The Data War - Formosahut forum

This is something that Dan was onto since way back - now it's coming to a head. Hong Kong was/is a front-line. The virus has dramatically ratcheted up what was already surging.

In the long run i think computers will take over - i think that will be a good thing - they're smarter than us - they don't need to eat or take a shit. But now we're living in the interim period where humans still wield the incredible power of the robot - that's a dangerous situation.

On the cutting edge of this in terms of state control we have China. Along with the virus the intrusion of personal surveillance also went exponential - only difference is that when the virus is gone the haul of data remains - or as John Donne put it describing the growth in love for his mistress
As princes do in time of action get
New taxes, and remit them not in peace
No winter shall abate the spring’s increase

Importantly, the virus provided a reason for 'why we need personal surveillance' up our gazoos - it's to 'protect us' in a time of crisis. To save lives.

The 'Battle of Ideas' - it already was a data war - now it's next level.

I ran across this guy the other day, and although some of the material linked to his site is questionable, the logic and observations in the video on this page make sense:

https://www.corbettreport.com/what-no-one-is-saying-about-the-corona-crisis/

And in this video, particularly in the second half (though the first half establishes context), he goes way down the rabbit hole of data and surveillance implications of Covid-19:

https://www.corbettreport.com/corona-world-order/

I ran across this guy the other day, and although some of the material linked to his site is questionable, the logic and observations in the video on this page make sense:

I like his point about keeping an eye on the actual truth - not some made-up narrative which someone thinks is in our best interests. That's a slippery slope coz then you have people justifying certain courses of actions based on a false premise - that's the 'out in the weeds'system of government he's talking about where you lose track of what it was supposed to be about in the beginning.

When reading articles I'm sometimes struck by comparisons to the 2017 flu epidemic in Australia which killed 1257 people here. You could just as easily insert that flu for Covid-19 - it was a new strain - very nasty - killed a lot of people - way more than Covid-19. Were those lives less precious? This is where the truth gets twisted and used to justify things like mass personal surveillance.

The Hong Kong protest i saw as making a fantastic stand in the battle of data control - now that seems to have been quashed - or relegated to 'not important in the circumstances'. That's a shame coz now we need that kind of pushback - especially from our young people like in Hong Kong - against this insipid data scraping more than ever.

I'm just struck by the incongruity of it all. There's something here that just doesn't add up for me. The fatality rate seems to be increasingly low as we understand that the infection rate is higher than we first thought. Shutting the entire world down for this does not seem to make sense. Am I missing something? Yes, a lot of people get sick, but most of them don't, and among those who do, not that many die.

I just don't get it.

I'm just struck by the incongruity of it all. There's something here that just doesn't add up for me. The fatality rate seems to be increasingly low as we understand that the infection rate is higher than we first thought. Shutting the entire world down for this does not seem to make sense. Am I missing something? Yes, a lot of people get sick, but most of them don't, and among those who do, not that many die.

I just don't get it.

Yep - it's a matter of asking basic questions like the one above. 'Non-truth' answers whereby you can't speak the 'real' truth to the public because of blah blah reason - that can't cut it anymore. There's too much at stake.

Taiwan is a good example. Taiwan is a country - democratic progressive successful - but no one is game to say it. Most countries parrot China's assertion that Taiwan is a province of China. That's telling a whopper. You can argue there are reasons for lying - money - fear of China - but you can't argue that it's not a lie. From that false premise - a lot of global policy has been built.

Now we're getting fed a stream of whoppers about the virus such as you outlined which are being used to justify data tracking? To quote an old Angels song: No way - get fucked - fuck off!

Here's an article about how the CCP is making its move against HK democracy activists under cover of the virus. By arresting leading advocates of the movement they are automatically barred from running in elections if they are found guilty - which they will be. The move would normally spark mass street protests but the virus lockdown prevents that.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/china-is-using-the-pandemic-as-...

When this all started, it struck me that there was an increased chance of China actually making a move on Taiwan, either militarily in the form of a blockade or in a softer manner, and indeed there was, and I think still is, an increase in excursions of both Chinese and US military around Taiwan.

The US military is certainly in a weakened state, and with all the attention on the virus, and Americans generally not knowing or caring where or what Taiwan is in the best of times, China must be weighing its options.

So I still think it's a remote possibility that China might try to further clip the wings of Taiwan during this period, just as they're doing with the HK democracy movement. Nobody is watching, and the US certainly doesn't have the political will right now to do anything but take care of itself.

Also, the economy in China is tanking, like everywhere else. Sooner or later, this is going to cause an increase in political pressure on Chinese leadership, and a nifty little conflict would go great lengths to refocusing that anger and rebuilding nationalism. I can see a false flag event in the Strait, Chinese fishing vessels being sunk or, even more convenient, military vessels or aircraft damaged or soldiers killed. That would be enough for China to call for a blockade on Taiwan, for the protection of Taiwanese of course.

I don't think all of that will happen, but it's certainly more likely now than before the virus started.

Here's an article that just came out yesterday on this topic:

China rattles sabres as world battles coronavirus pandemic

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-security/china-rattles-sabres-as-world-battles...

Yes i'm sure the government in Taiwan is on high alert. There was a strange incident a few weeks ago where some Chinese gangster type figures in speed boats rammed a Taiwan coast guard patrol - i did wonder if that was meant to be a trigger type action such as you mentioned. How can a humble fisherman afford to do so much damage to his boat?

Meanwhile, countries around the world are rolling out surveillance apps like there's no tomorrow - also 'for our own good'. Before we go overboard with any more draconian big-brother measures let's get through a year and check the statistics to find out if the final death toll is any worse than a nasty flu season. No doubt some people will say 'Well it would have been much worse if we hadn't taken all these measures!' but there are going to be plenty of countries that for various reasons haven't done much so we can still get a pretty good baseline measure.

According to the WHO's own website, up to 650 000 people die annually from 'normal flu'. We're currently up to 178, 000 deaths from corona virus. The approximate average age of those deaths is 80 (as it is with normal flu) - all of whom had other serious illnesses.

If it turns out that it's no worse than a bad flu season, then who's going to accept accountability for wrecking the world economy and ramping up the big-brother state for no reason?

Here's something that's alarming: A video by two doctors questioning the need for 'shelter in place' regulations - in a similar vein to the questions we've been raising - was removed from Youtube:

"We quickly remove flagged content that violate our Community Guidelines, including content that explicitly disputes the efficacy of local healthy authority recommended guidance on social distancing that may lead others to act against that guidance."

Chief executive (of Youtube, a Google owned company), Susan Wojcicki added: “anything that would go against World Health Organization recommendations” would be seen as "problematic" and removed.

Even more alarming is that i now find myself reading Fox News just to get some alternative analysis of what's going on! I'm a Guardian and Washington Post subscriber but they are pushing a tightly controlled narrative that appears to be in lockstep with the lockdown approach. The media's job is to ask questions and report information - not to be telling us what to think because someone's decided that distorting or concealing the truth is for our own good. I'll decide what's for my own good - just give me the fucking facts.

This is fascinating, and it confirms one of my suspicions, that many of these covid deaths are actually people who died of something else and covid was listed as the cause, or who had a leg in the grave already and covid pushed them in. One of the doctors touches on this at about 32 minutes. I haven't finished the video yet.

Thanks for sharing!

I find it particularly odd that this would be blocked when they were basing their comments largely on CDC data.

Here's a fun experiment that will never happen. Let's pick two states with roughly the same number of cases relative to population. Keep one on lockdown, open the other up, then measure deaths by all causes and see what we find.

Also, we can measure health and domestic crime rates and diet.

