(Maybe that’s just because we know that right now our government can’t scratch its ass and elbow at the same time, that we won’t face any penalty for our human rights abuses anyway, and there’s no point in paying bureaucrats to do something that ignorant yokels will go out and do for free... but that’s beside the point :)
I'm not by nature a conspiracy theorist. I don't think the grassy knoll is here. But, I do think that the US government propagandizes inside, and outside all the time and has done so continuously, since the birth of the modern communication era.
You write as if the Vietnam war just didn't happen. That routine abuses by US armed forces in the middle east just didn't happen. As if Snowden just didn't happen.
Maybe I missed the /s in this. Btw, if I got a whack from the site I wouldn't deny this may not be a useful discussion, but I really do mean it: I think this cannot be read, except as a counterfactual non-reality.
This is a valid point, and one that deserves focused thought. Because it's both very right and very wrong.
The US does generate constant propaganda on most issues of consequence. BUT. The US also generates constant propaganda on multiple sides of every issue.
The propaganda ecosystem is far more robust and distributed in the US. Whether it's straight journalism or spambots, or individuals expressing their heartfelt beliefs.
Maybe that's doing it better? Maybe it's just one mess after another?
One thing I know - it's quite a different from the sort of propaganda you get from a country where the national government maintains a list of forbidden words, events, and attitudes.
But even then, I think gp is referring to a difference in kind, both in behavior and communication. China's record (present included) on human rights is truly abysmal and incomparable to any nation with individual legal rights.
Propaganda comes in soft forms, which its easy to claim everyone does (I'd agree with that). But there's also propaganda along the lines of "our 'education centers' in Xinjiang are teaching the 'pupils' valuable new job skills!"
Whether you are talking about Xinjiang education centers or compulsory government schools in the USA the excuse for them is going to be along the lines of 'We need to ensure that these people become productive members of society'.
All in all they are compulsory miserable dehumanizing places that are designed to condition and manipulate people into what 'society' demands from them; as defined by the ruling authorities. In both cases anybody attempting to avoid conditioning and years in "detention" is guilty of a criminal act.
My point being that these things are not differences of types, but of degrees. And while it's easy to point fingers and laugh and pride yourself on the superiority of your own country, the take home lesson shouldn't be how much better America is then China, but to use them as a mirror to examine how and why things are better here and how to improve on them.
If you are saying elementary schools are reasonably comparable to concentration camps, you have lost the thread of the conversation.
Hand-waving and semantic games don't change the original discussions: who would you rather hold power over you?
1. A democratic government that enshrines human and political rights
2. An authoritarian ethnonationalist oligarchy that enshrines the primacy of the Party
Whoever powers your chips will at least potentially have that power over you. We're in an era where we can decide, but anything can change. Our choices and the values we act on now will set the stage for what is available to us in the future.
Things like Vietnam and Snowden are why so many people in our country treat things like gun rigts as a quasi-religion. Fear of the citizenry is one of the few remaining serious checks on government power they believe we have.
However, based on personal experience, only 20-30% of people really realize the level of propaganda we have been subjected to our entire lives. One of the big reasons for this is because USA was the pioneer in government and corporate propaganda. They have been doing it so long and spent so much money on it that it's practically a art form.
In fact I doubt 1 in 10 people every really thought about the fact that the entire economy of the WWW is almost exclusively based on propaganda in the form of advertisements. Public Relations Departments used to be called Propaganda departments before the Nazis came along and turned it into a bad word.
But even then it's not lost on a great deal of Americans that the only people in the past 40 years who have ever gone to jail for war crimes, torturing, and other forms of criminal malfeasance on the Federal level are the ones that exposed it to the public.
The idea that the US doesn’t covertly spend money on propaganda, when it overtly does and has for decades, is hilarious.
I mean, VoA is actually a pretty good, so this isn’t intended to be criticism of it. However, it is intended as propaganda, although a fairly light version of it.
You would be desperately wrong in that assumption.
In 1954 the US was capable of kneecapping Iran and other countries, but today it is too blinded by an ideology that refuses to accept it is an ideology to do the same.
Then again, incompetence is not absolute, and I guess you're lamenting the slide in competence (or the lack thereof, depending on how you look at it) of the service in question.
