combustion-engine cars. It basically leads the world now in electric cars.
> China's chabuduo culture
This is just getting into the realm of cultural stereotyping. Every country has its own version of "good enough" (which is all that 差不多 means), and China also has a long tradition of extremely fine craftsmanship (just think of the fact that fine porcelain dishes are referred to as "China").
> > Battery production isn't really something you can get villagers to do alone.
> You seem to think that China is still a backward agrarian society.
No, the party wants people in jobs, but battery production doesn't allow for that, it has no choice but to be heavily automated. China optimizes for work, except that isn't possible, then they get quality through automation.
> Quality varies immensely. China has never manufactured internationally competitive internal-combustion-engine cars. It basically leads the world now in electric cars.
The bodies are similarly made in a BYD EV than a Toyota or Hyundai ICE built in China. Having ridden in a few, they felt just as flimsy.
> This is just getting into the realm of cultural stereotyping. Every country has its own version of "good enough" (which is all that 差不多 means), and China also has a long tradition of extremely fine craftsmanship (just think of the fact that fine porcelain dishes are referred to as "China").
I mean, I get it, you want to say this is a stereotype, except when it happens for real, then its just something I should accept and not comment on. China does have a long tradition of craftsmanship, for sure, but when people want to make money, they optimize for that heavily. They do what they must to produce at the price that will survive in a very competitive cost-sensitive market. For example, quality in a flat renovation suffer because you hired guys who low balled the price, and they cheaped out on materials and finish (chabuduo!), but you are already complicit in that because you went for the lowest price (and if you went for a higher price, you'd probably still get scammed anyways).
> The bodies are similarly made in a BYD EV than a Toyota or Hyundai ICE built in China. Having ridden in a few, they felt just as flimsy.
Chinese-produced cars are starting to achieve 5-star ratings in international crash tests, so your blanket statement is false.
> For example, quality in a flat renovation suffer because you hired guys who low balled the price, and they cheaped out on materials and finish (chabuduo!), but you are already complicit in that because you went for the lowest price (and if you went for a higher price, you'd probably still get scammed anyways).
This happens in literally every country on Earth. It's just that you don't know any catch phrase to apply to it: chabuduo. If you choose a contractor purely based on price, expect them to cut corners.
We don't need to get everybody a small fry. We just need to give it to the ones that actually go hungry, and it'll sure go further if it's not wasted on the already comfortable.
Yeah, we spent ~$150 billion in 2023 on national feeding-people programs. SNAP, WIC, and others. Any single person earning less than $1,133 per month gets SNAP (modern day food stamps), higher for larger household sizes.
42 million Americans get SNAP benefits (additional people in other programs)
Once again, "let's increase this existing program by 0.1%!" is not a very convincing argument.
But that course of action would require the state to be somewhat tech literate and use their big brain.
Why pay a small company a six figure bounty to reverse engineer and patch out the phoning home spyware, when you can pay upwards of eight figures via juicy government contracts to someone like Allen Bradley or Rockwell?
Gotta juice your government contract. Charge a scrappage fee for removing the naughty crane, charge full price for a new crane and a special surcharge for over-night installation... and then have the chutzpah to explain that yes, Chinese and American cranes do look very similar... convergent design something something <cough>.
Does it really improve anything? With today's technology, it should be simple put there camera and just monitor containers visually using computer vision +ai.
It's not like they are in hangar. Hell, spacex is monitored 24x7 while building spaceships (ITAR regulated stuff).
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 206 ms ] threadalso: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
It's not a bad thing by the way that there is broad alignment - although it's not necessarily the most efficient or ideal at the global level.
https://np.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/comments/11jsyyf/
And then 10 years later, boom, national security issue. How are Americans ever going to solve these problems when everything is justified by or excused as political bias?
That's absolutely hilarious that the taxpayers are paying for this.
My ex-commie country would also do this when "the great leader" would tour factories and industries. Workers would cover up all foreign brands and pretend all tech is local and production efficiency is 100x what it actually was.
Pretty silly they tied a heavy wooden frame to it when they could a of just tied a bare flag in 4 points over the Chinese brand without the risk of it falling and injuring someone.
Which, sadly also says something.
This is a right to repair issue. Can't trust the remote third party maintenance service.
[1] https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/uae-purchase-american-port-...
Anyway, if he's president again I think he's more likely to pardon himself, illegally perhaps, than to actually pay his debts (with bribe money or otherwise.)
Trump is on record - in the 2016 presidential debates, no less - claiming that gaming the system (by not paying his fair share of taxes) makes him smart.
Not prosecuting him and holding his feet to the fire is a worse look for NYS/NYC. Not showing undue deference to a former president is actually something the state should be very proud of.
