The TikTok ban in context

The TikTok affair is unimportant when compared to Trump's general tariffs and high-cost trade war against Huawei.What is our long-run goal with respect to China?

Donald Trump recently issued an executive order banning TikTok on the grounds that it was necessary to deal with the national emergency he had declared in an earlier executive order. He says he is concerned that TikTok might turn user's "information such as location data and browsing and search histories" over to the Chinese government.

Trump does not site evidence of TikTok having shared data with China and TikTok says they have never shared user data with the Chinese government or censored content at its request. Furthermore, Kevin Meyer, CEO of TikTok and COO of its parent company Byte Dance, is an American, and TikTok US user data is not stored in China.

TikTok publishes a transparency report on government information requests and the report ending the second half of 2019 shows that the US government made 100 requests for information on 107 accounts, and 82% of those resulted in the transfer of data. Only India, with 302 requests on 408 accounts 90% of which made data transfers, requested more than the US. (Facebook received 51,121 US requests during the same period).

The format of the data TikTok reports to the police is shown below and its terms of service note that the company may also send law enforcement logs of a user's videos, comments, and interactions (source) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security actively monitored TikTok for signs of unrest during the George Floyd protests. It seems they are cooperating with the US government.

This background and Trump's track record convince me that the TikTok ban was politically motivated -- he wants to seem "tough" on China and get revenge for the way TikTok users tricked his campaign into projecting huge crowds for his disastrous Tulsa campaign rally.

Regardless, let's zoom out.

The TikTok affair is unimportant when compared to Trump's general tariffs and high-cost trade war against Huawei. What is his goal for US-China relations in general and for the Internet in particular? Is he seeking total self-sufficiency and independence from China? A bifurcated Internet?

When one considers the cost of reciprocal tariffs, the supply chains for manufactured goods, and the Chinese market for US goods like iPhones, it is clear that financial and industrial disengagement from China would be an economic disaster for both China and the US. 

The Internet is already bifurcating.  China already has more Internet users than the US, Russia, Mexico, Germany, UK, France, and Canada combined, and the US trade war on Chinese technology has accelerated its push toward self-reliance. China is also innovating --  Huawei, Tencent, and Xiaomi are among Derwent's  top 100 innovators and China has passed the US as the top scientific publishing nation in the world.

The Internet was conceived of and has served as a tool for collaboration, and existential global threats of economic inequality, climate change, pandemics and biological and other weapons require global collaboration. We need them and they need us.

Let me be clear -- there are no good guys here. China bans Facebook and Twitter, plays dirty tricks on the Internet, and imprisons and surveils citizens, but we seem to be caught in a prisoner's dilemma game in which both sides have defected and that could be fatal. 

There may not be a way out of our dilemma, but our recent relations with Cuba suggest a strategy worth considering. President Obama published a new Cuba policy and began rapprochement negotiations. He visited Cuba and made several Internet-related announcements, but the response was disappointing while Raúl Castro was in charge. His successor, Miguel Díaz-Canel, is a pro-Internet engineer and there may have been an opportunity for change when he replaced Castro if Trump had continued President Obama's policy, but that did not happen. Trump has made no substantive Internet-related policy changes regarding Cuba, but his politically-motivated rhetoric and Cuba Internet Task Force have assured continued hostility. 

We will never know how Díaz-Canel would have reacted had Trump continued President Obama's policy, but the outcome could not have been worse for the Cuban people or better for the expansion of China's Digital Silk Road. 

Whether we try the sort of engagement Obama tried with Cuba or something else, we cannot do it alone -- we must work with like-minded allies, which is surely not Trump's way. 

It's time for a change.

Update 8/26/2020

TikTok has answered Trump's executive ban and filed a law suit challenging it on the grounds that they were denied due process. They say they have never shared data with the Chinese, opened their publishing algorithm to show there has been no censorship, employ many Americans, provide a platform that is used by Americans for expression and income, and more.

While the suit asserts that TikTok was banned without due process -- claiming that the Administration has "ignored their extensive efforts to address its concerns," I wonder about the First Amendement guarantee of press freedom. TikTok is a publisher. What is the essential difference between banning TikTok without presenting evidence that it posed a threat to national security and banning the Washington Post because it had publishhed or might one day publish fake news that undermined national security?

In another twist, it turns out that Microsoft had been negotiating to purchase TikTok, and shortly before issuing the ban, Trump said the U.S. Treasury should collect a “very substantial” portion of the sale price. That sounds like a mob shakedown -- if you don't sell your company and give me cut I will shut it down leaving you with nothing. I can see the tweet -- "I got the Chinese to sell their company to Microsoft, created THOUSANDS of American jobs, stopped espionage and got a cut for the taxpayers as well."

Update 5/27/2021

Comparatech Editor Paul Bischoff points out that Trump’s executive order set a deadline of 45 days, but it was largely ignored and is techcally still in play. He reports that US national security officials are in talks with TikTok's parent company ByteDance about data security and preventing US user data from being accessed by the Chinese government.

In the meantime, TikTok was the most downloaded app in the first quarter of 2021 and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee unanimously passed a bill that would ban U.S. federal workers from downloading the TikTok onto U.S. government devices.

This puts President Biden in a political bind. Young voters like TikTok but the President is concerned about China's economic and political power. That being said, TikTok is insignificant in the long run -- we need to learn to cooperate and coexist with China in the face of global challenges like climate change, epidemics and economic inequality.

Geely's LEO constellation for mobile vehicle connectivity

It will be interesting to watch the mobile vehicle solutions and competition between Geely and Tesla/Starlink.

