China And Our Security The world of security is laced with bad decisions. I just read an article which claims right in the headline what seems like a terrible decision by powerful American organizations such as the U.S. Navy, NASA and by NATO. I have no way to know if it is true or not but the article states they are buying and using computer chips from a Chinese company. This seems to me to be a very dangerous thing and stupid. The chip is an encryption chip. The Chinese company, Hualan Microelectronics which is also known as Sage Microelectronics made it onto the list of accepted companies for the U.S. to deal with. It seems at every turn we just keep shooting ourselves in the foot. It doesn’t seem only to be the United States doing this but also Europe and Canada. It seems President Biden was said to have cracked down on some Chinese companies, but until we examine what are most important areas we have to protect and not take a chance with outside companies and especially Chinese and Russian companies. How can we keep our secrets if we install chips and equipment made in countries who want to destroy us? I think this is such a basic question I am surprised to have to ask it. Why would we do these things and risk everything? Could it be too many people in positions of power in the government and business have ties to these countries and they are cash cows for them? Anyone who pays attention to the news knows a lot of our legislators seem to have business ties with these companies. There has even been much talk lately about these ties extending all the way to the White House. It used to be different years ago. Politicians still wanted to and made money under the table, but most of them would not deal with our enemies in those days. Also, local politicians were more visible. If families were in need, they would help them out in some way, they appear invisible to them today. It is being said Chinese companies have found a way not to be taken off our list of unacceptable companies. You would have to wonder how this is possible, they didn’t change their operations? They switched their auditors. What they did was change auditors in their home countries to ones in the United States and Singapore. It is beyond my understanding our people in the government who are responsible for the list of acceptable companies would fall for this tactic, and yet it seems they do. It seems our telecom equipment is said to be riddled with dangerous Chinese equipment and a U.S. senator is trying to do something about it. Debra Fischer who is on the Senate Commerce Committee and Senate Armed Services Committee wants to get a bill passed to reimburse smaller companies for replacing that equipment. She claims if this equipment isn’t replaced, it will be a national security issue if these smaller companies cannot afford to replace the equipment. It is nice to see someone realizes what is going on. Chinese companies are starting to delist from the New York Stock Exchange. Recently five major Chinese companies made an announcement they would delist. Why would they want to do this? They don’t want to comply with stock exchange regulations. China claims it is a matter of their national security and they do not want to share their auditing data with the U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, known as PCAOB. These companies may already be off the N.Y. Stock Exchange as of the writing of this article. It was said they will move to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Trade with China is fraught with problems but there is no denying the benefits the ordinary citizen gets in cheaper prices for manufactured goods. This has to be taken on balance with the idea China is collecting data on every American when we deal with them in some areas such as the internet. TicToc has long been accused of collecting our data and sending it back to the Chinese government. I say this may turn out to be almost meaningless, because our data is being collected by every company and country everywhere and China could probably just as easily get our data from other sources. What worries me the most is when national security is involved. China doesn’t seem to have any respect for patent protection. They have been accused of routinely using patented material. They also have an extensive spy network and their newer planes seem to be very similar to ours. A Chinese spy was arrested by the FBI while attempting to steal information from a GE engineer. This is nothing new. One thing China is going after are planes which they can build which will compete with Boeing and Airbus. China now has a company which has built a new plane and it is suspected China might have used patented material to create the plane. Its new aircraft company is named Comac. It is being said China is getting away with the greatest intellectual theft in human history by the Business Insider in India. Their new J-20 fighter plane is said to look too much like the American F-22 Raptor. This might not have been a problem but China’s history of stealing aircraft plans is long. One time, during the cold war, we found out the Soviet Union was planning to steal plans to our space shuttle. We allowed them to do it, but what they didn’t know was we had altered the plans. After they built their version of the shuttle and it landed, it was burned and useless. We had altered the composition of the tiles that acted to shield the ship on reentry. One thing about fair trade, it has to be fair. When a country uses children and prisoners to manufacture their products, that certainly is not fair. China seems to have no compulsion about doing this as they are dealing with other countries who use children and prisoners to dig up lithium for batteries. It is said almost every Chinese prison has a factory in it where prisoners are used to make cheap goods. As I have said before, China is out to eat our lunch and it seems in many areas we are permitting this to happen. It is time for our businesses and politicians to respect the flag and not allow our enemies to take advantage of us.
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