> After all this research we definitely found the latest AMD CPUs which do not include any PSP functionality. According to a table from CPU World we know now that these CPUs are those we searched for:
Desktop CPUs (Socket FM2):
AMD A4-6320
AMD A4-6320B
AMD A4-7300
AMD A4 PRO-7300B
AMD A6-6420B
AMD A6-6420K
AMD A8-6600K
AMD A10-6800B
AMD A10-6800K
AMD Athlon X2 370K
AMD Athlon X4 760K
AMD FX-670K
AMD Sempron X2 250
AMD A4-5150M
AMD A6-5350M
AMD A6-5357M
AMD A8-5550M
AMD A8-5557M
AMD A10-5750M
AMD A10-5757MGood to see development from any country. Obviously they have enough reason to do it. Just consider sanctions. They also have to protect their own market.
Anyone that can afford it, should do it. Ultimately it is a good thing from technology prespective.
Here's a preview: https://www.hrw.org/news/2011/09/22/why-are-people-disappear...
See also what's happening in Hong Kong right now.
Up to six months! That's not bad, considering the fact that some prisoners have been held in Guantanamo for 10 years+ and can be detained there indefinitely without trial and subjected to torture [1].
Also, according to the HRW article:
> The Chinese government is pitching the proposed change as merely an extension of the conditions of the existing practice of residential surveillance, or “soft arrest,” to suspects in state security, terrorism or major corruption cases. “Soft arrest” allows police to confine criminal suspects to their homes for up to six months without trial or due legal process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_El-Masri
A different Khalid al-Masri is a suspected member of al Qaeda. So they tortured the wrong Khalid. Oops.
This is why basic things like the right to a trial, open court proceedings that journalists can attend, the Geneva convention prohibiting torture, etc etc are so important.
To trust a government to decide guilt in secret is to be ignorant of history.
According to your link about one thousand people were sent to Guantanamo. Right now in the region of Xinjiang about 1 million Uyghurs are being held in re-education camps (about 10% of the Uyghur population of the region).
Even if the USA compare terribly to the (rest of?) civilized world regarding human rights, as a non-American and non-Chinese I fear less the US government than the Chinese. (The fact that I'm not from a Middle East country probably helps...)
[1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/09/china-up-to-o...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/07/22/world/asia/ho...
It will give you true picture of how Hong Kong lost to mainland cities in terms of quality of life and innovation. So economy is the main root of all this frustration and protest. Extradition bill is just the spark.
Listening to them, it's pretty clear the extradition bill and the erosion of their human rights is a driving force.
If you want to talk about human rights, please read through the first instance of re-interpretation by China of Basic law of Hong Kong, when Hong Kong people requested China to re-interpret the basic law against basic Human Rights not to allow mainland spouses to enter Hong Kong. So Hong Kong is still denying the most basic human right of a family, but at that time it was in the interest of Hong Kong people and bad for Chinese spouses, so no protest against it neither any backlash. Indeed overall society was very happy at the cost of infringing human rights. You do something wrong once and open the doors, it will come to bite later. If at that time Hong Kong people would not have involved China for re-interpretation, it would have brought 150,000 people from across the border, along with it some more hardships, but would not have eroded the freedom. Hong Kong people chose prosperity over freedom and now will pay for it.
So fighting for human rights now is just a farce, main reason is, get rich quick does not work, majority live in prison cell size apartment(again by choice) and have no way to change it.
The US has been in constant wars, invasions, meddling with foreign politics, running protectorates, etc. for over a century, including having bases all around the world. Far more countries have battle and regime change scars by the US than by China. Including it being the only country that ever dropped atomic bombs (and to civilians, none the less).
And it's not just the Orange Baboon in charge that's worrying (though of course there's that too) -- the "Nobel Peace Price" winner Obama had a worse track record.
(Of course for Americans anything that happened over 20 or 40 years ago is ancient history and the world should have forgotten it and totally trust them now -- still there were like 4 wars and one regime change they assisted in the last 20 years, so there's that).
How about we don’t forget that the entire world has pretty much been a gigantic warzone ever since civilization started and how about we remember that American hegemony has been the single most peaceful period of world history.
