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China threat

Looks like yet another of the endless stream of covertly funded right-wing ‘think tanks’. This is all I can dig up so far, and I’d far prefer a better source, but I see no reason not to dismiss it as a load of right-wing Tory propaganda. Just look at the names involved. I’d obviously like to know who was paying for it, but the list of largely discredited Tory blow-hards is sufficient to view it as a Tufton St type entity.

”Advisory Council

The Lord Risby is the Chair of the Council on Geostrategy’s Advisory Council. Members of the Advisory Council include: Andrew Bowie MP Tobias Ellwood MP, Michael Fallon, James Gray MP, Carl Hunter, Andrew Lambert, Mitch Mitchell, Baroness Neville-Jones, the Earl of Oxford and Asquith, Royston Smith MP, Baroness Verma and John Whittingdale MP.[11]“

en.everybodywiki.com

Council on Geostrategy

en.everybodywiki.com en.everybodywiki.com
 
Wiki entry for the Earl of Oxford and Asquith:

He is currently a director of Group DF, the Ukrainian holding company of Dmytro Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch associated with Vladimir Putin and Viktor Yanukovych, who is also accused by the United States Justice Department of involvement with Russian organised crime. Prior to obtaining his peerage, Asquith ran the lobbying firm Asquith & Granovski, which served affluent clients from post-Soviet states, including Firtash

Raymond Asquith, 3rd Earl of Oxford and Asquith - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
The only threat to the UK in the past couple of decades has been itself...but hey lets keep up with the everyone else is out to get us theme. I doubt many right thinking folks would fall for the usual propaganda nowadays.
 
What meaning can we read into Russia and China combining to vote against the Gaza ceasefire in the UN? Russia votes "no" just to be bloody minded, but why China?
 
It has been obvious for years that China & Russia are disrupting democracies worldwide.
Freedom of speech is a threat to authoritarian states, so why wouldn’t they want to throw a spanner in the works at any opportunity.
 
Big Tabs said:
It has been obvious for years that China & Russia are disrupting democracies worldwide.
Freedom of speech is a threat to authoritarian states, so why wouldn’t they want to throw a spanner in the works at any opportunity.
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China is energy dependent on Russia. That's one side of it. The other side of it is that unlike Russia, China has a massive trade with Western democracies, which they clearly want to keep. I don't think the West can do without China at this point, since China has cornered a lot of the green technology market. It's a volatile mixture.
 
les24preludes said:
What meaning can we read into Russia and China combining to vote against the Gaza ceasefire in the UN? Russia votes "no" just to be bloody minded, but why China?
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I think it's also about how power is shifting East in general. China and Russia head up the SCO.

If you look at Africa you can see how c18th European colonialism is being replaced with stuff like China's Belt & Road initiative, Wagner taking over the mineral resources of African states in exchange for providing 'security'.
 
I agree, that organisation is definitely right of centre! However, I’m still interested technically in how much truth there is in the IoT threat? For example, I know that water companies, power distribution, traffic management, environmental systems - well you name it really - all have CIMs in their infrastructures. What I haven’t seen or heard is any real world evidence of them being compromised.

I’m definitely inclined to think it’s mostly distraction techniques at present. Dredging up 2021 breaches and theoretical risks.
 
Seeker_UK said:
Absence of evidence, etc....
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It’s an old adage. The difficulty in today’s age is that we question everything we see, hear or read. Unless you’re my BiL and you saw it on TikTok or your mate down the gym told you so it must be true 🤣
 
Jubal said:
It’s an old adage. The difficulty in today’s age is that we question everything we see, hear or read. Unless you’re my BiL and you saw it on TikTok or your mate down the gym told you so it must be true 🤣
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Problem is, you and I will never get to know the full truth about cyber-related stuff - it's a murky old business.

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www.chathamhouse.org

"Until recently, informed and open discussion on the responsible use of offensive cyber capabilities has been constrained by high levels of secrecy around national strategies for their use."
 
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The UK (and I believe US) removed all Hwawei equipment from their networks (or at least are in the process of doing so), due to a concern that they may have a back door or data gathering capablity, all without any firm proof at all. Given that it would have been trivial to harden the networks so that no unauthorised access could be made to the equipment or block any attemps by the equipment to "phone home" and the fact that Hwawei were literally putting other European vendors out of business because they couldn't compete on pricing (and the difference wasn't trivial either), then I'd say it's a fairly safe bet that what really was happening was protectionism.
 
IoT is a dumb idea, full stop. Let's just attach everything we use in life to the global network, thus opening it up to attack vectors that are simply impossible when there's no connectivity in existance. The scale of the threat is potentially imeasureable and makes the "i love you" virus look like a pimple.
 
It’s interesting how far China has advanced in the last decade compared to our decline. I thought this was quite interesting (Andrew Marr getting his arse handed to him by the Chinese representative):

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x.com
 
Jezzer said:
It’s interesting how far China has advanced in the last decade compared to our decline. I thought this was quite interesting (Andrew Marr getting his arse handed to him by the Chinese representative):

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x.com
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That's been posted before, but it is indeed iluminating. But then the UK has always had a bit of an exagerated opinion of itself, at least economically on the global scale. To put it in to perspective: Agriculture generates 7.5% of China's GDP (as of 2020), but that alone equates to approx 45% of the entire UK GDP in $. So while we may be 6th largest economy globally, we are insignificant compared to China.

Put another way the entire UK economy doesn't even amount to a 5th of China's.
 
gez said:
That's been posted before, but it is indeed iluminating. But then the UK has always had a bit of an exagerated opinion of itself, at least economically on the global scale. To put it in to perspective: Agriculture generates 7.5% of China's GDP (as of 2020), but that alone equates to approx 45% of the entire UK GDP in $. So while we may be 6th largest economy globally, we are insignificant compared to China.

Put another way the entire UK economy doesn't even amount to a 5th of China's.
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Yes, it’s an older clip but still, as you say, illuminating. I saw another X post where a US chap is talking about how Shanghai has evolved significantly in the last 5 years - automation, cleanliness, reduced pollution, improved politeness. He called it the ‘Japanification’ of China. I’m sure the Chinese wouldn’t like that particular turn of phrase but from his perspective it just meant that the Chinese has modernised both in terms of technology and society. He then went on to compare China’s rise to the decline of the US which made the comparison even more stark.
 
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