The Geely Holding Group (GHG) is a private Chinese conglomerate that is highly diversified, but best known as an auto manufacturer that envisions itself as a "global mobile technology group." GHG announced this week that it has begun construction of an intelligent satellite production and testing facility that will include modular satellite manufacturing, satellite testing, satellite R&D, and cloud computing centers.

They will be capable of producing a variety of different satellite models, but the immediate goal is to produce satellites for a constellation of LEO satellites capable of offering low-latency internet connectivity plus cloud and edge computing to support in-vehicle entertainment, navigation, over-the-air software updates, and level 4 and later level 5 (full automation) autonomous vehicles. (For a summary of the definitions of SAE's six levels (0-5) of vehicle autonomy, click here and for a detailed definition click here). Note that in addition to car companies, GHG has interests in trucking, high-speed trains, and even passenger drones.

Reuters reported that GHG is investing $326 million in the project, aims to make 500 satellites a year by 2025, and will begin launching satellites this year. Geely sold 2.18 million cars last year and will be adding satellite functionality to their cars as well as those of other GHC companies, including Volvo and Daimler.

The illustration on the GHG press release shows a CubeSat, so they are evidently not interested in competing with SpaceX and other would-be broadband ISPs, at least for now. (Three other Chinese companies are working on LEO broadband constellations). Regardless, they will compete with broadband LEO satellite providers for mobile vehicle applications and it will be interesting to watch the mobile vehicle solutions of and competition between Geely and Tesla/Starlink.

Update 2/2/2021

Geely has officially launched its internet satellite project in Qingdao, East China's Shandong Province, with an investment of 4.12 billion yuan ($637 million). The project is located in the Qingdao Shanghai demonstration zone, which is the location of other projects in support of the Belt and Road Initiative. I assume that being within the demonstration zone means they are receiving some subsidy -- perhaps free land or tax breaks like states and cities often give to attract business in the US. (Remember the Amazon headquarters bidding war a couple years ago)? For an explanation of the somewhat opaque system of local government, national government, and private financing of Chinese space ventures, listen to or read the transcript of this podcast interview with China space expert Blaine Curcio.

Update 1/6/2022

On December 14, an Expace rocket carrying Geely's test satellites, Geesats A and B, failed. While this was a setback, Curcio reported several positive developments as well. Geely's highly automated satellite manufacturing factory will make 500 satellites per year, and they have been aggressively hiring people with extensive satellite design and manufacturing experience, including at least ten experts who have worked on the third-generation Beido positioning, navigation, and timing service. 

Geely is also well-positioned politically. GHG Chairman Li Shufu is a member of the National People's Congress and is rumored to be a friend or close associate of Xi Jinping who spent five years as governor of GHG's home province. Li came from a humble family and the “Geely Common Prosperity Initiative” is clearly in line with Xi's drive for common prosperity.

For background on GHG and Li and his view of the future of mobile vehicles -- cars, ships, trucks, etc. -- see this Reuters report.

Update 8/23/2022

GeeSpace launched nine satellites, and they are all performing correctly. They are the first of 72 phase-one satellites that are expected to be in orbit by 2025. The second 168 satellites will then be launched, bringing the constellation up to 240 satellites.

Update March 2, 2024

Geely launched eleven satellites in the same 50-degree inclination plane as the first nine, but there was a considerable delay between the two launches. The first nine were launched in June 2022 and the second 11 were launched in February 2024. The delay may have been caused by a satellite re-design -- The mass of these satellites is 130 kg whereas the first nine satellites had masses of 100 kg.

The launch cadence will have to speed up if they are to reach their goal of beginning service with 72  satellites next year.

Update July 6, 2024

This update is based on a recent GeeSpace discussion in Blaine Curcio's excellent China Space Monitor.

Curcio begins with background on Geely and founder Li Shufu and his ambitious (Musk-like) plans for GeeSpace, which was initiated about six years ago when Li “floated his idea of using hundreds of proprietary mini, low-orbit satellites as a more accurate global positioning system for self-driving cars”

The company plans to provide “global real-time data communication services” once the 72-satellite first-phase constellation is completed next year and “global centimeter-level positioning services” when the 168 second-phase satellites are in orbit. GeeSpace envisions surveillance, urban planning, infrastructure management, and other applications, as well as automotive autonomous vehicle support and the eleven satellites launched in February had "artificial intelligence" remote sensing capabilities, with a resolution ranging from 3.2 to 16.4 feet 

Geely brands sold 2.79 million units in 2023, and Curcio concludes that "Within 5-10 years, GeeSpace could conceivably have a constellation of satellites connecting all Geely cars in a very interesting example of vertical integration (actual use cases pending)." 

Update 8/13/2025

Geespace launched 11 satellites, bringing the constellation to 41 in orbit with plans to begin IoT service with 72 satellites in 2025, followed by 264 D2D satellites and eventually 5,676 satellites.

"IoT services" is vague and more modest than earlier goals of “global real-time data communication services” with 72 satellites and a "168-satellite second phase by an undisclosed date to achieve “global centimeter-level positioning services,” or their press release promising "vision of building an integrated space and earth mobility ecosystem that will transform how users experience transportation."

That being said, don't underestimate Geely. It is a huge conglomerate selling many auto brands with large, rapidly increasing sales and profits, and as mentioned above, founder Li Shufu is ambitious.

