[anamax]

> The logical counter-response would be to encourage the sort of unrest present in the "Jasmine Revolution".

The US has a lousy history wrt helping such folk. We tend to abandon them.

We did it in both Iraq (during Saddam) and Iran (a couple of years ago).

[ja30278]

Who said anything about helping them? I was responding to a comment that suggested we had no useful counter-strategy to hacking, since it's difficult to respond to a cyber attack via conventional means. They know this, which is why it's relatively safe for them to engage in targeted hacking of US targets.

China is vulnerable to social unrest, and stirring up that social unrest puts them in a similarly difficult position...it's not something that they'd likely be willing to go to war over, but causes them great inconvenience. Developing/distributing vpn or other software that would bypass the great firewall would be useful here.

[anamax]

> Who said anything about helping them?

I was responding to the person who wrote "The logical counter-response would be to encourage the sort of unrest present in the "Jasmine Revolution".

If the suggested encouragment doesn't help, what's the point?

Note that some of our "help" has consisted of "we'll help if you accomplish {goal}" promises that we've broken.

What kind of "encouragment" and "stirring up" are you proposing that doesn't include help?