World View: China Increases Military Buildup in South China Sea

This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Former comic Beppe Grillo becomes political kingmaker in Italy
• Germany becomes alarmed over China’s cyberattacks
• China increases military buildup in South China Sea
• Apparently, Equifax’s networks and databases have been hacked
• Network Solutions crashes GenerationalDynamics.com

Former comic Beppe Grillo becomes political kingmaker in Italy

Beppe Grillo, after voting on Sunday (Reuters)

In Italy’s presidential election this weekend, Italy’s “hope andchange” candidate was Beppe Grillo, head of the 5-Star Movement.Grillo is a 64 year old former comedian who has turned into ananti-austerity, anti-establishment, anti-euro firebrand. The problemis that his 5-Star Movement may well have won more seats in theParliament than any other party. Grillo himself didn’t run forelection, because he’s ineligible to do so: He was convicted offmanslaughter in 1991 over a traffic accident. But he can still serveas the leader of the approximately 110 seats out of 630 that he won inthe parliament. Grillo might ally himself with one of the otherparties and become a kind of kingmaker, but the indecisive electionresults probably mean that a new election will be called. Reuters

Germany becomes alarmed over China’s cyberattacks

Germans are reacting with alarm to reports that Chinese hackers havestolen strategically important information from many German companies,including the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS).and steelmaker ThyssenKrupp. Although Chinese hackers have beenattacking Germany for years, the attacks became massive a few monthsago. The hackers’ tracks lead back to three major Chinese cities:Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and particularly to Unit 61398, aunit of China’s People’s Liberation Army which has been conductingmassive cyber warfare. (See “20-Feb-13 World View — New report reveals massive cyber war attack by China’s army” from last week.) Despite everything,Chancellor Angela Merkel is not pushing back very hard against theChinese, since China is one of Germany’s major training partners.Spiegel

China increases military buildup in South China Sea

China announced on Monday that it’s increasing its military patrols inthe South China Sea to protect Chinese fishermen and, presumably, tokeep out other countries’ fishermen. China has declared that it’sclaiming sovereignty over the entire South China Sea, includingregions that have historically belonged to other countries, includingthe Philippines, Brunei, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan, andVietnam. China announced last year that in 2013 it would startboarding and taking control of other countries’ ships in the SouthChina Sea. According to China, the new South China Sea patrolshighlight great advances in China’s law enforcement capability inrelevant waters, as Beijing seeks to safeguard its sovereignty andnational interests in the region. China Daily (Beijing)

Apparently, Equifax’s networks and databases have been hacked

I use different e-mail address for almost everything. That way, Iknow whether a company is using my e-mail address for spam.

In 2005, I registered with the Equifax web site to do some researchfor a brief period. Starting about a month ago, I’m been receivingseveral spam messages a day to that e-mail address.

Therefore, I conclude that the Equifax’s networks and data bases havebeen hacked, and e-mail address have been stolen at the very least.Whether Equifax’s credit card databases have also been hacked issomething I have no way of knowing.

Network Solutions crashes GenerationalDynamics.com

The GenerationalDynamics.com web site went down on Sunday evening atabout 7 pm ET, and didn’t come up again until 1 pm ET on Monday. Iapologize to anyone who was inconvenience.

About five years ago, I moved my web site from web.com (Interland) toNetwork Solutions because the customer support on web.com was activelyhostile, and Network Solutions was very good at that time.

But that appears not to be true any more. You have to sit there onhold for about an hour to get an answer to even a simple question fromNetwork Solutions customer support. The so-called “VIP support” isworse than nothing, in that you wait on hold to talk to them, and thenthey just transfer you somewhere else where you have to wait on holdagain.

The web site service had actually been degrading gradually for acouple of months, getting random server errors at different times,before it crashed completely. This afternoon, I experienced severalserver resets, so I’m afraid there are more problems to come.

I’m not sure that anyone else is any better.

Despite the fact that the web site was down yesterday evening, I wasable to get the e-mail messages out, since those go through ConstantContact rather than Network Solutions. The e-mail service is goingvery well, and since I use different e-mail addresses for everything,I am personally certain that subscribers to the Generational Dynamicse-mail service do not receive spam. You can subscribe to the e-maillist by clicking on the following link and typing your e-mail address:

http://GenerationalDynamics.com/Subscribe

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