A Second Cold War?

[Sunstone]

Has anyone else been keeping tabs on what now seems inevitable -- the division of the world's communications technologies and systems into two camps?

If you've been following that story as it is unfolding, what do you think the likely consequences might be?

I'm tentatively guessing a second cold war, complete with proxy wars on at least two, possibly three continents. You'll know where I'm coming if you've been following the story. If you're not already following the story, I'm guessing you're not interested in it, and this thread is just boring you. Sorry about that.

 

[Ellen Brown]

Has anyone else been keeping tabs on what now seems inevitable -- the division of the world's communications technologies and systems into two camps?

If you've been following that story as it is unfolding, what do you think the likely consequences might be?

I'm tentatively guessing a second cold war, complete with proxy wars on at least two, possibly three continents. You'll know where I'm coming if you've been following the story. If you're not already following the story, I'm guessing you're not interested in it, and this thread is just boring you. Sorry about that.

I've not followed anything yet. In the Trump world nothing will surprise me. Yes, I expect the Internet/AI/computer arena to be the next battlefront.

 

[Enoch07]

If you've been following that story as it is unfolding, what do you think the likely consequences might be?

New laws will be made that takes away Facebooks immunity as a social media platform, and is officially recognized as a publisher. It will lose its immunity because it censors and suppresses conservatives. So we can begin suing Facebook for discrimination and interfering with the peoples freedom of speech. Same goes for Twitter and perhaps Instagram and YouTube to a lesser extent. Silicon Valley has manipulated and cheated the system for far too long.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/gizmod...we-routinely-suppressed-conser-1775461006/amp

Ex-Facebook employee provides evidence that Facebook censors conservatives

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.th...agram-facebook-conservative-bias-social-media

 

[Sunstone]

New laws will be made that takes away Facebooks immunity as a social media platform, and is officially recognized as a publisher. It will lose its immunity because it censors and suppresses conservatives. So we can begin suing Facebook for discrimination and interfering with the peoples freedom of speech. Same goes for Twitter and perhaps Instagram and YouTube to a lesser extent. Silicon Valley has manipulated and cheated the system for far too long.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/gizmod...we-routinely-suppressed-conser-1775461006/amp

Ex-Facebook employee provides evidence that Facebook censors conservatives

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.th...agram-facebook-conservative-bias-social-media

Huh?

 

[Enoch07]

Huh?

You must be on about something else then Haha! Well never mind then!

 

[Sunstone]

You must be on about something else then Haha! Well never mind then!

I can see how I might have confused you.

 

[Enoch07]

I can see how I might have confused you.

Well to be fair. It just means more than 1 cold war. We just thinking about different ones is all.

 

[Sunstone]

Well to be fair. It just means more than 1 cold war. We just thinking about different ones is all.

Fair enough. An interesting way to look at it.

 

[Enoch07]

Fair enough. An interesting way to look at it.

I think I have an idea whatchutalking about. But I'm gonna see where the thread goes before I inject anymore.

 

[Augustus]

If you've been following that story as it is unfolding, what do you think the likely consequences might be?

I'm tentatively guessing a second cold war, complete with proxy wars on at least two, possibly three continents.

The CW was a battle for ideology (and alliances/territory) that was seen, to some extent, as an existential threat for each of the 2 main powers.

In a battle to control tech infrastructure, at some point the cost of conflict becomes greater than building your own parallel systems.

The main concern is the potential for politicised service disruption, yet this threat can easily be negated, albeit at a significant cost.

 

[Stevicus]

Has anyone else been keeping tabs on what now seems inevitable -- the division of the world's communications technologies and systems into two camps?

If you've been following that story as it is unfolding, what do you think the likely consequences might be?

I'm tentatively guessing a second cold war, complete with proxy wars on at least two, possibly three continents. You'll know where I'm coming if you've been following the story. If you're not already following the story, I'm guessing you're not interested in it, and this thread is just boring you. Sorry about that.

While there's a possibility of a second cold war (or it's just as possible that the first cold war never really ended), I'm a bit unclear on what you mean by "the division of the world's communications technologies and systems into two camps." What does this mean and how does this division manifest itself?

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

The infrastructure we call the Web, will always be open to attack.
As long as it is linked one country to another, either by hard wire fibre or by satellite it is open to almost anything.

Trump is frightened that Huawei can put Trojan horse back doors in its hardware, and it probably could if it wanted to. But why should it bother, as effective back doors can be anywhere in the circuit and totally hidden anyway.

