CHINA has blocked the word “Egypt” from the country's wildly popular
Twitter-like service, while coverage of the political turmoil has been
tightly restricted in state media.
China's ruling Communist Party is sensitive to any potential source of
social unrest.
A search for “Egypt” on the Sina microblogging service brings up a
message saying, “According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, the
search results are not shown.”
Throughout the week, as the crisis gathered storm in Egypt, the
administration had otherwise been slow to react, seemingly always one step
behind events. This was partly because neither the U.S. intelligence
community nor diplomats on the ground foresaw how swiftly the protests in
Egypt would gather momentum—even if everyone realized that virtually the
entire Arab world is a tinder box of pent-up frustration, with despotic
regimes unable to meet the needs of, especially, their youth.
Phi Beta Iota: Advanced Cyber/Information Operations are primarily about being in close touch with reality inclusive of history and culture as well as a full range of future holistic projections firmly grounded in a mature concept of intelligence that fully integrates “true cost” information for every service, product, and policy, and clearly appreciate the value of the human factor. Cyber-security is largly a scam (think back to the Y2K scare), and to the extent that cyber-security vaporware reduces the commander's attention to substance (intelligence), it is a cancer.