I’m not even trying to insinuate America should be some great arbiter of what is good and holy, but the fact of the matter is, people have been slaughtering eachother since communities became a thing, and only recently has it become so infrequent that people can go “oh! Look how America fucked up by bombing someone here!”.
As if, without America, there wouldn’t be regional conflicts pretty much everywhere, just like there literally always have been.
The world doesn't have to be an "idyllic utopia" not to want another player meddling on other countries business -- much less a 10000 pound gorilla one...
>How about we don’t forget that the entire world has pretty much been a gigantic warzone ever since civilization started and how about we remember that American hegemony has been the single most peaceful period of world history.
If we forget the Cold war, its proxy hot wars, meddling and support for dictatorships (Iran, Banana republics, Chile, etc) and the associated death toll, and so on. Including a few possible close calls for hundreds of millions (Bay of Pigs for one).
And the relative peace is not because of some protective attribute of "american hegemony" (and e.g. its benevolence), but because the few other major players (basically colonial opressors like UK, France, etc) got burned in the 2 world wars and got off the main game, so no great fights between them anymore...
But if you think it's some badge of honor for your country to "fuck around much of the world", and you think only bitterness for not being able to fuck colonies etc, as much as before is why anyone would oppose it, sure, more power to you...
All things considered, america has been pretty decent considering it has been the uncontested most powerful force in the world for the past 80 years.
To rebut your specific two points:
-more countries have battle scars from the USA than North Korea too. It more strongly indicates economic might than disregard for human life - wars cost money. Watch this space.
-Orange Baboon is in large part worrying because of the nonzero chance of making a grab for dictator-for-life. China already has one of those, who happily imprisons rivals and vanishes critics. I'd take Orange Baboon over God-emperor Xi any day.
Well, counting people they've killed globally, wars they've started, foreign meddling, atomic bombs dropped to other nations, etc, they surely are. Call me when the numbers change..
But who cares for those when it's their side doing them?
Do you really have faith that China is going to act any differently to outsiders?
Which I'm against, but that's for them to oppose.
Several Eastern and Western European countries had dictatorships, torture, executions, etc, in 20th century as well, didn't see anybody coming from outside to fix things (and don't think their population would welcome an invasion to "fix" things -- like those "democracy bringing" wars in the middle east).
And those pointing the finger at China today, were doing "disgusting things to their own citizens" (Jim Crow? Seggregation till the 70s? western world's worst prison system, 90% titled to blacks + death penalty still in use in 2019?), or were (and are) assisting regimes doing "disgusting things to their own citizens" then and now, so there's some hypocrisy involved too.
>Do you really have faith that China is going to act any differently to outsiders?
No, but there's a player with a known track record on this matters (a bad one) and one that is yet to build one. It's kinda like what Muhammad Ali allegedly said once: “No Viet Cong ever called me n....r”. Sure, they might. But thus far...
But we have due process and most of these offenses are due to the failed drug war. Whether or not people should be locked up for drug offenses is one thing, but the laws being broken are pretty clear and generally aren't being used as punishment for expressing anti-government sentiment.
>Americans imprison and torture children at the border
This angle is pretty ridiculous. The border facilities are totally overwhelmed by an influx of people who by law are not allowed entry to the U.S. The vast majority are economic migrants, not assylum seekers. Moreover, they made the choice to come here knowing full well the illegality of their actions, and they are not being "imprisoned," they are being detained for a few weeks while the overloaded system processes their claims. Calling it torture is an exaggeration. Also the miserable conditions at the contentious facilities recently in the news are not representative of ICE facilities in general.
Only when people are not just executed by cops because they dared look too black or homeless or whatever (so many more cases of police killings that any European country when adjusted for population that it's amazing).
And even then, the due process is full of batshit-crazy aspects, from prosecutorial blackmail deals, to "three-strikes" BS.
And let's not even get into prison conditions, use of solitary confinement, rape as "joke", private prisons and prison labor, and so on...
Or the fact that it's the only (or close) western country to still have the death penalty...
And that's for official prisons. Now let's add the various "sites"...
These atrocities are an exceedingly tiny minority out of millions of yearly police interactions.
