Why is Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton following up on Google's report of a cyber-attack from China and its threat to withdraw from Chinese soil with her own remarks condemning the country's policies?
Makes you wonder what conversations may have gone on behind closed doors between President Barack Obama and one of his science/technology advisors, Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
Secretary Clinton has called for the Chinese government to conduct a "transparent" probe into who was behind the attacks. (WSJ summary) Yeah, good luck with that.
For good measure, she threw in the names of other countries that love to censor too much, including Tunisia, Uzbekistan, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam. Sounds like a list Google could have provided, as it has done in certain books.
Can there be any doubt that everybody thinks or knows the attack was perpetrated by the Chinese government? I mean, come on, if the search for dissidents doesn't show it, Secretary Clinton's involvement has to. Chinese officials think so, and are pissed. (Another WSJ article)
"We urge the U.S. side to respect the facts, and to stop using the so-called Internet freedom issue to make groundless charges against China," Ma Zhaoxu, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Friday in a statement on the ministry's Web site.
Secretary Clinton sent a message to the Chinese that businesses are hampered without a free flow of information.
"Increasingly, U.S. companies are making the issue of information freedom a greater consideration in their business decisions," she said.
Sounds like a message to China, like President Obama's earlier statements in support of Google, that the U.S. government approves of the threat to withdraw.
Perhaps this is a way for the U.S. government to encourage other U.S. companies to also put pressure on China to change its ways.
I don't think Microsoft will, though. Steve Ballmer displayed a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease by discounting this whole issue.
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NOTE: I'm collecting updates on this story at my site, RichardLBrandt.com