China will be a formidable satellite Internet service competitor

In a study of the Internet in China in the late 1990s, my colleagues and I observed that "China has been able to execute plans effectively by allocating resources to competing, government-owned enterprises," and Kai-Fu Lee shows that they have pursued a similar strategy with respect to AI. Now they are doing the same with low-Earth orbit (LEO) broadband satellite constellations.

Characteristics of the Hongyun and Hongyan test satellites

Last December, state-owned China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) launched their first experimental Hongyun (rainbow cloud) Project satellite and a week later China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) launched their first experimental Hongyan (wild goose) Project satellite. (Both CASIC and CASC have Wikipeida pages and their Fortune Global 500 ranks are 322 and 323).

As shown here, Hongyun launched a test satellite in December 2018 and said they planned four more during 2019, but there is no record of those having been launched as of today. They have, however, completed tests of Web browsing, video chat, and high-resolution streaming and said users across China would be able to access the demonstration system. (I assume that refers to test users).

They initially planned to begin operating with 156 satellites by the middle of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), emphasizing service in China's remote regions. Late last year, they expanded the constellation plan from 156 to 864 satellites orbiting at 1,175 km with an 8 Terabytes per second capacity. They hope to serve 2 million 5G users through direct connections to base stations, 200,000 broadband users and 10 million Internet of things (IoT) users. The focus will be on China and Belt and Road nations.

CASIC has also established two satellite factories in Hubei and Hunan provinces. This may have been necessitated by the increase in the number of planned Hongyun satellites or it may be another application of the strategy of creating competing state-owned enterprises.

Hongyan applications (source)

CASC's Hongyan project plans a constellation of around 320 LEO satellites. They have launched one test satellite so far and had hoped to launch 8 more by 2020, but did not make that deadline. They expect to have 60 operating satellites "around" 2023 and to be able to provide global coverage with the full constellation by 2025.

As shown in this illustration, they plan to connect buildings, ships, trains, and planes and to provide mobile backhaul and, most interestingly, direct service to mobile phones. He Mu, Hongyan Application Director, promised the development of a "chip [that] can be integrated into the mobile phone so that everyone holding an ordinary mobile phone will have access to seamless satellite telecommunication with global coverage." That does not sound like a mobile connection to a base station with satellite backhaul, but neither does it sound possible.

Earlier this month a third competitor, GalaxySpace, launched Yinhe-1, which is expected to test Q/V and Ka-band communications at up to 10 Gbps. They refer to Yinhe-1 as a "5G satellite." I'm not sure what a "5G" satellite is, but note again that the above diagram shows a satellite communicating directly with a mobile phone, as opposed to a mobile tower. Check out this short video on the satellite and launch:

CASIC has four other "five clouds" projects underway in addition to Hongyun: Feiyun, using solar-powered drones, Kuaiyun, using near-space airships (dirigibles?), Tengyun, a project to develop a reusable space plane, and Xingyun, an 80-LEO narrowband IoT constellation using cubsats, the first of which is to be launched soon.

As noted above, Chinese state-owned enterprises often compete with each other, but they also cooperate. For example, CASIC's Hongun-1 was launched on a CASC rocket. (I wonder how they arrived at the launch price). Will Hongyun and Hongan exchange traffic at shared ground stations? Will their satellites one day intercommunicate in order to optimize a joint constellation with different orbits? Will they intercommunicate with China's geostationary satellites and other space assets?

It is often argued that government ownership and subsidy are unfair to competitors and lead to a suboptimal allocation of resources. I assume this sort of government-brokered "coordinated competition" is more common in China than in the US, but even here, the lines between government-sponsored research and development, government procurement and industrial subsidy are a bit vague as are the criteria for anti-trust enforcement. People and organizations will learn to game either system, so both must be dynamic.

Hongyun, Hongyan and GalaxySpace are late to the game. OneWeb, SpaceX, and Telesat are beginning to sign up customers and will launch a lot of satellites this year. Amazon is also a late-comer, but they have a lot of money and complementary infrastructure. Like Amazon, China has funds for the long run, domestic infrastructure which can be shared by the three LEO projects and they are working on reusability. Furthermore, they have a political advantage in the "Digital Silk Road" nations of our increasingly divided world and divided Internet. China will be a formidable satellite Internet service competitor.

Update 4/26/2020

The US military has tracked the Galaxy satellite launched in January in a 637 by 621-kilometer altitude orbit inclined at 86 degrees. On April 23, Galaxy engineers conducted a three-minute video call via a WiFi hotspot that used the satellite for backhaul.

As noted above, Galaxy has referred to this as a "5G" satellite constellation and we speculated that they may have been implying direct connections from cell phones to orbiting 5G base stations, but these test results confirm and @Megaconstelai points out, they are using the satellite for backhaul from terrestrial 5G cells.

Update 5/26/2020

A few Hongyun test results are in. The brief note speaks of spectral thermometer tests and image data. There was no mention of broadband Internet tests.

Update 9/8/2020

A Galaxy Space test achieved 1 gigabit per second for each of its 16 Ka-band user beams and Blaine Curcio says 2020 is a turning point for Chinese commercial space. SpaceX and others are racing ahead and China has a strategic -- military, political, and commercial -- interest in keeping up with the West/US in space. The Digital Silk Road runs through space.

Update 9/20/2020 

GalaxySpace is building a factory to mass-produce low-cost satellites in East China. They will manufacture "more than one" satellite per day, joining SpaceX (four per day) and OneWeb (three per day) as mass-production LEO broadband satellite manufacturers.

Their current test satellite has verified high-frequency Q/V/Ka and other frequency band communications and they have achieved 10 Gps speed within a 300,000 Km^2 footprint. They also succeeded in a 5G wireless test, which I assume means they communicated through a 5G base station.

