Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by cwwc 2008 days ago
The most BA conspiracy would be if the CCP thought about releasing a virus and said to themselves “hey, what will everyone need in a pandemic? Videoconference!” They funded Zoom, then released the virus and boom - they suddenly have access to every company and academic discussion out there.

If I plotting things, that’s how I’d do it at least. But alas reality isn’t a Bond film.

1 comments

Why would you fund a “tech” company when you could corner the market on PPE? According to my local news a company told the federal government the US lack N95 manufacturing.
Why not both?

And in some cases you don't even need to corner the market - just abuse your adversaries' psychology. For example, Canada, was sending tons of PPE to China in February. [1]

This turned out to be an awful decision and Canada was caught in a terrible shortage weeks later. China gladly sold PPE to Canada though.

[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2020/02/canada-...

> Why not both?

It’s a win-win-win situation.

But yeah, the fact that the entire world is dependent on China for cheap manufacturing is probably a bad thing.

PPE is just PPE. Zoom is tech which will continue to be more established even when we don't strictly require it. It gives the possibility of silently monitoring corporate/government calls for years. And some stock market gains as a cherry on top.
Good point