Mexicans use our guns, China hacks our supercomputers...

I agree with what has been said by war on this one... just seems like a setup for some regulatory legislation.

There was a really good article in last months Popular Science concerning this topic. An investigator hired buy the U.S. figured out that most of the Chinese Hacking is done by civilians...and it makes alot of sense...

Several examples were sited of Chinese hacks and most were done strictly as a statement of Chinese Patriotic Nationalism...apparently, hackers are regarded like rock stars there and 1 out of every three school children polled wants to grow up to be a hacker.

The beauty of it is this...technically, hacking foriegn systems is not a crime in China. With literally millions of Chinese civilians hacking out of a sense of Chinese patriotism..the Chinese gov't has no need to actively pursue cyber-hacking...thereby they are legally blameless...and China will not extradite Chinese citizens...so the hackers are safe from prosecution...and the Chinese gov't can not held responsible.

China managed to surpass the United States as of this year, when its Internet population reached 221 million users, as the Ministry of Industry and Information revealed. The findings show that despite China’s Internet policy, which limits access to certain content, the online population is growing every year.

http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_Despite_Censorship_China_Surpasses_US_In_Online_Population_16787.html

There was a really good article in last months Popular Science concerning this topic. An investigator hired buy the U.S. figured out that most of the Chinese Hacking is done by civilians...and it makes alot of sense...

Several examples were sited of Chinese hacks and most were done strictly as a statement of Chinese Patriotic Nationalism...apparently, hackers are regarded like rock stars there and 1 out of every three school children polled wants to grow up to be a hacker.

The beauty of it is this...technically, hacking foriegn systems is not a crime in China. With literally millions of Chinese civilians hacking out of a sense of Chinese patriotism..the Chinese gov't has no need to actively pursue cyber-hacking...thereby they are legally blameless...and China will not extradite Chinese citizens...so the hackers are safe from prosecution...and the Chinese gov't can not held responsible.

but arent we looking at absolute numbers and not percentages?

and their online community is growing much faster than ours

here is the Popular Science article that Krupa referred to


http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-04/hackers-china-syndrome

By 2006 China had become the world’s third largest automotive vehicle manufacturer (after US and Japan) and the second largest consumer (only after US). Automobile manufacturing has soared during the reform period. In 1975 only 139,800 automobiles were produced annually, but by 1985 production had reached 443,377, then jumped to nearly 1.1 million by 1992 and increased fairly evenly each year up until 2001, when it reached 2.3 million. In 2002 production rose to nearly 3.25 million and then jumped to 4.44 million in 2003, 5.07 million in 2004, 5.71 million in 2005 and 7.28 million in 2006. In 2007, 9 million automobiles are expected to be produced and the country could become the number-one automaker in the world by 2020. Domestic sales have kept pace with production. After respectable annual increases in the mid- and late 1990s, passenger car sales soared in the early 2000s. In 2006, a total of 7.22 million automobiles have been sold, including 5.18 million units of passenger cars and 2.04 million units of commercial vehicles.

China's overall economic construction objectives were clearly stated in the Three Step Development Strategy set out in 1987: Step One—to double the 1980 GNP and ensure that the people have enough food and clothing—was attained by the end of the 1980s; Step Two—to quadruple the 1980 GNP by the end of the 20th century—was achieved in 1995 ahead of schedule; Step Three—to increase per-capita GNP to the level of the medium-developed countries by 2050—at which point, the Chinese people will be fairly well-off and modernization will be basically realized.

You have to look at the percentages.

China has the largest Pop in the world! 4 times as large as ours.
The only place you see a lifestyle close to ours is in the SEZs.

This lifestyle is only enjoyed by a small percentage of the population. The gov is Communists, and if you are not very loyal to the Party elite you are not in the loop.

The largest percentage of Chinese can not buy cars, do not have internet, and live a very humble and poor life.

So.....we should just completely disregaurd them?

Americans have to give up on their idea of a better life for their children. That is insignificant to the corporations needs and too big of an expense to their bottom line.

Not when they can simply move where they have a cheaper labor source and free trade exists in the world.

A couple generations from now and Americans wont even remember when our currency was worth 5, 6, 7 times that of many European countries!

The question could be asked,
Why allow civilians to use the internet in the first place!
The internet was used exclusively by the government for a long time before allowing civilian access.

Actually the arpanet was a government conception and was implemented with help of several major universities.

I am not asking how and by which agency the internet was developed. I am asking why is government even allowed to use the internet?

This isn't a hard question. Even if government actually, truthfully, had some credit for developing the rudiments of what we cann the internet today, there is no justification that could be made that such credit should define who the internet belongs to.

The government isn't a private party. It has no rights. It can not claim a property against what the people ALLOW it to have.

If the government is too stupid to use the internet safely, oh well, they the government should be disallowed it's use. Just like you would disallow an access of a small child to anything it may find, that you deem to be too dangerous and inappropriate for that child.