Donald Trump thought-bubbles an Alibaba ban as Chinese clouds clam up about Clean Cloud plan

US president Donald Trump has suggested the United States may ban Chinese tech giant Alibaba. At a weekend press event, Trump was asked if he intended to extend bans on Chinese tech companies beyond the recently-announced measures against Tencent’s WeChat and ByteDance’s TikTok. His response was to recount his administration’ …

[Nick Ryan]

Banning Alibaba’s cloud would not overly discomfort either US citizens or Alibaba, as the Chinese company has made no secret that it will prioritise Asian markets.

Yep... In an international and growingly connected world, one idiot nation isolating itself for braindead internal political reasons may affect income but there are plenty of other markets out there and often larger and faster growing ones too.

[IGotOut]

If course he can build a wall. After all the Mexican one was completed in no time and fully paid for by the Mexican goverment, just like he promised.

[Anonymous Coward]

After all the Mexican one was completed in no time

he'll blame the fiasco of his pet-wall-project on the "enemies within" (ironically though, he'll be right, for once ;)

[steviebuk]

"I never said what scale the wall would be. I never did, I never said. It doesn't matter that it's just a model on a model map, its still a wall and its still great. Its the greatest wall that has ever been seen. I would say, I do say, its greater than the Great Wall of China (that we're also going to ban)."

[Anonymous Coward]

> one idiot nation isolating itself for braindead internal political reasons

Are you suggesting there's only one nation isolating itself for braindead internal political reasons? I can think of three just off the top of my head!

[Nick Ryan]

I didn't say that there was only one, just noting that any one individual nation being braindead isn't going to affect things too much... because it's a growing and developing world.

Only three? You are being generous!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he can build a wall around America and keep everyone inside from getting out, including their Airforce and Navy!

Make everything you need in 'merica.

See how that goes donnie.

[b0llchit]

Maybe he can build a wall around America...

Of course he can build a wall. He must only pump-drain both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to get a solid foundation.

Impossible you say? Americans always think big, so it can be done. Where all the water will go, you ask? Of course it will be dumped onto China's doorstep. The south-Chinese sea can tolerate a bit of water. Maybe the Indian ocean can hold a few cubic kilometres too to hold India at bay.

[macjules]

Some good news then ..

The bad news: Trump is banning Alibaba

The good news: He is sending the notification via USPS

[Anonymous Coward]

ban Chinese tech giant Alibaba.

also, declare those US bonds bought by Chinese void and watch what happens.

[cyberdemon]

Re: ban Chinese tech giant Alibaba.

> also, declare those US bonds bought by Chinese void and watch what happens.

Yeah, scary stuff.. Every economy in the west is borrowing by issuing bonds.. Who else can buy them but China?

Is anyone else seriously worried about the prospect of all this sabre-rattling nationalism leading to WWIII? Or is it just me?

Also, I fear that WWIII could be a lot more slow-and-painful than simply bathing in the Light of a Thousand Suns. More like enslavement by a swarm of autonomous DJI drones with guns. Half-life 3 except the manhacks shoot you, and you have nothing to shoot them back with. The game wouldn't have been much fun if the resistance were wiped out in the opening levels, and you then had the choice to play on as a good little citizen, or die..

[teknopaul]

Re: ban Chinese tech giant Alibaba.

Churchill did a back of an envelop analysis to see who had access to resources to win the war: and set about securing them.

Trump banned envelopes.

[Peter2]

Re: ban Chinese tech giant Alibaba.

Is anyone else seriously worried about the prospect of all this sabre-rattling nationalism leading to WWIII? Or is it just me?

Militarily, there won't be a fight any time soon between China and western countries. That'd only happen if one or the other sides could actually conceivably win something by doing so. Neither side can take land from the other, and Chinese trade would cease to exist the moment shooting started whereas western trade would be quite safe (from sheer distance from China and quantity of military forces defending it relative to the force China could possibly project to the other side of the planet)

What we have is the same situation as in the cold war, where the Soviet Union and the West are unable to win a shooting war and quietly attempted to make each other collapse.

The Soviet Union employed huge numbers of terrorists, and the West just quietly prospered through the capitalist system while taxing off 5% to pay for a military while building using our superior tech base to field things things that are ever more expensive to defend against. The Soviet Union topped 40% of their GDP going to the military and then economically and politically collapsed. The Soviet Union strategy of spending on terrorism to turn us into a hostile, mistrusting, divided bickering dystopian society did not succeed to any notable extent.