In a related development, China's National Development and Reform Commission added satellite broadband, 5G, and the Internet of Things to it's “New Infrastructures” list. That means more money will be invested in these technologies.

Consultant Blaine Curcio speculates that the Chinese government assumes increased importance of the Internet in a post-COVID world and rather than limiting the investment effort to the state-owned enterprises, the government has opened the doors to the private sector as well.

Update 1/19/2021

Construction of China's first smart manufacturing plant for satellites has been completed. Production will begin in March and the first product will be Hongyun broadband Internet satellites. The factory will be capable of making 240 small satellites a year and it sounds like it can be repurposed to build satellites for other constellations. SpaceX and OneWeb both claim to be able to produce satellites faster, but their factories may not be as easily reconfigured. Regardless, the Chinese space industry is progressing rapidly.

Hongyun Project -- China's low-earth orbit broadband Internet project

It might be tempting to dismiss this effort as small and behind the broadband satellite projects of companies like SpaceX, OneWeb and Telesat, but that would be a mistake.

Long March 11 rocket and Hongyun-1
satellite (source).

Last December, State-owned China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) launched the first experimental Hongyun (rainbow cloud) Project satellite and they began testing it in March.

The 247 kg test satellite is in orbit at an altitude of around 1,100 km and they plan to launch four more test satellites this year and begin operating with a 156-satellite constellation in 2022. I don't know anything more about their plans, but with only 156 satellites I suspect they will focus on unserved regions in rural China and perhaps Latin America at first.

It might be tempting to dismiss this effort as small and behind the broadband satellite projects of companies like SpaceX, OneWeb and Telesat, but that would be a mistake. China has an ambitious, global Internet infrastructure and application program called the Digital Silk Road and the "road" is terrestrial with highways, ports, pipelines, and railways, undersea with cables and in space with the Hongyun Project, their Beidou satellite navigation system, which will be global next year, and the Digital Belt and Road Earth observation program. Our withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the current trade war were gifts to the Chinese.

(Other early short articles on the LEO project here and here).

Update 6/4/2019

CASIC broke ground on April 24 for a satellite industry park in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province, where they will produce satellites for the Hongyun project.

In keeping with China's policy of funding competitors, another production line operated by a satellite start-up, Spacety, based in Changsha, Central China's Hunan Province, began construction in January. Each facility is expected to produce 100 satellites per year. (China has historically funded Internet service competition).

Update 6/18/2019

U.S. military tracking data shows the satellite is in a nearly circular orbit averaging 1,067 km altitude at an inclination of 99.9 degrees and CASIC confirmed that Hongyun would emphasize service in China's remote regions.

Update 11/26/2019

Speaking at a conference last week, CASIC general manager Zou Guangbao confirmed their planned schedule and said they would serve the broadband communication, navigation & remote sensing markets in China and elsewhere. They are also developing a separate constellation of 80 Internet of things satellites

Update 12/14/2019

GalaxySpace is a second Chinese company working on a LEO broadband constellation. Their first satellite is under construction. The 200 kg satellite will have 10 Gbps capacity, orbit at 1,200 km with a 300,000 square km footprint and use high-frequency Q/V band radio.


Update 12/18/2019

Hongyun has expanded its broadband satellite plan. They are now working toward 864 satellites orbiting at 1,175 km with an 8 Terabytes per second capacity. They hope to serve 2 million 5G users through direct connections to base stations, 200,000 broadband users and 10 million Internet of things users. The focus will be on China and Belt and Road nations.

Update 12/21/2019

Liu Shiquan, Deputy General Manager of CASIC Hongyun satellite reported that Hongyun performance and function tests have been completed. He did not give details but said the tests included Web browsing, video chat, and high-resolution streaming.

Liu also gave a few schedule hints. The post quotes him as saying they would launch four more test satellites "by 2020" but I assume that meant "during 2020." He also said that by the beginning of 2020, users across China will be able to access the demonstration system. There was no elaboration on this, but I assume he is referring to a few test users. He also said they plan to have 156 satellites in operation by the middle of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25).

I wonder if more detailed information is available on the Web in China.

Update 1/6/2020

The Hongyan (Wild Goose) project plans a constellation of around 320 LEO satellites. They have launched one test satellite so far and had hoped to launch 8 more by 2020, but did not make that deadline. They expect to have 60 satellites in orbit and operating around 2023 will be able to provide global coverage with the full constellation by 2025.

As shown in this illustration, they plan to connect buildings, ships, trains, and planes and to provide mobile backhaul and, most interestingly direct service to mobile phones. He Mu, Hongyan Application Director, promised the development of a "chip [that] can be integrated into the mobile phone so that everyone holding an ordinary mobile phone will have access to seamless satellite telecommunication with global coverage." (If this happens, it will be interesting to see how they differentiate this from terrestrial mobile service).

CASIC's Five Clouds

Hongyan is a project of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) while Hongyun is a project of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC). CASIC has four other "five clouds" projects underway in addition to Hongyun:

• Feiyun, using solar-powered drones
• Kuaiyun, using near-space airships (dirigibles?)
• Tengyun, a project to develop reusable space plane.
• Xingyun, an 80-LEO narrowband IOT constellation using cubsats, the first of which has been launched.

