USA, USA, USA

U.S.Decides To Retaliate Against China’s Hacking, Marquel, TPVs NYTimes So What Section correspondent, read in disbelief. Apparently, China stole over 20,000,000 files of U.S.citizens, so the Defense Department has given them a, “Oh yeah, take this!” response, stealing files on over 40,000,000 Chinese citizens.

Marquel was unsure what that would accomplish. For instance, if the Chinese took 20,000,000 Swedish citizens’ files, there would be few if any Swedes not in Chinese computers. But with two billion Chinese eating dim sum each week, even 40,000,000 aren’t all that many. Who are these people, and of what interest are they to U.S.intelligence?

Marquel went down to the defense department and asked there.

“We really showed them!” Said a colonel, “40,000,000, more than twice their’s, and within 24 hours of getting the order.” He pumped his arm. “We’re the best. USA, USA, USA!”

I looked around the room. Four printers were spewing out papers at an alarming rate.

“Are these the files?” I asked, pointing to the printouts. He nodded. “Can I see a few?” He nodded again.

I looked around and sort of flipped a coin in my mind. The first one said, Jee Hong. He lived in Quang Don Province. He made fishing lines. His wife scrubbed neighbour’s pots and pans. His daughter worked as a prostitute in Goa. “Is this valuable intelligence?” I asked.

“Not unless you’re the daughter’s john and you want to bargain a really low price.” He said.

“Doesn’t sound important to national security. Another?” I asked. He nodded.

The next one was Maru Noha, a student at Kumph beauty school in Hautain Province. She was 22, one parent alive living in Mongolia, working as a cook in a mining camp.

“This doesn’t sound like important intelligence either,” I observed.

“If you’re looking for important intelligence you’re more likely to find it in the telephone book. These are random files. It will take twenty men two years to go through it all. We don’t expect anything important.” He said.

“So why do it. The Times said today our anti ISIS forces were overrun yesterday and it was a  ‘failure of intelligence.’ Shouldn’t those twenty people be working on real intelligence?” I asked.

“In theory, yes. But we’ve got 40,000,000 raw intelligence files direct from China. We can’t ignore it.” He said.

“Not if you want a whore in Goa or a cook in Mongolia, or maybe have your hair done.” I said.

“Fat chance,” he said. “intelligence is long boring work. We’re used to it. You can’t tell until you can’t tell,” he uttered.

I didn’t really understand him nor did I understand why we were wasting our strengths on childish macho contests. The room was literally half full of printouts with more coming. The colonel was up to his waist in it. The country was in even deeper shit.

By MARQUEL: USA, USA, USA