>And even then, the due process is full of batshit-crazy aspects, from prosecutorial blackmail deals, to "three-strikes" BS
The system is not perfect, but the point is that in contrast to authoritarian China, it is generally not abused to suppress political dissent and U.S. citizens have rights to due process and representation in the legal system that do not exist in China.
Save you speech for the children being tortured. Why don't you go down there and say that verbatim to their faces?
>Save you speech for the children being tortured
I don't think you know what the word torture means. You've been misled by propaganda. And, again, the problems are happening limited to a select number of overwhelmed facilities.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/26/week-in-patria...
https://www.scarymommy.com/migrant-children-tortured-border-...
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/torture-facilities-immigrant-...
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/06/usa-family-se...
" The severe mental suffering that officials have intentionally inflicted on these families for coercive purposes, means that these acts meet the definitions of torture under both US and international law,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s Americas Director."
>The El Paso Del Norte Processing Center housed as many as 900 migrant detainees earlier this month despite only having a recommended capacity for 125.
9x over capacity. What exactly are you expecting? The implication that this treatment is intentional is pure political bias. In any case these conditions are not a secret and people continue to voluntarily make the illegal journey. Who is responsible here?
That said, the actual ACLU CBP report was enlightening, detailing abuses going back to 2014 when the CBP program lowered standards during rapid expansion. It's hard to trust other modern news sources like those you provided because of their heavy political slant and propensity for sensationalism.
Also, china's full of criminals sentenced to death for heinous crimes, it's fine not to waste their organs.
We need to stop conflating abuses by individual agents with poor conditions caused by underprovisioning of resources due to a general increase/spike in migrant activity.
Also, there is some merit to the idea that poor conditions at these facilities act as a deterrent to voluntary migration. No one is forcing these people to come here illegally and, again, the vast majority are economic migrants, not legitimate asylum seekers.
I think that's the gist of your argument, even if it is putting words in your mouth.
Well, at least you admit you're not arguing in good faith. That's not what I'm saying at all. Apparently the involvement of children precludes you from considering this discussion rationally.
This is a vast over-exaggeration. I'm always surprised when people believe whatever they read without criticism or scrutiny.
What they did was they interviewed eight ethnic Uyghurs from eight different villages in Kashgar Prefecture in Xinjiang (the poorest and most problematic area in terms of violence and extremist ideology). They asked them questions like “how many people do you estimate live in your village” and “how many people do you think were taken from your village”. They then calculated the ratio of people detained to total inhabitants in these eight villages and extrapolated this ratio to the entire Uyghur population in the province of Xinjiang (population 23 million, many parts of which are prosperous and violence-free) in order to obtain the million+ estimate. The 1 million number (or 3 million, it’s hard to keep track of these days) is always thrown around like it’s a confirmed fact, which it decidedly is not.
Furthermore, as the article mentions, CHRD is a group based in Washington, D.C that is almost wholly funded by U.S government grants [2, p.9]. There is a clear conflict of interest here especially in the context of growing rivalry and geopolitical posturing between China and the U.S. The article also mentions Radio Free Asia, an organization literally founded by the CIA [3][4] as an anti-Communist propaganda arm. They claim they are no longer affiliated. Again, another source wholly funded by the U.S government.
[1] https://www.nchrd.org/2018/08/china-massive-numbers-of-uyghu...
[2] https://pdf.guidestar.org/PDF_Images/2015/260/523/2015-26052...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Free_Asia
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/26/archives/worldwide-propag...
I don't really know what you expect me or the average layperson to do. I can't get on a plane and go to Xianjing, but I can read and listen to the experiences and stories of the many people that have fled the region and entrust the credibility that (certain) journalists have to do investigative journalism. The source of the article I linked to is one of many.
Also consider that you don't have to be sitting in a detainment camp to be a victim of a cultural genocide.
My point, as I’ve stated earlier, is that there is a conflict of interest here. It's not that much of a stretch to think that the U.S government would like to delegitimize the CCP to further their own geopolitical and strategic interests.
> I don't really know what you expect me or the average layperson to do.
I expect you as a HN reader (but perhaps not the average layperson) to not view news reported in the mass media as infallible, but to scrutinize everything that is said with a high degree of criticality. Whose interests do these stories represent? Who benefits from fomenting mass outrage against an external boogeyman? Who is paying for the experiences and stories which you are consuming and why?
