Bloomberg has been breaking stories showing Chinese involvement in massive espionage on the US, these seems to include government, corporate and at the individual level:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-13/marriott-hack-china-is-greatest-threat-to-americans-privacy
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies
These news clearly make the so-called Russian threats of hacking look mild in comparison, assuming that the claims were true. If you were to watch the congressional hearings on the Russians (which I did) they use logical fallacies to determine that the Russians hacked, interfered and got Donald Trump elected.
- You had for profit organizations all over the world making money through advertisements through Facebook groups, but somehow the whole rest of the world was ignored and only Russia was the focus.
- Somehow these for profit groups were associated with the Kremlin, despite no evidence for it. They simply mentioned that Putin is an ex-KGB agent and Russia has a past history of doing what I summarize as “scary spy stuff.”
- They used the logical fallacy that because Trump won, and Russians interfered with the election with political propaganda, they were siding with Trump and there was collusion. Nice premise and conclusion right? The problem is what over 70% of the groups created were pro-Hillary, and the ones with most traffic where those in the far-Left fringes, groups like “Blacktivist” which had more followers than Black Lives Matter and were promoting the same agenda. But somehow these leftist groups were an organized effort to get Trump elected, and influenced American voters to vote against Hillary. It’s pure nonsense, it’s obvious once you saw the case they presented for this that it’s all a scam and the ones pushing it know it.
These allegation on China on the other hand look to be very real.
Vice President Mike Pence made a very interesting speech on the Hudson Institute where he addresses these issues with China brought by Bloomberg and more. It’s worth watching on it’s entirety:
In the video Mike Pence talks about Chinese censorship, how Google is aiding China with their project Butterfly and that the Trump administration is opposing this. That by itself brings a new light to the congressional hearings coming up with tech companies, but of that enough.
Mike Pence claim China has been working to infiltrate Hollywood, our companies and education. That China has government/private corporations that are used as spy vessels for the Chinese government (something I’ve heard years ago by Spaniards, who had seen a big influx of Chinese immigrants and corporations involved in their country which the Spanish government was aware of espionage activities by the government through the Chinese corporations). If the Bloomberg claims are true, including the deliberate application of hardware into the electronic devices being manufactured in China for the exclusive purpose of espionage, this could completely destroy the Chinese supply chain.
Think about it: So far China is looking to gain global hegemony through supply chains and it’s trading partnerships. China is also looking to increase in the value chain of it’s manufactured products and move away fro cheap electronics into sophisticated state of the art technology. These illicit activities could be enough to brand Chinese made electronics a national threat to the US, and other countries would soon follow US lead. Chinese attempts to move up the value chain with technology is destroyed for decades, and in the mean time other countries fill in the gap. Perhaps the US removes environmental restrictions on rare earth mineral mining, and/or North Korea, not allied with SK which has a very close relationship to the US, becomes a supplier has part of the deal Kim made with Trump to increase their economy with privatization (NK has vast amounts of rare earth minerals used on electronics).
We know for a fact that these espionage concerns are shared by the heights levels of the current administration through Mike Pence. Is it too much of a stretch that the US government has let the Chinese government know that they know what they’ve been up to, and that they could literally end the markets for Chinese products if they don’t cooperate with the US to bring down the imbalanced trade deficit brought about Chinese protectionist practices, open their markets to American companies, end their IP theft and forced sharing practices, along with espionage and interference in American institutions?
My guess is that threatening to ban all Chinese imports of manufacturer electronics on grounds of national security is one of the Trump cards of the US administration that is causing the Chinese to concede. They can retain what they have and continue making a living if they stop their espionage, theft, currency manipulation, protectionist practices etc, or lose much much more if they continue as they’ve done.