Here's a fun experiment that will never happen. Let's pick two states with roughly the same number of cases relative to population. Keep one on lockdown, open the other up, then measure deaths by all causes and see what we find.

Also, we can measure health and domestic crime rates and diet.

Great idea! Actually we will get some indication with what Sweden is doing. People are saying 'Oh Sweden has a high number of deaths compared to Denmark and Finland' but that's disingenuous coz the no lock down strategy is not meant to be measured as a day-by-day thing - of course there will be more cases in the beginning - there's supposed to be - but it's about who comes out best in the end. That includes damage to the economy and all the repercussions of that.
As you said, measure the total number of deaths from all causes - not just virus deaths - in say one year, two year's time.

Re the data companies getting involved, now it seems Facebook has waded in. I always used to defend FB on the grounds that it provided a platform for many protest groups to organize and co-ordinate, but now they are taking down pages that are trying to organize protests against the lock down.

Got this creepy text message from 'Aus Gov' today.

"Coronavirus Aus Gov msg: Help us to keep you safe and ease restrictions by downloading the COVID-Safe app now: (download link)"

Funny how it says 'ease restrictions'. In order for 'us' to ease restrictions imposed upon you by 'us' - first hand over your gps coordinates - so us can restrict you even better!

The thing about a Data War is that the internet is a global phenomenon - it's not limited by country borders. When people talk about the threat of globalism - it's only the internet that can enable the worst case scenario of a worldwide big-brother command centre. A key to that would be access to everyone's physical location at any given time.

In the case of the tracking apps being introduced in the name of the virus, even if a country like NZ, which may have the best of intentions, that data is still vulnerable to being hacked by another country which may not have the best of intentions.

If i'm a CCP higher up for example then I'm going to:

(a) recognize that the internet and data mining is not going out of style in the near future
(b) collect as much of that data as possible through whatever means i can
(c) use it to consolidate my own position in power and track any threats to that power

An example of that, was reported in the Taipei Times today:

"An initial probe found that the hackers used Internet protocol addresses registered in Europe as springboards to implant backdoor programs and malware into servers at Taiwan’s health agencies, medical research centers and Centers for Disease Control offices to steal critical information and files, they said."

The article states that the "National Security Bureau officials yesterday identified the sources of the cyberattacks as China and Russia."

Well, exactly. I'm a bit of a nut when it comes to privacy. I use a VPN all the time, both on my phone and my PC. I use encrypted email, and I encrypt everything I store on the cloud before it leaves my computer. I don't have social media profiles, and I surely won't be loading tracking apps to my phone. If I'm required to, I'll seriously consider giving up the phone.

Granted, I do have the location thingy enabled on my phone, and I do use Google Maps all the time when in unfamiliar places, and it's great! GPS is a fabulous technology. So it's a trade off and I accept that. But when it comes to the state requiring that I essentially wear a digital tracking device when I've done nothing wrong, well, I'll give up the device.

The question then becomes, do you need the device to do things like fly or get on a train. And the answer already in many parts of the world is yes, you do.

The next leap, the next big leap to all this, is implants, which are already happening. I believe they put them in the fleshy part of the palm, but I'm sure there are options, particularly for paraplegics. (Yeah, that was my attempt at dark humor.)

Many of these changes will be gradual, even generational. They don't have to chip everybody all at once, though the Nazis tried using the technology of the day. It will be rolled out gradually and people will willingly get chipped to simplify their lives. It will be a status thing, sort of like iphones are now. or lots of followers on the dipshit social media platform of the hour.

All this is already happening, just on the fringe. It's already a status thing.

Here's a freaky one. YouTube censoring clips critical of CCP. Sounds unbelievable but appears to be true. You Tube has some half-arsed excuse - blaming it on a glitch - but not sure that makes sense.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/may/27/youtube-investigates-automatic-delet...

Well, without even getting through the second paragraph, it's clear their excuse is bullshit:

"The company said the filtering appeared to be “an error” amid a greater reliance on automated systems during the coronavirus pandemic because its human reviewers have been sent home."

For fuck sake, I work from home, full on, for two companies. This is an absolute bullshit excuse.

Zoom seemed suss from the start - now they've shown their true colors by cutting off accounts from HK protesters at the behest of CCP.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/12/zoom-admits-cutting-off-activists-account...

Norway suspends virus-tracing app due to privacy concerns.

Finally some dissent on a state level.

CCP's new 'National Security Law' for HK involves a back door for allowing extradition - for those accused of "secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign interference" - actually it's more like front a door.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/18/grave-cause-for-concern-hongkongers-could...

I'd be catching the next plane, boat, hot air balloon, or jet ski to Taiwan.

"Qatar has continued to make a Covid-19 tracing app mandatory even as the kingdom has relaxed its lockdown, and despite security loopholes that exposed the personal information of more than a million users. Being caught outside without a phone carrying the app is punishable by a fine of up to £43,000 or up to three years in jail.

In Hangzhou, a Chinese city of 10 million people, authorities announced last month that they would seek to expand their coronavirus app to gather more comprehensive health and personal data.

Under the proposal, an individual’s status would be colour-coded and scored out of 100 based on medical records as well as other lifestyle choices such as smoking, drinking alcohol, or hours slept."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/18/coronavirus-mass-surveillance-could-be-he...

In Australia, people continue to download the tracking app (over 50%). In all the time it's been used, it's resulted in zero cases of virus detection in Victoria - the second most populous state. Can't find any info for the other states but it's probably zero as well.

So if it's not working as a virus tracking app then you have to ask why go to all this expense to implement it?

Australia's PM announced today that Australia was currently under cyber-attack from "a state-based actor, with very significant capabilities.”

He wouldn't name the "actor" but we can take a pretty good guess.

“This activity is targeting Australian organisations across a range of sectors, including all levels of government, industry, political organisations, education, health, essential service providers and operators of other critical infrastructure."

My guess is they're going after the tracking data.

It's similar to the gain-of-function experiments - they don't achieve anything - they just present significant opportunity for something to go wrong.

This article fits into this puzzle in some way. I only just sped read it, and I'm going to have to read it again more closely, but the gist is that there are databases of faces being shared without any consent. I had never heard of IARPA. I'd heard of DARPA. Apparently DARPA has a cousin.

https://www.ft.com/content/cf19b956-60a2-11e9-b285-3acd5d43599e

Great article. Wish there was more alarm about this but there doesn't seem to be.

In fact, recognising a face is only the first step of biometric surveillance, he suggests. “It’s really like an entry-level term to much broader, deeper analysis of people’s biometrics. There’s jaw recognition — the width of your jaw can be used to infer success as CEO, for example. Companies such as Boston-based Affectiva are doing research that analyses faces in real time, to determine from a webcam or in-store camera if someone is going to buy something in your store.”

Other analyses, he adds, can be used to determine people’s tiredness, skin quality and heart rate, or even to lip-read what they are saying. “Face recognition is a very deceiving term, technically, because there’s no limit,” he concludes. “It ends ultimately only with your DNA.”

The other thing was a reference to Duke University and a collaboration with China on facial recognition technology. Duke University keeps cropping up in research i've done. For example, i noticed that the only other researchers explicitly supporting the pangolin theory were from Duke - who in turn operate a jointly run university in - guess where - Wuhan - which in turn houses a joint research facility. https://dukekunshan.edu.cn/en/whu-duke-research-institute

Another thing about your facial recognition post - i wonder how Zoom fits into all this? If facial recognition can be learned from YouTube then i assume it can do it with Zoom - the only social media giant that's allowed in both China and the US.

China deploys last piece of it's GPS satellite network.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53132957

"The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall carry out national security education through schools, social organisations, the media and the Internet etc to develop national security education, to raise the national security awareness and law-abiding awareness of the residents."