It’s the opposite of banana republic level corruption when you realise that they’re aiming for the (former) king and can’t afford to miss…which they aren’t.
This is in reference to using the same legal loopholes that other rich people use, including rich liberal celebrities and politicians. He's not wrong, he was being honest about what rich people do. Liberals don't even admit they're filthy rich most of the time. What is "fair"? That is an opinion. We don't have to pay according to any random person's idea of fairness. We have to pay according to the law.
The bank here had no complaints, and they would have if there was an actual problem. I don't care what some TDS having judge says about that, and neither should you.
Didn't they, one by one, stop doing business with him? That's pretty damning. Plus, his guilt was proven in a court of law. Does it matter that no bank took him to court before this? Look at the size of punishment - some $350M over the course of the lifetime of his company.
Could a bank have looked at the number and decided that going after Trump for an average amount of 5-10 million dollars every year wasn't worth it? It's just better to stop doing business with him. It isn't like Trump was stiffing them for a billion dollars a year.
> TDS having judge
NOW we are reaching banana republic status when regular people like us start doubting the trustworthiness of institutions like the court system with no evidence of corruption.
Wondering if you have the same concerns about the Delaware DA (Trump appointee) prosecuting Hunter Biden or Richard Hur (R lawyer) claiming Biden has poor memory and is easily confused. Are they suffering from BDS or are they just telling it like it is? And what makes you sure that either answer you choose will not be contested by someone else like you?
> neither should you
Like I said before, I'll take a judge's opinion on this than wakawaka28's.
The only difference between Trump and every other person who wants to be a president/senator is he was actually persecuted for corruption. Good they went after him. Next go after everyone on the Senate arms committee for insider trading
>The U.S. military has been concerned about the cranes for years and has made efforts to skirt ports with the China-made cranes as best as possible, according to the senior U.S. military commander who oversees the military’s logistics operations.
>The Chinese can track the origin, destination and other data of the U.S. military’s containerized materiel to determine exactly where the military is shipping it, Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, the commander of U.S. Transportation Command, told the Journal last year.
This is a problem that doesn't require billions in investment to solve, but rather a wire cutter.
Because they require these to work.
> or just not allow them to call home?
I can't say for sure, but I believe they already don't call home: this is also why building a solution to block them from "what if they started to call home" doesn't work.
What if its wrapped in aluminium?:0
Could be as simple as telling the captain of the ship to swap the RFID modules between two containers during the voyage.
Then, besides this, the whole thing is a bad idea. The Chinese will destroy these cranes in the event of a war with the US.
Indeed you are right. And I was once laughed out of security meeting for suggesting that allowing certain nations to build the control systems for one of our nuclear power plants might have issues.
TBH, I think the laughter was very, very nervous and I distinctly heard the sound of a penny dropping.
[0] https://www.punchline-gloucester.com/articles/aanews/edf-hin...
This sounds a lot like suggesting a Walmart manager can “just quickly stick encrypted payload QR codes over each EAN barcode in the store”.
Everybody can do that. Here are sites for tracking a container.[1][2]
Many people need to know where containers are. Ship operators, ports, railroads, truckers, customs officials in multiple countries, customs brokers... It's not usually a big secret. The military may operate outside the commercial system at times, but probably with their own vessels.
[1] https://www.track-trace.com/container
[2] https://www.searates.com/container/tracking/
It has often struck me that intelligence could also be gathered using civilian infrastructure. There are a lot of cameras out there, things like cars are tracked. Overall traffic movements, particular images showing something like a military vehicle, and an individuals private vehicle's movements can all yield a lot of information if a lot is available.
[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63749696
That ban on installing their equipment on government property is a good idea, but they are all over the place, often on entrances to large buildings so lots of views of streets.
For schools: [1]
For roads: [2]
Their own wuxia.[3]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scoM0sL-HGg
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4s83ECKblo
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otAuH6FDhgw
In the Eastern-European capital where I'm living (EU and especially NATO member bordering Ukraine) the local mayor's office has implemented a parking verification system which involves a few Town Hall cars driving around with "AI"-cameras attached and filming almost everything on sight, automatically identifying number-plates. I'm pretty sure that that system and the data stored there is a lot less secure compared with what some special security service would have put in place, and, yet, the data stored in there (basically the real-time locations and identification of almost all the cars in the downtown-ish area of this NATO capital) is just as important as anything held by said security services and labeled as "state secrets".
Pretty sure it would be a EU GDPR violation to record and store everyone's vehicles and license plates in public spaces without their consent if there's no surveillance warrant.
At least it's like that in Germany.
[1] https://www.hotnews.ro/stiri-administratie_locala-26379925-c...
Because last time I checked illegal street parking in Bucharest is still a shitshow where all drivers just park wherever they want because the chance of the police actually fining them is super small.
