12/5/14 3:11 PM

But they don't need to build the best turbine engine or aircraft carriers.

All they have to do is hack into the command link and the game will be won.

Prior to WWII, the 'major power ' such as the US/UK and France build lots of great battleships. GGermanny and Japan could (or would) build anytthing even close to that. But instead, they build airplane that could sink the great battleships in matter of minutes. ;-)

12/5/14 3:30 PM

Good point, April! China can apply a very simple, no-tech, kamikaze way to sink great battleships.....with a billion and a half population, it has enough of a recruit pool to storm, overtake, and sink a ship with the weight of its troops. If you think that is a crazy idea, keep in mind it is a somewhat frequent occurrence (sadly accidental) with ferry ships in the Philippines and Indonesia.

12/5/14 8:55 PM

that's an interesting thing. china has an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLA_Unit_61398" target="_blank">official military unit</a> specifically created to hack into western governments and companies to steal technical data, and probably leave nefarious trojan-horses and back-doors so they can continue monitoring and appropriating data as needed. of course the government denies it, even though the building exists and a unit-patch even exists.

hard for me to get worked up over it, since the US and other western powers do the very same thing. google <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet" target="_blank">stuxnet</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duqu" target="_blank">duqu</a>. of course the US denies, as well. but we dont deny the existence of the NSA, so at least we're (somewhat) forthright about it.

ive read that the US has validated against non-friendly nations the ability to use modern digital, phased array radar systems to actually "insert code" and take over an adversary's radar systems and make them see/do whatever they like. that's pretty cool star-trek-like stuff!

speaking of star-trek, the US also something called the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System" target="_blank">active denial system</a>. it's basically a directional microwave oven that beams the energy at your adversary's troops -- a sort of "phaser" set to stun. non-lethal when used in moderation, it causes a very strong feeling of overheating, as you'd expect. the neat thing is that it can "sneak thru" gaps and around corners, so if a bad-guy is hiding behind something you can still zap them. there's no secrecy around the system, so i'm sure russia and china and israel have their own versions.

12/5/14 9:48 PM

quote:

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hard for me to get worked up over it, since the US and other western powers do the very same thing.

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12/5/14 10:25 PM

That has been true since 06 Aug 1945, but for different reasons ...

12/8/14 10:39 AM

It's also one thing to have access to the machinery and quite another thing to know how to fabricate them. Turbine engines are a prime example. You can hold a turbine blade in your hand, be able to test it to see how strong it is, but have no idea how to fabricate it to have such strength, internal cooling passages, wear prevention coatings, etc. And THAT's where the real magic lies . . .

12/8/14 11:30 AM

that's where the hacking comes into play... ratio of alloys, recipe for the coating, etc.

12/8/14 1:35 PM

quote:

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"...Um, I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here, it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now..."

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