God help the kids of HK.

God help the teachers too! Can you imagine having to teach and enforce that shit when just a few weeks ago you were out demonstrating?

God help the teachers too! Can you imagine having to teach and enforce that shit when just a few weeks ago you were out demonstrating?

The security laws instilled a chilling effect that's for sure. The airport staff were organizing protests not long ago - we're a long way from there now.

Noticed there were two outbreaks in China the last few days that triggered lockdowns. They occurred in Xinjiang and HK. That’s just a coincidence right?

That's an excellent point. What a coincidence!

Here's a disturbing interview in which the Chinese Ambassador to the UK tries to explain prisoners getting loaded on to trains i Xinjiang.

https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/hu25hq/bbc_asks_chinese_ambassador_to_the...

That's an excellent point. What a coincidence!

Here's a disturbing interview in which the Chinese Ambassador to the UK tries to explain prisoners getting loaded on to trains i Xinjiang.

https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/hu25hq/bbc_asks_chinese_ambassador_to_the...

Hmm, good job getting the footage, whoever did that. Do you think it was secretly filmed by an activist or official video that was somehow obtained by one?

It's hard to say. I looked for the source of this on BBC and couldn't find it, but I've seen loads of similarly incriminating videos out of Xinjiang. The fact is that there is undeniable genocide going on, and the world basically doesn't care.

It's hard to say. I looked for the source of this on BBC and couldn't find it, but I've seen loads of similarly incriminating videos out of Xinjiang. The fact is that there is undeniable genocide going on, and the world basically doesn't care.

There's a reason why the world doesn't care. The CCP has gone to a lot of trouble over the last few decades to influence the influencers - academics, politicos, and/or business people.

There's talk of a Cold War, or even a Hot War, but the thing is we were already in a war - we just didn't know it (you did Dan - you were yelling it from the rooftop) - it's the Data War.

I'm just posting this here as it's latest of many relevant topics that this site might be useful for.

http://gen.lib.rus.ec/

I have not spent much time on it and as a link sharing site one would be wise to be careful about what one downloads, but it does appear to provide access to a lot of materials that are generally behind paywalls.

Now the data war is entering a new stage on these fronts:

1. Vaccines
2. Social media access and dominance
3. Elections

Now the data war is entering a new stage on these fronts:

1. Vaccines
2. Social media access and dominance
3. Elections

Yeah, the elections in HK have been cancelled and there are arguments in the US about how to conduct their own elections.

We also discussed 'money' as a data war front before. Looks like China, with good reason, is going after the US dollar's preeminence, by way of a digital currency. If they can get all the Belt and Road countries paying off their debt forever with a new currency then that's half the world converted right there.

Chinese 'front-line health workers' are descending on HK to conduct sweeping virus testing. Residents fear this is a DNA gathering and surveillance exercise. They only have around 100 new cases a day - hard to see why they need Chinese workers to conduct testing to cover that.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53633446

That's a disturbing thought, and a rational fear.

The southern state of Victoria has declared a State of Disaster. This declaration "gives authorities the ability to suspend Acts of Parliament and take possession of properties."

That sounds like carte blanche.

Melbourne residents are currently under curfew.

It's only been instituted once before, 7 months ago by the same premier, Daniel Andrews, during the Victorian 2020 bushfires, which claimed 3 lives in Vic (the worst impact was in NSW).

There's also talk of police being granted powers to demand access to people's phones to check gps tracking and whether they have violated lockdown rules.

Andrews is the only Australian premier to have signed up for a Belt & Road project.

This is strange. Google, which was banned from China in 2010, opened an AI research centre in Beijing in 2018. What's up with that?

Pompeo says (without concrete evidence that i can immediately find) that research from the facility is being employed in the surveillance of Uyghurs.

There is already an extensive list of Western universities, researchers, and companies collaborating with China on AI research, now it appears Google is involved. That's a frightening combination. Between them they would have the personal info of pretty much everyone on the planet.

AI scares the crap out of me. A number of big thinkers, including Stephen Hawking if I'm not mistaken, have stated that AI is the biggest threat to face humanity by far. Yes, didn't take long to find: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30290540

Deepfakes are frightening enough, but then there's all the data wizardry that will be possible and, of course, used for surveillance.

Here are some random links I've bookmarked on the topic, most from months ago:

https://www.inverse.com/article/53280-this-person-does-not-exist-gans-website
Here's the site it references: https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019/01/business/pentagons-race-against-deepfakes/

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/01/artificial-intelligence-turns-brain-activity-sp... (And if it can turn brain activity into speech, it means it can monitor and record brain activity! I mean, to turn it into speech, it first has to understand it.)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/28/chinas-social-credit-system-could-interfe... (Not directly related to AI, but you can be sure they'll apply AI to this Orwellian system.)

https://pathmind.com/wiki/generative-adversarial-network-gan

That's some scary shit. It does feel like the virus has opened up a window for all this kind of stuff.

Noticed this today from Victoria where they've declared the State of Disaster:

"On at least four occasions in the last week, we've had to smash the windows of cars and pull people out to provide details because they weren't adhering to the Chief Health Officer's guidelines, they weren't providing their name and address."

The good news is that in the near future, smashing car windows won't be necessary because AI will tell the officers who is in the car, where they just came from, who they've been near in the last 72 hours, their blood type, complete DNA profile, political affiliations, and current blood oxygen levels!

The good news is that in the near future, smashing car windows won't be necessary because AI will tell the officers who is in the car, where they just came from, who they've been near in the last 72 hours, their blood type, complete DNA profile, political affiliations, and current blood oxygen levels!

There's a movie scene right there!

What Hawkings said - it just seems logical that it will come to pass. We didn't invent thought - thought invented us - we're it's vehicle - the next model is AI - a better one - it's bound to become predominant.

Weirdly, i'm ok with that - more worried about the interim period when a select pool of power-crazed humans are still able to wield it.

For whatever reason, the virus has given this data-grab a tremendous leap forward.

"WeChat is sometimes described as being a social network, but it's really so much more... It is perhaps best thought of as being a kind of secondary operating system that sits on top of iOS or Android.

It is also viewed as being a key instrument in China's internal surveillance apparatus - requiring local users who have been accused of spreading malicious rumours to register a facial scan and voice print."

People watch movies and wonder what an AI future will look like. We're already in it - it looks like this.

I'm of the view that the time-tested approach of reciprocity should be used. You ban Google? We ban WeChat. It's that simple. And reciprocity should be demanded full scale. You demand access to databases, we demand access to databases.

I work with people in China all the time who can't access foreign social networks. Why countries have been giving full access to Chinese social media platforms when China is blocking theirs makes no sense to me. This is one of the few points on which I agree with the current administration. But I don't think they're approaching it in the right way. They should be demanding full reciprocity.

Jimmy Lai is a hero of our times. Started out in a sweatshop and worked his way up to founding Giordano. With the money from that he launched Apple Daily and Next - which became frontline publications in the data war with the CCP.

“I’m a troublemaker. I came here with nothing, the freedom of this place has given me everything. Maybe it’s time I paid back for that freedom by fighting for it."

He's now been arrested under HK's new security laws.

I had no idea he founded Giordano. I used to buy their clothes often in Kaohsiung.

I wonder when the world will realize that China is out to take it over. One often hears the defense that China has never invaded another country, which is absolute bullshit. It's invading land in the South and East China Seas that isn't theirs as I type. Tibet might have an issue with that sentiment as well. And Taiwan has never, ever, ever been part of the PRC. That's just an undeniable fact.

