By Mr. Curmudgeon
Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn made a startling announcement: the U.S. Defense Department recently suffered a major cyber attack. “...Code spread undetected on both classified and unclassified systems, establishing what amounted to a digital beachhead from which data could be transferred to servers under foreign control,” Lynn told the New York Times. He refused to say which country’s intelligence agency was behind the attack but gave something of a hint.
According to the Times, “Counterfeit hardware had already been detected in systems that had been procured by the Defense Department, Lynn said – a danger since computer chips can be written with remotely operated ‘kill switches’ and hidden backdoors.”
Buried within the counterfeit hardware are “logic bombs” to cause malfunctions or remotely triggered “kill switches” that simply bring computer systems to a dead halt.
So, let’s see if we can figure out what nation is behind this attack on America. Apple, which has its headquarters in Mountain View, California, has many of the components to its popular consumer electronics – like their iPods and computers – manufactured at a facility near Shenzhen, China. Dell Computer offers next-day factory-direct delivery for its line of computers – direct from Xiamen, China. Toshiba of Japan outsources the making of their fine computers to a factory in Guanghou City, China. Are you starting to get the big picture?
The bipartisan policy of “free trade,” which resulted in the export of America’s industrial base to China has not only killed jobs here at home but poses a military threat as well. Could this be what Richard Nixon had in mind when he opened the way to closer diplomatic ties with the communist giant? Oddly, many Republicans still see Richard Nixon as something of a foreign policy genius. Tell that to the Pentagon’s information technology wonks.
President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said one should “never let a crisis go to waste.” Unfortunately, his boss used our current economic crisis to expand government power, worsening the crisis.
Here’s a novel idea. What if we use our current crisis to re-establish a strong national tariff, which will re-establish our industrial base, which will create jobs and manufacture our own products that will enhance rather than threaten our national security?
The term “free trade” is turning into something of an oxymoron, when the nation that has been the primary beneficiary of the policy is at odds with the nation that calls itself the leader of the free.
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