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Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

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Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#161
post #78
post #3

Author here - if you have any questions, please do let me know!

First, thank you for the article and discussion. Do you have any thoughts on the role and practicality of deterrence in this space?

No, not really - however, based on this post, several people contacted me with questions like these. I asked around and got recommended https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cyber-Persistence-Theory-Redefining... for a more theoretical basis. Haven't read it yet though.

Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China imports coal from the United States.

They have huge amounts, but want slightly more. They're the biggest coal producer, producing half the world's coal, and then consuming it too, along with importing an extra 10% which is coking coal for steel making. They have lots of lignite and bituminous coal, which is fine for heat and electricity, and would be fine for turning into gas and liquid hydrocarbon fuel if that was useful.

Am I missing something? This does not seem consistent with what I have seen going out of the harbors. Exports of both thermal and metallurgical coal from the United States to China have increased [0][1].

[0]: https://www.eia.gov/coal/production/quarterly/pdf/t9p01p1.pd...

[1]: https://www.eia.gov/coal/production/quarterly/pdf/t11p01p1.p...

Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#164
post #21
post #8

It does feel mad that we outsource so much of our national infrastructure maintenance to China. When/if they invade Taiwan, how are we going to do anything when they have that sort of leverage over us? It was bad enough with Russias gas

Well US is not dependent on anyone for her Energy needs. Unlike China. Its quite vulnerable on that front if a few pipelines blow up ala nord stream. This is also why the US has such a large presence in the middle east.

The Chinese are building solar farms and wind farms at an incredibly fast pace. Have you seen how cheap Chinese solar panels are? It's safe to assume by the time they decide to make a military move on Taiwan, they will have achieved energy independence as well.

Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#165
post #3

Author here - if you have any questions, please do let me know!

Not a question.

However as a fellow european, having worked for large "national/eu important companies", this article resonated a lot with me and my frustrations. Granted I don't do anything "security" related.

Everything in "it infrastructure" has been outsourced to India, at best Poland. You have competent people in eu offices that don't have the power to use their own hardware. You have to beg for weeks to barely skilled ticket masters from outsourcing companies, endless meetings.

All eu staff is relegated to feature factories or process managers. Zero ops. "It's not our core competency."

I refuse to ever again work for the large "of national security" european companies. It's soul crushing. And it is very clear nobody cares.

It hurts me everytime I read how tens of billions are allocated for whatever EU soverignity. I have been in way too many 10 managers 2 engineers teams with way too many long meetings begging teams from $indian_outsourcing_company to let me do my job.

Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#166
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, sure. But the US chooses who it integrates with militarily. An alternative approach would have been to say "hey, yeah we can see why you'd want to join - but this will foment tensions with Russia, so you can't". That is the kind of diplomacy would have prevented Russia from invading its neighbours. It would have been difficult to get worse outcomes with that approach than what the powers that be managed to get…

The only thing that would have changed is that Russia now also could invade the baltic states. Why do you think Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if the NATO had not been expanded?

>Why do you think Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if the NATO had not been expanded? Because the main reason for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine is a miscalculation about resistance. With the expansion of NATO, the prospect of invasion would be assessed closer to reality and dismissed as counterproductive

Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Change Healthcare has lost $872M since it was attacked in February. The question is, what is the cost to secure? I've been in so many meetings where the cost of security is 10-15x the cost of a breach. It's horrifying.

Part of this is that nobody has cared about security since the beginning, for basically anything in tech. It’s an industry-wide issue that permeates every level of the stack. And so yeah, individual companies trying to retrofit security onto a jenga tower of technology is going to have to spend a ridiculous amount of resources to have any kind of impact. I don’t know what the answer is, but I too believe things won’t…

Security wasn’t really a design consideration especially in the one use one PC era. We’re still trying to secure hardware and software descended from that era.

Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#168
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, sure. But the US chooses who it integrates with militarily. An alternative approach would have been to say "hey, yeah we can see why you'd want to join - but this will foment tensions with Russia, so you can't". That is the kind of diplomacy would have prevented Russia from invading its neighbours. It would have been difficult to get worse outcomes with that approach than what the powers that be managed to get…

So what was first, Russia invading neighbors, or neighbors wanting to join NATO? I'll give you the answer: Chechnya. Thinking that Russia would never invade an independent Georgia or Ukraine is very naive, to say the least. If you want a "neutral" country, take a look at Belarus. A neutral country in Russia's eyes only has connections with Russia, not with the West. They make it very clear which countries they want "…

>Ukrainians want a sovereign democratic country, and they are willing to pay a very high price for that.

Doesn't seemed to be true, considering Ban for men's leaving country, forcefull conscription and cancelled elections

Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#169
What's grating on my nerves is that I called out a lot of security concerns in courts & justice software and shortly after was constructively dismissed.

I've been unemployed ever since.

I'm getting antsy about income and getting no traction on my job search.

How many other people are advanced in tech but having some difficulty finding work right now?

How tempted will they be to switch to black hat for income?

I can't be the only one thinking this way.

Re: Cyber Security: A pre-war reality check

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of this is that nobody has cared about security since the beginning, for basically anything in tech. It’s an industry-wide issue that permeates every level of the stack. And so yeah, individual companies trying to retrofit security onto a jenga tower of technology is going to have to spend a ridiculous amount of resources to have any kind of impact. I don’t know what the answer is, but I too believe things won’t…

> I don’t know what the answer is, but I too believe things won’t change until the day someone figures out how to push a “kill all humans” OTA update to all the self-driving cars on some random Tuesday afternoon. Even in that case I’m pessimistic that any action will happen. People will go on TV and say grave things, hearings will be held. Fingers will be pointed. Task Forces will kick off. Reports will be written. B…

You are describing the current world, where politicians dissolve issues. There’s a saying in Europe that no minister of defense was ever nominated. Real ministers of war, when there is war, appoint themselves into position.

When there is a real problem, people act upon it (assuming society is functional - otherwise the country simply dies). That’s why there is no better training for war than war itself. Ukraine has already unrooted all of the peace & love & no armament folklore in France, and even turned a lot of ecologists into pro-nuclear voters.

So yes, I wouldn’t be surprised if guarantees of offline mode (with regular drills) were passed into law for electric cars and everything cloudy, including IntelliJ.

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