Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • March 19, 2010 10:09 AM

@ Shachar,

“If only that were the whole of it…….”

Yes, if it was it would give some hope of a solution in the “near term”.

But sadly it is but the tip of the iceburg.

Clive Robinson • March 19, 2010 1:25 PM

I’m not sure many of the commenters here understand nukes.

Without a delivery system nukes are the equivalent of having a handgrenade gaffer taped to your arm. They act as a deterant to those that can only attack you close up.

Another way of looking at them is to “salt the earth” that is make any attackers victory piric.

Although almost any vehical can carry a tactical nuke. Most nukes are most definatly not tactical and if you look at the early US and CCCP nukes you will see why early delivery systems where heavy lift bombers.

The danger with Pakistan and North Korea was they have delivery systems that are difficult if not impossible to stop (ie missile systems).

However delivery systems are getting easier and easier to design but for some reason we don’t talk about them we just talk about the potential payload

Clive Robinson • March 21, 2010 12:28 AM

@ Snarki, child of Loki,

“If the counter-offer was “no, keep the money, but instead your country has to change from dollars to Euros”, THAT is where sacred values get dinged.”

Well we already know what happened to one country on talking about switching from USD to EUR…

As reported in the European press a shortish time after (what the rest of the world regarded as) the faux election of GWB and his taking offfice, Iraq’s Saddam had aproached various continental EU nations (in the Euro Zone) to talk about selling Iraq’s oil in Euro’s not Dollar’s to get the US off of his back.

Well the Euro Zone countries were a little luke warm, so he upped the anti by changing the offer to selling Iraq oil “only in Euro’s”. Which as it was the worlds second largest producer of oil would have instantly promoted the Euro to being the world trading curancy virtualy over night.

Well the US had a significant problem as Paul Wolfowitz later let slip with his infmous “lake of oil” comment.

Basicaly the US had for some considerable time taken on significant world debt as the price of trying to keep the US Dollar the world trading currancy.

The reasons for this are a little complicated, but in essence it enabled the US to stay afloat with ever increasing deficit due to amongst other things US domestic energy demands.

Thus the USD was badly over subscribed and if it ceased to be the world trading currency then it would have gone down the proverdial plug hole and the US economy would have followed rapidly.

Now the question is why did the Euro Zone not jump on this offer “to do the US down”. Well the reason was and still is quite simple. Most European countries are much more acutely aware of the significance of “currancy stability” than most in the US are. It would not have been in the world economies interest to have the US go down the plug (and still isn’t which the “China APT” mob tend to conveniently forget).

The reason being that unknown to most in the US the Clinton administration had been heading of global recesion for almost the entire term by buying up stratigic debt to stop it snowballing and bringing the world economy down (look at Far East property bubbles etc).

Now the GWB administration for various reasons either did not or for political reasons chose not to belive that Europe had little intrest in “Doing the US down” (it has been said that this was because the GWB backers only viewed the world through their own intent).
Thus the GWB backers belived (incorectly) that Sadam’s plan as a “master stroke of an evil guenius” to take the US out…

Not what it most likley was ie Sadam’s last ditch gamble to stop the effects of the sanctions causing him to lose control of Iraq.

Unfortunatly the US could not “go it alone” on a “Grand Adventure” and thus up stood Tony Blair who had grandiose notions of self worth.

He thought that he could be a new “Churchill” and be better than his hated role model “Margret Thatcher”. Europe had quite politly told Tony he was not even close to being the “Iron Lady” and infact they where quite openly laughing at him amongst themselves about how he wanted to be “The European President” and thus not “Bush’s lapdog” but “A Court Jester”.

So various little plans where “cooked up”. And the UK and the US developed a spiral of stories about “WMD”. It was quite clear to many that there was absolutly no substance to the WMD story and thus distanced themselves from it but “still staying on message” (see CoPow statment’s where he keeps refering to UK Intel AKA the “dodgy dosier” put together by Blair’s cleque of spin misters in 10 Downing St. from Internet downloads…).

It was by the way well known by both the US and UK security services (CIA / MI6 et al) that there was absolutly no factual evidence Sadam had WMD. They actualy knew Sadam had to maintain the illusion so as to keep the countries surounding Iraq out of Iraq.

Almost laughably stories like the Uranium Yellow Cake where put about by the US Gov supported Iraqi congress (in exile) where well known to jornos as compleate fakes.

It was later made obviouse from the desperate claims of “mobile biological weapons” the photos where of “hydrogen generators” for inflating “barage ballons” that the UK had sold to Iraq as “war surplus” several years previously along with a load of “arc light” vehicals…

So the result of the GWB backers not trusting Europe to be self interested was the “Grand Adventure”.

The main side effect is the US did the likes of Iran a huge favour and took the Sadam rod off of their backs (with the consiquences we see today).

Meanwhile of on the “Grand Adventure” both the US and UK ellected officials had taken their eye off of their domestic issues such as “property bubbles” and their ilk. These where very obviously overheating the US and UK economies due in the main to “deregulation of financial markets” and financial market inspired tax regulation changes.

So whilst the cat’s where out hunting sewer rats, the house mice played and gnawed through the foundations and had an even worse effect than the sewer rat alone could ever have done.

The financial pain both the US and UK are currently fealing would not have bitten so deaply if Bush and Blair had not wasted trillions of USD on actually increasing the chances of a middle east disaster…

As we currently see those countries that either did not partake or only paid a token effort in the Bush Blair “Grand Adventure” are not realy suffering the effects of the colapse of the UK/US banking industry (even though many in Europe have been playing fast and lose with “debt offsetting” to keep in the ERM).

There are however a few countries whose “rob Peter to pay Paul” fiscal behaviour to keep government debt of the balance sheet has been unmasked (Iceland, Greece etc) in the process.

But the US & UK have been badly hurt. The UK more so due to timidity and “off books debt” caused by PPI/PFI stupidity and the shmoozing of the financial industries of government ministers to get favourable deregulation.

Oh and the real joke of it all is that the USD and EUR have been so weakened that China (if it was stupid enough) could actualy promot it’s currency (yuan) to that of a third international trading currency ( http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=china+currency+undervalued ).