Knowledge of history can be of help here. One example is Rebiya Kadeer’s testimony to the U.S Congress about the Uygher situation [1] which many people accept verbatim. We can see an exact, historical parallel in the form of the Nayirah testimony [2], which was a contributor to the U.S decision to engage in the Gulf War. We all know how that turned out.
> The source of the article I linked to is one of many.
Look at the primary sources. There barely a handful of them which 99% of articles like these trace their journalism back to.
> Also consider that you don't have to be sitting in a detainment camp to be a victim of a cultural genocide.
This is true. I’d like to add that asking Uyghers to speak Mandarin in these “education camps” does not constitute cultural genocide and neither is banning elements of Wahhabi Islam which is not native to their culture in the first place. It’s a simple fact of life that if you want to do business in China or have any kind of economic opportunity, you need to learn Mandarin. This does not preclude the practice of your own native customs or languages. People think China is all Han when in fact there are many, many ethnic groups there [3] practicing their own languages and customs, and getting along just fine.
I'll end by saying that Uyghers are definitely being detained and "re-educated", I've never contested that. I'm merely questioning the scale and characterization of these camps as well as the motivations of some of the mainstream publications.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFWBCPuzl5E
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_China
And it's also not a stretch to suggest that a government that defines separatism and religion as two of it's three defined evils is committing cultural genocide on a large (millions+) section of it's country that doesn't conform to the rest of it's society.
> I expect you as a HN reader (but perhaps not the average layperson) to not view news reported in the mass media as infallible, but to scrutinize everything that is said with a high degree of criticality.
There is only so much time in the day, and today I'll spend most of mine scrutinizing the layout of virtual networking devices. In order to receive news and information about topics I am less knowledgeable about I unfortunately must entrust others with the credibility to perform this scrutiny on my behalf. The ones I entrust to do this may fail, but that doesn't mean that I'd necessarily do better than them.
Perhaps my original statement doesn't withstand scrutiny when put into certain context but I don't think it's hyperbole in this discussion.
I’ve already addressed the million+ figure and cultural genocide point above. As far as the Three Evils, religion is not one of them. Religious extremism is (for example, Wahhabism and Salafism). Many religions are practiced openly in China today. There are 39,000 mosques in China, many of them paid for by the state. Separatism is considered an evil for obvious reasons. Namely, it undermines the stability of society which can lead to large scale consequences in a country of 1.4 billion that is barely four decades removed from third world status, like China.
> There is only so much time in the day, and today I'll spend most of mine scrutinizing the layout of virtual networking devices. In order to receive news and information about topics I am less knowledgeable about I unfortunately must entrust others with the credibility to perform this scrutiny on my behalf. The ones I entrust to do this may fail, but that doesn't mean that I'd necessarily do better than them.
This is all fine and understandable. But if that is the case, don’t you think it would be better not to perpetuate conjecture masquerading as facts which can’t withstand basic scrutiny?
Not any more than claiming that research data is automatically conflicted out just because it receives government funding.
I’ve never advocated for automatically dismissing anything wherein a conflict of interest exists, only to regard it with a critical eye and a grain of salt.
- There is no guarantee that a backdoor introduced by the US will only be used by the US, or by someone with whom the US has willingly and knowingly shared knowledge about the backdoor. For all we know the MSS might be spying on some citizens using US backdoors in US chips.
- There is no guarantee that the US will always use a backdoor introduced by it for morally infallible reasons. That's a risk with any weapon, of course, and it's super easy to write it up under the cost of doing business -- right until the cost of doing business involves your own device and your own life.
- Even if you trust the checks and balances of US government completely, there is no guarantee that all governments with whom the US would share the backdoor have the same checks and balances in place.
It's not like the backdoor will ask an attacker for their US passport and a search warrant before allowing access.
The problem with the OP is it's whataboutism, it's a logical fallacy to say well A does something bad too, so B doing something bad is equivalent. That's a false equivalency.
I am a German citizen living in the UK and I own a Huawei phone. A while ago the American president issued a domestic law and I still don't know whether my phone will be usable in the future or not.