I would suggest that the strategy today on the part of hostile nations would be to interfere with our political systems by funding disinformation and hiring people to deliberately try and disrupt any form of normal human interaction between people who actually have little actual disagreement beyond the best way of achieving an aim that everybody agrees on.

By turning these things into huge partisan arguments with only two sides and then attempting to drive wedges between the two sides the intention is to ramp up tensions to the point that things boil over.

I suspect that the hope on the part of the funders is that people are going to start killing each other and we'll end up collapsing into a civil war.

So no, personally i'm not worried about somebody starting WW3 and the world ending in a nuclear holocaust: Our society being pushed to the point it collapses is a much more realistic and serious concern.

[Hollerithevo]

Re: ban Chinese tech giant Alibaba.

The USA not only did capitalism, but supported terrorists (Contras, for one example), overthrew democratically-elected governments (Iran, Chile, I could go on), supported dictators and strongmen and warlords (Indonesia, Egypt, I could go on) and used pressure to get small or weak companies to support them (e.g, in the UN). I prefer living western-style rather than Soviet-style, but let us not pretend that the 'white hat' was very white. It was just a lot richer.

[Nick Ryan]

Re: ban Chinese tech giant Alibaba.

The Soviet Union strategy of spending on terrorism to turn us into a hostile, mistrusting, divided bickering dystopian society did not succeed to any notable extent.

Oh, I don't know, it seems to have worked far, far too well. Possibly also that somone did such a good job that many people thought that it was themselves doing the thinking and not external parties (who may or may not have been Soviet/Russian, but important not to check just in case)

[Peter2]

Re: ban Chinese tech giant Alibaba.

Nope. That strategy came to an end prior to 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed.

That was 29 years ago. Many of these issues simply didn't exist 15 years ago so they couldn't have been connected.

Now you could claim that Russia (and China?) are probably running successors to those programs with considerable justification by observable evidence, but the version one attempt during the cold war concentrating on setting off car bombs in crowded streets and hijacking airliners etc was very definitely a failure.

[Cliffwilliams44]

Re: ban Chinese tech giant Alibaba.

Not to mention the totally fictitious technology the Reagan administration was leaking to the Soviets to make them spend real, personal and intellectual capital on. Every time they thought they had made a "leg up" on the Americans Reagan would leak the "Next big thing" and they be back to square one. Most of the so called "Start Wars" missile defense tech was all fake!

[amanfromMars 1]

Re: ban Chinese tech giant Alibaba. @Cliffwilliams44

Not to mention the totally fictitious technology the Reagan administration was leaking to the Soviets to make them spend real, personal and intellectual capital on. Every time they thought they had made a "leg up" on the Americans Reagan would leak the "Next big thing" and they be back to square one. Most of the so called "Start Wars" missile defense tech was all fake! ..... Cliffwilliams44

Yes ..... Mighty Ming and Magnificent Ivan learnt a hell of a lot from that early remote version of virtual command and control .... the iron hand for wielding at the touch of a velvet gloved finger, nowadays defaulted to the click of mice.

And who's to say they are not now strategically hardwired with .... Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me ..... to avoid any pathetic and apathetic repeat performances?

[Peter2]

Re: ban Chinese tech giant Alibaba.

Yes. He had the author of one of the most important works in the field as an advisor. If your interested in this area then you can read "The Strategy of Technology" online free of charge from one of the authors websites which explains the strategies and methodology behind fighting a technological cold war.

[Getmo]

Autonomous drone swarms

I've been thinking about these micro murder drone swarms that keep getting talked about.

It seems to me, they must wirelessly communicate with each other in order to coordinate an attack. I'm guessing in the form of bluetooth or wifi, both of which are in the 2.4 GHz spectrum (+5 GHz Wifi). I wonder how they would act if you actively disrupted their communications.

I believe it's fairly simple to acquire or build your own 2.4-5 GHz portable jammer, even if it's highly illegal to operate. Still, might it be worth it to look into securing your own device for use in our dystopian future? I'll keep mine next to the homemade EMP in my bomb shelter.

[Peter2]

Re: Autonomous drone swarms

I've been thinking about these micro murder drone swarms that keep getting talked about.

