Every year, China hacks into American companies and steal billions of dollars in intellectual property, including weapon designs. I will research how the U.S. government can take specific steps to prevent this. My brainstorm maps the various conclusions that the sources I have read made. The sources all disagree on the best ways to prevent cyber attacks.
All posts by Ruben Krueger
My Research Topic
My research is on China’s widespread cyber-based economic espionage on the United States and how this is viewed as a national security threat. This is significant because 1) according to various sources, China has stolen billions of dollars in trade secrets 2) if this is a national security threat, then there should be a concerted effort to end this.
A 2016 Congressional report found that, without a doubt, China’s cyber activities are a danger to the United States. The report stated that China has compromised national security agencies and that they have been able to do this without impunity. Further, the authors wrote that this may help China in a conflict with the United States.
Other sources are not as bellicose. For example, one source argued that the China’s activities are focused on economic gain, not military advantage. I hope to show that viewing China as an enemy will be of great detriment to the United States. The United States and China are not rivals for control of the world, but two powers who need each other.
Sci-fi and Political Messages
In an episode of Star Trek, the crew is transported to an alternate universe where they are serving a despicable empire. Instead of being peaceful, they are interested only in conquering worlds. They become imperialists, exploiting other people; for example, the anti-Enterprise crew force another world to allow mining on their world. This is clearly meant to represent the Soviet Union, with the real Enterprise being the U.S. The distinction between the universes is made even more transparent, as the anti-Enterprise is poorly lit, as opposed to the bright Enterprise. This furthers the message that the U.S. is the protagonist and the Soviet Union is the antagonist in the world’s narrative.
As Sarantakes writes, “The message of the episode is that a democratic country like the United States is different from and better than its autocratic rival, the Soviet Union and that U.S. foreign policy should reject these merits.
Star Trek isn’t the only show to do this. As Sarantakes notes, because science fiction and fantasy media can hide behind the fact that they are not connected to reality, controversial positions can be taken. For example, in the sci-fi movie District 9, aliens are contained to ghettos in a small part of South Africa. The aliens are subjected to a military occupation, and cannot leave for home. This is a metaphor for apartheid South Africa, as it shows a community of people being discriminated against.
A Tale of Dangerous Cities
The Soviet Union was an evil empire, always expanding and threatening the American way of life. Although Moscow was thousands of miles away, there was an enemy closer to home: the city. The city was a target for nuclear attack; the densely-populated centers were more dangerous than spread-out suburbs. Or as Farish wrote,
“… postwar America was characterized by a powerful disillusion for urban life that began at the core. Central cities, …. were spaces of blight, repositories of extreme cultures, classes, and races, threatened from above and within. This language of anxious urbanism may well have been symbolic camouflage for broader fears…”
The suburbs became a retreat from the heterogeneous (i.e., non-white) cities, and thus a place of safety. This quote sums up Farish’s thesis: in Cold War America, among the changes brought by the post-World War II world and the changing demographics of America, the cities were attacked by the intelligentsia as being unsafe.
However, this disillusionment did not end with the Cold War. When the Twin Towers fell, an indelible impression was made upon the American psyche. The Twin Towers were a symbol of American might: our capitalism, wealth, strength, and ingenuity. The September 11th terrorist attacks and Hiroshima shared a lot of similarities: countless lives were lost in such a short amount of time, it was a total surprise and urban destruction.
Trump and the Cold War: His U.N. Speech
The official transcript of the speech can be found here:
“In America, we do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone,” as President Trump spoke to the U.N. General Assembly this month, “but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to watch.” With this simple declaration, the commander-in-chief establishes a dichotomy: there are those who live the “correct” (American) way of life, and those who do not. This is one of the ways in which Cold War rhetoric—that is, the arguments which were used in the Cold War era—appeared in Trump’s address.
During Trump’s speech, “God” appears five times, and with this, he makes explicit how God is on the side of America. For example, Trump said that “…sovereign nations let their people take ownership of the future…And strong, sovereign nations allow individuals to flourish in the fullness of the life intended by God.” It is clear that America is one of those “strong, sovereign nations,” and thus America is following God’s directive. Moreover, Trump concludes his speech with a “God bless the United States of America.” These statements echo the prevailing Cold War narrative, which Senator Joseph McCarthy best explained as “today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity” at a Women’s Republican Club in 1950.
Despite our relationship with God, there are existential threats to our nation. As Trump described, “…each day also brings news of growing dangers that threaten everything we cherish and value… Rogue regimes represented in this body…threaten other nations and their own people with the most destructive weapons known to humanity.” This harkens back to the perpetual fear during the Cold War of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. This fear was so great that our own nuclear weapons were seen as the only defense. President Truman summed this up by saying “The United States should not under any circumstances throw away our gun [nuclear weapons] until we are sure the rest of the world cannot arm against us.”
Although Joseph McCarthy and Nikita Khrushchev are long gone, the language of the Cold War is very much alive. President Trump demonstrated this at the U.N. General Assembly this month, the event where the world’s heads of state assemble to discuss the issues which impact all of us.
The Rhetoric of Containment 