[arthropodSeven]

The first half of the article refers without exception to this "Chinese operation." Only in this sentence in the middle of the article do they point out that there's only circumstantial evidence to attribute it to China:

> But as with the Russian SolarWinds hackers, investigators have yet to identify who exactly the Hafnium hackers are—beyond Microsoft's assertion that they're state-sponsored and operate out of China—or to pin down the full extent of their motivations.

Obviously, countries do this kind of thing all the time. And an operation of this scale is likely to come from someone with government resources. But it continues to bother me that the requirements for attribution of these attacks never rise above the level of hearsay.

Is nobody even slightly skeptical of Microsoft? The company that eagerly collaborates with the alphabet soup agencies gets to write off an exploit in its own software, courtesy of Chinese state hackers, when we all know _for a fact_ that the NSA pays these companies to keep such exploits around for their own use.

It's one thing to acknowledge that one explanation is likely; it's another thing to give up on skepticism entirely.

[fc373745]

Is state driven media possible in the US?

If so, is it possible that the mass accumulation of hatred for the Chinese is a byproduct of state driven media?

[kortilla]

> hatred for the Chinese

The equivocation of hatred for the Chinese and hatred for it’s government is itself Chinese government propaganda.

Any time criticism comes up of the actions of their government, the deflection method is to say it’s just hatred for the Chinese. This is done to prevent the Chinese people from realizing that people in the West are on their side and they are not their government.

[fc373745]

Unfortunately, i don't think anyone is that dim to conclude that the accusations against the Chinese government is out of pure empathy for the Chinese people.

If it was the case that your empathy stretches across the pacific ocean for the Uighurs, then why does it not stretch for the Palestinians? I think the actions taken by Israel is way worse of a human rights violation than China is doing, but because the West supports Israel, it turns a blind eye against the Palestinians?

Moreover, one can formulate and theoretically, yes accusations should not equivocate as hatred for the Chinese.

But in practice, this isn't true at all.

[bllguo]

funny that you say this as we are witnessing an uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes. you can't seriously think that nobody conflates the two?

and people in the West assuming they know best is as much of a problem as anything else. you're not on their side, you're speaking as if you're above them

[hayst4ck]

> you're not on their side, you're speaking as if you're above them

This is a common sentiment with American conservatives. They think liberal people look down upon them from their ivory towers. Honestly, they do. Your average conservative is malnourished with a fox news media diet and isn't educated enough to critically think about their own positions, you can't even engage in a rational conversation with most of them. The GOP at large is a bad faith party who rules for power and dominance, not for the improvement of peoples lives. Rhetoric is their weapon not reason.

While liberals are not in favor of white supremacy, religion, or "easy fixes" they do favor policy that would benefit the average conservative person. In the sense that liberals want to see conservative peoples lives meaningfully improve, liberals are on the side of conservatives. In the sense that liberals want to preserve conservative culture and reinforce their world views, liberals are clearly not on the side of conservatives.

China has it's own Han supremacy problem (just like America has a white supremacy problem), and while the west is not interested in supporting Han supremacy, I think the average [educated] westerner does want to see the average chinese persons life improve, just not at the cost of Taiwanese lives, Uigher lives, Tibetan lives, or Hong Konger lives, and not at the cost of our own prosperity.

[Udik]

The overwhelming majority of Chinese people stand by their government, with levels of approval and satisfaction way higher than Americans' for theirs (95% vs 38%) [1]

All this talk of "the CCP" is just a very thin veil of self-deception, allowing you to pretend that you are "on the same side" of the Chinese people. You're not. The best future for China is to become the dominant world power, and you don't want that in any form or shape, am I wrong?

[1] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-sur...

[kortilla]

> The overwhelming majority of Chinese people stand by their government, with levels of approval and satisfaction way higher than Americans' for theirs (95% vs 38%) [1]

And guess which country disappears citizens for “re-education” if they speak out against said government. You’d have to be daft to respond to those surveys negatively in China if there was any kind of chance your response could be traced back to you.

> The best future for China is to become the dominant world power, and you don't want that in any form or shape, am I wrong?

Yes, you are wrong. Becoming “the” dominant world power has little to do with the good of the people. Norway’s citizens are better off than US citizens on average and Norway is irrelevant on the global power scale.

Regardless, you are still confused about what people are against. It’s not China becoming a world power (it already is). It’s literally the abusive way the CCP treats dissidents. Look at the Muslim camps, look at Honk Kong, look at Winnie the Pooh.

Let it sink in that most people are happy the Chinese lives are improving. The issue is with the fascists at the top.

[pja]

Do you really think it's safe to give an honest negative answer when asked your opinion of the CCCP in China?

Personally I doubt it, and I imagine that the average Chinese citizen understands this reality very well indeed as they give their positive answers to the nice poll agent with the sincerest smile they can muster.

Everyone knows how the game is played.

[Udik]

Do you really think the people involved in this 13 year survey are so stupid they didn't think of the issue you could identify in a good 5 seconds of thinking before writing your comment?

[kortilla]

Their paper outlines no solution to this.

[pja]

Oh, I’m sure they’ve thought of it. I simply doubt that they’re able to meaningfully counter it.

[v-yadli]

> This is done to prevent the Chinese people from realizing that people in the West are on their side and they are not their government.

Currently there are more than 919.14 million CPC members in China (data point circa 2019), and this does not include the people working for 事业单位 (gov. funded public institutes). So for a random Chinese citizen, Western people have a, like, 3% chance of hate and 97% of love? If we propagate one hop further to the relatives/friends (let's say it knows 100 people in his/her life), the number goes to 4% of love and 96% of hate.

:-(

[kortilla]

Nope. The shit is a result of decisions at the top. I have no beef with people who work for local government offices.

[chrisjharris]

Accusing a group within China of hacking, and hating the whole of China, are two very different things.

[crocodiletears]

The intelligence community has been known to direct and cultivate media assets. [0]

Less directly, much of news reporting is dependent upon access to exclusive and sometimes anonymous sources. There's little to prevent some of those sources from being honeypots meant to indirectly manipulate reporters into parroting a given narrative.

Even so, I doubt that antipathy towards China's being driven by any centralized authority. We're entering an era of great power competition with the country, its (ostensible) ideology has historically existed in opposition to the US, and many still see it as the poster-boogyman for the hollowing out of American industries.

There's always been tension, and ever since the Trump administration began imposing tariffs and clamping down against Chinese IP and technology theft, it's incidentally become more present in the public's consciousness.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

[Isamu]

> mass accumulation of hatred for the Chinese

What are you referring to? You mean articles that attribute hacking to actors with connections to the PRC?

[axguscbklp]

>Is state driven media possible in the US?

I'm sure there's some of that, but I suspect that even if there wasn't we'd see much the same results. In the US, the state and the mainstream media are essentially the same thing. The people who run the state and the people who make up the mainstream media are part of the same social circles, they go to the same restaurants, they tend to have the same worldviews.