So is that more for show and fearmongering drivers to not park illegally or do they actually issue and chase down fines now?
As for the parking in Bucharest, things have definitely changed in the last 2-3 years, especially because of technology. The main Town Hall and some of the district Town Halls (we have six) have realized that charging people for parking money is a very handy tax, and because tech has made it a lot easier to put in place and to enforce it’s basically free money for them.
If they implement 'parked, didn't paid' then they are storing the license plate number for some time (at least a day, or a next day).
Anyway, this is a public space and license plate numbers are a public information (just like the names of streets), which can be associated with an individual but until they are - they are not personal information.
The fact that the vehicle is in a public space is irrelevant, and the names of streets are an obvious straw man.
Article 4(1) of the GDPR is quite clear as to what constitutes personal data:
> ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;
The fact that the natural person is identifiable by absolutely anyone (the motor vehicle licensing agency), not just the passers-by looking at the license plates, makes the license plate number personal information.
Oh noes, now I can't publish a map with St. StreetName on it! Because Mr. Incognito lives on St. StreetName, 31!
>> ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;
> The fact that the natural person is identifiable by absolutely anyone (the motor vehicle licensing agency), not just the passers-by looking at the license plates, makes the license plate number personal information. 1
No. Associating Mr. Whatshisname with a license plate number is a personal data. The license plate number itself is not. Otherwise you should go and blur/mask all the streetnames in all the photos made in EU ever. Or disband every motor vehicle licensing agency in every EU country.
And another edit: is [0] a personal data? Should Wikipedia Foundation be punished for even having that data?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BigOriginal.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZPMC says the same Chinese group are going to be building a new Bay Bridge in San Francisco. And they (ZPMC) don't even have bridge building experience! I'm going with a US v. USSR style defeated-before-the-fight-starts scenario here favouring China.
The US doesn’t know how to make cheap, high quality hardware as far as I can tell. Basically every time I’ve recently looked for a piece of somewhat specialized hardware, especially if it’s at least a bit electronic, it’s from China or Taiwan. The cheap sketchy hardware comes from China. The slightly more expensive apparently nice stuff comes from China or Taiwan (but is oddly hard to buy — apparently these companies have not mastered distribution?). The really nice expensive stuff has substantially less informative spec sheets, comes from US-based companies, and is actually a nice package wrapped around almost-stock gear from China or Taiwan.
Even brand new innovative things “from the US” outsource to ODMs in China or Taiwan.
For some reason the US doesn’t seem to have nice contract manufactures or ODM shops and also seems to lack the expertise needed to cost-effectively design or manufacture power electronics.
If the US supply chain isn't cost effective, then it'll have to commit multiple times the resources of the adversary to win. If the US supply chain becomes inefficient enough, at some point the US becomes unable to win. The US doesn't have multiple times the resources of China when it comes to overall manufacturing, so under that oversimplified model the US just loses any direct war - and apparently their military budgets are similarly sized right now [0], so if China is much more efficient at manufacturing (more than about 2x) they might have an edge even at present spending without being on war footing.
Ok, so now we snap back to reality where there are other factors than just manufacturing efficiency and the US military is presumably in better shape than China's. But you can hopefully see now how without overwhelming manufacturing the US needs to maintain big strategic, organisational and technological advantages over the Chinese military to compete with them. They can't outresource someone with similar resources (for which we have GDP and manufacturing output as proxies) and much more efficient processes.
[0] https://chinapower.csis.org/military-spending/
Value generation in modern "mid-tech" (elevators, cranes, machinery and tools in general) is 50% in services, including software. You would need to make whole new company to develop and service systems for retrofitted Chinese cranes.
Bending metal to crane shape is not that expensive. Delivering full system with automation and maintaining it is.
No country would join the WTO if it required them to give up control of critical infrastructure.
Deciding not to strictly follow a trade agreement when the other party of that agreement is doing it all can to avoid the spirit and letter of the agreement is not whataboutism. That’s just a reasonable response.
(Article XXI on security exceptions: https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/gatt_ai_e/art21_e... )
No, it's not.
We moved past that so we have an (in theory) independent arbiter, in this case WTO.
I hear this claim often about China (particularly from Americans), but I think it's very far from being true.
China underwent massive, extremely painful reforms in order to join the WTO, on a scale that would be difficult for most Americans to imagine. For example, China basically built an entire intellectual property legal system from scratch. Or another example: China split up numerous large state-owned enterprises and forced the resulting companies to operate on a for-profit basis, which meant that tens of millions of workers lost their jobs and many more lost benefits.
I think most of the exaggerated statements about China not caring about WTO rules stem from a basic misunderstanding both of how the Chinese economy works and what WTO rules require.
