US, Apparently With No Sense Of Irony, Preaching 'Openness' And 'Transparency' To Chinese
from the can't-make-this-stuff-up dept
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is heading to Beijing to talk with the Chinese government, and the message he's bringing to the Chinese is that (a) Americans don't do irony and (b) we're a bunch of lying hypocrites. I'm sure that will go over well. You may recall the recent revelations that the NSA (which is a part of the defense department) had hacked into Huawei -- a company that the US keeps insisting is likely used by the Chinese government to spy on people... even though it has no evidence at all to support that.In what may be the most unintentionally hilarious article in the NY Times you'll read in a while, it discusses how Hagel and the US government are preaching openness, transparency and candor when it comes to state-level cyberattacks, sharing information on what the US is doing, and hoping that the Chinese will reciprocate. In fact, the Obama administration recently held a briefing for the Chinese government in which they discussed the US's "doctrine" for defending against cyberattacks:
The idea was to allay Chinese concerns about plans to more than triple the number of American cyberwarriors to 6,000 by the end of 2016, a force that will include new teams the Pentagon plans to deploy to each military combatant command around the world. But the hope was to prompt the Chinese to give Washington a similar briefing about the many People’s Liberation Army units that are believed to be behind the escalating attacks on American corporations and government networks.Note, of course, that they only discussed how the US defends against attacks, not their offensive capabilities, such as hacking into Huawei or introducing destructive malware like Stuxnet. Even so, Hagel's mantra seems to be that "transparency" is suddenly a good thing.
So far, the Chinese have not reciprocated — a point Mr. Hagel plans to make in a speech at the P.L.A.’s National Defense University on Tuesday.
In Beijing, the defense secretary “is going to stress to the Chinese that we in the military are going to be as transparent as possible,” said Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, “and we want the same openness and transparency and restraint from them.”Of course, that's quite a different message from a year ago. As you may recall, just as the first Snowden documents were being released to the public, President Obama was scolding China for its cyberattacks. But, as the NY Times article notes:
“We clearly don’t occupy the moral high ground that we once thought we did,” said one senior administration official.You think?
And, yet, it seems that making these hilarious claims of "openness" and "transparency" from an administration famous for its unprecedented secrecy has been drilled into Hagel's head for this trip to Beijing. Discussing a different issue -- an escalating dispute between China and Japan over some uninhabited islands -- Hagel again made a statement that reads like pure hypocrisy:
"The more transparent and open governments can be with each other, the better for everyone. That avoids miscalculation, misinterpretation, misunderstanding, and hopefully that lowers the risks of conflict."While that statement is likely true, it seems fairly rich for the US to be out there preaching that message, while being one of the least transparent, least open US administrations ever. Last year, we wrote about how the Snowden and Manning stories basically stripped the US of its ability to hypocritically browbeat other countries, because those other countries had little to pushback on. As we noted, the way out of that was to stop being hypocritical and to actually practice openness and transparency. While, perhaps, you could argue that sharing a few details of our "cyberdefense" capabilities qualifies, that's a pretty hard sell. The US government still seems to hope that its own hypocrisies will be ignored while it preaches principles it comes nowhere close to living up to.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: china, chuck hagel, cyberattacks, defense department, dod, openness, transparency, us
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
cAN YOU BLAME THE OTHER 300 WE ELECTED?
HOW about the ones THEY hired that have jobs for the past 10-20 years?
HOW about we do it this way..
I HIRE you to do a job, after someone ELSE was running it, and expect the SAME or BETTER then the first,second,third person that had the job, before you..
LETS pile more BS on top, why dont we..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
If everyone would abstain from voting, who would win? And there would be no voter fraud or hanging chads to boot.
Americans need to get off their KFC-eating, twitter/facebook-obsessed, infighting asses.
I'm not going to hold my breath.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
a few numbers for you..
REGISTERED democrats and repubs..is 100,000,000
1/3 of the USA.
Count on the number of voters..?
just over 100,000,000
And if you split it between the 2 groups..
50 million voted a president into office.about 16% of the people created a president.
Also if you look at STATE elections, for state offices, the numbers arnt much different..
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
This is just sad...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Which means that all of the claimed hacking they have done in the US is going to at least triple so they catch up with what the US is doing.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
i also read the condemnation of Erdogan and what he has been doing. don't any of the so-called 'pillars of democracy' realise that by acting as they are, the likes of USA and UK, are giving more clout to the sort of action carried out by Turkey? he doesn't need to justify what he's doing, because he's following the examples given to him. you dont need an IQ above 'idiot' to be able to work that out!!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
To be fair, as long as the individual(s) you're talking about aren't members of the government, that is a fairly safe assumption.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Unless the administration somehow manages to get total and honest oversight back in place, there's no way that any promises of transparency can be meaningful. Even if Chuck Hagel defected to the Chinese and told them everything he knew, odds are good that he still wouldn't be able to tell them everything that was going on.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Weapon's-grade humor
Think about it, at least one person has to know how insane their preaching over 'openness and transparency' is, coming as it is from the most secretive US presidency in history, so obviously they're hoping that every Chinese official who they talk to is going to be laughing so hard that they pass out, and potentially die, from laughing so hard.
Incapacitate and/or eliminate the right officials, and the country will be vulnerable to the second wave of attacks, that of exporting the US's healthcare system over there, to pick off any survivors. Follow that up by exporting over the US's IP laws, to destroy any innovation and/or creativity, and in just a few years the once mighty country will be brought to it's knees, ripe for the picking.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Weapon's-grade humor
They are creating worthless building projects just to get money moving around. http://seekingalpha.com/news/1636163-china-to-accelerate-projects-in-order-to-support-growth
Shouldn' t they be investing in self-sustaining projects? The bubble will burst in 3...2...1...
Derp!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Openness and Transparency amongst whom
While the US government preaches O&T towards their citizens and openly urge the Chinese leaders to do the same towards theirs, it's all about O&T among the military: We help you oppress your people, we would like that same Openness and Transparency in return.
Smell the coffee: It's a DEFENSE-secretary who's going!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
If an official in the chinese governemnt lies to the government he gets executed, If the official in the US government lies to the government he gets eventually promoted.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Leading by example is the thing missing for making this elsewise commendable idea easier to act on.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No proof that Huawei is used by the Chinese government...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Yeees, China... be more transparent...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: no creditability nor bargaining position.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: no creditability nor bargaining position.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Yum
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Ironic 2x
[ link to this | view in chronology ]