What people forget is this is how the Soviets operated. Operation Pandora was a KGB op to blow up a Black church, cause it to be blamed on White supremacists, and sow as much racial tension as possible. The Soviets knew they couldn't beat NATO in a conventional war, so they had to fight other ways. Everything that is going on now is straight from that playbook. It's sad how quickly we forget history. It's not like this was 400 years ago. It was 60 years ago. The Russians have been this way for over 100 years. Why would they suddenly change now? If it quacks like a duck....

This is spot on. I love how everyone is saying, why would the Chinese do this when there are so many back doors, etc. Why WOULDN'T they be doing it? In the event a conflict erupts, they can cause so much chaos. It would be irresponsible of the MSS NOT to be doing this. It could also be a good way to help prevent a conflict, in China's eyes. If things start to get hot, they could begin causing chaos as a way to tell Western countries, hey, back off. I don't think any rational person takes offense at the NSA hacking the Chinese or the MSS hacking the US. That is espionage. It's when it gets into companies and trade secrets that there becomes a big problem. But just because we understand that they spy, doesn't mean we don't call them out on it when we catch them. The US did the same thing during the Cold War when it caught Soviet spies. It is normal to say - hey, this country was spying, and we caught them.

China (the CCP) is anti everyone. Their culture has deteriorated since the 1930s due to the destruction of their moral code from Confucianism and similar philosophies by the CCP. All of your examples of the relationship between China and the US are pre-Xi. That is when things changed. The SCS is not theirs. They made islands on formations. Under no law is this legal. In fact, they have stolen islands that are well within other country's EEZs. The only way this is possible is because they have the military power to take what they want from countries like the Philippines. Interesting how these islands weren't an issue until Xi came along. Furthermore, China lost their case under UNCLOS, where both China and the Philippines are signatories. That means China is bound by the ruling but isn't abiding by it. Don't try and twist this and say the US isn't a signatory, but it's butting in - so what? China is a signatory and it rejects the ruling. Period, full stop. There is simply no way to defend China's stance on this other than might makes right. Hacking - yeah, we hear a lot about it and not the US. What does that say? The US is better at it. But I highly doubt the US is stealing trade secrets and providing them to US companies. This is very much an Asian thing - and I am saying this as an Asian. Japan did it to the US in the 80s and China is doing it now. I think everyone knows that espionage is a thing. The sin isn't the espionage, it's getting caught. Everyone spies in their own national interests. Everyone should 100% understand this. The issue comes in when one country wants the special treatment that comes with being a third-world, developing country and competes with Western countries that have open markets. Then that country, massively subsidizes its own companies, manipulates its currency to create an extremely slanted competitive environment. Add to that, the government actively steals trade secrets to give its own companies an advantage. If the West tries to target specific companies for their bad behavior, then they are accused of being racist and xenophobic. All of this is part of the hybrid warfare manual. If you are non-Han Chinese, have you been to China or done business there? It's worse than a casino - the odds are always in China's favor. Most foreign companies won't last long - just long enough for a local company to copy their IP and make it cheaper. The US has an enormous amount of faults. It has abused its position of having the dollar being the world's currency. It has invaded countries that weren't a threat but rather were of an economic interest. But that doesn't preclude the US from being better than China for the role as the world's superpower. Both can be true at the same time. Lesser of 2 evils type thing. Ask yourself which country is better in the world's leadership role? At the end of the day, the world is better off with the US being in its position than China.

How can American kit be harder to hack than something the MSS already has a direct back door into? That's like saying Master locks are easier to pick than just having the key to open them.

How can 51.1% of a country be the extreme right? Does that make the other 49.9% the extreme left? There is no middle ground in your world? The extreme of either side likely number less than 15% on each side. The overwhelming majority of the US is moderate.

The best piece of kit you can buy at this level for finding cameras is a thermal imager. Anything that uses electricity produces excess heat. You can sweep a room and find more with this than any spy camera detector. Some cameras will be hidden behind black plastic and the spy detector will not find them. The thermal imager can still see the heat from the other sides of where the black plastic is. However, be forewarned, glass stops a thermal imager. I once found a camera in a painting that had a glass cover over it. For the things the imager won't find, the best thing is a physical search. This takes a lot longer, and most people just aren't going to do it. It usually takes me 3 hours to sweep an AirBnB. So far, I have found 7 cameras. All of these were in Asia and most were WiFi types so it was easy to start by sweeping the network for devices. But a few were battery powered with micro sd cards. Those take more time to locate. Hotels are just as bad. So its not just an ABNB issue.

Weird. I have "been there" too. I have done operations with numerous CN firms across 6 countries in Asia, importing into those countries from CN. Almost half of the deals involved some level of fraud and deception. It always starts out the same way. The first 6 months, the products are spot on. Then it slowly starts with the faulty units or outright fake ones. It may be direct violations of UP in the contracts or fake transpo problems. We had one place send 100k masks to Thailand for an NGO and they were all missing the basic filter layer in the mask. There was no way to get a refund, no one to complain to, anything. The numerous times we tried to file complaints, the companies were all shielded by the government. Until it harms Chinese citizens, the government doesn't care. To say that the Chinese people don't commit these sorts of crimes is ridiculous. They commit them at a much higher rate than most other countries and have the government protection to do it.

