China watch.

Let this Evergrande thing snowball and crash the CCP's economy.
Yes it will hurt Australian mining interests. But these have been arguably a bad thing for Australia. By being so dependent on mineral exports, we give the CCP leverage over us. If they cut buying, their leverage drops too.
Most mines are foreign owned anyway. Digging up a country and handing the profits to a foreign company rarely ends well for the country unless there are significant value adds like steel manufacturing, mineral processing etc. We've lost those.

When China opened its fifth research station in Antarctica this month, analysts sounded alarm bells about potential security threats on Australia's southern doorstep.

Experts warned that China's expanding activity in Antarctica combined with Australia's inaction and lack of funding could lead to Beijing's increased strategic presence in the frozen continent.

The new Qinling base could also improve China's surveillance capabilities and give them more control over transport routes to exploit resources, they say.

www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-18/china-s-new-antarctic-station-qinling-in-antarctica-australia/103464840

Yup. This has been higlighted many, many times. Our government does nothing. Under the treaty system we are allowed to inspect their bases whenever we want. We don't do it because that would cost money.

So the Chinese will use their usual grey zone tactics and wait for the expiry of the treaty system and claim a chunk of Antarctica for themselves. They do not recognise Australia's Antarctic Territory, so it will be the usual "We are taking this land, what are you going to do about it?" bullying style. We will (again) do nothing and they will win.

I see the US is waking up to chinese controlled infrastructure.
These cranes have software that tracks shipments and uploads them back to China as well as china being able to shut them down remotely.



www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-executive-order-us-china-port-crane-maritime-cybersecurity-1872259

Hubby has a DJI drone. Hasn't updated the app for a while. Went to do so today, and found out that both Google Play and Apple Store have removed the apps from their stores because... wait for it... They identified gaps which would allow data harvesting. Apparently the US has several reps trying to ban DJI tech from the skies for that reason. *sigh* I have really enjoyed the DJI tech and it's an expensive thing to buy and then just not use. But I guess I'll be on the lookout for a replacement option. The drone has been one of our options for gaining info on what's going on around us in times of need and it's not a luxury I'm willing to give up easily.

The only other option is to buy a cheap smart phone to put the app on and never use it for anything else. But I'm also not a fan of data collection of my local area because we're using the drone. So in all likelihood that means I'll be in the market for a new drone that comes from a more reliable source. I kind of thought that was coming and even fairly recently said on this very forum that the product is great and just because it's from China, doesn't mean that there's anything nefarious about it.

Well, I'm a big girl and honest enough to admit my mistakes. Don't get DJI!

My UHFs are older Uniden although not because of a fear of tracking, that just happens to be what I bought. But no one's triangulating signal hits to figure out where I am. 

But the bigger kicker here is China has zero interest in tracking ME. I'm a middle aged grumpy old bag in regional WA. There's absolutely no material gain to be made from knowing where I am or what I'm doing at any given time. There's very limited gain to tracking me, and even LESS on wasting ordanance on me. It's hilarious to think that anyone's wasting any direct tracking hours on little old me, and while it's a thing that I see around the traps it's something I'll never stop advocating for people to understand. You, me, the general Aussie population who're just living a relatively law abiding life with no links to anything spooky? They're not interested in wasting resources on us. We're simply not important. Knowing and truly understanding that fact leads to a calmer, less stressed life. They just. Don't care. About us. 

The concern with the app specifically is that it's collecting geo data on a smaller scale that could provide fidelity that current doesn't exist from alternate sources without a massive amount of expense. Even Google, who constantly sends ground-based vehicles to take street view imagery, can't achieve the kind of fidelity that a low flying middle-tier domestic drone can provide. There's a real imaging gap between the street level view and the satellite view and that's a gap that I'm not interested in filling for the CCP. Or anyone else. I have no desire to be an unwilling and unwitting collection source for an AI to build a 3d map of my entire country to a more accurate level.

So I don't give a flip if the CCP wants to waste resources tracking me. Although they aren't. At least, not at any smaller of a level than they do the macro tracking that they'd have on any major nation. But providing tactical information on my region just because I wanted to be able to set a drone to do a few laps of my area to check out bushfires etc, is absolutely not on my bingo card for 2024. Also, my car was manufactured in Vietnam. Does that make it foolproof? Heck no. But my concern here is the CCP filling their intel gaps using tech that's proven to be leaky and removed from the market due to security concerns. We can't possibly know and identify every single source that might make the bad guys lives more difficult. But if we're aware of specific ones it only makes sense to reduce that risk.

Interesting that the US is "Waking up" to Chinese data harvesting via products, yet has a completely open southern border which is now seeing more entries from Chinese than by any other nationality. All of them are completely unidentifiable, having all discarded their passports when sneaking across the border.
The situation there is absolutely insane. If there is ever a US-China conflict, there will be a massive problem with local insurgents destroying infrastructure.

This is not unusual. The CCP has been caught repeatedly doing this. The plan is clear. At the commencement of any conflict, the CCP shuts down US infrastructure remotely.

michaeltsnyder.substack.com/p/china-is-actively-preparing-for-war?publication_id=1520363&post_id=142499792&isFreemail=true&r=2s1wgx&triedRedirect=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email




If you hear an onion ring, please answer it.