“The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head.”
- H.L. Mencken, “A Time to be Wary” Continue reading Almanac: H.L. Mencken on bureaucracy at About Last Night.... Read more
Reality is stranger than fiction ...
Cai Wei, the Chinese Consul-General in the city of Houston, is refusing orders by the Trump administration to close the diplomatic compound which is suspected of running sophisticated espionage activities.
Between 2014 and 2019, the career diplomat served as the Deputy Chief of Mission at the Chinese embassy in Australia, and had previously worked in other posts including the five-eyes intelligence partner country Canada.
In 2018, the ABC revealed Cai Wei used a dinner gathering with Labor MPs in Canberra to strongly deny the Chinese Communist Party was trying to control foreign students studying in Australia.
Chinese diplomat accused of spying operation in US used to work in Australia
COLD WAR II: U.S. charges Chinese researcher with lying, as tensions rise. “Federal prosecutors have charged a Chinese cancer researcher at the University of California, Davis, with lying about her ties to the Chinese military and Communist Party when seeking a visa to come to the U.S. The FBI believes she is evading arrest by staying at China’s consulate in San Francisco.”
Chinese hackers counted on no one clicking ‘update’ in decade-long spread
The Department of Justice unsealed an indictment Tuesday alleging two hackers worked in collaboration with the Chinese Ministry of State Security to steal everything from video game source code to weapons designs from hundreds of companies around the globe. And, if the indictment is to be believed, the hackers were able to do much of this by exploiting people’s natural laziness about updating their software.
Notably, the indictment claims, the two hackers — Li Xiaoyu, 34, and Dong Jiazhi, 33 — had a decade-long spree that succeeded, in large part, because people and companies often don’t immediately download and install software patches as soon as they become available.
“[To] gain initial access to victim networks, the defendants primarily exploited publicly known software vulnerabilities in popular web server software, web application development suites, and software collaboration programs,” reads a DOJ press release.
It amazes me how many people — including IT pros who ought to know better — shrug off security patches.
DECOUPLING: U.S. has ordered China consulate in Houston to close – State department spokesperson.“We have directed the closure of PRC Consulate General Houston, in order to protect American intellectual property and Americans’ private information.”
WHO IS A WHOLLY OWNED SUBSIDIARY OF THE PRC: WHO Official Promotes Conspiracy Theory Website to Bolster China’s Coronavirus Disinformation Campaign
We must change China or China will change us, Pompeo warns
Houston Chinese consulate a 'hub of spying', Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says as US-China tensions escalate
Chinese Scientist Wanted for Visa Fraud Hiding in San ...
Researchers Charged with Visa Fraud After Lying About Their Work for China’s People’s Liberation Army
China’s San Francisco Consulate Harboring Known Fugitive from Justice
Four individuals have recently been charged with visa fraud in connection with a scheme to lie about their status as members of the People’s Republic of China’s military forces, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), while in the United States conducting research. Three of these individuals have been arrested and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is seeking the fourth who is a fugitive from justice currently being harbored at the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco.
Researchers Charged with Visa Fraud After Lying About Their ...
Chinese consulate in San Francisco harboring fugitive, FBI says
GOOD: Austin Tong is refusing to back down after posting a photograph in which he criticized China’s Tiananmen Square massacre. Fordham’s insistence on a public apology here must mean they get a lot of money from the PRC or something. As I say, it’s easy to tell who’s on the payroll, or at least on the team.
Fordham University President Joseph McShane needs to be called to account for this bullying.
90 Chinese nuclear scientists resigned; investigation underway.
The State Council, China’s Cabinet, has sent an investigative team with other government agencies to look into the recent resignation of over 90 nuclear security scientists at an institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the academy said on Tuesday.
The mystery surrounding the resignation of half of the employees in that research institute became one of the most talked-about topics in China.
The team consists of officials from the State Council’s general office, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the CAS and other departments. It will head to Hefei, Anhui province, to thoroughly investigate the situation, the academy said.
The recent resignation of over 90 nuclear security scientists at the academy’s Institute of Nuclear Energy Safety Technology has ignited public speculation on institutional bureaucracy, employee poaching and inadequate financial support for young scientific talent.
Plus this zinger at the end: “The timing of their resignation also made the Chinese netizens wonder if the scientists wanted to break their ties with the Chinese Communist Party before its imminent demise.”
FLASHBACK: Why US outsourced bat virus research to Wuhan: US-funded $3.7 million project approved by Trump’s Covid-19 guru Dr Anthony Fauci in 2015 after US ban imposed on ‘monster-germ’ research. Because this story is over a week old and I haven’t seen anything.
Back in October 2014, the US government had placed a federal moratorium on gain-of-function (GOF) research – altering natural pathogens to make them more deadly and infectious – as a result of rising fears about a possible pandemic caused by an accidental or deliberate release of these genetically engineered monster germs.
This was in part due to lab accidents at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in July 2014 that raised questions about biosafety at US high-containment labs.
At that time, the CDC had closed two labs and halted some biological shipments in the wake of several incidents in which highly pathogenic microbes were mishandled by US government laboratories: an accidental shipment of live anthrax, the discovery of forgotten live smallpox samples and a newly revealed incident in which a dangerous influenza strain was accidentally shipped from the CDC to another lab.
A CDC internal report described how scientists failed to follow proper procedures to ensure samples were inactivated before they left the lab, and also found “multiple other problems” with operating procedures in the anthrax lab.
As such in October 2014, because of public health concerns, the US government banned all federal funding on efforts to weaponize three viruses – influenza, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
In the face of a moratorium in the US, Dr Anthony Fauci – the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and currently the leading doctor in the US Coronavirus Task Force – outsourced in 2015 the GOF research to China’s Wuhan lab and licensed the lab to continue receiving US government funding.
The Wuhan lab is now at the center of scrutiny for possibly releasing the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and causing the global Covid-19 pandemic.
Worth remembering Fauci’s role here, as it may influence his conduct today.