Have you realised that they'd have pretty much zero payload, and need to reload and recharge frequently yet? If somebody ever does pull a huge drone swarm, you can expect an airstrike or artillery/MLRS carpet bombardment of the recharging and reloading location, after which it becomes a huge number of drones with flat batteries a short time thereafter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Autonomous drone swarms

The payload only needs to be 50g of PE4 if the drone is on your face when it goes off.

They cost less than a full magazine buying in bulk and their launch site is the back of a Uhaul truck parked around the corner from a parade in your nations capital or outside an army base

How much good does 18 carrier battle fleets do against that?

[Spanners]

"Clean" network?

If the world wants a clean network, they would have to ban the USA from it for a start.

Why? To keep the USA's "Three Letter Agencies" out of it since the US has demonstrated that, while China has a law about how everyone must help spooks when asked, the USA has been invading our privacy for a long time now without laws. Their corporations are considerably worse.

[Teiwaz]

Read that as

Alabama ban

..well, knew he was uppity with states having other points of Authority other than himself, and prone to sending out groups of goons in vans.

[Dinanziame]

prodded by a reporter who mentioned Alibaba and Alibaba only, he said: “Well, yeah. We’re looking at other things, yes we are”.

I'm starting to wonder how many of "Trump declarations" are the result of a journalist asking a precise question on something he knows nothing about, and getting a vague answer that "we're looking into it".

[My-Handle]

I'm wondering how long it'll be before some of these reporters start making bets with each other on what they can prompt Trump to ban next.

Reporter 1: "Hey Dave, $100 says I can get him to ban cartoons!"

Reporter 2 (Dave): "You're on."

<in press conference>

Reporter 1: "Anime and east Asian cartoons are watched by millions of Americans! Are we doing anything to control this potential source of propaganda?"

Reporter 2 (Dave): [whispers] dammit.

[Mike Moyle]

A friend of mine used to be a reporter in Miami, Florida. There are certain words that some folks in the Deep South have trouble pronouncing and sometimes there would be a game among the reporters at politicians' press conferences to see who could get the politician on the record using one of the problematic words. My friend won big one night by getting the pol in question to talk about the threats to the "Amurrican Nucular Bidness".

[Hollerithevo]

Or on purpose

l can speculate that interested parties, say, certain big businesses or politically-focused organisations, might see bribing a reporter to plant a word they want mentioned and are confident will be picked up, as a kernel of corn before a rooster, and then acted upon. POTUS seems merely to mention something and minions leap to Make It So, although these are not regal expressions of will (yet). So one well-targeted word, being so powerful, could mean riches for the reporter involved.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft Windows

Lenovo still sell PCs running Microsoft Windows. Obviously you would want to end that.

All those PC makers in China, making and selling PCs with Windows licenses, you could end that in one ban. Simply label Windows as export controlled and stop it being exported from USA.

Think of a world without the power of Windows 10, Windows 10 Pro, Windows 10 embedded and so on. All that kit that the Chinese would be deprived of, a major blow to the Chinese economy. They could never possibly recover from losing Windows!

It would cripple the Chinese economy for sure and Trump would be a hero to the Fox News crowd.

Think of the ratings!

[Robert Moore]

Re: Microsoft Windows

What a wonderful world it would be.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Microsoft Windows

True

Beastie --------------->

[amanfromMars 1]

What's next ? An Internal NEUKlearer Explosion?

Seems like Uncle Sam and the boys have gone Full Retard. Not really the smartest of moves in a world with worlds full of SMARTR Movers and Shakers.

And whatever is Mike Pompeo smoking/dropping? It certainly fcuks up his 0days and puts a bullseye target on his chest for all those he just loves to berate and belittle. What a sub-prime loser ....... although it is sad to maybe have to admit, he might have some suitably mad and/or necessarily conveniently stupid supporters.

Thus proving that old adage, ..... There's nowt as queer as folk.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: What's next ? An Internal NEUKlearer Explosion?

It seems AMFM1 has achieved sentience and gained political opinions, and even moved to Gods Own County of Yorkshire.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: What's next ? An Internal NEUKlearer Explosion?

A downvote for that? I suppose the internet and computers have finally reached Lancashire now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Alibaba=GoDaddy

I'm not sure how Trump plans to ban these "Chinese Cloud" companies especially when many are hosted on US servers.

In fact,

Alibaba is being hosted by GoDaddy out of Scottsdale Arizona to run advertising fraud and harvest user information from....

...get this...

the phones that were distributed by the GOVERNMENT FUNDED LIFELINE PROGRAM!

(you can't make this stuff up)