Characteristics of Hongyun and Hongyan satellites

Update 1/20/2020

GalaxySpace has launched a LEO "5G" satellite, Yinhe-1, which is expected to test Q/V and Ka-band communications at up to 10 Gbps. I'm not sure what a "5G" satellite is, but note that the above diagram shows a satellite communicating directly with a mobile phone, as opposed to a mobile tower. Check out this short video on the satellite and launch:

Update 1/30/2020

See this post for some discussion of Chinese space policy.

Update 2/25/2021

Space Engineering Development (SED), a subsidiary of China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), has begun testing its satellite manufacturing infrastructure and is expected to begin production in March. The plant will manufacture the Hongyun satellites and will be capable of producing about 240 satellites annually. Hongyun plans a 156-satellites constellation, so they should be ready next year when they plan to begin operation.

Trump's China tweets -- data for historians, political scientists, journalists and us

Trump's tweets and other posts provide us with an unprecedented stream of current information and data for political scientists, journalists and future historians.

The New York Times has published a thorough analysis of Donald Trump's recent phone conversation with the president of Taiwan. It takes a multifaceted look at the call, asking whether it was a "diplomatic gaffe or a calculated new start" in our relationship with China.

Only Trump, his advisors and perhaps some of the people he has been interviewing for Secretary of State can answer that question, but we can get clues as to Trump's thinking by looking at his Twitter stream.

A search of his Twitter stream for the word Taiwan, returned only four tweets:

The two October tweets are anti-Obama campaign statements.

The tweet announcing the call says "CALLED ME" in caps. Was that Trump crowing about his stature or was it intentionally saying he had not initiated the call? I cannot know, but I am certain that this was not a casual call -- it was planned and scheduled by both sides in advance.

The latest tweet justifies the call and serves as a message to China and Trump's constituency. (I have to reluctantly admit that I agree -- pretending that Taiwan does not exist is absurd).

Trump's tweets do not provide definitive answers, but they do give us more information about what is going on than we are used to.

"China" tweets

Since Trump is focusing on China, I searched of his Twitter stream for the word China. Twitter returned 276 tweets -- here are the earliest four:

Trump has been posting anti-China tweets for nearly six years. The first had little engagement -- one reply, 73 retweets and 26 likes -- while the latest one has had 22k replies, 39k retweets and 122k likes so far. He was already campaigning at the time of the first tweet, which refers to a site called shouldtrumprun.com. (Today that site contains only a copy of a statement by the Federal Election Commission saying he was eligible to run).

Who is the intended audience for these tweets? No doubt, the early tweets were intended for Trump supporters -- Breitbart readers and Limbaugh listeners -- but future tweets might also be for the general public and the Chinese government.

I have no doubt that both our State Department and the Chinese Foreign Service are well aware of the issues on which our nations co-depend and where we have conflicts, but discussions of such things are traditionally held in private. Whatever you think of Trump, he is providing us with a degree of transparency we are not used to in our politicians and civil servants.

Listening to a fireside chat

New media are mastered by new politicians and Trump's use of social media is reminiscent of the fireside chats President Roosevelt used to communicate with the American people and others when radio became ubiquitous.

If I were a political scientist, I would begin looking at these and Trump's other tweets and posts as research data, ripe for content analysis and fact-checking. They will also be data for historians one day. (The archive of network traffic during the 1991 Soviet coup attempt might be the earliest example of historical data online).

One thing is for sure -- I hope he keeps tweeting after becoming president.

The government role in shaping the Internet in China and the US

The US government invested $124.5 million in building and demonstrating the feasibility and value of the ARPANet, TCP/IP internetworking protocol and subsequent deployment to education and research organizations with the establishment of NSFNet and the NSF developing nations program. That was a pretty good investment. (Government procurement was also important -- for example, lessons learned and programmers trained in building the SAGE early warning defense system played a key role in the progress of networking and computer science in the US).

Internet development timeline

NSFNet was at first the backbone for the international Internet, but the government stepped back once the initial research and development was completed, phasing out the NSFNet subsidies over a four year period. Private telephone and cable companies with local monopolies or oligopolies became Internet service providers and owners of our Internet infrastructure.

In contrast, the market for Internet applications and services was competitive from the start. Private capital has financed and developed our Internet startups and ecosystems of organizations to support them -- incubators, accelerators, co-working spaces, investors, consultants and hackerspaces. The first startup ecosystems were in the Silicon Valley and along Massachusets Route 128, but many, including my home town, Los Angeles, have followed their lead.

1,113 tech startups in Los Angeles

535 startup support organizations

The Chinese have taken a different approach to Internet infrastructure. They established an academic network in 1987, linked it to Stanford University in 1993 and the following year established a full Internet connection. Like all other nations, they began with a slow link to a small academic network, but within a few years, the Chinese had realized the importance of the Internet and had established competing, government-owned national backbone networks.

Unlike the United States, the Chinese government is also playing an active role in support of Internet application and service companies. In his 2016 Report on the Work of the Government, Chinese premier Li Keqiang stated that

Further progress was made in implementing the strategy of innovation-driven development, the penetration of the Internet into all industries picked up the pace, and emerging industries grew rapidly.

The Chinese are funding startup ecosystem organizations like those created by the private sector in the US. For example, 710 subsidized startups are clustered in the Dream Town district of Hangzhou.

Chinese workers remodeling Dream Town spaces

How has it worked out?

The US had a significant lead over the entire world when a small Chinese academic network joined the Internet. One cannot directly compare the US and China -- there are many confounding differences, but we can compare China with India, a nation with some similarities. India's academic networks joined the Internet a little before China, but they essentially started at the same time. By 2002, the Chinese Internet was significantly more advance than that of India.

