Battles are today fought in cyberspace , you can open a dam , you can cut communications , you can enter cell phones , you can find anybody , no technologically advanced nation no matter where wants to be found with its pants down , the British NHS was hacked as an example , banks are paranoid that money today an be transferred with the right knowhow - nothing and nobody is above these actions.

China is paranoid - so is everywhere that has increasing technological dependency.

BM

Di (amina046) said:

I actually do not care who spies on me. Thinking about it, I actually prefer the Chinese over the Americans.

Google knows more about me than I would like, so they are ahead of the Chinese on that regard.

Also, China doesn't just monitor you, it judges you on your Social Credit score.

Jenifer (Zarknorph) said:  China doesn't just monitor you, it judges you on your Social Credit score.

And my society doesn't do the same thing?

How come at least three people I've known were called up for jury service while still in their yoof and, for all I know, have been doing it regularly every few years since?

I've only been called up once.

ABC News

France's digital tax targeting US tech giants could spark a new disruption in world trade

Amazon, Facebook and Google have hit back at a move by France to tax their sales, but Australia may soon follow.

Read more from ABC News

Jenifer (Zarknorph) said: I've only been called up once.

You're probably a bad girl, unable to accept any evidence put in front of you.

Jenifer (Zarknorph) said: Amazon, Facebook and Google have hit back at a move by France to tax their sales, but Australia may soon follow.

Please don't remind me of another terrible result from Brexit.

Trump has told us we'll not get a trade deal with the US unless we agree to forego taxing US corporations.

Di (amina046) said:

I actually do not care who spies on me. 

I care a great deal about who intercepts the electronic communications of myself and my neighbours.

Nowadays, a large portion of political discussion is online.   Someone who can identify dissenting opinions, and who has the power to penalise them, is in a position to leverage that power into tyrrany.

Even just being able to profile individual voters well enough to manipulate them via micro-targeted arguments is a game changer.

True, many people have voluntarily given such information to big companies such as Facebook.   And, as we've seen in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, that's dangerous because even if Facebook don't have that sort of political ambition, those who do have it may be able to winkle the data away from Facebook.

But, even so, there's a big difference between that, and between spying happening at the hardware level where most people won't have the ability to opt-out of being listened into.

Di (amina046) said:

Thinking about it, I actually prefer the Chinese over the Americans.

Neither the Donald Trump administration nor the Xi Jinping administration have my best interests at heart.   They are both, first and foremost, pursuing their own national interest (or possibly just the interests of certain leaders and financial backers).

But, on average, over the last 50 years America has been for global trade, free markets, democracy and the rule of law.    While China has not.

So I'd say my interests coincide more closely with those of America than those of China.   If you're in doubt about that, you don't know enough about Tibet, or the Falun Gong.

AletheiaAtha said:  I'd say my interests coincide more closely with those of America than those of China.   

I'm rather reluctant to accept that. It could be wholly and definitely true - but only because I'm white and speak English. If I was brown and spoke some minority language and was under occupation, Chinese colonialisation might suit me better.

AletheiaAtha said:    If you're in doubt about that, you don't know enough about Tibet, or the Falun Gong.

I'm not sure that Tibetans are suffering worse than native Americans did.

While Falun Gong has twice as many members as the Communist Party of China - its a much, much bigger threat than American communists ever posed to the US government and social stability.

BerrySteph said:

I'm not sure that Tibetans are suffering worse than native Americans did.

That's a pretty low bar.

And, even so, I'd like to think that America today isn't the same as America 75 years ago (internment of ethnic Japanese American citizens) or America of 175 years ago.