Another Security Risk from China?

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Bruce Schneier writes:

China is getting a copy of the Windows source code. I’ve already written about the security risks of open-source versus proprietary software. One of the problems with open source is that the bad guys get to look at the code. One of the good things about open source is that the good guys get to look at the code, too. If I were the Chinese government, I’d turn that code upside down looking for vulnerabilities, and then not tell anyone about them. This seems like a huge security risk to me, even though Microsoft might consider it a smart business move.

Good point. Microsoft probably sees China as just another customer, but from a security standpoint we should be wary. If there is any advantage to be gained here, the Chinese government will take it. The fact that we habitually view a technology as benign does not preclude someone else from using that technology as a weapon. (See, in this regard, Lex’s recent post about China’s space program.)

Israeli submarines with nuclear missiles?

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This should be taken with a shaker of salt, but I think it is interesting enough to post about it. Call it a tribute to the National Enquirer if you think it is too improbable.

According to reports originally coming from the Los Angeles Times Israel can now can launch nuclear-tipped cruise missiles from German-built submarines that were delivered in the late 90s. After its smear-campaign against Schwarzenegger I have doubts about the paper’s credibility, but if true this would be good news. Due to its small size Israel has no room for error so it has to keep track of what its enemies are up to. If they knew that it can retaliate even in the unlikely case of a successful surprise attack would be a quite effective deterrent.

Der Spiegel, also not the most credible source I can think of, reports that the diesel-powered submarines can stay out of port for over four weeks and can sail over 15,000 kilometers (not quite 10,000 miles) in that time; their armament consists of ten torpedoes and Harpoon cruise missiles. The magazine also says that experts had warned years ago that Israel was planning to use the subs as platforms for nuclear weapons. Some members of the German parliament allegedly asked the government if the installation of over-sized torpedo-tubes in the three submarines of the “Delphin” class (with a diameter of 650 instead of 533 millimeters, that’s respectively about 26 and 21.5 inches) indicated such intentions. According to Der Spiegel the German defense-ministry answered that “at the end of the day the federal government can’t exclude any kind of armament”. If the reports are indeed true they were right and Israel has successfully redesigned the “Harpoon” anti-ship missile to carry a small nuclear warhead for use against ground-targets.

According to some experts Haaretz quotes these claims are bogus, which might be right – leaking false information like this and denying it afterwards is still going to keep Israel’s enemies wondering and make them think twice before they try anything. And even if it’s true a boilerplate denial is almost obligatory, to keep them wondering anyway.

And finally, this website claims, in an article that seems to be from a while back, that two of the three submarines had been paid for by the usual German financial support for Israeli defense and the third jointly by Germany and Israel. The website also claims that German and Israeli firms cooperated in the construction of the boats and blithely mentions that these specific boats also could also be used for launching nuclear weapons. Taken together with the defense-ministry’s response quoted above this would mean that the German government knew about the plans Israel had with the subs, should it turn out that there really is something to this story. A caveat: The homepage of the site has been hacked (I know this because all you can find there is “hacked…”). I don’t think that the material I quote has been maliciously put up by the hacker in question, military-themed websites get hacked on principle around here, but it’s one more reason to be skeptical.

Now here’s a quote

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Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary on January 20th 1939:

“Wir müssen versuchen, die ganze Welt gegen die feigen Londoner Kriegstreiber mobil zu machen”.

Translation:

“We have to try to mobilize the whole world against the cowardly warmongers in London”.

It seems a bit strange that he would write something like this in private, but the term “English warmongers” was a staple of Nazi propaganda even before World war II, so it might have been out of force of habit. He also wasn’t being ironic, the Nazis would have preferred taking over Europe without a fight, of course.

A moderate in his own special way

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Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad hasn’t mellowed with age:

Jews rule the world, getting others to fight and die for them, but will not be able to defeat the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has told a major Islamic summit.

“The Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them,” Mahathir said, adding, “1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews.”

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He told the biggest gathering of Muslim leaders since the 2001 attacks on the United States that all Muslims were suffering “oppression and humiliation”, with their religion accused of promoting terrorism.

(Read the whole thing, it’s fascinating, in a horrifying kind of way).

This kind of insanity isn’t all that surprising coming from him. He is notorious for ranting about the evils of globalization and even his anti-Semitic screeching didn’t just come out of the blue. The man built his whole decades-long political career on the discrimination of ethnic Chinese, who serve as scapegoats for all problems in much of South East Asia (an obvious parallel to anti-Semitism). And Mahathir Mohamad wasn’t just an opportunist who went along, he was the driving force behind this policy.

Profiting from affirmative action at the expense of the more successful ethnic Chinese, few Malays complain (which would be illegal anyway). As long as Malays and Islam are securely on top in the country, the anti-Chinese riots of earlier decades won’t repeat themselves, but that is good news in a very qualified sense, for the Chinese effectively (if not formally) live in dhimmitude. Sharia law is gaining ground in the country and it looks like it might be extended to
the non-Muslim population, too.

Even so Malaysia is still pretty relaxed and tolerant for an Islamic country (at least for now), and Mahatir Mohamed is a moderate as Muslim leaders go. He’s set to retire now though, and his successor is likely to be worse. Add to this the problems of Indonesia and the Philippines to control their own Muslim extremists (not that they are always trying that hard) and the situation in the whole region looks increasingly likely to deteriorate. We might miss old Mahatir yet.

(When I posted I hadn’t noticed that Sylvain had put up an entry on the same speech a short while ago).

Update:

This is about one of Mahatir Mohamad’s possible successors:

Nik Abdul Aziz, the spiritual leader of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party, was quoted by the Malay-language Mingguan Malaysia newspaper as saying that even women who wear Muslim headscarves can arouse men if they wear makeup and perfume too. The end result could be rape or molestation, the newspaper cited Nik Aziz as saying. Anwar Bakri, a senior adviser to Nik Aziz, confirmed he made the comments, but said they were reported out of context.

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The fundamentalist Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party is the country’s largest opposition group, controlling two of the 13 states, where it has restricted alcohol sales and segregated Muslim men and women at supermarket counters.

It has tried to introduce criminal laws including punishments such as amputation, but these have been blocked by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s national government.

(Link via Reason)