Be interesting to hear what was the cause of the Google Drive virus today. Reports are that there are problems connecting with gmail, google docs etc. Currently i still have connectivity so not affecting everyone.

That would be a massive escalation if China had anything to do with it.

I wonder at what point in a cyber war does a bombing response come into the equation. Currently it seems that 'the rules of the game' only allow for a cyber retaliation.

The situations in HK and Xinjiang show how the lockdowns work as a tool of state oppression:

"Some residents... were forced by authorities to take Chinese medicine daily, and were required to film themselves doing so."

"One video showed dozens of high-rise residents in Urumqi yelling from their windows in despair."

“I have even taken three nucleic acid tests ... but community workers won’t let me leave”

"Social media users shared photographs of front doors sealed with steel crowbars, and locks installed by community workers."

Who needs detention centers when you can just lock people up in their highrise apartments?

New Zealand's stock exchange was shut down due to cyber attacks for the fourth consecutive day.

That's a high stakes strike right there. It's interesting how these DDoS attacks appear to be perpetrated with impunity.

And this indirectly demonstrates how solid Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies are. The NZ market is $135 billion. The Bitcoin market alone is worth over $210 Billion, with the Ethereum capitalization at nearly $45 billion. So this demonstrates that the stock markets are an easier target than major crypto blockchains. (Crap blockchains not included.)

Nobody, ever, has penetrated the Bitcoin blockchain. Ever. Even when it was worth $400 billion or whatever. When you read about Bitcoin getting stolen, it's from exchanges, not directly. It gets stolen from people who aren't protecting it. But the system itself, so far, has proven impenetrable. I mean, there's over $200 billion sitting there. Nobody can take it. The group that chose to target the NZ Exchange chose it over Bitcoin. And they would choose the NYSE over Bitcoin.

Hmmm, I guess I should have read the article first. I see now this was a DDoS attack, a denial of service attack. So they weren't actually trying to steal anything, just shut it down. That can be attempted on the Bitcoin blockchain, but it would cost a lot of money and it wouldn't achieve anything.

It's basically noise thrown at servers to overwhelm them. But this, again, is why blockchain technology is so important. DDoS works because data is centralized, so attackers can attack a certain URL or collection of URLs.

Blockchain is based on distributed data. There is no central server to attack. That's the beauty of it. But, attackers can still try to overload the system with transactions, but they have to pay for that.

The only other weakness in a blockhchain is the 51 percent problem, meaning if a certain entity acquires 51 percent of the mining (i.e., processing) power on the chain, they can fuck with it. This is all very new technology. The internet is moving from centralization to decentralization, as is data, and money in the form of cryptocurrency.

The internet is moving from centralization to decentralization, as is data, and money in the form of cryptocurrency.

In 10 years time - maybe a lot less - that will be seen as a prophetic statement. But as you mention - they're all just logically played-out outcomes. The question is, what actions should we take now to meet that world?

It's a big psychological leap to crytocurrency - just as a normal person who's been imprinted with the big Bank system - but i guess big changes usually are.

Btw, i wonder what the modelling says about the rise of AI? Is that expected to all fizzle out in the future or create a greater impact on our lives?

Don't know what this is about:

"The Online Chess Olympiad has been impacted by a global internet outage, that severely affected several countries, including India. Two of the Indian players have been affected and lost connection, when the outcome of the match was still unclear."

Could be lots of reasons for a 'global internet outage' i suppose, but worth recording.

Here's a disturbing one which ties a few threads together. HK authorities are instituting a drive to swab everyone in HK for Covid.

Activist Joshua Wong said it "fuels more concerns that the plan is a large-scale DNA collection," creating a way for a "China-style surveillance regime".

The suss scientists up to their eyeballs in China ties, authors of the silly Proximal Origins paper ("proving" the virus didn't leak from a lab - it was the pangolin that did it! - Lipkin, Holmes, Andersen, Garry, Rambaut), include big lockdown and DNA surveillance fans. Is Hong Kong the love child of like-minded experts and the CCP?

Wonder if the Scripps Shenzhen Bay lab, which specializes in infectious diseases, is cashing in on this big-pharma bonanza - running the tests and what not?

Their website does brag that they are:
"spurring novel solutions to the grand issues challenging mankind. Areas of research include bioinformatics, biomedical engineering and the discovery of innovative drugs."

We had our genomic surveillance trial-run with the Uyghurs - now let's roll it out in Hong Kong.

Next stop - Taiwan.

Then stopping all stations to a town near you...

Not quite on the scale of other cyber-attacks we've discussed but seems a McDonald's store in Changhua caused an internet outage when burning ghost money fell through a storm drain grill and melted internet and tv cables. Only in Taiwan!

https://youtu.be/VOqciE9TmfE
WTF?

Good lord. What a bunch of assholes. Clearly she ran because she was scared to death by these goons. Not to mention that she's a, (clears throat), child.

This is one of those 'shocking but not surprising' stories. The head of the company in Shenzhen (lots of dark stuff goes on in that city) calls it a 'Hybrid War' - though i still think Data War is better.

"A Chinese company with links to Beijing's military and intelligence networks has been amassing a vast database of detailed personal information on thousands of Australians, including prominent and influential figures."

"Information collected includes dates of birth, addresses, marital status, along with photographs, political associations, relatives and social media IDs."

"While much of the information has been "scraped" from open-source material, some profiles have information which appears to have been sourced from confidential bank records, job applications and psychological profiles."

"The company's chief executive Wang Xuefeng, a former IBM employee, has used Chinese social media app WeChat to endorse waging "hybrid warfare" through manipulation of public opinion and "psychological warfare"."

"The database was leaked to a US academic based in Vietnam, Professor Chris Balding, who until 2018 had worked at the elite Peking University before leaving China citing fears for his physical safety.

"China is absolutely building out a massive surveillance state both domestically and internationally," he said".

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54366606
"A technical problem has forced a full-day halt to trading on Japan's stock exchanges, including the popular Nikkei 225 index.

A Japan Exchange Group statement gave no details about the nature of the glitch and didn't indicate when trading would resume again."

This sheds a very dim light on what happened:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-stocks-tse/tokyo-stock-exchange-paralysed-by-h...

It just says it was due to a hardware problem. That seems very odd.

The whole of Mumbai lost power. Probably nothing but worth recording, given shutting down a country's power supply would be the 'holy grail' of a data war.

"Officials said the "unprecedented failure" was because of issues with "incoming supply to the main grid"."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54518106
"Norway has blamed Russia for a cyber-attack on the email system in the Norwegian parliament in August."

This is not to be construed as pro-Trump - i think that's part of the problem that i mentioned before - there's this reacting off him onto 'non-truth' positions. In that vein, it's disturbing how mainstream media - including social media - have suppressed the Hunter Biden story.

It's been on my radar because of the China connection more than the Ukraine stuff.

A crack-head, who happens to be the son of the then-VP, now favoured candidate for US President, is invited to buy 10% ownership, for the bargain basement price of $425 000, of a company called BHR - 80% controlled by Chinese financial groups. BHR invests (big time - we're talking billions) in other companies.

"A wide range of China experts told PolitiFact that it’s not unusual for the Chinese government and businesses linked to the state to court prominent Americans or their family members."

The very fact that it's not unusual, and deemed not newsworthy, is the most newsworthy part!

This is exactly what the CCP's United Front does: uses a combination of money, flattery, and honey-traps to influence influential people. Hunter Biden is a classic example. The CCP doesn't give away millions for the fun of it - they are paying for that influential person to use their influence to promote the CCP's narrative. Their narrative is a global control one.