Given the I-Soon leak I think it's incredibly naive to think that China isn't using data from the cranes for malicious purposes.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2024/02/22/chinese-...
There have been lots of hacker for hire companies from around the world. You want to embargo India because of Appin, Italy for Hacking Team, Israel for NSO Group? If you are worried about "state-backed hackers" I mean... what is the NSA again?
Things nobody has ever said.
It also produces more STEM PhDs than any other country, and now leads the world in rankings of high-quality research output.
> Chinese-made Toyota is still much lower quality than Japan-made Toyota
Yet Chinese-made and -designed automotive batteries are among the most advanced in the world, and China is quickly becoming a leader in the development and production of electric cars.
Again, it very much depends on which products we're talking about. China produces both cheap junk and world-leading products.
And the rest of the world still benefits from that output as much as China (emigration shot up during/after covid).
> Yet Chinese-made and -designed automotive batteries are among the most advanced in the world, and China is quickly becoming a leader in the development and production of electric cars.
Battery production isn't really something you can get villagers to do alone. Otherwise, the quality of Chinese cars is pretty consistent across brands (so so, China's chabuduo culture), but it doesn't matter much because auto shops/repairs are still pretty affordable.
You seem to think that China is still a backward agrarian society.
> Otherwise, the quality of Chinese cars is pretty consistent across brands
Quality varies immensely. China has never manufactured internationally competitive internal-combustion-engine cars. It basically leads the world now in electric cars.
> China's chabuduo culture
This is just getting into the realm of cultural stereotyping. Every country has its own version of "good enough" (which is all that 差不多 means), and China also has a long tradition of extremely fine craftsmanship (just think of the fact that fine porcelain dishes are referred to as "China").
> You seem to think that China is still a backward agrarian society.
No, the party wants people in jobs, but battery production doesn't allow for that, it has no choice but to be heavily automated. China optimizes for work, except that isn't possible, then they get quality through automation.
> Quality varies immensely. China has never manufactured internationally competitive internal-combustion-engine cars. It basically leads the world now in electric cars.
The bodies are similarly made in a BYD EV than a Toyota or Hyundai ICE built in China. Having ridden in a few, they felt just as flimsy.
> This is just getting into the realm of cultural stereotyping. Every country has its own version of "good enough" (which is all that 差不多 means), and China also has a long tradition of extremely fine craftsmanship (just think of the fact that fine porcelain dishes are referred to as "China").
I mean, I get it, you want to say this is a stereotype, except when it happens for real, then its just something I should accept and not comment on. China does have a long tradition of craftsmanship, for sure, but when people want to make money, they optimize for that heavily. They do what they must to produce at the price that will survive in a very competitive cost-sensitive market. For example, quality in a flat renovation suffer because you hired guys who low balled the price, and they cheaped out on materials and finish (chabuduo!), but you are already complicit in that because you went for the lowest price (and if you went for a higher price, you'd probably still get scammed anyways).
Chinese-produced cars are starting to achieve 5-star ratings in international crash tests, so your blanket statement is false.
> For example, quality in a flat renovation suffer because you hired guys who low balled the price, and they cheaped out on materials and finish (chabuduo!), but you are already complicit in that because you went for the lowest price (and if you went for a higher price, you'd probably still get scammed anyways).
This happens in literally every country on Earth. It's just that you don't know any catch phrase to apply to it: chabuduo. If you choose a contractor purely based on price, expect them to cut corners.
Atomize - to break into small pieces
Along many dimensions at once - in lots of ways
Things breaking into small pieces in lots of ways is the real problem, apparently. What specifically are you talking about?
At least that's how I read it, I don't think it explains everything though. Beware of anyone too sure about the causes for complex problems.
So that’s $24 per person experiencing food insecurity. So a couple big mac meals.
The point being that a billion dollars is mostly nothing for a population of 330 million.
Social security spent 1.4 trillion last year.
“We shouldn’t do this thing, we should increase social program spending by 0.06% instead!” is not a good argument.
We shouldn't feed 50,000 people and do this other thing instead should probably have a very strong argument.
42 million Americans get SNAP benefits (additional people in other programs)
Once again, "let's increase this existing program by 0.1%!" is not a very convincing argument.
I know social security is difficult but guys, come on. Let’s make an effort in the counter argument at least.
Who's gonna do this, some add ware developed from Google or Facebook?
/may contain traces of sarcasm
Strange way to spell "spend".
Why pay a small company a six figure bounty to reverse engineer and patch out the phoning home spyware, when you can pay upwards of eight figures via juicy government contracts to someone like Allen Bradley or Rockwell?
It's not like they are in hangar. Hell, spacex is monitored 24x7 while building spaceships (ITAR regulated stuff).