I would not be surprised if all the major players have had permanent entry points into each others national web infrastructures embedded for some time now. Just as Huawei "could" have spy circuits in their hard ware, so "could" the american supplied processors that Huawei uses in their devices.

All countries could have on off switches in any of their components that they supply to each other. the only way to give some protection, is to have a massive amount of redundancy in the network. so that every point is served by a multitude of differently sourced components.

All vital infrastructure should also be totally firewalled from the public network. with no interconnection at all. However even that can be tapped into and left dormant.

Probably the only way to prevent the uses of the Web as a weapon, is to ensure that all national web structure are totally compromised.
So that no nation dare use it as a means of attack.

Americas financial and political attack on Huawei will undoubtedly back fire. as America will lose the ability to place its own Compromised components in Chinese Equipment.
Perhaps China has already found and neutralised such American components, hence Trumps paranoia on the subject.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

While there's a possibility of a second cold war (or it's just as possible that the first cold war never really ended), I'm a bit unclear on what you mean by "the division of the world's communications technologies and systems into two camps." What does this mean and how does this division manifest itself?

The first cold war was essentially between the USA and The USSR.
any new cold war will be between the USA and China.
This is a totally different ball game.
China is already streets ahead of the USA in many fields. and would out supply both military hardware and troops on the ground in any conflict. War come down to numbers. China out " numbers" america in almost everything.
In terms of Technology and its production. China has become the major supplier of Technology to the USA, and the world.
America has already lost the technological advantage it once had.

 

[leov]

the w

Has anyone else been keeping tabs on what now seems inevitable -- the division of the world's communications technologies and systems into two camps?

If you've been following that story as it is unfolding, what do you think the likely consequences might be?

I'm tentatively guessing a second cold war, complete with proxy wars on at least two, possibly three continents. You'll know where I'm coming if you've been following the story. If you're not already following the story, I'm guessing you're not interested in it, and this thread is just boring you. Sorry about that.

the world must be always separated into warring parts. that is how elites operate.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

the w

the world must be always separated into warring parts. that is how elites operate.

That is the way tribes work.
Wars are made worse by the weak and easily led taking sides.

 

[Stevicus]

The first cold war was essentially between the USA and The USSR.
any new cold war will be between the USA and China.
This is a totally different ball game.
China is already streets ahead of the USA in many fields. and would out supply both military hardware and troops on the ground in any conflict. War come down to numbers. China out " numbers" america in almost everything.
In terms of Technology and its production. China has become the major supplier of Technology to the USA, and the world.
America has already lost the technological advantage it once had.

First, there doesn't need to be a cold war at all.

The first cold war was largely ideological, as the US and USSR were temporary allies who fell out shortly after the end of WW2. There was also a geopolitical basis for the first cold war, in that the Soviets had just undergone a major national trauma with the German invasion, and their primary goal was to ensure that such a thing could never happen again.

The technology may have been less advanced back in those days, yet the most significant technological breakthrough had already been achieved: Nuclear weapons. The first cold war was characterized by an insane arms race, nuclear brinkmanship, along with various proxy wars based on ideological alignment.

China had also emerged as a major player in the first cold war, at first aligned with the Soviets but later fell out with them and started becoming more friendly to US interests. Nixon saw that as "triangular diplomacy" where he thought he could play both China and Russia against each other while the US would be in a more advantageous position. It seems that China may have been playing a similar game from their own vantage point.

I wasn't entirely sure what the OP was referring to, but I did find an article relating to the subject matter: https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/05/article/the-new-art-of-war/

This article suggests that the basis for any new cold war, at least from China's point of view, is rooted in a desire for historical revenge against the West over things that happened more than a century ago. They seem to be more nationalistic than anything else.

Even in the face of President Trump’s so-called trade war with China, the Chinese appear to be accelerating their efforts to penetrate American institutions and opinion-shaping bodies. This is far deeper – and more systematic – than Russian efforts to polarize America through the use of social media.

Just as Clive Hamilton does in his book, I acknowledge the extreme sensitivity of these issues. What makes the debate about China’s role inside America particularly sensitive is that some nearly four million Chinese-Americans are targeted by Beijing – which believes they should be loyal to their ancestral country, not America.

Some Chinese-Americans and Chinese residents in the United States have cooperated in obtaining technology for the Chinese government. And many Chinese nationals who obtained years of experience working at American companies have returned to China to help competitors there. The Chinese have a nickname for these individuals, haigui, or returning sea turtles who come ashore once a year to lay their eggs.