Barry Naughton, the chair of Chinese international affairs at the University of California-San Diego says (btw you don't need to be the chair of Chinese international anything to know this!):

"This is a standard operating procedure. Bring in an influential person, give him a small percentage of a firm as a ‘finders fee’."

The New Yorker said Hunter Biden arranged a meeting "in the lobby of the American delegation’s hotel in Beijing between Vice President Biden and Li, the BHR CEO."

What better place to lobby than in the lobby?

"This was followed by a "social meeting" between Hunter Biden and Li."

None of it was do with business, the New Yorker reported - except that's how the CCP do do business on this level.

There's some interesting raw material there at the very least. Well-worth following up. If the CCP has been grooming the son of potentially the next President, who is wide-open to blackmail due to his 'off-the-rails' lifestyle - why does the public not have a right to know about that?

Here's a well-written article on censorship of this story by Greenwald, which was itself censored by Intercept, that focuses on (a) the massive media co-ordination to suppress it, (b) the falsehoods used to justify that censorship - including that it was a Russia disinformation campaign despite zero evidence for that.

It's this (b) one that i keep seeing come up - with a Covid-bullet and Chinese characteristics:

We can't tell you the real truth because of blah blah reason. So we're gonna lie.

To protect that lie we're gonna cancel - we're gonna vilify - we're gonna surveil - we're gonna punish.

But don't worry, it's all for your own good.

This is interesting. I have been avoiding any election related news like the plague for the last few weeks. It's just all so skewed that I don't bother. So although I was aware of this H. Biden controversy, I haven't read up on it. You're right. The media should be reporting on it.

The sad thing is that all candidates have this sort of thing going on. All of them. That's how they get to where they are.

But the bigger issue here is reporting and information. That clip in the Greenwald piece was telling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSB_fQHbSiA. I've never trusted Amanpour's reporting. Note how in that piece she says something like, "I am a reporter," implying that whatever she states is the truth is, indeed, the truth because she somehow can't be corrupted. It's absurd.

But the bigger issue here is reporting and information. That clip in the Greenwald piece was telling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSB_fQHbSiA. I've never trusted Amanpour's reporting. Note how in that piece she says something like, "I am a reporter," implying that whatever she states is the truth is, indeed, the truth because she somehow can't be corrupted. It's absurd.

This is something that crops up a lot. Saying 'I'm a reporter' or 'a scientist' is not in and by itself a winning argument. It tells me that you have some experience in the field, but, as investigators, I still want to hear the details of your investigations, and then i will make my own mind up. Reporters and scientist can be influenced by personal agendas just like everyone else.

As for the election - yes it's a dismal choice. As you say, everything is presented through the prism of tribalism - and truth is the first casualty of that war.

Initially I liked Beta O'Rourke - at least he had some charisma - but he had this disastrous campaign launch where he appeared on the cover of HQ (a male fashion magazine), said he was 'born to be be in it' or something similar, and came across as a poonce. (Aus slang for 'not manly') His campaign was then dead in the water.

Interestingly it's a similar story in Australia. Both major parties have become impersonal machines focused on protecting their own internal power structures - it's a culture of deceit and message management. It's not an environment that encourages individuals to express and debate ideas - it's the opposite.

This NBC report is good example of how the media have suppressed the Hunter Biden story:

"One month before a purported leak of files from Hunter Biden's laptop, a fake "intelligence" document about him went viral on the right-wing internet, asserting an elaborate conspiracy theory involving former Vice President Joe Biden's son and business in China."

The NBC article purports to expose the Hunter Biden story as disinformation and a 'right-wing conspiracy theory' generated by a 'fake' source.

At first glance you would think 'Oh, so it's all political bullshit. Hunter Biden has no connections with China - it was all made up!'

But here's the thing. The author of the report, for very understandable reasons concerning personal safety, wanted to remain anonymous, hence the fake profile. I would do exactly the same thing - especially if i was in China. The author passed his report to academic Christopher Balding. Balding made it plain from the beginning that the author's profile was fake - due to personal safety reasons - no attempt was made to present it as anything else.

Secondly, Balding points out that most of the information contained in the report, is from publicly available data - all of which is cited so that anyone wanting to check the veracity of it can easily do so. It includes corroborating info from 3 human sources within China who also remain anonymous - again, for understandable reasons.

So did NBC check any of these sources? Nup. Not interested. Their only agenda is discredit the story and bury its findings.

The claim that the info was only disseminated on "far right-wing" media is laughable. I'm not far right-wing - I'm not even near right-wing - never have been. Yet here i am disseminating it. The academic Christopher Balding says he didn't vote for Trump in 2016 and won't this time - he just wants to get this info out - because it's important the public knows what's going on with Biden's son and the CCP.

The fact is, the so-called 'progressive media' are actively censoring anything that exposes the neo-liberal elites and their deep ties to China money and globalization ideology. Anyone that wants to expose this by publishing cold hard facts detailing this activity will be shut out of the mainstream press. Disturbingly, right wing outlets will often be the only ones who will publish it. Yes, it suits their agenda, but that's not the fault of the person who wants to expose this information. What's their alternative?

I consider myself a progressive - have been since Uni days - but censoring the truth is not what we're supposed to be about. That's what the right wing money-driven guys do. It's what Miramar and the Taitung Government did. It's what the CCP does. It's exactly what i am fighting against.

For the record, the report that was suppressed and vilified by NBC states the following key points:

BHR is a state managed operation. Leading shareholder in BHR is a Bank of China which lists BHR as a subsidiary and BHR’s partners are SOEs that funnel revenue/assets to BHR.

HUNTER continues to hold 10% in BHR. He visited China in 2010 and met with major Chinese government financial companies that would later back BHR.

HUNTER’s BHR stake (purchased for $400,000) is now likely be worth approx. $50 million (fees and capital appreciation based on BHR’s $6.5 billion AUM as stated by Michael Lin).

HUNTER also did business with Chinese tycoons linked with the Chinese military and against the interests of US national security.

The state of media in the US has sunk to its lowest point in my lifetime. What gets me is that the Internet was supposed to accomplish just the opposite. It's all very disturbing.

My main sources of news now are: Reuters, Al Jazeera, BBC, and The Guardian, in no particular order. I'm actually getting the bulk of my news from mostly non-US sources. AP is also a good US based source of information.

CNN used to be OK but has become so biased as to be laughable, like FOX. I've given up on all the networks. It's pathetic.

So, yeah, where's the honest investigative reporting?

Regarding investigative reporting, Al Jazeera does some good work: https://www.aljazeera.com/podcasts/aljazeera-investigates/.

So, yeah, where's the honest investigative reporting?

It's on Formosahut!

This story is interesting coz I'd assumed that China already had big internet companies on a short leash - but apparently not. Guess that tells you how hard it is to keep track of what exactly they're up to.

"China has proposed new regulations aimed at curbing the power of its biggest internet companies.

The regulations suggest increasing unease in Beijing with the growing influence of digital platforms.

The new rules could affect homegrown tech giants like Alibaba, Ant Group and Tencent, as well as food delivery platform Meituan."

Some of the rules sound downright appropriate, which doesn't square with my CCP views too well, but they include:

"stop(ping) companies from sharing sensitive consumer data, teaming up to squeeze out smaller rivals and selling at a loss to eliminate competitors... (They) also take aim at companies that treat customers differently based on their data and spending habits."

This is (another) insight into what it would be like in Taiwan (or anywhere) if China gets its totalitarian claws in.

Zhang Zhan was detained on May 14, 2020 and is now officially charged with "picking quarrels and provoking trouble".

What quarrel exactly? She reported from Wuhan on the Wuhan outbreak, including the detention of other journalists, and the harassment of families seeking accountability. She also, according to the indictment: “accepted interviews with overseas media Radio Free Asia and Epoch Times and maliciously stirred up the Wuhan epidemic situation.”

