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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  2071 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How Grindr became a national security issue

I have a hard time not seeing Tencent investing in Uber as a more abstract version of lighting your cigar with a hundred dollar bill, but yes, knowing where people are going could be useful to Chinese intelligence. I guess it wouldn't surprise me if the military/state department/intelligence agencies started offering ride services.

Flipkart looks like just business to me though, though it wouldn't surprise me if you knew something I don't.





kleinbl00  ·  2071 days ago  ·  link  ·  

There wasn't another shoe on that one, I'm always curious to see what opinions come up in the state/commerce technology divide. I can absolutely see the reasons for forbidding foreign ownership of a dating app. But I can also absolutely see the reasons for forbidding foreign participation on a social network at all.

Chinese intelligence gathering is a bulk process. They don't invest in skilled operatives; they lean a little on everyone and glean what they can without risking exposure of anyone important. This is why the arrest of Meng Wanzhou is destabilizing: the gear is borked because of course it is. You never know what you might get out of having a router somewhere cool. that's how China operates. Arresting the executive who makes borked gear is very different than arresting Wen Ho Lee because it paints an entire class of interaction as suspect and is much better aligned with the way the PRC actually does stuff.