The article suggests that China is trying to settle old historical scores and project their power:

Simply put, Xi is attempting to eliminate Western ideas and establish himself as an absolute ruler for as long as he chooses. It is reminiscent of the worst type of Chinese authoritarianism, which I learned about in Beijing in the early 1980s.

Xi is rallying his nation around his version of “the China dream,” referring to previous eras in which China was an advanced world power. Chinese children learn about their nation’s 100 years of humiliation at the hands of foreign powers who occupied large swathes of territory beginning in about 1840. The Chinese were divided among themselves as a dynasty slowly collapsed and they lacked the wealth or the technology, in the form of weapons, to resist the foreign barbarians.

That period ended when Mao Tse-tung and the Communist Party won the Chinese civil war in 1949. China had “stood up.” It’s against that backdrop that today we see the Chinese attempting to settle historical scores and project power.

Their goals are clearly different from the Soviet objectives in the first cold war, which were largely defensive in nature. The Chinese government is clearly not really "communist" anymore, and they certainly don't appear to champion any world-wide revolution of workers to seize the means of production. They are nationalists.

Technology is what it is. They try to steal our technology; we try to counter it and steal theirs. All sides involved in computer shenanigans trying to gain influence over hearts and minds, along with trying to gain secrets and establish a foothold in finance, industry, control of resources. It's essentially the same battle of power politics which has dominated human history for as long as it's been recorded.

The West may have to adjust to what is going on. I don't see that we're in any immediate danger at the moment, but we may have to restrain some of our ideological intensity and geopolitical hubris where we believe that we're always right and that we hold some sort of moral imperative to project our power globally in the name of "freedom" and "democracy." That was our ideological basis in the first cold war, but I don't think we're going to be able to do that in this perceived "second cold war" that appears to be upon us.

In other words, we can't go around acting like a bunch of Dudley Do-Rights and Do-Gooders around the world. For one thing, no one ever really believed it in the first place. Secondly, it could undermine and compromise our geopolitical position, making us far more vulnerable than we otherwise would be if we weren't trying to pass ourselves off as global saints and missionaries.

 

[leov]

That is the way tribes work.
Wars are made worse by the weak and easily led taking sides.

it is purposeful action to keep world separated.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

it is purposeful action to keep world separated.

It is totally with out direction.
Tribalism is a product of human nature. This is shared with much of the animal kingdom.

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

First, there doesn't need to be a cold war at all.

The first cold war was largely ideological, as the US and USSR were temporary allies who fell out shortly after the end of WW2. There was also a geopolitical basis for the first cold war, in that the Soviets had just undergone a major national trauma with the German invasion, and their primary goal was to ensure that such a thing could never happen again.

The technology may have been less advanced back in those days, yet the most significant technological breakthrough had already been achieved: Nuclear weapons. The first cold war was characterized by an insane arms race, nuclear brinkmanship, along with various proxy wars based on ideological alignment.

China had also emerged as a major player in the first cold war, at first aligned with the Soviets but later fell out with them and started becoming more friendly to US interests. Nixon saw that as "triangular diplomacy" where he thought he could play both China and Russia against each other while the US would be in a more advantageous position. It seems that China may have been playing a similar game from their own vantage point.

I wasn't entirely sure what the OP was referring to, but I did find an article relating to the subject matter: https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/05/article/the-new-art-of-war/

This article suggests that the basis for any new cold war, at least from China's point of view, is rooted in a desire for historical revenge against the West over things that happened more than a century ago. They seem to be more nationalistic than anything else.



The article suggests that China is trying to settle old historical scores and project their power:



Their goals are clearly different from the Soviet objectives in the first cold war, which were largely defensive in nature. The Chinese government is clearly not really "communist" anymore, and they certainly don't appear to champion any world-wide revolution of workers to seize the means of production. They are nationalists.

Technology is what it is. They try to steal our technology; we try to counter it and steal theirs. All sides involved in computer shenanigans trying to gain influence over hearts and minds, along with trying to gain secrets and establish a foothold in finance, industry, control of resources. It's essentially the same battle of power politics which has dominated human history for as long as it's been recorded.

The West may have to adjust to what is going on. I don't see that we're in any immediate danger at the moment, but we may have to restrain some of our ideological intensity and geopolitical hubris where we believe that we're always right and that we hold some sort of moral imperative to project our power globally in the name of "freedom" and "democracy." That was our ideological basis in the first cold war, but I don't think we're going to be able to do that in this perceived "second cold war" that appears to be upon us.