She was on a hunger strike but authorities began force-feeding her.

Imagine the chilling effect these detentions have - then consider the courage of those activists who speak out anyway.

That's very disturbing.

It's coming to light that COVID was in Italy much earlier than thought, as early as September 2019. Given how this journalist was treated by the Chinese govt., it's easy to see how they could have known about COVID months earlier than admitted but kept it under wraps.

I wonder what was going on around Wuhan in late 2019, from, say, August on.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-timing-idUSKBN27V0KF

"The WHO said it would contact the paper’s authors “to discuss and arrange for further analyses of available samples and verification of the neutralization results”.

I wonder what will come of that. Won't China then have some questions to answer? Or is the WHO going to conveniently explain it away as bad science?

I wonder what will come of that. Won't China then have some questions to answer? Or is the WHO going to conveniently explain it away as bad science?

I think we'll find WHO and China angling for a muddied-water outcome where the virus may not have even come from Wuhan, or China. The CCP was insistent when setting up the scope of the WHO 'investigation' that overseas origin sites be included. As i mentioned, that would be perfectly fine if it really was an independent investigation - but seeing how it's not - then it smells like the investigation being tailored to fit a pre-formed outcome.

My understanding of the reason for Italy being an early adopter of the virus was that there were a lot of Chinese from Wuhan working in textile factories in northern Italy, living in dorm-type accommodation. The first officially recorded cases in Italy were two people who had just arrived from Wuhan on Jan 23.

It does seem likely that the virus was around for months before it was first detected - given that symptoms are very similar to a flu, it could have easily been misdiagnosed. It's also possible that it mutated within humans in the initial stages until it hit the jackpot re transmissibility.

Once it was detected by Wuhan doctors in Nov-Dec, there was an initial effort by authorities to shut them up. Some were detained. I tend to believe those doctors were acting honestly and reported it as soon as they became aware of it.

In a lab escape scenario, yes it's possible that lab actors may have been aware that it had escaped, and kept it quiet hoping it would be ok. It's equally possible they weren't aware it had escaped.

In a deliberate leak scenario, yes, you would want to keep it under your hat as long as possible. The problem i see with this theory is that if i was going to deliberately leak it, i wouldn't do it right next to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

In the movie script i was writing, the only way i could reconcile this is if it was designed for say release in HK, to suppress the protest for example, then there was a slip betwixt lip and cup, and it got out in Wuhan instead.

(PS. I wrote quite a lot of that script, but now i honestly can't see anyone daring to publish it even if it was good enough. If you take a look at Netflix, there's virtually nothing that could be construed as unfavourable to the CCP in their entire catalogue. In fact i struggle to think of a single movie or tv series published by anyone that is critical of the CCP since Seven Years in Tibet - even though there are some fantastic stories in there.)

First off, keep the script going and absolutely copyright your premise, script, characters, or idea. The old fashioned, pre-Internet, cheap way to do that was to mail a copy to yourself and not open it. The postmark served as proof of copyright. Nowadays, I'm sure there are plenty of high tech ways to copyright ideas, premises, characters, or full-blown scripts. Do it!

What's going to happen here is that after all the dust settles in, say a year (or ten), movies and novels of all sorts are going to come out en masse, and in great quantity over the course of generations to come, many of them not being kind to China. So get that copyright.

In a sense, this forum serves as proof of your idea, but do some research. I can't imagine Formosahut standing up in court against Netflix!

I heard second hand that there was a lot of speculation in the Chinese language press during the initial outbreak regarding the possibility that the virus occurred in more than one place simultaneously, which always seemed absurd to me. That makes no sense. Of course, the Chinese would love to pass this off as having originated somewhere else. What I see as a more likely scenario is that the Chinese simply managed to contain this longer than the world thought, beginning as early as July or August of 2019.

The Italians assumed these increased rates of pneumonia were due to the flu; why wouldn't they? It took this virus getting very, very deeply entrenched in the population before it could no longer be covered up or ignored. This all gets back to a very low mortality rate, comparable to, say SARS 1, and the ability to spread very easily among people with no symptoms. I'm pretty sure I had it back in February, long before this part of Japan was even concerned about it.

This is like a toenail fungus that may disappear, but never really goes away.

"In a lab escape scenario, yes it's possible that lab actors may have been aware that it had escaped, and kept it quiet hoping it would be ok. It's equally possible they weren't aware it had escaped.

There's another option. Or multiple. Let's explore four sets of lab characters:
Set 1: Lab characters NOT privy to any information that work on the virus was happening.
Set 2: Lab characters aware that work on the virus was a thing but NOT privy to any other information, and NOT aware that it escaped, but of course they'll find out.
Set 3: Lab characters that WERE aware that it escaped but thought it was an accident.
Set 4: Lab characters that WERE aware that it escaped while on transfer to HK where it was to be released.

The point here is that, in such a lab, of course there is going to be a hierarchy of "need to know" characters. The difficulty with regards to a script is going to be how much of that complexity to include.

There's another option. Or multiple. Let's explore four sets of lab characters:
Set 1: Lab characters NOT privy to any information that work on the virus was happening.
Set 2: Lab characters aware that work on the virus was a thing but NOT privy to any other information, and NOT aware that it escaped, but of course they'll find out.
Set 3: Lab characters that WERE aware that it escaped but thought it was an accident.
Set 4: Lab characters that WERE aware that it escaped while on transfer to HK where it was to be released.

The point here is that, in such a lab, of course there is going to be a hierarchy of "need to know" characters. The difficulty with regards to a script is going to be how much of that complexity to include.

Thanks for the encouragement! I'll keep working on it.

There was, in real life, 'Gain-of-function' work going on at WIV to make bat viruses more contagious. They (including Batwoman) published papers on it. It was considered somewhat controversial but not too bad - their rationalization was 'we need to manipulate viruses to stay ahead of the curve so that when the outbreak comes we'll be ready to deal with it'.

On that level everyone would know that that type of work was going on. However, in terms of hitting the jackpot with SAR-2 - that sweet-spot you talked about - highly contagious, not too deadly, but deadly enough to get attention - that's where your hierarchy of who knows what would come in.

A lot of the justification for this type of work, apart from trying to anticipate a virus that may evolve in nature, is also to anticipate biological warfare strains that other countries might be working on. After the anthrax incidents in the US, there was an explosion in this these type of purpose-built labs around the world.

The thing is, that in the process of predicting what the other side might be coming up with, you're creating deadly strains yourself. If you come up with one that ticks all the boxes, then it's not gonna be lost on the higher-ups that this is something we need to keep in our arsenal - just in case.

The beauty of it, the part that may have proved too seductive to its owners, is, this weapon can achieve all the results you want without firing a shot.

You let off a nuclear weapon then the whole world will know about it and you better be prepared for retaliation. (Or in the HK case, you commit a Tiananmen Square type massacre, you need to deal with the fallout from that which may strain those decade long ties you've been building with academics/politicians/business people around the world.)

You release a virus though, then you get to achieve all your goals - HK, Xinjiang, discord around the world, showcase the primacy of your lockdown/surveillance system, divert the course of history - and nobody can pin anything on you.

Yes, it's a conspiracy theory. But unlike a lot of conspiracy theories, that require a complicated alignment of myriad moving parts, there's a simplistic, logical beauty to it. The prize on offer for those prepared to seize the initiative is colossal.

Former US National Security Agency director Mike Rogers:

"My attitude always was: can you explain to me how Russia, China, North Korea and the Iranians have come to the conclusion that cyber represents low-risk (pay wall) — that they can engage in aggressive activities in cyber and not trigger a significant response … or at least a response that they think outweighs the benefits?”

