China warns citizens to stop posting info about spy satellites on social media

China's Ministry of State Security has asked citizens to stop posting info about the nation's spy satellites and national security installations online. State-controlled media yesterday covered the Ministry's call for netizens to stop marking the location of military installations on maps and discussing military topics in …

[Gene Cash]

It gets better

China was static firing their Falcon 9-alike when it became very dynamic, apparently because they didn't bolt it down firmly enough to the pad.

It flew up several hundred meters and came back down with a big bang.

[BOFH in Training]

Re: It gets better

Yeah was wondering if it was related when I read the article.

Not a good look when a rocket engine test gets the rocket to fly off. They may be doing this so that next time something similar happens, the average person may not be aware.

[sanmigueelbeer]

China's Ministry of State Security has asked citizens to stop posting info about the nation's spy satellites and national security installations online.

War Thunder when?

[Pascal Monett]

Hu Youping

I can but salute a courageous woman who placed herself in harms' way to protect innocent people, and paid the ultimate price for it.

Now I can only think of one thing : if that had happened in the USA, the guy wouldn't have come aboard with a knife, he would have had an assault rifle.

[sanmigueelbeer]

Re: Hu Youping

if that had happened in the USA, the guy would have come aboard with a knife

But the passengers in the bus would have the assault rifles.

[Gary Stewart]

I spy with my little eye

I always wondered why the US denied the existence of Area 51 to US citizens for so long. It's not like any country with a half decent spy satellite couldn't see it. Seeing as how we have much better satellites than that I'm sure we are aware of most if not all "secret" Chinese bases.. We may not know exactly what they do there, but we do know where they are.

[DS999]

Re: I spy with my little eye

Probably it was denied so long because when it was built there were no satellites so a policy of denial made more sense. I would imagine the original order for the "deny" policy came from either the secretary of defense or the president himself, requiring a person of equal level to change that policy. So we kept getting denials from generals on down because that was what they'd be ordered to say so they were going to keep saying it until their orders changed.

[trindflo]

Re: I spy with my little eye

Maybe the denial made sense before our latest technology in spy satellites, but I doubt it. It was well known for a long time that Aeroflot flights would occasionally go way off course, so bases would make everything visible disappear any time Aeroflot was anywhere near. The US might have had some advantage with the U2, but pretty clearly the Russians knew it was there.

[DS999]

Re: I spy with my little eye

It doesn't matter when the denials no longer made sense, what matters is when someone with the power to order a change policy bothered to do so. So whether one believes it stopped making sense under Nixon or Reagan or Clinton, why would any of those presidents have a reason to change the order? They had more important stuff to do.

I'm not sure why it was changed under Obama, though one could assume it was either because 1) government officials got tired of issuing denials that made them looked silly, and requested up the chain of command to end the foolishness long enough they were eventually heard, or 2) the acknowledgement served some policy purpose (you can insert your own ideas there out of the dozens of possibilities from reasonable to tinfoil hat)

[PB90210]

Re: I spy with my little eye

London's BT Tower was an 'official secret' despite being the tallest building in London from 1964 until 1980, and having a public viewing gallery and revolving restaurant from 1965 until the bombing in 1971