Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • April 20, 2021 9:08 AM

@ ALL,

A basic lesson in history of the last half century would have taught people two things,

1, Economic sanctions against a nation are a form of mass murder.

2,When applied economic sanctions rarely if ever effect the supposed targets of the polotical, elites, their supporters or their guard labour.

3, There are more than enough other nations in the world who will see such sanctions as a profit opportunity.

4, Whilst Russia is “cash strapped” it is one of the richest nations in the world resource wise thus can keep going almost indefinately.

5, Many other nations are very much dependent on Russian resources which the US can not and will not make up the loss for.

6,Other super powers are going to see a hidden aliance with Russia as being strategically important.

The net result this is posturing for the home crowd and will do the US more harm than good. Worse it effects Europe, the Middle East and China none of whom are currently in favour of the US.

Thus the US is issolating it’s self further and further each time it pulls a silly stunt like this. Especially as most of the rest of the world know they have the NSA CIA and god alone who knows which other US agencies both Governmental and NGO in their networks.

Back at the ITU conferance in Doha in 2014 the likes of Russia and China made it very clear diplomatically they had had enough of the US and it’s older allies crawling around in it’s communications networks.

It’s fairly clear that since then Russia is taking the necessary legal legislative steps and actions to start carving it’s self out of the “all roads lead to Rome” or more correctly Washington of the Internet. Slowely but surely they are bringing their own Great firewall up.

Unlike the US and possibly Europe neither China nor Russia have set their economies to sit on top of the Information super highway bubble. Nor are Russia and China actually dependent on the US in the way the US is dependent on them.

The US started this silly game and all they keep doing is doubking down on it whilst making their own economy weaker and more dependent.

I’ve spent more than two decades warning about what is happening and the most likely out come.

The US has turned into the worlds party girl wasting everything on status and frippery whilst behaving like an ally cat morally. In the process totally hollowing out their nation so the cupboard is bare, and running around pretending to be every ones friend whilst robbing them every which way they can and setting them upon each other.

At some point the bubbles the US think are foundations for the future are either going to deflate or burst, and if the latter that’s when the game of musical chairs stops and where the bare tooth and claw fighting starts.

Meanwhile the politicians stand on the deck with the band playing “Nearer, My God, to thee” with their juniors playing at being designers but just rearanging the deck chairs. Whilst some of the nore sensible billionairs have bought their refuges abroad and are quietly moving the contents of their store cupboards out of the US not just away from the US IRS but away from their shareholders as well. Look at what percentage of Apple, Alphabet / Google, Microsoft, Amazon etc is “off shore for tax reasons” and just how little left there is in the US…

Ask yourself why other than not paying tax, and keeping it out of US and other shareholders hands they have done this. Oh and purchased not just offices, homes, fall out shelters and foreign citizenship and keep energancy transport “hot” and ready to go? Could it be they expect to be up and gone whilst “incoming” are in flight? Or similar.

There is an old Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times” and if people are not carefull they will find that the riches they think they have will disapear out of their hands faster than quick silver.

Remember when the computers are down your money is gone, when the currency in your pocket is nolonger sought it is worth less than toilet paper, it will not get you the basic necesities of life.

If you have doubts about what other people are thinking keep your eyes not on the price of precious metals but the more interesting industrial metals such as the “Rare Earth Metals” without which not just Chip/IC manufacture stops, but manufacture of computers on which the US is so dependent in just about everything stop. Even stuff that should not ve high tech like your fridge, freezer, cooker, microwave, water heater, house heating and even lighting and it can all be stopped dead in just a few milliseconds… But there is a lot of other high tech stuff, not just most domestic brown/white goods, most modern vehicles such as cars and most delivery vehicles. Even those that might be slightly better protected including trains and planes are not going to be unscathed because of all the unprotected support equipment including fuel supplies. Even supposadly protected “smart weapons” and even ordinary “weapons delivery systems” are likewise going to be effected.

A year or so ago most would not have believed it but the problems with energy companies just turning the switch off to make profit, and the break down of supply chains and thus shops during COVID have kind of started people thinking about “dependency webs” and where the “weak links” are and are realising just about everything is a weak link due to the “don’t lewve money on the table” and similar mantras that have taken any real kind of resilience out of the equation, just leaving fragility without backup that if any point fails will cascade through the rest (see Texas near grid down).

Some are realising that the currebt situation is not tenable, any one system can fail and without which cascades start, things stop and can not be brought back up due to ignored dependency and death inevitably follows unless you have thought ahead and made preperations or hop on a plane to Mexico, using your political position to ensure “you get on the last bus to nowhere”.

In a way for many in the US COVID has been a rude awakening out of their sleepwalk on social media. Take a look in Walmart, even they have jumped into the game with their 24Hour Personal Emergancy kits… What is that telling you their managment think and why?

Interesting times are indeed ahead and US politicos realy need to stop playing the fiddle, get down from their podiums and start doing an honest days work. Because they will find out all to soon if they don’t just how little US citizens are starting to think of them and with the very unobjective US MSM playing with fireworks in the fuel store whilst fanning any little sparks they see for ratings you know where that rabbit hole is likely to end up…

Remember nearly half the US adult population voted one way and the rest another way it was very close and very acrimonious. Some of those people took a day trip in January and did rather more than just knock on the door. Whilst to some they might appear extream, to others that poured large amouts of money into “war funds” and the like not at all. Thus many are a half pace behind extream in the crowd, with plenty more pushing forward from behind…

Is it realy time for empty gestures or actually taking a lead in getting all the nasty little games that all sides are playing if they have the money turned not into near acts of kinetic war but just minor annoyances?

Me I vote to stop blowing the trumpet banging the drum and slinging empty threats back and forth. Instead quietly look at sorting out the real root causes of the insecurities that make these stuoid ICT espionage games possible…

But if I’m still around and other of todays readers are in 2040-50 any bets on if I will still be saying the same “Defence not offence”?

Clive Robinson • April 20, 2021 2:16 PM

@ Nick Nolan, ALL,

“Russians did the former. Hackers didn’t try to damage US systems,”

Actually the US attacked Russian infrastructure atleast thre times by what you would call cyber espionage / hacking, causing a number of deaths and billions in economic damages. The CIA actually publicaly boasted about it.

Then the US have sent duqu, Stuxnet, flame, and other variants off to other nations.

Just like with nuclear weapons the US has had for prestige reasons had to be first at mass destruction (they got beat on chemical weapons by both Britain and Germany) even biological weapons they used on their own people in the New York underground.

These are recorded in history that is publically available.

If you look at the history of Russia since Stalin’s day, they realy are not first at anything, however they can as with the Tzar Fusion Bomb (also the worlds cleanest by far at the time) go better, to the point their scientists and engineers designed the closest thing ever imagined to a “Domesday device” it never got built because the CCCP leader of the time told them they were compleatly mad and he would have them all locked up.

History shows that like it or not Russia is a pragmatic rational actor, and the US, well do I need spell it out any further?