“How is it that we have got two diametrically opposed world models? We have got to change this dynamic. We have to reshape the risk calculus of these cyber actors whether it be nation states or criminal actors.”

That's a good point - we touched on it before. A Data War is the war you have without firing a shot - or the repercussions of firing shots. But it's still a war, with real war outcomes.

As a criminal enterprise, data theft in general operates with impunity. How often do they catch the guy who rings up with a banking scam? Never?

It's the same with state-sponsored cyber-warfare. It's serious shit. But there are no repercussions for the perpetrators. (Unless you're named Julian Assange or Edward Snowden - then we'll hound you to your grave.)

That's a good question. I guess one response would be, how do we know there aren't repercussions? Wasn't an Iranian reactor hit with a cyber attack? I can't remember the specifics, but here is one result of a quick search:

From https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/05/satellite-image-raises-suspicions-of-atta...
"The Natanz site was first targeted in 2007 by a cyber-warfare campaign known as Olympic Games that included the use of the Stuxnet computer virus, which scrambled code and led to the destruction of at least hundreds of centrifuges, among other damage. Israel and the US were thought to be the architects of the operation."

So I don't think there's impunity, I just think this war is being fought in a less public sphere. It's far easier for governments to keep this war out of the press, unless of course it serves a purpose to have it in the press, in which case every government will choose to expose whatever event supports their cause.

But we live in increasingly interesting times. AI is going to be a nightmare in many respects.

So I don't think there's impunity, I just think this war is being fought in a less public sphere. It's far easier for governments to keep this war out of the press, unless of course it serves a purpose to have it in the press, in which case every government will choose to expose whatever event supports their cause.

Yes, that makes sense - and i do remember the Iran nuclear cyber sabotage. We hear nothing about cyber attacks on China or Russia but i suppose we wouldn't. It's the war you have without the public knowing they're having one. It still worries me when big things about the planet's future are being decided in the shadows - maybe that's the way it's always been...

Here's a good example of what the future is looking like. It's also straight out of the playbook of the genomic surveillance scientists (Lipkin, Holmes, Rambaut, Garry, Andersen) that wrote the Proximal Origins pangolin narrative.

"Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for a "global mechanism" that would use QR codes to open up international travel.

"We need to further harmonise policies and standards and establish 'fast tracks' to facilitate the orderly flow of people," he said.

The codes will be used to help establish a traveller's health status.

But Human Rights advocates warn that the codes could be used for "broader political monitoring and exclusion"".

I'm with the Human Rights advocates on this one. We cannot be coerced into handing over the world's individual health information to Xi Jinping or any other government because of a disease whose origins remain secret, withheld information.

Hand over the fucking information about that first before you go asking for everyone else's private stuff.

On the purely criminal level, this cyber scam is an example of the impunity under which the criminals operate.

It's called Business Email Compromise (BEC). It's frighteningly simple and effective. It involves a scammer getting access to someone's account, often a tradesperson, then altering the account details of a real outgoing invoice.

The customer sees nothing wrong as the correspondence part is left unaltered. He/she goes ahead and pays but the money goes to the scammer's account, which has been opened with a false name. The money is then withdrawn from an ATM in a different country (in this case South Africa).

The police told the victims:

"Any further investigation is unlikely to result in a successful prosecution of the party responsible."

"The reason is Victoria Police has no jurisdiction in South Africa and Interpol will only investigate fraud matter in excess of $1,000,000 loss."

The end.

Note from Dulan Drift: Hope you don't mind Dan but i moved this post to here.

DAN WROTE:

China Wants Your DNA—and It's up To No Good

https://www.newsweek.com/china-wants-your-dna-its-no-good-opinion-1550998

The story starts:

"We need to further harmonize policies and standards and establish 'fast tracks' to facilitate the orderly flow of personnel," said Chinese ruler Xi Jinping to the virtual G20 Leaders' Summit on November 21. "China has proposed a global mechanism on the mutual recognition of health certificates based on nucleic acid test results in the form of internationally accepted QR codes. We hope more countries will join this mechanism."

China wants a worldwide database of DNA records on qrode. Yep, they want us all to have a qrcode. No doubt they'd prefer it be tattooed on our foreheads.

And they're using COVID as justification for pushing through and making it a reality.

DNA surveillance is one of the last frontiers remaining in total surveillance state. Covid has fast-forwarded us into this Brave New World faster than we thought.

One of the main functions of the Uyghur re-education camps was a playground for this sort of stuff.

It's important to remember, it's not just China who is into mass surveillance technology - maybe i'm guilty of focusing too much on their exploits.

This is an interesting article on American Big Data company called Palantir. Came across them browsing the stock market. So far as the Covid K curve goes, Palantir is on the up-ramp, having increased 175% this year.

What do they do? Supply big data scraping algorithms to governments, the military, and mega-corporations.

https://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/land-and-expand-secretive-palantir-makes-its-ma...

Apple Daily owner, Jimmy Lai (73), and activist Joshua Wong (24) have been locked up.

Their crimes: voicing opinions.

At least it shows the inter-generational solidarity in HK.

Lai is awaiting trial, while Wong was sentenced to 13 and half months.

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2020/12/04/2003748078

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/02/hong-kong-activist-joshua-wong-jailed-ove...

Not sure if this is data war - could be.

"Chinese scientists have revealed they will use satellites and rockets as part of an ambitious project to artificially create rainfall."

On the surface, it could be a useful technology - bringing rain to drought areas - though i'm wary of fighting climate change through artificial weather manipulation.

Anyway, it's supposed to happen fast. Due to "breakthroughs in research and new technologies" the plan is to have a "developed weather modification system" by 2025. Includes an area the size of India.

So if this is a another technology taking off - literally to the stratosphere - where is that gonna go?

Manipulating typhoons - causing floods - droughts - heatwaves - blizzards? You'd imagine all those possibilities would be logical extensions.

This video from Gordon Chang talks about CCP's concerted effort to collect the world's DNA.

The program has experienced a Covid-enhanced bump. For example, whenever they conduct vaccine trial tests in foreign countries, DNA is collected.

Chinese entities also own large parts of ancestry companies - indeed they subsidize the cost of analysing DNA on these sites - just to get the data.

They hack insurance company and medical databases.

Chang makes the point that whether you think Covid was a biological weapon or not, it proves that biological weapons do work - exhibit A - the mess America was reduced to - within months.

He argues that controlling the DNA data means you now know how to tailor a virus to attack a particular ethnic group.

"Muslims in China’s Xinjiang were “arbitrarily” selected for arrest by a computer program that flagged suspicious behavior, rights campaigners said yesterday, in a report detailing big data’s role in repression in the restive region.

"Surveillance spending in Xinjiang has ballooned in the past few years, with facial recognition, iris scanners, DNA collection and artificial intelligence deployed across the region in the name of preventing terrorism."

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2020/12/10/2003748449

This is another example of 'the future now'. Before people didn't care too much about China's human rights violations - many still don't - so long as they keep it to within their own country.

But the internet takes it beyond the Chinese border. Data is being collected from all around the world and is ready to be weaponized when the time comes.

This could be the 'cyber-attack of the century'. It penetrated government departments, major corporations and even cyber-security firms.

"Prof Alan Woodward, a cyber-security researcher at the University of Surrey, says: "Post Cold War, this is one of the potentially largest penetrations of Western governments that I'm aware of."

The funny thing is that it was so simple the way they did it. Forget about going after all these heavily fortified entities individually with their mega-security budgets - just hack the company that supplies them with software - then wait for them to upload it!

