The China Syndrome, part 7

Rob Rosenberger, Vmyths co-founder
Wednesday, 29 May 2002

WELL! WE CAN now add Asia Times Online to the list of publications with the guts to even acknowledge "The China Syndrome." The total now stands at five.

White House fearmonger Richard "digital Pearl Harbor" Clarke did not consider "The China Syndrome" important enough to bring it up to senator Charles "digital armageddon" Schumer in February at a cyber-security hearing on Capitol Hill.

Hmmm, did I say "five"? Let's see: The Wall Street Journal, The Register, Vmyths, the Weekly Standard, and now Asia Times Online. Yep, "five." The latter publication made the list when reporter James Borton filed a credulous story about Beijing's ability to destroy America with a computer virus. Now, I may call it a credulous story, but I'll give Borton serious credit for doing his (one-sided) research. He included a paragraph about "The China Syndrome":

US technologies of surveillance, encryption, firewalls, and even viruses have been willingly transferred to Chinese partners in the past several years as part of China's budding efforts to enter the New Economy. Rand Corp's James Mulvenon maintains that such US companies as Network Associates (McAfee Anti Virus), and Symantec (Norton Anti Virus) gained entry to China's market by voluntarily providing China's Public Security Bureau with more than 300 computer viral strains.

Mulvenon got the number wrong by two orders of magnitude. The original figure stood at 30,000 viruses before the antivirus cartel (shall we say) "corrected" it to a more respectable value of 500 viruses — still almost twice what Mulvenon told reporters. But I must give the man credit for even daring to talk about ... um, about... Well, let's call a spade a spade. I give Mulvenon credit for daring to talk about something he almost certainly learned by reading Vmyths. (No offense taken, Jimmy. You've got an open invitation if you ever want to talk to me about "The China Syndrome.") Now, you'll notice I didn't include Information Security magazine in the list of five gutsy publications. You'll notice I didn't mention Virus Bulletin newsletter. In fact you'll notice I didn't peg a single computer security publication besides Vmyths. Everyone else avoided "The China Syndrome" like the plague. Then again, "avoided" may be too strong a word. Perhaps every other computer security publication on Earth views it as "a complete waste of ink"? I mean, think about it for a moment:

Why would subscribers to a computer security magazine care if antivirus firms transfer dangerous virus technology to an oppressive government that recently held U.S. servicemen hostage?
Why would a computer security pundit write about how the White House tacitly approves the U.S. transfer of dangerous virus technology to China while simultaneously spewing rhetoric about the looming threat of a Chinese über-virus?
Why would the U.S. Department of Defense (a very large antivirus customer) care if their own cyber-bodyguards supply "weapons of war" to a country the CIA predicts will cyber-attack the U.S. Department of Defense in the very near future?
Why would the U.S. senate want to oversee U.S. firms who build cyber-warfare battlelabs with millions of dollars in federal grants and then transfer cyber-warfare technology to a regime unafraid to point tanks at their own citizens in their own capitol just to protect an untenable communistic dogma?
Why would FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center bother to interview the antivirus industry's oldest respected critic who believes the U.S. arm of the cartel misled the FBI agents ~~who cavort with the U.S. arm of~~--

Mulvenon got the number wrong by two orders of magnitude. The original figure stood at 30,000 viruses before the antivirus cartel (shall we say) "corrected" it to a more respectable value of 500 viruses.

Uh, let's just forget I wrote that last part.
COMPUTER SECURITY MAGAZINES want to publish stories with substance, not baseless paranoia. Only a paranoid schizophrenic would find any controversy in "The China Syndrome." Hence demoted White House fearmonger Richard "digital Pearl Harbor" Clarke did not consider it important enough to bring it up to senator Charles "digital armageddon" Schumer in February at a cyber-security hearing on Capitol Hill. And so I must congratulate Rand Corporation's resident paranoid schizophrenic, James Mulvenon. He convinced a reporter to acknowledge "The China Syndrome" — which is more than I can say for the vocal critics at Vmyths who've ranted about it for over a year now...