This sounds like the beginning of a James Bond movie. Either that or just an Auburn fan wanting to screw with a Bama fan.

This is really cute. Those who wish to protect themselves from those that wish to do them harm are He-Boys. So in your world, its better to be the victim of robbery, rape, murder, etc? In your world, the only people who would ever try to prevent these things are He-Boys? And then those that do manage to discharge the firearm are only ever going to hit anything other than their target? Do you have any evidence to cite to back up this wildly inaccurate claim? For this to be true, what, more than 80% of those who pull a firearm and discharge it for self-defense have to shoot someone else. That should be easy for you to prove because there should be tens of thousands of bystander shootings by those being attacked in crimes. The CDC claims that there were 1.1 million defensive uses of a firearm, with 18.1% of those resulting in the firearm being discharged. https://americangunfacts.com/g... With your logic, that means that there are over 140k people that were shot by the victim wielding the defensive firearm.

They just fielded a regiment using T-55s.

People will continue to use the devices without a second thought. Sure, there will be some people who stop or use alternative OSes (Graphene), but overwhelmingly, people will continue. Just look at TikTok, Facebook, IG, Temu, and a host of other apps. Everyone knows by now that these apps are collecting vast amounts of user data and in the case of the Chinese apps, sharing it well beyond the company. But people want the apps and don't care about the things they can't see happening in the background. I was traveling in Singapore earlier in the year and realized how much easier my life would be if I just gave in and installed all the apps they wanted me to do. Install the airport app and make security easier. Install the airline app and get updates on your flight, track your bags, and even buy things in the city using air miles. Install Grab and Food Panda for taxis and all sorts of deliveries. Google Maps for walking around. SG Gov app for help with government services I was needing to use. Except that SG is allowed to access all data about everyone in the country, including citizens, at any time for any or no reason. This includes accessing internet streams from your mobile (you have to register the SIM when you buy it in-country), your location, your finances if you have them in SG, etc. They have almost as many cameras as London all connected to AI facial recognition that can track you to just about any point on the islands. I have no plans to do anything illegal in SG but all of this felt very creepy to me. I am not criticizing it because that is what the people of SG want for themselves and as a guest, I will follow their rules. But it made me end up turning my phone off and keeping it in a Faraday bag for a lot of while I was there. My point is that most people in SG will install all of these apps and many more without a second thought. I don't think most in the US would stop using their phones if the government was able to gain full access at any time. Even if Tiktok came out and said, yeah we copy all of your data and send it to the CCP for them to build a profile on you so that when the war starts, we can use that data to go after individual Americans, most people would keep using it because it's trendy. They will keep using Temu because they can get cheap crap delivered to them. I wish I could find the link to the video, but I saw one where an African American influencer who commonly made videos on her views of the inequality of the races in the US and her own personal struggles was also pushing her viewers to download and install Temu. She showed some socks that she got on the app and that they were less than $2. One of her viewers pointed out that they were made with Uigur slave labor and that Temu didn't prevent companies that used Uigur labor from selling on Temu. She rationalized it that it was cheaper than buying on Amazon or Walmart and she needed to save money. So here is a woman who in her daily life has to deal with the ramifications of the slavery of her people in the past brushing off modern slavery so she can save money. This isn't to criticize her. The point is that if we don't see the evil these apps do, the benefit the app gives us is far more powerful and likely to win out. As a side note, you can buy temporary eSIMS online for travel and they aren't registered when you arrive. At least some level of privacy.

Nearly everything you said is incorrect. Their military has mostly deployed. They can't keep troops on the borders of Europe, the Caucuses, China, and in the Fae East and still deploy more to Ukraine. They have spent nearly 50% of their active armor. The rest is in various states of disrepair. They have burned through a third of their top attack helicopter model and expended the overwhelming majority of their "precision" weapons. They won't be able to rebuild those quickly with a shortage of Western chips. The Chinese chips they have been receiving have above a 30% failure rate. Russia hasn't withstood anything from NATO. NATO isn't in the war. At this point, Ukraine has received mostly old, outdated kit and you think that that is the best NATO can throw at Russia? Russia can't even shoot down a slow-moving Rivet Joint because their missiles won't release and fire. The ruble is in fact, worse now than before the war. It has been steadily declining since December and nothing in the near future points to any signs of a reverse. Europe didn't experience a cold winter so Russia lost enormous amounts of gas revenues. That gas can't be transported to China and that's why the Russians are burning if off. There will be no replacement of the dollar for oil any time soon. Why? There is no viable alternative. The Yuan isn't anywhere near stable enough as its not allowed to float freely against other currencies. It is artificially controlled to benefit the CCP. No country will invest seriously in that. There will be an absolute partial diversification away from the dollar because countries don't want to feel the power of sanctions. This brings me to Russia's economy. Why is China saying they should be removed? Why is Russia saying that they won't talk about peace until the sanctions are removed? Because sanctions take time to impact an economy. It's not a 6 month or even a 1-year thing. People like to complain that they aren't working but that is because those people can't think outside of the current news cycle. Why does North Korea resort to hacking and drugs for income? Because sanctions have destroyed their economy. Oh, and ? !