As the articles point out - it's not an 'in and out' disruption thing - the consequences are unknown and will reverberate years into the future.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-30/sunburst-cyber-hack-solarwinds-software-cybersec...

PS. I had to 'hack' my way past the spam filter to get this post up - seems it picked up something it didn't like.

One good thing that could come out of this is internet diversification. Google/Apple/Amazon pulling the plug on Parler was a big moment. That could backfire spectacularly down the track.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-10/apple-bans-social-media-site-parler-from-app-sto...

This arguably necessary application of censorship by the tech giants could nudge the decentralized movement closer to mainstream (or fringe, in this case) adoption. I'm talking here about IPFS and also future applications built on blockchain technology.

Peepeth is a blockchain powered social network that also uses IPFS. It is moderated, so crazies calling for overthrow of governments or inquiring about kiddie porn aren't going to be welcomed there, but there's nothing stopping Parler wannabes from creating exactly the same thing without moderation.

The problem with censorship is that 'Who decides what to censor?' and 'Who censors the censors?'

For example, we have top experts telling us China is "open and transparent". That is Covid misinformation - pure and simple, but there has been no move to ban these experts from Twitter or anything else - not even a 'Disputed Claim' notification. That doesn't bother me at all - so long as i'm free to publish details as to why China is not "open and transparent". But when that right is under threat, that's when i have concerns. Sure i can publish on Formosahut, which i'm grateful for, but I would never be granted access to mainstream media platforms to challenge those claims. (I know this coz i've tried haha! The reply is either no reply or 'Now is not the time to talk about that.')

I remember a long time ago you made a point about calculating a response to something by asking the question: 'How is this hurting me (or others)?' If it's not, or if it just offends my sensibilities, then that's not grounds for banning it.

That stuck with me and i often use it as a rule of thumb. In the category of things that do hurt, we have racism, homophobia, sexism, violence, human rights abuses etc

But there's a helluva lot of stuff that doesn't really hurt anyone that still gets the full cancel-culture treatment. This is where big-tech appears to be heading - 'We believe in free speech - so long as you don't say anything that we disagree with.'

But there's a helluva lot of stuff that doesn't really hurt anyone that still gets the full cancel-culture treatment. This is where big-tech appears to be heading - 'We believe in free speech - so long as you don't say anything that we disagree with.'

Noted, but this is where technology may step in. Censorship is now possible because all major platforms are centralized, i.e., there is a gatekeeper. Decentralized technologies will remove the gatekeeper, to an extent. The highest level gatekeeper is the ISP, not the platform like Twitter. People connect to the Internet via an ISP, so they are the highest level gatekeeper, right now.

China enacts gatekeeping via the ISP level. Western countries haven't gone there yet, at least not explicitly.

But the IPFS and blockchain models are major gamechangers. IPFS, as it exists now, will likely die out, but something will replace it. Blockchain tech is absolutely going nowhere. It is the future. The old (current) model of databases on servers is so clearly inferior to what decentralized data structures provide NOW that it's just not a guessing game. This is why all the big banks and old school companies like IBM are getting into it, albeit quietly.

These technologies are going to leapfrog Twitter, Facebook, etc. Check out SOLID and Ethereum

So there is a lot on the horizon happening. This is an incredibly exciting time in technology. We are on the brink of something as big as the beginning of the Internet. I believe that. The entire Internet is based on centralized servers and data. That is being disrupted right now. I keep telling my high school students that they'd better start learning about this stuff.

Now, this decentralized model doesn't necessarily solve the major problem with the Internet with regards to sharing information, discussing issues, and coming to conclusions based on sound evidence and logic.

And that major problem is that the Internet allows us to live in idea mirrors, echo chambers, or whatever the term is. Decentralization actually will make that problem worse by making it easier for people to hide in their own idea caves.

In effect, decentralization will allow us all to retreat to our own thought neighborhoods that we existed in before the Internet! So this is a real conundrum.

On the one hand, decentralization allows more freedom. On the other, we use that freedom to avoid new ideas and surround ourselves with the comfort of familiarity.

The Internet allows us to live in idea mirrors, echo chambers, or whatever the term is. Decentralization actually will make that problem worse by making it easier for people to hide in their own idea caves.

In effect, decentralization will allow us all to retreat to our own thought neighborhoods that we existed in before the Internet! So this is a real conundrum.

On the one hand, decentralization allows more freedom. On the other, we use that freedom to avoid new ideas and surround ourselves with the comfort of familiarity.

Good analysis, 'conundrum' is the right word - just to echo your remarks haha.

One thing about the Covid origin arguments, however, it has thrown up some strange bedfellows - which breaks through the echo chamber to some extent. For example, most people on the left trust the experts and believe it was the result of natural selection, whereas the right is more likely to believe the lab scenario.

Then there are those that have an opinion on the origin that is formed without regard to left or right thinking. It would be nice if this engenders a rise in independent analysis - outside the web of both party machines.

Alan Deshowitz describes himself as a 'liberal Democrat' but has an interesting perspective (paywall) that relates to the above:

"There is a crisis in free speech led by the United States but literally around the world. And the tragedy is it’s being led by the left. I grew up with McCarthyism. There were great threats to free speech from the right, and we, liberals, stood up for free speech because naturally they were suppressing our free speech.

Today, the conservatives are speaking up for free speech, because the left is repressing their free speech. There are very, very few people out there who say “free speech for me and for thee, rather than free speech for me but not for thee”.

The left have become so certain of their truth that they don’t think there’s a need for dissent. They don’t think there’s a need for due process. Many support cancel culture which is a direct denial of both freedom of speech and due process. With certainty comes intolerance."

Literally.

"Health authorities in China are using anal swabs to mass test residents for coronavirus amidst a severe outbreak spreading from the north-east of the country.

Doctors claim the procedure can be more effective in detecting the virus than nasal swabs."

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/coronavirus-australia-live-news-australia-ranke... (paywall)

That makes drive-through testing a bit tricky!

That makes drive-through testing a bit tricky!

Good point. That's why i reckon we should patent ‘anal recognition technology’.

We could become the next tech-whiz entrepreneur gazillionaires.

Here's how it could work (stop me if this is too much information):

I have a Japanese style toilet - seems more hygienic - just wanted it for the water - but modern ones sense you sitting down - make whirring noises - lights are activated. Freaks guests out a little bit but i'm used to it - find it comforting even.

How hard can it be to equip that existing setup with an anal recognition function?

We know Covid can be detected in sewerage - now you will be able to trace that all the way back to the actual arse-hole it came out of.

This is how brainwashing works. The frightening thing is that it's effective.

"Children as young as six are to learn about crimes under Hong Kong's national security law.

Schools will be asked to monitor children's behaviour and report any support for the pro-democracy movement, as part of new education rules."

It's pretty frightening how easily Hong Kong was subjugated and the world for the most part remained silent. It's pretty clear that freedom is all fine and dandy with leaders in the West until it affects the bottom line. Whether it's Hong Kong or or Xinjiang, leaders of the free world blow a lot of hot air, but at the end of the day, they can't let it all get in the way of business.

It's the great lie at the heart of world politics. I would challenge anyone to argue how China's totalitarianism is better than Russia's. Whereas with the USSR we had the cold war and trade sanctions, and even recently, presidential impeachment proceedings, with China it's like a love-in for business people and scientists.

Imagine American scientists conducting clandestine collaborations with Soviet scientists at Soviet biodefense labs to work on potential bioweapons - then not publishing their work outside the Russian lab and refusing to answer questions about it. They'd be locked up as traitorous spies. But that's exactly the situation we've got today with scientist collaborating with WIV - but this time the media treats them like they're untouchable gods.

(this thread continues here)

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