Phi Beta Iota: As of 2100 broadcast media are reporting that Chinese scientists have examined the surviving wreckage. We are reminded that the Tomahawk attack on Bin Laden in the Clinton era yielded one dysfunctional Tomahawk arriving in time for Bin Laden to sell it to the Chinese for US$10M. The “true cost” calculations of such misadventures are analytically stimulating.
Although the events of Sunday were not a joint operation, a decade of cooperation and partnership between the United States and Pakistan led up to the elimination of Osama bin Laden as a continuing threat to the civilized world. And we in Pakistan take some satisfaction that our early assistance in identifying an al-Qaeda courier ultimately led to this day.
Zardari and Chinese leaders reportedly discussed investment opportunities in numerous sectors, including port development, hydropower, roads, railways, mining and others.
Among the projects discussed between Beijing and Islamabad is a proposed railway to link Kashgar to the southern Pakistan port of Gwadar. If realized, it would give China direct access to the Arabian Sea and provide an alternative route should a naval blockade cut oil supplies from the Middle East.
“All Chinese plans for gaining access to resource-rich Central Asia and building energy pipelines pass through Gilgit-Baltistan,” said Syed. “Gilgit, the northern areas capital, has acquired the status of gateway to Central Asia after Pakistan-China barter trade agreement and accords with Central Asian States.”
Benazir's husband is voted in amid muted rejoicing, but army hostility and militant violence could threaten hopes for stability, reports Jason Burke
Phi Beta Iota: The Op Ed is “party line” stuff. Not in the Op-Ed is the fact that China is the President's primary ally, and the military and the tribes do not like him. Not in the Op Ed is China's enormous success across multiple fronts in Pakistan, including its ownership of the port of Gwadar, previously addressed here at Phi Beta Iota. While the USA has been waging war, badly, without a strategy and without a return on investment in mind, China has been waging peace. We are reminded of how Iran lured the US neoconservatives into Iraq. In the absence of intelligence and integrity at the highest levels of the US Government, China wins, Russia ties, and US loses, across Central Asia, over the next decade. Ultimately this region is about water and rare metals. The region is not conquerable. Brzezinski and his disciple Obama don't get that yet. President Zardari is not the man his wife was (see our review of her book below).
Is it just me, or does it appear that we're okay with selling our cyber-soul to China (and Russia), as long as we can also blow tens of billions on US firms pretending to do cyber-security?
Report: Despite status as U.S. security threat, China's Huawei partnering with Symantec
East-Asia-Intel.com, April 27, 2011
The Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies, which has been linked to the Chinese military, is working with the U.S. software security giant Symantec, which is engaged in securing hundreds of thousands of U.S. computer systems against outside intrusions, according to a report last week in the Diplomat newsletter.
The report said “China and Russia are leveraging U.S. multinational corporations' economic requirements to accomplish strategic goals that could quite plausibly include covert technology transfer of intellectual property, access to source code for use in malware creation and backdoor access to critical infrastructure.”
Huawei was blocked from buying the U.S. telecom 3Leaf last year by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and also was blocked in 2008 from buying 3Com over security concerns. The U.S. National Security Agency also stepped in to dissuade AT&T from buying Huawei telephone equipment.
Despite those actions, Huawei formed a joint venture with Symantec in 2007 called Huawei Symantec Technologies Co. Ltd. (HS), the report said. Huawei is the majority partner with 51 percent ownership, with the entity being headquartered in Chengdu, China.
The report said a 2008 report identified HS as developing “China's first laboratory of attack and defense for networks and applications.”
The result is that Symantec is assisting China's cyber development of computer warfare capability.
Phi Beta Iota: The US Government compounds its lack of a strategic analytic model and the requisite integrity to actually pay attention to whatever findings might emerge, with an abysmal inattention to the most basic aspects of counter-intelligence, not just within government, but across the private sector, which does not actually take counter-intelligence seriously either. Creating a Smart and Safe Nation is not difficult–it requires only a uniform commitment to intelligence and integrity across all boundaries.
In what may be one of the finest five minute presentations by Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX-14), he summarizes how US sanctions are equivalent to a declaration of war, and goes on to review how we are spending one trillion dollars a year (that we borrow) to militarize the world, in the process driving everyone into the hands of the Chinese.
This does not appear to be a prepared speech–it appears to be statesmanlike common-sense. Phenomenal.
SANYA, Hainan, April 14 (Xinhua) — Leaders of five BRICS countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, released on Thursday a joint document, Sanya Declaration, at the BRICS Leaders Meeting in south China's resort city of Sanya.
The following is the full text of the document.
Sanya Declaration
(BRICS Leaders Meeting, Sanya, Hainan, China, 14 April 2011)
Full text of Sanya Declaration of the BRICS Leaders Meeting
