China and Google--Republished from Jan 15, 2010

China and Google are both often in the news, and but last week they were in the news together. Google accused China of launching a cyberattack against it and threatened to pull out of China. Nicholas Kristof is a New York Times writer who has a great deal of experience living in China and his column highlights a number of important themes in the history of technology (some which are a little scary). We talked in class about paradigms. Kristof mentions that the Chinese are putting a lot of effort into cyberwarfare. If China wanted to become a military power that could challenge the US in a traditional way it would take trillions of dollars and many years to develop the various weapons systems and train their military forces. (For example here and here are a post on recent Chinese work in aircraft carriers and how far they are behind the US.) Instead cyberwarfare doesn't require you to build any expensive hardware--just acquire computer skills that you can use in a variety of ways. If Chinese hackers could mess with aspects of the American infrastructure--power-grids, dams, air traffic control systems, etc., they would have a powerful weapon that in any conflict (in some ways more powerful than aircraft carriers and a lot cheaper).

Kristof's column also shows some aspects of the "social construction of technology." Different groups value different things. We in the US value openness. The Chinese value the ability to censor things and keep controversial issues out of the public. There is a tug of war now going on in the Chinese internet about which will win. The Chinese have created "the Great Firewall of China" to control the internet in their country. Kristof shows how innovative Chinese are coming up with ways to get around that Firewall, such as faking out censors by referring to June 4 (the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre) by the name "May 35." (Well that probably won't work any more.) Anyhow the question is does the Internet require freedom or can the Chinese customize the Internet to their own values. We will see.