The International Telecommunication Union's Information and Communication Technology development index (IDI) provides a recent indicator of Chinese progress. The IDI is a function of eleven indicators measuring ICT access, use and skills in a nation. In 2015, China ranked 82nd on the IDI while India ranked 131st. In 2010, China ranked 87th and India ranked 125th.

While China has done better than India to date, their economy is slowing and their program of support for startups can lead to misallocation of resources and cronyism -- as happened in the Chinese construction industry:

The US started at the top, so our infrastructure had no where to go but down relative to other nations. The US ranks 21st in fiber deployment among the 34 OECD nations and our average Internet connection speed ranks 15th among the 74 nations served by Akamai.

Percent of broadband connections with fiber,
OECD, December 2015

Connection speeds, Akamai, Q1 2016

While the US has faltered in infrastructure deployment, we have retained the lead in Internet applications and services. As shown here, the US had 39 of the most popular 100 Web sites as ranked by Alexa in September 2016 while China had only 10.

These rankings should be taken with a grain of salt – SimilarWeb, an Israeli company, rates the US substantially higher with 40 sites in the top 100 as opposed to 10 for China. Chinese sites also focus heavily on China whereas the US sites generally seek a global audience.

It seems that the US private sector has done well in Internet applications and services and not as well in deploying infrastructure. Private companies seek to maximize corporate profit rather than social goals regarding education, the economy, etc. This has contributed to other nations surpassing our infrastructure in spite of our pioneering role.

These are complex issues and I cannot reach definite, generalizable conclusions (nor can anyone else), but, if I had to guess, I would think that China would be better off cutting back on subsidies for Internet application and service companies and the US would be better off with a more competitive Internet service provider market -- discouraging consolidation and "gentleman's agreements" among companies and encouraging ownership of infrastructure by local governments and customers.

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Update 10/16/2016

For teachers or others who might like to present this topic, I have prepared (and used) a nine-slide, one-video annotated PowerPoint presentation.

Is Alibaba comparable to a US company?

Alibaba is this weeks hot news -- they have had a lengthy PR campaign (preceded by a documentary film) followed by a record-setting stock offering.

I went with the hot-news flow, posting a comparison of Alibaba's market capitalization to those of other prominent companies as a "current event" for my class, but then I began to wonder whether that was an apples-to-apples comparison. I think I know what companies like Apple or Intel or Amazon are and do, but, I am not sure about Alibaba.

This was driven home by a New York Times article on Alibaba and its relationships to other companies and its history with respect to Yahoo. A lot of the article is summed up in the accompanying graphic, which depicts Alibaba's corporate investments, corporate investors, including Yahoo and Softbank, and Alibaba founder Jack Ma's personal investments:

This graphic reminded me of a case study of the Internet in Singapore that I worked on several years ago. With the help of my nephew, who worked for Goldman Sachs in Singapore at the time, I made the following graph of the ownership relationships between Singapore info-communication companies and the Singapore government in the year 2000.

Both graphics depict a Web of business and ownership relationships, based on corporate and personal ties. (The tie between Yahoo and Alibaba seems to have been based in large part on the relationship between Jack Ma and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang). To a degree, US corporations are also parts of such webs, but is their interconnection as deep as that of Alibaba or the Singaporean companies?*

These graphics call to mind the stereotypical differences between US and Chinese (Asian?) cultures. For example, this pre-departure guide for Chinese students contrasts an individualistic US with a collectivist China.

I am surely not an organization theorist, political scientist or anything close, but I wonder about basic differences between a US company and a Chinese company like Alibaba. Is owning a share of, say, Apple, conceptually the same as owning a share of Alibaba?

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* This is not to imply that all Asian corporate cultures are the same -- for example, the venture-capitalist role of the Singapore government is apparent in the Singapore figure above. That being said, it should be noted that, when I was there, Chinese people dominated the Singaporean companies.

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Update 10/3/2014

There is a long discussion of this post on the Slashdot Web site. The discussion rambles quite a bit -- for example some comments talk about the structure of this particular offering rather than the nature of Chinese vs. US corporations. One exchange that I liked was:

Comment: At that high level, the line between corporations and the government becomes blurry, no matter which country you live in. Just look at Standard Oil, Boeing, Halliburton... The list goes on.

Reply: For sure, but are there differences in degree? For example, in Chinese dominated Singapore, the government is an explicit shareholder. I wonder if anyone has done a study of explicit ownership of stock by US companies --- e. g., does Haliburton own stock in Standard Oil?

Censorship and being skeptical of things posted online -- an example for my class

This morning my Google Plus feed included a link to a video posted by Moshe Vardi on Chinese Internet censorship during the run up to the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations.

I am going to use it in class as an example of government censorship, but, more important, to illustrate the need to be skeptical of things one finds online.

Internet censorship in China is not exactly news, but I still wanted to check the provenance of the video. The video was produced by Vocativ.com. Going to their Chinese news page, I noted that the general tenure of the posts is negative, perhaps indicating some bias:

The Vocativ.com video presents a number of "man in the street" interviews showing people who are apathetic about or unaware of the 1989 demonstrations. At the 1:27 point in the video, a reportedly censored post from Weibo, China's version of Twitter, is displayed. The deleted post had allegedly contained a link to a Tiananmen democracy rally announcement at http://bit.ly/1kn6p3V, a URL shortened using the bitly.com service.

Following the link, I found a Weibo page with a bunch of posts, none of which seem to have anything to do with Tiananmen Square (thanks Google translate).