I am not aware of China having any ability or willingness to do the same. As a European citizen I am accustomed to feel the effects of US politics, I can't say the same thing about China.
If anything the loss of US control in the future gives me modest hope for more alternatives and competition.
Intel Management Engine has the capability to be a backdoor[1]. Whether the US has keys to it is in question. But it is known that Intel has included features on chips for the NSA[2].
[1] https://www.techrepublic.com/article/is-the-intel-management...
[2] https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-visa-undocumented-fe...
Written into laws that obviously can be ignore with no repercussions.
Hint: zero.
(The 11 soldiers who were torturing detainees in Abu Ghraib were not tried for torture. Only watered down charges like dereliction of duty, assault, and battery.)
I don't care about the US promising they won't be bad. The fact that their companies can be forced to install surveillance mechanisms is already the worst case scenario for a hardware buyer. Beyond that, I don't care if it's the Americans, the Chinese or the fucking aliens doing the spying.
These limitations and checks are written into laws. These laws can be easily ignored. Remind me as to how many of the 11 soldiers actively torturing people in Abu Gharib and Bagram were actually tried for their crimes?
Also, Bush doesn't seem to be in jail.
If only those "limitations and checks" were actually followed by the US government and intelligence agencies. Here are some examples I collected during a previous discussion of US vs China surveillance states
https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/privacy-and-su...
https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hub...
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/national-id-hr4760-biometri...
https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/26/16932350/ice-immigration-...
https://theintercept.com/2018/01/19/voice-recognition-techno...
https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-cell-carriers-selling-acces...
https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hub...
https://freedom.press/news/revealed-justice-depts-secret-rul...
https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying
https://www.eff.org/cases/first-unitarian-church-los-angeles...
https://www.eff.org/cases/jewel
https://www.eff.org/cases/hepting
https://www.eff.org/cases/smith-v-obama
https://apnews.com/d69a8e6db867477795f4152d0511bbf9
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-records-fact...
>Because there not beyond imprisoning or killing people over information gained
The US government also certainly uses the information gained to kill and/or imprison people, although you could perhaps argue that the scale is not the same
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/inside-the-cias-k...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/oct/...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/?utm_term=.dc5b7bd3682e
>we have no reason to believe the US had implemented backdoors in major processors.
There is evidence that US intelligence agencies have backdoored products in the past. Personally, that's reason enough to believe that they may have backdoored processors as well
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa...
https://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/snowden--the-nsa-p...
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/519661/nsas-own-hardware-...
If you read The Dictators Handbook, the author talks about how more democratic nations use foreign aid as a means to prop up autocratic nations in order to extract their resources (autocracy overseas to support the standard of living of those who are your selectorate).
It's like we totally forgot about the 2013 NSA spying revelations, or the 1973 CIA backed coupe in Chile, or the US overthrowing a democratically elected government during the Iranian-Contra crisis...
We should absolutely be concerned that the United States could (and does) inject backdoors to spy on other nations, because causing them to destabilize helps with resource extraction and to keep prices low, pleasing the domestic constituency.
E.g. Chile where they helped establish Pinochet to power should feel secure. Italy where they collaborated with far right groups and deep state against democracy should also feel OK. And so on...
> Hopefully this will push RISC-V manufacturing efforts in the US before the market becomes flooded with cheap open source and most likely backdoored chips manufactured in China
Security comes from rigorous research and evidence, not paranoia or prejudice.
Many people/companies don't have much to hide from China but they do from the US.
Please explain
As a practical matter, that's largely irrelevant to us in the West. The world that's shaping up is a world where we won't be able to get those processors in any case.
The middle east didn't see the same benefit, and why? Because they sat in the middle of a cold war zone of contention that stoked every existing bit of strife into a hot war.
In fact I had this very discussion with a group of Africans recently. Yeah, they weren't shy about "educating" me. Some of what they believe is, in my view, not fact based. (At least, it can't be proven in court so to speak.) But, yeah, a lot of what they were saying was definitely true.
I wouldn't mind hearing what some of those things are.
I have seen enough instances when first amendment rights are also bulldozed (still there is hope as someone emerges to preserve it). Arresting assange in UK trying to extradite him to USA, Snowden are just the tip of the iceberg.
