Up first, spotted skulking about the Western Addition, which certainly would make sense, comes the whip of the Pariah Nation, North Korea’s BFF. Check out the cutesy numbers and letters on the quasi-Fed-issued consul license plate.
Click to expand
(And, ironically, the car is the flagship model of the world-famous Tahara Plant, the finest car factory in the world since the 1980′s. Thomas L. Firedman still has a total boner for it.- he took the tour and got the T-shirt. My ride was made there well, AAMOF. Actually, I passed through there just last month, you know, on bidness. That’s the country that got all invadey starting about a century ago ’til about seven decades ago. Hey, who’s invading Filipino islands these days? I’ll give you just one guess! Ooh, my ride had a cheesy SERRAMONTE license plate holder as well. But I didn’t even buy my car there, so WTF was that for, who told you to put that thing on? Not just plastic bolts, metal. I couldn’t get them off myself so they had to do it for me. But while I was down there one time, I told the extreeeeeemely cute front line sales rep that she ought to sue for harassment if what I saw and heard was routine. Guess what – she got together with her friends and took action by hiring some law firm/lawyer and ended up getting a ton of money from the dealership group. I’ll tell you about it sometime. Oh and that’s the same dealership where bay area favorite son Tom Hanks got a nice SUV, also from Tahara, also the best in the world, about a half-decade back. I’ll tell you about that sometime too. But I digress…)
Up next comes Taiwan. Poor Taiwan! See that, “FOREIGN ORGANIZATION,” like it’s not even a country.
That’s some fucked up shit right there.
Check it:
“Foreign Organization Special License Plates
5006.5. (a) The department may issue, for a fee determined by the department to be sufficient to reimburse the department for actual costs incurred pursuant to this section, distinctive license plates for motor vehicles owned or leased by an officer or a designated employee of a foreign organization recognized by the United States pursuant to the Taiwan Relations Act (22 U.S.C. Sec. 3301 et seq.) when the department is otherwise satisfied that the issuance of the license plates is in order.
(b) The distinctive license plates shall be designed by the department and shall contain the words “Foreign Organization.”
(c) The department shall establish procedures for both of the following:
(1) To verify the eligibility of an applicant for plates issued pursuant to this section.
(2) To authorize a recognized foreign organization to apply on behalf of its officers for plates issued pursuant to this section.
Added Ch. 397, Stats. 1994. Effective January 1, 1995.”
On It Goes.
A 1999 report of the United States House of Representatives Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military and Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China, known as the Cox Report, warned that the PRC has stolen classified information on every thermonuclear warhead in the U.S. ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) arsenal.[15] Information is collected through espionage, as well as through rigorous reviews of U.S. technical and academic publications, and pervasive interaction with U.S. scientists.[16] The PRC tasks a large number of individuals to collect small pieces of information which is then collated nd analyzed in the PRC.[16] In this way, individual PRC agents can more easily escape suspicion while carrying out their operations in the United States. U.S. Government personnel suspect that the PRC’s intelligence collection efforts directed towards the development of modern nuclear weapons to be focused primarily on the Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Sandia, and Oak Ridge National Laboratories.[16] The PRC is known to have stolen classified information on the following warheads: the W-56 Minuteman II ICBM, the W-62 Minuteman III ICBM, the W-70 Lance short-range ballistic missile (SRBM), the W-76 Trident C-4 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), the W-78 Minuteman III Mark 12A ICBM, the W-87 Peacekeeper ICBM, and the W-88 Trident D-5 SLBM. The PRC also has stolen classified information on U.S. weapons design concepts, weaponization features, and warhead reentry vehicles.[17]
Cyber warfare
The PRC operates a political and corporate espionage effort directed towards accessing the networks of major financial, defense and technology companies, and research institutions in the United States.[18] PRC efforts involve exploiting security flaws in software, and email attachments to sneak into the networks of important U.S. companies and organizations.[18] An example of such an attack, is a recipient opening an email attachment that seems to be from a familiar source. The attachment contains a “sleeper” program that embeds in the recipient’s computer. The program is controlled remotely, allowing the attacker to access the recipient’s email, send sensitive documents to specific addresses, and even turn on a web camera or microphone to record what is happening in the room.[18] In January 2010, Google reported, “a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google.”[19] According to investigators, the Google cyberattack was directed towards the company’s password system that millions of people use to access Google’s various web services, including email and business applications.[19] The attack targeted the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.[19] In addition to Google, at least 34 companies have been attacked including Yahoo, Symantec, Adobe, Northrop Grumman, and Dow Chemical.[18] In January 2013 The New York Times reported that it had been the victim of hacking attempts originating from China over the previous four months after it had published an article onPrime Minister Wen Jiabao. The newspaper elaborated that the “attacks appear to be part of a broader computer espionage campaign against American news media companies that have reported on Chinese leaders and corporations.”[20]
Chinese cyberattacks seem to have largely targeted strategic industries in which China is lagging.[18] Specifically, attacks on defense companies target information on weapons systems, and attacks on technology companies seek valuable source code which is critical to software applications.[18] Chinese cyberattacks have emphasized what senior U.S. Government officials have said is an increasingly serious cyber threat to U.S. critical industries.[18]
