When you couple a massive government spying program with triple encryption and unknown exploits in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Adobe’s Acrobat, you get a terribly troubling outcome. It seems the Chinese have banks and banks of engineers hacking the world’s software by using government/corporate espionage on a level not before seen. The object of this program was among other things to get source code from the companies which were hacked. In fact they succeeded in stealing much of it. China has wiped away much of the world’s manufacturing jobs and now produces cheap goods with working standards below those in the prisons of most developed nations.

In the process, some companies in the country have killed and injured people by exporting items like toothpaste, milk and children’s jewelry which is tainted and/or poisonous.

Now, it seems, software may be is next. With this brazen attack the company has stolen massive amounts of private corporate information from dozens of the world’s technology companies. This has caused companies to make security changes in not only their back offices but their customer-facing products as well.

The question is – will the US government do anything about it and moreover what can be done? China after makes all the world’s goods and buys much of the debt in the US allowing the government to spend far beyond its means. To date, the US has done is issue a formal diplomatic note which as far as I can gather ranks just above the formal diplomatic sticking the tongue out.
 

Then again what should the punishment be for having a government program whose goal is the theft of intellectual property on a massive scale? And what if anything can be done to keep China or other governments from doing the same thing?

Sadly, this is not something I have a ready answer for – witty or otherwise. I just have to commend Google for threatening to pull out of the country. It takes real guts to make such a statement and this could be a great time for the US and others to put massive pressure on China to loosen its tight grip on its citizens and change.

Do I believe anything of substance will come out as a result of this incident? Sadly no – but I hope I am wrong.