If complacency is the absence of fear, I'll wear that label. It's not a definition I'd use, but some might. Where have I ever advocated appeasement?
I personally think the US education system is a greater threat to American security than Beijing and Goldman Sachs combined, but I guess we all have to be hysterical and panic-stricken over something. I mean, think about it... you live in a country where astrologers outnumber astronomers 100 to 1, and you're worried about the Chinese?
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
Ok. I sense there's room for a deal here.
You'll be complacent but not an appeaser and I'll be just hysterical but not panic-stricken. How about that?
"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene
If I confess to complacency, may I be excused from tearing my hair and rending my garment? I've no great stock of hair to begin with, and garments get more expensive by the day... plus they're all made in China, so I couldn't replace it without subsidizing the evil ones.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
My brother who made his engineering Bachelor in Munich told me that his institute of the TU (technical university) had no troubles to find internships for their students but for the Chinese. It seems as if certain things, especially espionage happened rarely with other nationalities but relative often with the latter.
... "We need officers capable of following systematically the path of logical argument to its conclusion, with disciplined intellect, strong in character and nerve to execute what the intellect dictates"
General Ludwig Beck (1880-1944);
Speech at the Kriegsakademie, 1935
Defense Security Service: Targeting US Technologies: A Trend Analysis of Reporting From the Defense Industry
....Overall, the majority of collection attempts in FY10 originated from the East Asia and the Pacific region; commercial entities were the most active collector affiliation category for the second year in a row; targeting of information systems (IS) technology more than doubled from FY09; and collectors continued to most commonly use requests for information (RFIs) to elicit information from cleared contractors.
Even as the total suspicious contact reports from industry more than doubled from FY09 to FY10, the East Asian and Pacific region accounted for an even larger percentage of the total in FY10, increasing from 36 percent to 43 percent. East Asia and the Pacific accounted for as much of the total as the next three regions combined. Despite the dramatic increase in the number of reported cases attributed to the second most active region, the Near East, its share of the total actually declined slightly, due to the even greater increase in incidents attributable to East Asia and the Pacific.
As with the East Asia and the Pacific and Near East regions, Europe and Eurasia’s reported collection attempts more than doubled from last year, causing it to displace South and Central Asia as the third most active collector region. Together, East Asia and the Pacific, the Near East, and Europe and Eurasia accounted for over three-quarters of the world-wide total reported collection attempts against the U.S. cleared industrial base.....
This is rather balanced piece of advocacy on the threat from PRC cyber activity, from April 2012 by Jason Healey, Director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council of the United States (so a 'Beltway Pundit').
In brief a major challenge to the economic sustainability and health of governments and businesses alike.
Link:http://www.acus.org/new_atlanticist/...cyber-silencesThe threat of Chinese espionage is so critical that the commander of our military cyber defenses has called it the “the biggest transfer of wealth through theft and piracy in the history of mankind.” But the threat is not bad enough to go on the record about the threat, to take risks to share needed information, or even to be willing to tell the Chinese to back off.
These are the government’s Three Silences. Added together I fear they are driving us to defeat.
First: Silence about the threat we face....Second: Silence about practical information which could help the private sector....This leads us to the last silence: Silence to the Chinese about our increasing fury.... By refusing to speak, either to our own people or to the Chinese, we are fighting on an asymmetric battlefield of our adversary’s own choosing. Going public, through naming and shaming those involved, is a winning strategy.
davidbfpo
All three parts; the first point quite accurately and sadly , the last hilariously .
Shame that hysteria and panic isn't directed at the pathetic state of our education system which promotes a tendency toward those failings as well as an obsessive desire for safety and comfort couched as risk or harm avoidance.
If I were to endorse Chinese activities without giving the rationale, I would have no fear.
Fear arises only if one does not endorse the happenings that create the fear!
An ostrich with its head in the sand, has no fear!
Last edited by Ray; 06-03-2012 at 06:17 PM.
Has anyone here "endorsed Chinese activities"?
Rational assessment of threat needn't produce fear. There's room for disagreement on the extent and nature of threat, but reasonable disagreement is not advanced by panic or hysteria.
Last edited by Dayuhan; 06-04-2012 at 01:41 AM.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
But well-crafted and focused panic and hysteria are excellent tools for building project support and raising funds.Originally Posted by Dayuhan
A moral panic is caused when an issue threatens the perceived social and the world order.
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