Beyond (Un)Reasonable Doubt

Google can be--and is--both loved and hated. At the moment one has to love the search engine company since it and it alone has had the courage and savvy to tell it like it is. To let the world and its brother know that the Chinese government is executing major, very sophisticated cyber-espionage attacks against not only Google but thirty some other major companies as well.

Google placed the cyber attacks on top of the Beijing demands for search engine self-censorship as a reason to consider withdrawing entirely from the enormous Chinese marketplace. While analysts have debated the long and short-term economic impact of this threat, the reality is that someone, sometime, has to take the toughest of tough lines against the hostile Chinese government.

In the normal course of affairs it is governments which take the hardline, make the threats, issue ultimata, but when the steward of international affairs is lacking in will or capacity to do the right thing, then it is necessary that a private enterprise step up and take a whack at the problem. This is what Google is doing. It may be acting in its own best interests but in doing so it is acting in the best interests of the US as well.

"Engine Charley" Wilson may have been wrong when he stated, "What is good for General Motors is good for the country." back when he was Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense. If today the panjandrums of Google were to make a similar comment, they would be right on.

Reputedly the US State Department will issue a "demarche" in the next week or so on the Chinese matter. If it is keeping with past Notes, the US will express "concern" perhaps even "grave concern" over the allegations. It will request that the Beijing government investigate the situation. It might even be so bold as to allude to unspecified "consequences" if the Chinese do not cease and desist in their wholesale efforts to steal everything not nailed down in cyberspace.

If the past is the reliable guide it normally is, the Chinese government will reject the demarche. The rejection will contain all the usual rhetoric about "Cold War thinking" and US "backsliding." Chinese foreign ministry spokespeople will invoke the sacred totem of "Chinese sovereignty" and Chinese "internal affairs" along with the new fetish of the supremacy and perfection of the Chinese legal and judicial systems.

The ball will be hit back over the net by the half-hearted folks of Foggy Bottom. They (and quite possibly SecState Clinton) will "deplore" the Chinese attitude but otherwise will let the matter slide away into diplomatic oblivion.

The three step model which has characterized Sino-American relations for some years now typifies what the Secretary of State described a few days ago as she started off on her Asian jaunt as a "mature" relationship between the US and China. Apparently Ms Clinton sees a "mature" relation as being inherently asymmetrical, that is, a relationship in which one party lies, cheats, steals, and engages in a general sort of Adolescent Oppositional Defiance Disorder and the other party is endlessly patient, understanding, willing to compromise, and quite willing to ignore manifestations of hostile behavior.

In all probability the neat, lawyerly minds of Secretary Clinton, President Obama, and other legal types in the administration are greatly perturbed by the inability to prove the Chinese culpability in this as well as other instances of cyber-espionage to the criminal justice standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt." Lawyers apparently have such tidy little minds that it is difficult or even impossible for them to get a grip on the messy realities of normal international discourse such as espionage (whether cyber or the old fashioned sort) and the use of terror tactics by both non-state and state actors.

The reality of cyber based espionage is that it is nearly impossible to prove to the standards demanded by an American court of law. That ground truth has been reemphasized by such non-techno-wonks as the National Security Council as well as by legions of highly competent techies.

Even if it can be demonstrated that the attacks originated in China using a server located in Taiwan that in no way proves the Beijing regime either executed, authorized, or knew about the attacks. While the sophistication of the effort in its exploitation of a small flaw in the software for pre-Internet Explorer 8 can be best (and perhaps only) explained by direct governmental and military involvement, it does not in and of itself prove the Trolls of Beijing masterminded the operation.

Without the highest standard of proof, the lawyers of the Obama administration cannot bring themselves to do more than issue pro forma expressions of concern, of minor irritation. Without the sort of incontrovertible evidence which would make for a slam-dunk conviction in Federal Court, the pettifoggers of the administration cannot do more than wring their hands over the theft of billions of dollars in US intellectual property or even the penetration of critical defense establishment systems.

This orientation, this narrowness of both mind and vision, assures that President Obama and presumably others in his administration will take a far more vigorous position with the violations of human rights executed by the Beijing authorities in their (successful) efforts to censor searches and sites. Human rights is a far more attractive mast on which to nail the colors of indignation then is the fundamental reality that the Chinese government and military are engaged in wholesale theft of American property and defense secrets. After all there is no real need to prove anything in the realm of human rights abridgement. The allegation is enough.

Then, of course, there is the other inhibition operating on the Obama administration. Not only do the Trolls of Beijing hold a trillion dollars more or less of US government notes, the administration and the "Progressive Caucus" in Congress need the same Trolls to pick up a few tens of billions more in order that the "Transformational Agenda" can be executed in full.

Perhaps these less-than-reality oriented, agenda driven, multi-cultural advocates of the post-modern era are totally unconcerned with Chinese espionage. In their mental calculus the theft of intellectual property from mere corporations or the undercutting of US national security and defense capacities is of little moment compared to the pressing need to put the Transformational Agenda into full effect.

After all, which is more important, the present and future security and economic strength of the nation or the bringing of the blessings of True Belief to the benighted multitude of Americans? It seems the Obama administration has made the choice.

Now, perhaps, the founders of Google are regretting their full-throated support of Mr Obama. That would be a nice wrinkle to the current imbroglio.