1) If you're counting investment, you should count it in dollars, not number of investors or corporate entity locations.
2) This is missing at least two extremely well-known CNE vendors, which makes me doubt its accuracy.
3) The takeaway from the graph on Mythical Beasts [1] should be that the industry is _very small_, not that it's very big.
4) Americans should be happy that the US government is the biggest player. Would you prefer to have China or Russia or the Middle East be the biggest player? Get a warrant -> own a phone is a very straightforward process that fits into existing models of civil liberties in the US.
>Would you prefer to have China or Russia or the Middle East be the biggest player?
If the absolute value of China + Russia + ME was the same, but US went down? Yeah, probably. Doubly so if sales going down meant less R&D investment and therefore lower quality software.
tptacek · 1h ago
This data set is missing even several pretty well-known CNE vendors.
The bigger question is: why would you expect the US not to be the largest investor? CNE vendors are tech companies. The US is the largest investor in tech companies.
bigyabai · 1h ago
> why would you expect the US not to be the largest investor?
Mostly because $FAV_TECH_COMPANY constantly tells me they love privacy. They fight backdoors in court, they rush out security patches and closely coordinate with the government to ensure I'm safe. Every advertisement seems to reinforce the idea that they cared about my security, I guess I put too much faith in the principles of private enterprise.
tptacek · 57m ago
What would that have to do with anything I just said?
bigyabai · 1m ago
It might help inform you, if you're unfamiliar with the sentiment Americans hold towards security?
Don't take my word for it, though. Scroll through the rest of the comments in this thread, I counted all of three unique users that took this article at face-value. This is the status-quo for most people here, even educated tech enthusiasts.
The headline can't be taken at face value. "Largest" is based on the number of investing entities (including individuals), not something more objective like dollars invested. Also, the US is not making these decisions as the headline implies.
hparadiz · 2h ago
Aka enterprise security solutions
tptacek · 1h ago
Enterprises are generally not customers of serious CNE vendors.
It is why the employer contracts the hacking firm to do it all for them. Meanwhile, the employer has deniability. The employer receives reports of your data and activities as accessed by the firm. That is the whole point. It's a legal gray area. Being naive and daft about it doesn't help.
dadrian · 1h ago
No, that is also illegal.
tptacek · 1h ago
Sounds made up.
bamboozled · 1h ago
“Freedomware”
Group_B · 1h ago
Gotta love the good old US of A. I feel like we have the worst of both worlds; dystopian surveillance, yet massive crime issues still. An amazing world we live in.
generalizations · 1h ago
I suspect that in the very near future, the latter will dramatically decrease and the former dramatically increase. I wonder how that tradeoff will be perceived.
bregma · 1h ago
As surveillance increases the definition of crime will expand.
Consider the incentives. Surveillance is costly. The only way to justify increasing surveillance costs is to demonstrate increasing intervention in criminal activity. If traditional crime is reduced, new crimes need to be introduced.
Once all the enemies of the state have been eliminated, it becomes mandatory to introduce new enemies of the state so they, too, can be rounded up. Eventually there will be no one left to come for and the surveillance technology will go unmonitored.
jrochkind1 · 1h ago
Don't worry, the crime wont' actually decrease either.
hansvm · 1h ago
Maybe. If we use our powers too capriciously then they'll deter behaviors other than criminal behaviors. Like that boat of alleged drug traffickers we recently blew up -- that looks more likely to discourage boating within 1000 miles of the US than any particular crime.
corimaith · 11m ago
The increase in crime is purely political problem emerging from the demands of a certain segment of middle and upper middle classes, not the government or working class.
falcor84 · 1h ago
What do you mean? What would lead to government surveillance decreasing?
wil421 · 1h ago
No he means crime will dramatically decrease and surveillance will increase. I’d be inclined to agree.
roughly · 1h ago
> I feel like we have the worst of both worlds; dystopian surveillance, yet massive crime issues still.
One might be tempted towards the conclusion that dystopian surveillance doesn't materially impact crime rates and that if we want to solve the latter, we need a different solution than the former.
mrtesthah · 1h ago
The problem is that when laws no longer apply to certain individuals in our government, we no longer have rule of law at all, because a law is inherently universal. The US is rotting from the head.
kubb · 1h ago
At least you have freedom… in some sense.
No comments yet
howmayiannoyyou · 1h ago
Good. I want my tax dollars allocated to penetrating every and any system my country's adversaries may use to undermine our interests or threaten our people. And, I want maximum penalties, civil and criminal, for any person or company who misuses these systems for personal or political gain. Also, I'd like to see mandatory statutory civil damages for any vendor creating and/or selling/providing these systems who does so in a negligent or malicious manner, same as we provide for other high risk products and services.
vkou · 1h ago
Well, you're definitely not going to get the latter two, and the only guarantee about the first one is that they will definitely be used against enemies of the state.
Whether there's any overlap between them and enemies of the people will heavily depend on the latter's ability to steer towards good governance. The track record for the past few decades hasn't been great.
ChainnChompp · 1h ago
Nailed it - well said. Going to take some serious work for the populace to start steering the ship again, unfortunately.
