Human Actions Are Linked

The FBI has come under a great deal of criticism of late for their mishandling of materials with respect to events ranging from evidence on the Waco destruction to the documents relating to the Oklahoma City bombing, and a number of other incidents in between. Tuesday's New York Times features a story that the computer and chip factories in Taiwan are increasingly moving to Mainland China, which already produces a considerable portion of the "guts" of computer products shipped from the Island to the US and the rest of the world.

It is pointed out that this could give the Chinese the power to cut off our computer component supplies in the near future. What if we couldn't build, for example, a missile shield to use against the Chinese because they refused to sell us the components? This is highly outrageous to any self-respecting Empire. Why, it's almost like some nation cutting off oil to Japan in 1941, or economic sanctions on Cuba in 1933, and more recently since the 1960s.

Linked to that article is one from the NYT for April 28th, citing an FBI warning that the Chinese, in retaliation for American actions against China, may be hacking into American computer servers: "Hackers have already unlawfully defaced a number of U.S. Web sites, replacing existing content with pro-Chinese or anti-U.S. rhetoric."

What the FBI neglected to mention, according to idefense, a cyberintelligence company, is that 302 of the 307 known cyberattacks were against Chinese sites. There is the usual insinuation that the Chinese government is behind these 5 known attacks, while the 302 attacks against the Chinese sites were just your average American hacker, angry at the Chinese, and exercising the right to protest. Whatever, that's quite a ratio in favor of the US.

As it happens, one of my former students is the webmaster of a site that was hacked by the Chinese this past weekend. The Pentagon says the Chinese government has developed its own computer-warfare programs. If this is so, then the Chinese desperately need to rework their programs, because the government site they hacked has nothing to do with the National Security State, but is a Broward County agency to help people get jobs. What kind of anti-proletarian activities are the Chinese up to anyway? Still trying to bring down Capitalism in the old-fashioned way!

The Chinese hackers wrote, "F--k the U.S. Government and Poizon.com." This was in retaliation for Poizon.com, the American hackers, apparently having struck first with "F--k the Chinese Government." You've got to hand it to both groups of hackers. They both understand it's government actions, and not the peoples of both nations, that create the problems. It seems highly unlikely the governments would have had much to do with such slogans since what they both have in common is: "F--k Government," and that's pretty anarcho-libertarian sloganizing.

What really seems to tick off our National Security Managers, however, is that there is very little they can do to control such behavior in the foreseeable future. Well, such name calling is probably a much better therapy for letting off steam, than is raising missile shields or dropping bombs. Long live the hackers!

But not to worry. Our intrepid cybersleuths have already held two training exercises to prepare against these potential cyberattacks, with more training sessions to come. A few more of these, and there goes part of our recent tax cut! New enemies are in short supply these days, but the Oriental hordes may just be out there lurking in cyberspace. Stay tuned.

May 31, 2001

William Marina [send him mail] teaches History at Florida Atlantic University and is an Adjunct Scholar of the Mises Institute.

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