But, I noticed something strange. Normally, when you go to a URL shortened by bitly.com, it displays the original full-length URL in the address bar, but in this case, it displayed the shortened version, http://bit.ly/1kn6p3V.

When I refreshed that page, it went first to http://us.weibo.com/gb then redirected back to http://bit.ly/1kn6p3V.

This strange behavior indicates some sort of trickery, lending credence to the assertion that a rally announcement had been deleted.

One can not be sure, but I now have more confidence in the video, it's interview clips and the claim that over 50 people were arrested in the run up to the 25th anniversary of Tiananmen.

Shifting gears -- it was interesting to compare the Weibo site to Twitter. It is a lot busier, more colorful and loaded with ads, including animated GIFs. Definitely not a US style site.

Not only does Weibo have more ads, it has greater information density. I checked a 102 Chinese character "tweet" and Google translated it into 335 latin letters -- well over the Twitter limit. (We can re-take the advantage by attaching images of printed pages to our tweets).

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Here is the video:



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Update 2/25/2015

This is an 80 minute talk Chinese censorship of the Internet by Gary King, of the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science:



King reports that China has over half a million people working on Internet censorship and that their goal is not to suppress criticism, but to head off action. (Criticism is valuable information).

The scope and methodology of this study is interesting -- big data social science – made possible by the Internet.

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Update 5/25/2016

Gary King and his colleagues have published a study in which they estimate that Chinese government workers fabricate about 488 million social media posts annually.

The workers write these posts in addition to their regular jobs and send copies to a government propaganda office.

King estimates that about one in every 178 comments on Chinese social media sites is fabricated by the government, but they are not distributed uniformly over time. As shown below, their strategy is to increase post frequency in response to specific threats or events and nearly stop at other times.

Cyberwar is a trending topic -- New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington post hacked

Last week, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post each reported attacks by Chinese hackers trying to discover documents and the names of sources for coverage of political corruption in China. They also reported that Chinese hackers had targeted Bloomberg, Reuters and other media sites.

The Times said the intruders used phishing attacks to break in around September 13 and infiltrated computers of at least 53 users, including those of the Shanghai and Beijing bureau chiefs. It seems they were looking for email and documents that might identify the sources for The Time's coverage of business deals that left relatives of Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao wealthy.

According to Mandiant, the security firm the Times hired for help on this case, at least thirty western news organizations have been targeted by China. Many private companies also say they have been attacked by China, but they will not give forensic proof because that would be bad public releations and also reveal security secrets.

The Times reported that the hackers used university computers as proxies and switched IP addresses in order to remain anonymous. Oliver Richwood has warned against using China as a scapegoat and assuming they are responsible for all cyber attacks, but, in this case, the Times seems certain that the attacks are Chinese, saying they "closely matched the pattern of earlier attacks traced to China." The reported choice of targets supports that claim.

The outline of Cliff Stoll's TED Talk

Eric Schmidt of Google has said ”It’s fair to say we’re already living in an age of state-led cyber war, even if most of us aren’t aware of it.” Schmidt is correct, but "cyber war" is too broad a term. We may distinguish between at least three forms of cyber attack (1) espionage -- government, personal and business spying (2) sabotage that destroys or modifies data and (3) sabotage that effects the physical world. We can also characterize cyber attacks by their intent -- monetary gain, industrial advantage, political repression, political advantage, etc.

In his article "Fear Pays the Bills, but Accounts Must Be Settled," security expert Bruce Schneier acknowledges that cyber attacks are commonplace, but points out that hype often outstrips reality and leads to major funding decisions. Many stories focus on hypothetical sabotage of the electric grid and other infrastructure, but, as far as I know, the only type 3 attack to date was the 2008 US-Israel Stuxnet worm, which damaged an Iranian nuclear enrichment plant. (The New York Times also reported that story).

Hype or reality, cyberwar funding is on the increase, and there is a lot of money to made. For example, the recently increased funding for the Army cyber command.

Topographer Stoll's Klein wine bottle

All this talk about government-sponsored hacking reminded me of Clifford Stoll, an astronomer and system administrator who tracked down a KGB hacker at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in 1986. Stoll documented his detective work in an insightful and funny book "The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage." Check it out and read the reviews at Amazon. I read it at the time and remember really liking both the book and Stoll himself. If you wonder why I said I liked him as well as his book, watch his 2006 TED Talk.

The New York Times has also recorded an 8-minute news video on the Chinese break ins featuring interviews of the Times CTO and Nicole Perlroth, who wrote the story.

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Update 2/19 -- The New York Times reports that Mandiant will soon publish a report stating that a specific unit of the Chinese Army, headquartered in a specific building in Beijing has been responsible for "an overwhelming percentage of the attacks on American corporations, organizations and government agencies."

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Update 2/20 -- Mandriant has published a report detailing their evidence against the Chinese and the Chinese have denied that the charges. They have also produced a short video showing screen captures of the hackers at work. (Yes, the video could have easily been contrived and bogus).

The video shows alleged Chinese hackers setting up a gmail account using a US IP address, spearphishing, taking control ov victim computers, accessing a victim's Microsoft Exchange email, copying hacking tools from their repository in Shanghai and stealing files.

Security gurus are now going through the Mondriant report to see which malware was being used and making sure that it is known to the security and antivirus community.

It is too bad that Cliff Stoll did not have access to YouTube when he was working on the Cuckoo's Egg. His video would have been a lot funnier!

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Update 2/24

Bloomberg has an article "How to curb Chinese cyberattacks." The title promises more than it delivers, but it differentiates between attacks against critical infrastructure and espionage and talks about what the administration has and should do.

