Cybersecurity experts say fake accounts created to give China miners competitive advantage
Pro-Chinese agents posed as concerned local residents on social media to try to spark protests over the opening of rare earth mines in the U.S. and Canada, cybersecurity researchers said in a new report.
The fake Twitter and Facebook accounts were created to give China, the largest producer of rare earth minerals, a competitive advantage, cybersecurity research company Mandiant disclosed on Tuesday.
Expecting publicly traded companies to do more than simply return shareholder value — their fiduciary responsibility — is a fairly new development in Western capitalism. The idea that corporate leadership and shareholders should explicitly care about environmental, social, and corporate governance (known as ESG) issues beyond how they might affect the bottom line has been around for only about 30 years.
But now, ESG investing has become a big driver in steering capital to corporations deemed to be good stewards of subjective principles. By 2025, financial management firms that claim to invest with ESG principles are projected to account for $50 trillion of a total global value of $140.5 trillion — more than a third of managed investments.
A commissioner with the U.S. communications regulator is asking Apple and Google to consider banning TikTok from their app stores over data security concerns related to the Chinese-owned company.
Brendan Carr, a commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has written a letter to the CEOs of both companies, alerting them that the wildly popular video-sharing app does not comply with the requirements of their app store policies.
OTTAWA – It remains unclear whether Canada will participate in a new US$600-billion project from the G7 being set up as a western counterbalance China’s massive Belt and Road Initiative economic power play.
U.S. President Joe Biden and other G7 leaders officially launched the newly renamed Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment at their annual gathering over the weekend in Germany, pledging US$600 billion in investment for the plan. It is being positioned as an alternative to China’s sprawling Belt and Road Initiative, which has used Beijing’s economic might to extend its influence around Africa, Asia and Europe.
On June 21, China’s People’s Daily reported that the United States and Taiwan were about to participate in the annual Monterey Talks. The U.S. side, China’s most authoritative publication stated, was expected to offer 20 types of weapons for sale to Taiwan, “with emphasis on building ‘asymmetric capability.'”
Taiwan, which the People’s Republic of China claims as its 34th province, already has asymmetric capabilities, and one of them could be as powerful as a nuclear weapon.
Four Takeaways From a Times Investigation Into China’s Expanding Surveillance State
China’s ambition to collect a staggering amount of personal data from everyday citizens is more expansive than previously known, a Times investigation has found. Phone-tracking devices are now everywhere. The police are creating some of the largest DNA databases in the world. And the authorities are building upon facial recognition technology to collect voice prints from the general public.
OTTAWA – A federal research unit detected what might be a Chinese Communist Party information operation that aimed to discourage Canadians of Chinese heritage from voting for the Conservatives in the last federal election.
The Sept. 13, 2021, analysis by Rapid Response Mechanism Canada, which tracks foreign interference, says researchers observed Communist Party media accounts on Chinese social media platform Douyin widely sharing a narrative that the Conservatives would all but sever diplomatic relations with Beijing.
The report, obtained by The Canadian Press through the Access to Information Act, was prepared just a week before Canadians went to the polls.
A look at the history of revolutionary China evokes parallels with present-day Canadian society. In specific terms, this relates to China’s Cultural Revolution, a socio-political movement spanning from 1966 until founder Chairman Mao Tse Tung’s death in 1976.
Feds @CMHC_ca looked for #discrimination in housing, discovered pricest realty is owned by Chinese. Conclusion? "Further research is needed" https://t.co/54Sof6PnrO #bcpoli #cdnpoli @TOAdamVaughan pic.twitter.com/SBtyMN8fn9
— Blacklock's Reporter (@mindingottawa) June 21, 2022
h/t RM
Former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole claims foreign interference from China in the last election cost his party seats. But some media and national security experts are pushing back, arguing that it’s difficult to conclusively prove interference and that any intervention was unlikely to have been so decisive.
U.S.-based researcher Christopher Balding says he found evidence that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is obtaining data via smart coffee machines that are made in China, warning that such tactics may be employed against U.S. consumers.
Balding, who released a report via New Kite Data Labs, said issues with the Chinese internet-connected coffee machines are allowing CCP officials to collect data on Americans.
China has launched its third aircraft carrier, the first designed and built entirely in the country, marking a significant military advance for the Asian superpower.
The announcement comes as tensions between China and the US have ramped up in recent weeks over Beijing’s sabre-rattling towards self-ruled Taiwan, which it views as a breakaway province to be seized by force if necessary.
Launched in a Shanghai shipyard to great fanfare, the Fujian is more technically advanced than the other Chinese carriers.
Since 2019, China has been pursuing a new concept of war, known as “intelligentized warfare.” The idea is to operationalize artificial intelligence (AI) and the use of unmanned platforms (such as drones) in a way that subdues the enemy, ultimately without having to resort to conventional “hot” warfare.
Parallels have been drawn between the war in Ukraine and a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. While these situations differ in many respects, both countries exist outside of a collective security apparatus like NATO, and both face existential threats posed by much larger and hostile neighbors. Lacking nuclear weapons and outgunned in conventional terms, both the Ukrainian and Taiwanese militaries have little choice but to wage asymmetric warfare. Yet few people truly know, let alone understand, Taiwan’s current defense policy and the path forward.
Scientists in China say they have detected what could be the trace of a signal from an alien civilization.
The researchers have identified what they have called “suspicious” signals from space as part of a search for evidence of aliens, and work is ongoing to determine what they might be.
The signals were detected by China’s FAST radio telescope, also referred to as the “Sky Eye” telescope. With a dish diameter of 1,600 ft, it is the largest of its kind in the world, and since 2020 the telescope has been involved in researching possible alien life.