In other words, we can't go around acting like a bunch of Dudley Do-Rights and Do-Gooders around the world. For one thing, no one ever really believed it in the first place. Secondly, it could undermine and compromise our geopolitical position, making us far more vulnerable than we otherwise would be if we weren't trying to pass ourselves off as global saints and missionaries.

China has no interest in a cold war as such.
However it does see The USA as a predatory threat that they need to counter.
China would far rather trade and be the worlds primary supplier.
If you consider China as benign you would be closer to the truth.
But it will defend its interests with out limit. As it knows that it can not be conquered.

When it comes to a choice and taking sides. It makes far more sense for the rest of the world to side with China rather than the USA as it is a more stable and reliable partner.
Many countries have already put that choice into action.
Others are being bullied by the Usa not to trade with china by the threat of withholding American technology.

This is forcing China to match or exceed those technologies, which is in turn diluting those threats. And replacing them with further trade strengths.. if China choses to link with India as a technology partner. The Usa will soon become a relative technology backwater.

What Russia choses to do in this new situation is not especially important. But will remain an important supplier of rawmaterials and energy, especially to Europe.

China and Russia are already more important to Europe in many ways than is the USA.

 

[Stevicus]

China has no interest in a cold war as such.
However it does see The USA as a predatory threat that they need to counter.
China would far rather trade and be the worlds primary supplier.
If you consider China as benign you would be closer to the truth.
But it will defend its interests with out limit. As it knows that it can not be conquered.

How do you know what China wants? Just curious.

I don't think the US has any interest in a cold war either. I'm not even sure why the Chinese would consider the US to be a predatory threat. The US government has been kissing up to China and giving them a free pass ever since the Tiananmen Square massacre. It's more likely that our policies these past 30 years have signaled to China that the US leadership is weak (or easily corruptible) and that we might be easy prey for them. That's the reason the US is in the current position it's in, mainly because of incompetent and weak leadership.

When it comes to a choice and taking sides. It makes far more sense for the rest of the world to side with China rather than the USA as it is a more stable and reliable partner.

If the "rest of the world" can agree to side with any single nation, it would be an unprecedented first in world history.

I'm not even sure who, exactly, would side with China in a dispute with the U.S.

North Korea would, of course, side with China. Possibly the Russians (although I wouldn't predict a very lovey-dovey relationship between them). I can't imagine NATO ever disbanding so that its countries can join an alliance with China. And China has already alienated much of the Muslim world by their ill treatment of Muslims in China. Even with their own neighbors, China has had rather rocky relations.

Many countries have already put that choice into action.
Others are being bullied by the Usa not to trade with china by the threat of withholding American technology.

That may be so, although I had not heard of that. Even with tariffs, the US is still trading with China. So, I can't imagine the US bullying other nations not to trade with China, while we still are trading with China.

This is forcing China to match or exceed those technologies, which is in turn diluting those threats. And replacing them with further trade strengths.. if China choses to link with India as a technology partner. The Usa will soon become a relative technology backwater.

That's a big if. China and India don't generally see eye to eye with each other, and there have been some ongoing disputes between those two countries. Although both countries have made efforts to improve relations in recent years, they're still a long way to becoming partners. Another tech giant, Japan, also has a lot of historical bad blood with China.

I won't deny that the US has a myriad of problems - part of which has to do with our own incompetent, short-sighted leadership (both in the public and private sectors) which has brought us to this point. We may very well become a technological and industrial backwater, mainly due to the policies of outsourcing and free trade which have been embraced by both parties for several decades now. They didn't think about the long-term ramifications, such as what you're outlining here. They've been in this get-rich-quick, instant-gratification mode for so long, they can't think in any other terms. More is the pity.

Say what you will about Trump, but I will give him credit as being the first president in a long time to actually show some backbone on this issue. This should have been done a long time ago.

What Russia choses to do in this new situation is not especially important. But will remain an important supplier of rawmaterials and energy, especially to Europe.

China and Russia are already more important to Europe in many ways than is the USA.

Right now, the US just has to try to hold things together. We have to accept our limitations and take a less prominent role on the world stage. We should reduce our defense strategies to just defending our own soil and withdraw most overseas forces. Russia, China, and India are the three major powers in Asia, so let them handle the problems of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, while Europe can take care of itself.

The Americas can and should remain detached from the problems of the Eastern Hemisphere, although that doesn't mean we can't trade and have friendly relations.