RianAtheer · 3h ago
Wow, didn’t know the U.S. is now the top investor in commercial spyware clearly a big push for cyber defense and global intelligence edge. Essentially, it’s about maintaining an edge in cyber operations and national security. The U.S likely sees commercial spyware not just as a tool for spying, but as a strategic investment to keep up with global cyber threats.
linkregister · 2h ago
Investment in these firms does not equate to improved national security. Existing US government programs exceed the capabilities of these firms. A purpose for contracting with these firms is to evade the significant legal oversight present in the NSA, CIA, and FBI computer network exploitation programs.
OutOfHere · 2h ago
US and Israel are the the global cyber threat.
SilverElfin · 2h ago
What about China? Salt typhoon was just one among many actual attacks, not just threats, connected back to the Chinese state.
soperj · 2h ago
What attacks from the US have you heard of?
saagarjha · 43s ago
Stuxnet?
autoexec · 1h ago
Does microsoft windows count?
Honestly, I imagine that other nations should be very concerned about the small number of US based companies creating all the CPUs which could easily be backdoored. Same for the blackbox wireless chipsets our phones depend on too.
That and so many of the companies that people depend on are in the US (Google, Amazon, social media, Apple, MS, etc) since you have to think that the US government is collecting massive amounts of data from those places.
OutOfHere · 2h ago
Yes, but with rare exceptions, China doesn't exercise much power to lock up someone, or to disempower someone, at least so long as you don't visit China. Meanwhile, the US and Israel are well known to target individuals both domestically and around the world irrespective of their affiliation.
SilverElfin · 1h ago
What is power? Like legally? China definitely has international policing outposts that are meant to cast their power outside their borders.
Telling someone their family is going to get it if they keep doing what they do is quite some distance away from... straight up bombing them.
corimaith · 6m ago
And you think China won't bomb foreign adversaries if they can? Or any country for that matter.
The answer is don't place yourself in the crosshairs of great powers in the first place, which then puts into the degree you can align yourself with their interests.
pessimizer · 39m ago
And anybody who happens to be nearby.
pessimizer · 32m ago
It's also important to keep in mind that China has less than a quarter of the per capita prison population as the US. If you're talking about who's a police state, the US and China just aren't in the same universe.
Or from another direction, China has 4x the population of the US, and still has fewer people in prison.
corimaith · 5m ago
That's more on an indictment of multiculturalism as opposed to cultural homogenization though, which I imagine many here would furiously oppose the latter.
ImJamal · 1h ago
They have the power to arrest people in China. Any Chinese outside of China could have their family still in China arrested.
1) If you're counting investment, you should count it in dollars, not number of investors or corporate entity locations.
2) This is missing at least two extremely well-known CNE vendors, which makes me doubt its accuracy.
3) The takeaway from the graph on Mythical Beasts [1] should be that the industry is _very small_, not that it's very big.
4) Americans should be happy that the US government is the biggest player. Would you prefer to have China or Russia or the Middle East be the biggest player? Get a warrant -> own a phone is a very straightforward process that fits into existing models of civil liberties in the US.
[1]: https://mythicalbeasts.atlanticcouncil.org/
If the absolute value of China + Russia + ME was the same, but US went down? Yeah, probably. Doubly so if sales going down meant less R&D investment and therefore lower quality software.
The bigger question is: why would you expect the US not to be the largest investor? CNE vendors are tech companies. The US is the largest investor in tech companies.
Mostly because $FAV_TECH_COMPANY constantly tells me they love privacy. They fight backdoors in court, they rush out security patches and closely coordinate with the government to ensure I'm safe. Every advertisement seems to reinforce the idea that they cared about my security, I guess I put too much faith in the principles of private enterprise.
Don't take my word for it, though. Scroll through the rest of the comments in this thread, I counted all of three unique users that took this article at face-value. This is the status-quo for most people here, even educated tech enthusiasts.
The headline can't be taken at face value. "Largest" is based on the number of investing entities (including individuals), not something more objective like dollars invested. Also, the US is not making these decisions as the headline implies.
My home country does not have formal diplomatic ties with them, yet we purchased and deployed surveillance tech from this country.
We live in a truly dystopian nightmare.
Report: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/re...
Dataset: https://github.com/ac-csi/mythical-beasts
Consider the incentives. Surveillance is costly. The only way to justify increasing surveillance costs is to demonstrate increasing intervention in criminal activity. If traditional crime is reduced, new crimes need to be introduced.
Once all the enemies of the state have been eliminated, it becomes mandatory to introduce new enemies of the state so they, too, can be rounded up. Eventually there will be no one left to come for and the surveillance technology will go unmonitored.
One might be tempted towards the conclusion that dystopian surveillance doesn't materially impact crime rates and that if we want to solve the latter, we need a different solution than the former.
No comments yet
Whether there's any overlap between them and enemies of the people will heavily depend on the latter's ability to steer towards good governance. The track record for the past few decades hasn't been great.
Honestly, I imagine that other nations should be very concerned about the small number of US based companies creating all the CPUs which could easily be backdoored. Same for the blackbox wireless chipsets our phones depend on too.
That and so many of the companies that people depend on are in the US (Google, Amazon, social media, Apple, MS, etc) since you have to think that the US government is collecting massive amounts of data from those places.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/12/world/europe/china-outpos...
I am not certain that is necessarily true. At least, not if one is originally from China.
https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/trnsprnc/brfng-mtrls/prlm...
The answer is don't place yourself in the crosshairs of great powers in the first place, which then puts into the degree you can align yourself with their interests.
Or from another direction, China has 4x the population of the US, and still has fewer people in prison.