Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
How do you stop them yourself?
That's the question I asked you. It seemed relevant, since you were the one discussing stopping them.

For me it would depend entirely on what you want them to stop doing, how badly you want them to stop doing it, and how willing you are to deal with the probable consequences of whatever means are proposed to get them to stop doing it.

Quote Originally Posted by carl View Post
The CIA doc you linked to was very interesting and contained this passage.

"On 17 January 1983, to define his policy for political, military, and economic relations with the USSR, Reagan approved National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 75, U. S. Relations with the USSR, a document spelling out purposes, themes, and strategy for competing in the Cold War. It specified three policy elements: containment and reversal of Soviet expansionism, promotion of change in the internal system to reduce the power of the ruling elite, and engagement in negotiations and agreements that would enhance US interests."

That strategy seems as if it would be a very appropriate one to apply toward Red China today. Hell, reducing the power of the ruling elite would be downright humanitarian.
Again these are very generic prescriptions, and the question would be what exactly could or should be done to advance these prescriptions. It might also be pointed out that some of what was done to contain and reverse Soviet expansionism didn't exactly work out for us, notably sustaining various dictators who claimed to be anti-communist and supporting various insurgents who turned out to be not so much anti-communist as anti-everybody. Any such set of broad goals stands or falls on the specific steps chosen to advance the goals.

Of course the Chinese cyber-espionage project is well known, and we can assume that all of the standard responses are in progress, from analyzing their espionage priorities to determine their perceived weaknesses to trying to set them up to steal things that will backfire on hem. Of course the Chinese also know these moves are in progress and will be taking their own steps to counter them. That's the nature of the game.

As for the aforementioned "water army", described this way:

paid posters are known as the Internet Water Army because they are ready and willing to 'flood' the internet for whoever is willing to pay. The flood can consist of comments, gossip and information (or disinformation)
it would appear to indicate, in simple terms, an unlimited capacity for generating spam. How large a threat this entails remains unclear.

As suggested on another thread, it is useful to determine what specifically we fear.