Mr President we spend more than 2000 times per person on defence than China but we cannot defend our defence networks, is it true?

Dear Mr President, I have some bad news for you. I know in 2011 we spent 58 percent of the total defense dollars paid out by the world's top 10 military powers and we outspend China, the next-biggest military power, by nearly 6-to-1 or over two thousand times more per person on defence than China but we cannot defend our defence networks. What's more I think we should tell the world we cannot defend them and let us be at the mercy of these heinous hackers.

Doesn't sound right to me, but actually this is what America says, but is it what it seems? I cannot imagine being back in Government and taking this as policy advice to a UK Prime Minister, rightly they would think you are bonkers and dismiss you in more ways than one, so we need to look under the message and work out what IS being said but more importantly why.

In terms of facts America does spend c58% of all worldwide money on defence and it shows. Their capability is second to none – they are THE force to be reckoned with, so why do they claim to be so defenceless? Several possible reasons:

• The first possible reason is one of deflection, sometimes when you are being criticised for the legality of your drone programme, or you are struggling to agree a budget (again, and again) and you are not seeing the growth and improvements in economic prosperity you need, you need something to get everyone focussed on – a bogeyman helps;
• The second possible reason is in a country where Corporate America wins over politics (otherwise politicians do not get re-elected), and Corporate America is driven off profit and Corporate America is also driven off individual greed, anything that gets in the way of these objectives does not make progress. How do you convince Corporate America to make the necessary security improvements – you nudge them in the right direction by driving up the fear
• The third possible reason is it might be true (but words matter)
• And finally another possible reason maybe that the USA is executing a strategy that: drives Corporate America to undertake the necessary security changes; drives Corporate America to bring jobs back home, especially from China by creating such a poisonous atmosphere about China (in this context Huawei is just collateral damage); and the USA looks to slow the economic growth of China outside of its own border and finally it sets its defence networks up as one huge honeypot.

I have written above that words matter, and as no one would want to be caught out lying when America says its defence networks are not defensible (or derivatives) it is true. What it doesn't say is that America is not defensible. All that the American Government and Military are saying is that they have moved their defences into the private sector private network infrastructure. If you think about it, it is quite obvious that to attempt to re-engineer the architecture and rebuild 15,000 separate defence networks is a monumental and thankless task. Why not just agree with the American Telecommunications Operators to install additional defences in their networks so before anything gets to Government, or military, it has been vetted and cleaned etc. Maybe this is why America doesn't want us to sell our equipment to American companies; maybe they will worry that we will see what they do with American Citizens personal data, monitoring and storing of everything that passes through telecommunications.

So why the mention of a honeypot? It's quite clever really. You have just reduced your threat landscape to probably less than 30 network points (just count the undersea cables going into America etc.) and you broadly have less than a handful of telco's, so put on those access points an array of sensors and other top secret gubbins that the USA has spent all of its defence budget on and low and behold you have created a veritable gold mine of information, and a lot of response options – more of this in a future posting.

Just to finish, have you ever asked yourself the question why Governments chose to activate legislation at a particular point in time. You could get the impression that all of these cyber security laws in America about information sharing are about a future requirement, really? More likely the kind of scenario I have detailed above has already created a law breaking situation and these new laws are there to legitimise what might have been happening already – not saying it has just might have been…

Comments

[Morgan]

US military spending is many times higher than anyone elses.
2000x higher or 2000% higher, either way, it’s a world of difference.
Think about it:
The US shares only two borders (Canada and Mexico) while China has 14 shared borders.
China’s military spending is dwarfed by US spending in spite of the fact that China is flowing with wealth and the US is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
In spite of these realities, the US defense spending is approximately 2300% more per person. Feel free to check my math.
While the US pursues hegemony militarily (US military installations are thoroughly spread across the globe) and is in a constant state of aggression, China’s military has not fired a shot in decades. Yet, for lack of credible threats, the US declares that China is the one that is dangerous. Isn’t it the other way around?
When it comes to cyber security, the US replays the same tune, “as God-ordained guardians of civilization, it’s up to us to stop those insidious Chinese”
The people who run America depend on scare tactics to justify constantly channeling hundreds of billions of tax dollars into the military machine. If they can’t maintain the mythology of “America under threat”, there will be no way to justify the ungodly costs of the war machine, the CIA ops, the secret prisons, and PRISM.

[firstname]

this issue abt the huawei makes me wonder, is the US worried that huawei could put bugged devices/technology on the market to spy on the public(please am NOT saying nor implying that it does) like it "could be doing already"?.

[Alan]

Don't worry about the US market, then. Focus elsewhere.

[John Suffolk]

Dear Mikey thank you for the comment.

You are right about the maths, that's why I sourced the figure from another article. I agree with you, based on the numbers more like 24 times.

Best wishes

John

[Mikey]

Apparently you can't do math.

You claim the US spends 6 times more on defense than China and 2000 times more per person.

But China has 4 times the US population so if the US spends 6 times more on defense then that is only 24 times more per person.