To some extent, you can only snort in contempt at calling this level of interaction to be "meddling", the same as Russian disinfo "meddling" in our elections. It strikes me as laughably minor compared to the influence that Chinese business have by just threatening to give contracts or purchases to another supplier - I'm sure such threats…
To some extent, you can only snort in contempt at calling this level of interaction to be "meddling", the same as Russian disinfo "meddling" in our elections. It strikes me as laughably minor compared to the influence that Chinese business have by just threatening to give contracts or purchases to another supplier - I'm sure such threats make our businessmen pick up the phone to call the MP they fund.
For "disinformation", isn't is "foreign disinformation" for America's Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell, and British Petroleum, to pump out disinformation about climate concerns they already knew were real? For forty years?? It's perfectly legal for Canadian and American corporate properties of foreigners to "meddle" in our elections, always has been; but the influence is still foreign.
Would western countries have shipped all their manufacturing overseas if they loved their own constituents as much as they loved the money to be made for our 1%, by offshoring? That's your real foreign influence.
Unlike so many problems presented to me in the news, which are mostly getting worse every day, China's "influence" on Canada could hardly be less than it is now: we're suspicious and angry at them.
China ran a multi-million dollar foreign influence operation targeting the Obama administration, hoping to bend Washington towards signing a free trade agreement, allowing Huawei to build the U.S' 5G infrastructure, and to keep quiet on Taiwan and Hong Kong. When they first came across it, the FBI et al dismissed it because they couldn't believe that a state-sanctioned campaign could be so sloppy and directionless.
The reality is that a lot of foreign meddling is sloppy as all hell. But it's a thing we have to resist based on its intent and tactics, not on its actual results.
At least corporations have the common decency to run their democratic manipulation out in the open, so we can address it publicly.
I think that fiction has drastically raised people's expectations of what spies can do. If you want to read a painful, eye-rolling account of spy projects that never achieved much, try Tim Weiner's "Legacy of Ashes" about the CIA.
The corporations, alas, have been remarkably effective. I'm just finished Nikiforuk's Tyee article on the "failed petrostate" of Alberta, that was lobbied out of tens of billions in royalties...
To some extent, you can only snort in contempt at calling this level of interaction to be "meddling", the same as Russian disinfo "meddling" in our elections. It strikes me as laughably minor compared to the influence that Chinese business have by just threatening to give contracts or purchases to another supplier - I'm sure such threats make our businessmen pick up the phone to call the MP they fund.
For "disinformation", isn't is "foreign disinformation" for America's Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell, and British Petroleum, to pump out disinformation about climate concerns they already knew were real? For forty years?? It's perfectly legal for Canadian and American corporate properties of foreigners to "meddle" in our elections, always has been; but the influence is still foreign.
Would western countries have shipped all their manufacturing overseas if they loved their own constituents as much as they loved the money to be made for our 1%, by offshoring? That's your real foreign influence.
Unlike so many problems presented to me in the news, which are mostly getting worse every day, China's "influence" on Canada could hardly be less than it is now: we're suspicious and angry at them.
China ran a multi-million dollar foreign influence operation targeting the Obama administration, hoping to bend Washington towards signing a free trade agreement, allowing Huawei to build the U.S' 5G infrastructure, and to keep quiet on Taiwan and Hong Kong. When they first came across it, the FBI et al dismissed it because they couldn't believe that a state-sanctioned campaign could be so sloppy and directionless.
The reality is that a lot of foreign meddling is sloppy as all hell. But it's a thing we have to resist based on its intent and tactics, not on its actual results.
At least corporations have the common decency to run their democratic manipulation out in the open, so we can address it publicly.
I think that fiction has drastically raised people's expectations of what spies can do. If you want to read a painful, eye-rolling account of spy projects that never achieved much, try Tim Weiner's "Legacy of Ashes" about the CIA.
The corporations, alas, have been remarkably effective. I'm just finished Nikiforuk's Tyee article on the "failed petrostate" of Alberta, that was lobbied out of tens of billions in royalties...