U.S. overstates China nuclear clout, report says
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The United States has been  exaggerating China's nuclear clout in a process that could lock  the two into a Cold War-style arms race, two arms-control  advocacy groups said in a report Thursday.
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This past Sunday the Washington Post ran a piece on the possibility of a nuclear war with China. To my knowledge it's the first to appear in such an auspicious publication, so I'll quote it at length:Given China's appetites and our alliances and interests, a war is not inconceivable in Taiwan, or in Korea. To remove American nuclear escalation from the equation, China would need not parity but only a deterrent such as it has long possessed. The Chinese, however, whose nuclear thresholds are dissimilar to ours, would have other options. They know that every facet of America's economy, military and society depends on individual and networked electronic devices. Were these to fail all at once and irreparably, the nation would seize up, perhaps for years.Faced with victory, or with loss, they might choose to -- and who would venture to guarantee that they would not? -- detonate half a dozen high-megatonnage nuclear charges in the mesosphere, in an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) strike perhaps not even in American airspace, cooking almost every circuit and semiconductor, rendering the American government blind, deaf and dumber than it is already and the country unable to resist the inroads that would surely follow.  Heady stuff, written in a hawkish style reminiscent of the Cold War, but does it add up to a plausible scenario for toe-to-toe nuclear combat?
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China and Russia shunned the   United States on Thursday by boycotting U.S.-hosted talks on   North East Asian security issues that also focused on North   Korea's nuclear program.
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The Bush administration is backing away from its long-held assertions that North Korea has an active clandestine program to enrich uranium, leading some experts to believe that the original U.S. intelligence that started the crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions may have been flawed.
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(InfoWorld) - China Tuesday denied allegations that its militaryÂ hacked a Pentagon networkÂ in JuneÂ -- the second time in as many weeks that the country has responded to charges of sponsoring computer attacks. "Some people are making wild accusations against China and wantonly saying the Chinese military attacked the Pentagon's computer network," Jiang Yu, a foreign ministry spokeswoman said in Beijing, according to the state-controlled Xinhua news service. "These are totally groundless and also reflect a Cold War mentality," she added. Jiang was responding to a story published by the Financial Times this weekend that quoted American officials who said the People's Liberation Army (PLA) was behind the June hack. One person familiar with the incident told the Financial Times that there was a "very high level of confidence... trending towards total certainty" that the PLA was responsible. Other sources told the publication that Chinese hackers probed the Pentagon system for months before the attacks, which forced the U.S. to take the network offline for more than a week. The Department of Defense downplayed the attack, but declined to point the finger at any one country or group. The attack on an unclassified e-mail network in the Office of the Secretary of Defense required that the systems be taken offline, spokesman Bryan Whitman acknowledged today, but backup networks kicked in. He would not confirm that China hackers were behind the assault, saying only that it's often difficult to pinpoint the origin of an intrusion into computer systems. But the Pentagon did not stand idly by, he said. "Cyber or non-kinetic type threats to military computer networks are viewed as just as real and just as significant as physical or kinetic threats," Whitman said in a statement. "The department aggressively responds to deter all intrusions to defend what is known as the GIG, the global information grid." Just a month before the attack, the Department of Defense had issued a report claiming that the PLA fieldsÂ first-strike cyberwarfareÂ units whose arsenals include computer viruses they might unleash on enemy networks. When the Pentagon released its annual report on the state of China's military strength in late May, Jiang, the same foreign ministry spokeswoman who blasted the story today, took exception to its overall tone, although she didn't mention cyberwarfare specifically. The U.S., she said then, "continues to spread myth of the 'China Threat' by exaggerating China's military strength and expenses out of ulterior motives." Last week, Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor, raised the same issue during her visit to Beijing after the popular weekly Der Spiegel said systems at several government ministries, including Merkel's own office, had beenÂ infected with spywareÂ planted by Chinese hackers. In statements made during a press conference Aug. 27, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao called the reports of "grave concern" and promised that China would cooperate with Germany in its investigation. Today, Jiang seemed to echo Wen's comments. "The Chinese government has always opposed any Internet-wrecking crime, including hacking, and cracked down on it according to the law," she said. The Chinese military has been involved with hacking and viruses since at least the early 1990s, according to a 2000 paper written by Timothy Thomas of the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth. Coincidentally, the president of both China and the U.S. will face off this week in Australia during meetings of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. Hu Jintao, China's president, arrived in the country yesterday, while President George W. Bush arrived in Sydney today. Trade and climate change are expected to lead the agenda during the 21-country talks. Hu and Bush are scheduled to meet one-on-one during the conference. Â  Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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China is opposed to threatening Iran with war over its nuclear program and stands for a diplomatic solution, a government spokeswoman said on Tuesday.
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BusinessWeek Online - When it comes to the balance of power in East Asia, American strategic planners have had one particular nightmare: If the Chinese military could acquire sophisticated defense hardware and military systems from the European Union, Beijing could get a substantial assist in a possible confrontation with Taiwan. So last December, when European leaders announced they would seek to end a 15-year ban on weapons sales to China, Washington was quick to voice its displeasure. Pentagon officials talked darkly about restricting European access to sensitive U.S. ...
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CHINA has admitted a &quot;regrettable&quot; intrusion by one of its nuclear-powered submarines into Japanese territorial waters last week.
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The United States is somewhat less confident that North Korea has a production-scale covert nuclear enrichment program than it used to be, a top U.S. intelligence official said on Tuesday.
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The United States, which sees China as a long-term strategic rival, has lobbied the EU against lifting the ban, citing a potential threat to Taiwan and to US interests in Asia.
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China's relations with the United States were stable in the past year, with some "major" advances, according to a Foreign Ministry report, but frictions remain over Taiwan and trade, state media reported on Sunday.
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The U.S. formally accused China on Monday of failing to open the nationÂs economy and crack down on piracy of foreign goods.
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China defended its record on religious freedom Thursday, saying all Chinese can worship as they choose with no restrictions, and it blasted a U.S. government report that said Beijing persecutes some believers.
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China and Russia shunned the  United States on Thursday by boycotting U.S.-hosted talks on  North East Asian security issues that also focused on North  Korea's nuclear program.
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The United States said it was reevaluating possible space cooperation with China, including joint moon exploration, following Beijing's recent anti-satellite weapon test.
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A congressional report on Iran's nuclear program has been blasted as "outrageous and dishonest" by the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog. The IAEA slams the House Intelligence Committee report for saying Iran "is currently enriching uranium to weapons grade." The report also insinuates the IAEA may be in cahoots with Tehran in covering up Iran's nuclear ambitions.
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The United States warned China Monday that its announced military spending boost was &quot;inconsistent&quot; with peaceful growth and hinted that Beijing was understating its defense expenditures.