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Update 2/25

The New York Times continues the discussion of Chinese cyber-attacks -- the "cyber-cold war" -- between the US and China. The article surveys the debate over the appropriate response to Chinese attacks -- from diplomacy to better defense to counter attack. There is no clear answer because of the deep inter-dependencies of the Chinese and US Economies.

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Update 3/1

The Chinese have countered US charges, saying hackers from the US have repeatedly launched attacks on two Chinese military websites, including that of the Defense Ministry.  They claim 144.000 attacks per month.  Do you believe the US is also conducting offensive attacks?  Do you favor our doing so?

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Update 3/8

I've always assumed that Skype calls were securely encrypted, but that turns out not to be the case. With Microsoft's assistance, the Chinese government is monitoring Skype calls. University of New Mexico graduate student Jeffrey Knockel, who discovered the monitoring and is tracking the tracker, maintains a list of keywords the Chinese use for both censorship and surveillance. There are over 1,100 keywords on the list and he updates it daily on his Web site. Be careful about saying things like "Reporters without Borders", "Amnesty International", or the Macdonalds in front of Chunxi Road in Chengdu" if you are using Skype to talk with someone in China.

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Update 3/9/2013

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi says recent hacking allegations are on "shaky ground," and China opposes "turning cyberspace into a new battlefield or using the Internet as a new tool to interfere in the internal affairs of other nations.” He said that China’s government opposes hacking and has drawn up rules and laws to strictly forbid hackers and they have advocated and submitted specific proposals for a set of international rules governing the Internet under a United Nations framework.

Do they really want a truce? What I wonder is why we are not seeing stories of Internet espionage in China. I suspect it is going on.

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Update 3/15/2013

A high level official has now explicitly called upon China to curtail hacking and enter into talks on the topic. While this seems obvious to a layman, in the protocols of international diplomacy, this is apparently an important step.

The speech in which hacking is addressed was by Tom Donilon, National Security Advisory to the President.

The New York Times article stresses hacking, but it is worth noting that hacking was a small part of the speech addressing "The United States and the Asia-Pacific in 2013." The main point of the speech was that the US has shifted priorities, increasing emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region.

In fact the section on hacking was only 319 out of 5,317 words and 3 of 78 paragraphs -- 4-6%. That is perhaps indicative of the over-hyping of the importance of these "cyberwar" attacks.

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Update 3/15/2013

The US is talking stick as well as carrot.
http://nyti.ms/WtjCLX

General Keith Alexander, who runs both the National Security Agency and the new Cyber Command, told the House Armed Services Committee “This is an offensive team that the Defense Department would use to defend the nation if it were attacked in cyberspace. Thirteen of the teams that we’re creating are for that mission alone.”

The same day the nation’s top intelligence official, James R. Clapper Jr., warned Congress that a major cyberattack on the United States could cripple the country’s infrastructure and economy, and suggested that such attacks now pose the most dangerous immediate threat to the United States, even more pressing than an attack by global terrorist networks.

This is starting to sound like the "weapons of mass destruction" buildup to the invasion of Iraq.

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Update 5/7/2013
http://nyti.ms/16e8CYU

The New York Times has reported that the US has accused the Chinese military of "mounting attacks on American government computer systems and defense contractors, saying one motive could be to map “military capabilities that could be exploited during a crisis.”

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Update 5/20/2013

The New York Times reports that, after a three-month break, Chinese hackers have resumed their attacks on U.S. targets. The Chinese Foreign Ministry denies the accusation, and People’s Daily, which reflects the views of the Communist Party, called the United States “the real ‘hacking empire,’ ” saying it “has continued to strengthen its network tools for political subversion against other countries.” Other Chinese organizations and scholars cited American and Israeli cyberattacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities as evidence of American hypocrisy.

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Update 5/22/2013

This story keeps on going. The Washington Post reported that Chinese hackers breached Google security in an effort to learn the identities of Chinese intelligence operatives in the United States who may have been under surveillance by American law enforcement agencies. It seems they tried tried to do the same at Microsoft, but failed to gain access.

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Update 5/23/2013

The New York Times has published an article on the culture of hacking in China -- it is widespread and brazen. Companies advertise their capability and sell at trade shows. The article covered a trade show and quotes a salesman as saying “We can physically locate anyone who spreads a rumor on the Internet.” The company’s services include monitoring online postings and pinpointing who has been saying what about whom.

Another quote from the article:

The culture of hacking in China is not confined to top-secret military compounds where hackers carry out orders to pilfer data from foreign governments and corporations. Hacking thrives across official, corporate and criminal worlds. Whether it is used to break into private networks, track online dissent back to its source or steal trade secrets, hacking is openly discussed and even promoted at trade shows, inside university classrooms and on Internet forums.

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Update 5/29/2013

The Washington Post reports that critical U.S. weapons system designs were compromised by Chinese hackers. Before things like reports of weapons in Iraq, I would have been more concerned about this report, but, now, I cannot help wondering whether it is hype to get congress to allocate funds for agencies and companies.

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Update 6/1/2013

A New York Times column argues that the example of the British use of Elizabethan pirates against the Spanish navy is more relevant to the budding cyberwar between the US and China than the cold war between the US and the Soviet Union.

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Update 6/1/2013

A New York Times article reports that The United States and China have agreed to hold regular, high-level talks on how to set standards of behavior for cybersecurity and commercial espionage, the first diplomatic effort to defuse the tensions over what the United States says is a daily barrage of computer break-ins and theft of corporate and government secrets.  That sounds hopeful.