Why not? Unless you are a Chinese citizen, it arguably makes more sense to grant access to the Chinese government rather than the US government. The PRC generally shows little interest in non-citizens while the US government frequently goes after people beyond its borders (e.g. Meng Wanzhou, Changpeng Zhao, Sam Bankman-Fried, Julian Assange, Kim Dotcom, etc.).
> Why not? Unless you are a Chinese citizen, it arguably makes more sense to grant access to the Chinese government rather than the US government.
You're making zero sense:
1. I predict there will be no change in the US government's access as a result of this.
2. I don't think Americans are so indifferent to their own country that they'd prefer a situation where an adversary country gets handed an intelligence asset. I mean, hypothetically, would an American prefer US trade policy be set that in a way that disadvantages American workers, because some politician got blackmailed because of something his Roomba recorded?
> The PRC generally shows little interest in non-citizens while the US government frequently goes after people beyond its borders
3. The Chinese government has been going after people in the US. They've long been engaged in industrial espionage, but there's also their "overseas police stations" (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65305415). It's worth noting that US citizens can have a Chinese origin, and I doubt the Chinese government would suddenly become uninterested in a dissident once he got naturalized.
I'm not sure how useful of an intelligence asset a map of my house is, or pictures of me in my boxers on a saturday morning. I'm also not sure why you think they weren't already just buying this information from iRobot.
> I'm not sure how useful of an intelligence asset a map of my house is, or pictures of me in my boxers on a saturday morning.
Seriously, who cares about you or your house? Why do you think your personal example is the one to reason from?
iRobot sold 50 million robots, lets conservatively say 10% of those are internet connected and still in service. That's 5 million households. There's probably quite a few people in that 5 million who have something going on that Chinese intelligence is interested in, even things that may affect you personally, if indrectly (if that's what you care about).
> Again, I don't know why you think China wasn't already buying that information from iRobot before it went bankrupt.
Come on, do really you think iRobot they sold data like that to third parties? Like user-identified floor plans? Camera images from inside people's homes?
> Aside from attempting to subvert democracies with botfarmed divisive politics, sure.
When Twitter had its recent VPN reveal, what actually took me by surprise was how many divisive accounts weren't from China or Russia, but from regions of the world like Turkey, India, Africa, and South America. Sure, they could be spouting divisive politics to push an agenda of someone who is paying them, but the simpler answer might be that they spout divisive politics because it earns them money in terms of advertising dollars.
And that's the real problem, IMHO. The subversion of democracy isn't happening because of China, Russia, or any number of adversarial countries, but because our social media companies don't care enough about our country or the people living inside it to meaningfully crack down on ragebait engagement farming.
The general thing about state actors is that they have every incentive to have a dossier of compromising information on every foreign national regardless of current relevance, for potential use in the future. You could, for instance, someday be in a position where you have privileged access to data that becomes relevant to them, and thus your history becomes useful.
True, but the US has a long track record of pursuing both foreigners and citizens—through prosecutions, extraditions, sanctions, or asset seizures—often years later and regardless of nationality. In practical terms, the risk of being targeted by the US for breaking a law is far higher than being blackmailed by a foreign state like China. The consequences are asymmetric as well: blackmail usually amounts to little more than embarrassment, whereas being pursued by the US government can carry lengthy prison sentences or worse.
This is not to mention that the US also engages in data collection for coercion purposes.
State actors also have finite budgets and do cost/benefit analyses. They don't really gain much for creating and maintaining deep dossiers on hundreds of millions of random foreigners.
and then list out examples that the US targeted which includes a US citizen, also while ignoring that China goes beyond its borders to target their citizens?
Both countries routinely act this way because they have the power to do so