Constitution is not absolute but a moving target with time. It requires a good faith constant effort to keep it and it's spirit alive.
I believe having a democracy does not guarantee it will remain same. The best example is India, where the current govt is bulldozing the constitutional spirit with amendments to turn it into Hindu nation and make it more like China where govt has absolute control. Anyone Who criticise the govt will be termed terrorist.
Both USA and China have their own set of good and bad, can't paint either with a broad brush.
This data/backdoor/power in the hands of a communist autocratic government with complete disregard for territorial and human rights is an infinite times worse, on a completely different scale, than in the hands of a democratic government.
I just can't buy that China is better than US regarding human rights. Or do people actually think the opposite?
US dragnet snooping has nothing particular to do with law enforcement. Nobody is allowed to know what is done with the stolen information. When we find out one use, that doesn't preclude any other use.
The use that nets the greatest return for any snooped information is extortion. Spooks are very familiar with this use, as it is their go-to method to "turn" people to recruit informants. Of course turning is only one of many uses for the same information. Coercion applied to public officials creates corruption, to judges miscarriages of justice, to police persucution of private enemies. It poisons the public well everywhere it touches.
Prosecutors are also very familiar with extortionate use of secrets. We see it in "plea bargains", where people are made to plead guilty to charges prosecutors could not prove in court, but that only scratches the surface. "Constitutional protection" is no shield against any use that doesn't introduce the facts in testimony.
Note that having "nothing to hide" doesn't help you if the secret is about somebody else, and used to coerce their actions against you.
"Everything has vulnerabilities!" - Bullshit. Connect your Ethernet MII to a decoder that sets an LED if a certain pattern comes by. Can you hack it, to make it turn on when it isn't supposed to, with crafted network packets alone?
Nope! Perfect security.
Just because the US is run by jackwads, yeah, let's go ahead and let the next super power be run by jackwads too.
What kind of ridiculous thinking is that?
You have done nothing but reinforce the point. If anything, that's even more reason to make sure China is not run by jackwads in the future. I mean, what are you disagreeing with?
That the US is run by jackwads?
or that China should not be run by jackwads when it becomes the superpower?
Or are you just off on some other tangent altogether? (more whataboutism?)
Because this subthread is about the idea that jackwads in China should be able to do something simply because jackwads in the US do it. Which is a patently ridiculous notion.
Also, just because there are concerns about Chinese back-doors does not mean the author is entirely unconcerned about US back-doors, nor does it even tangentially relate to his argument. (In fact, I think the author would agree that both are equally bad.)
At least, however, in the US there are enforceable State and Federal Constitutional protections for citizens and residents that limit the ability of the government to spy on its citizens. Even if these protections are not perfect (they are not) or sometimes abused (they are), they are objectively better than the clusterfk of privacy and rights violations the Chinese state inflicts on its citizens every day, with the consent and complicity of national technology firms.
It may not mean much if you're not a US Citizen (it shouldn't) but like it or not this is a new front of national security, and to "not get it" is to miss the point entirely.
I understand the risk, but isn't that cat "already out of the bag" for ARM licensees and other ISA implementations? Is there something particularly special about this one?
Edit: Does it have to do with being open-source?
Obviously, RISC-V also needs software support; gcc supports it, Golang has added RISC-V as a target (although it's not yet implemented) and there are several projects working on LLVM (e.g. lowRISC and SiFive's port). Having played around with the Fedora-RISCV port under QEMU, it's actually surprisingly good thus far.
Having an open-source processor design with good software support that anyone can manufacture without royalties is a good thing and will hopefully spur both Intel and ARM into innovation.
Edit: Fwiw, I hope the open source ISA has secondary societal benefits. I'm not skeptical, just pragmatic. Follow the money.
IIRC The general topic was speculative execution and such security, but I think it also made it clear that more generally all the chips, software involved ... you just can't know.
To be clear, I don't say that to dispute anything you're saying, quite the opposite.
But at the same time, RISC-V needs to happen. It's a critical step to move computing forward. It's just a damn shame that this is the way it's going to happen. Hopefully this will push RISC-V manufacturing efforts in the US before the market becomes flooded with cheap open source and most likely backdoored chips manufactured in China.