ta8507

Reminds of me of a conversation I had with an engineer from a internet-connected thermostat company. When designing their device, they disassembled many of their competitors' thermostats. They found that some had microphones on their circuit boards. Scary stuff.

You may want to read Chapter 7 of If Nuns Ruled the World by Jo Piazza[1]. Sister Dianna Ortiz was kidnapped in Guatemala in the late 1980s and ended up in a CIA torture prison. A case of mistaken identity and lots of cover-ups ensued, but she lived to tell the tale[2]. She sadly passed away last year, RIP.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21822356-if-nuns-ruled-t... [2] https://www.democracynow.org/2005/10/12/sister_dianna_ortiz_...

What would be more depressing is if western governments have not already given this some thought, and years later China achieves all this through theft of our IP. Somehow I don't think the Chinese (nor the Russians for that matter) have the same moral qualms.

Realpolitik: speak softly and carry a big stick.

Starlink is a Musk project. So is Tesla's Giga production facility in Shanghai. Will he want to be forced to choose between them?

Imagine in an alternate world, it is 1937 and America imports most of its products from Nazi-run Germany, because they are better at producing them at lower cost. There have been persistent rumours of mistreatment of Jews, particularly on the periphery of their empire, but the reports are disparate and refuted by the Germans. Every year more and more evidence is mounting of German nationalism and forced labour, but surely it's just exaggerated and it will all just work itself out in time?

What is the rest of the world to do? Do people have the appetite to give up their access to cheap goods?