Russian and Chinese Hackers Trying to Get Research on Coronavirus Vaccine?
by John Lawrence, July 17, 2020
Why isn't research on a vaccine widely shared with every laboratory in the world? It's a pandemic, for Pete's sake. It affects everyone in the world. Oh, but American corporations think it's proprietary, I guess. They're hoping to make a killing off the vaccine if they are the first to develop it. They want to make everyone pay. That's it. It's so called intellectual property, the kind of property China has been stealing from us supposedly. Give me a break. First they politicize the pandemic; now they want to weaponize it.
The New York Times said: "Russian hackers are attempting to steal coronavirus vaccine research, the American, British and Canadian governments said Thursday, accusing the Kremlin of opening a new front in its spy battles with the West amid the worldwide competition to contain the pandemic." So now it's a competition? I thought everyone in the world would be cooperating to come up with a vaccine. Or is it that the US has to turn everything into a competition. Elsewhere in the world people seem to cooperate more. The US has to think of everything as a competition even when it is something the solution of which will save lives all over the world. It shouldn't be a competition nor should any company make a ton of profits. Where is Dr Jonas Salk who did not patent his polio vaccine thereby forfeiting $7 billion in profits according to Forbes, when we need him now?
This accusation of hacking reaches a new low in Pompeo's and the Trump administration's attempts to vilify Russia and China. This international hacking situation, which the US also participates in, needs to be resolved by diplomacy rather than ratcheting up the tensions between the US, Russia and China. It is the kind of thing that, rather than justifying a new Cold War, could be resolved by peace making efforts rather than war making and mutual alienation. But the US has not had any real diplomats for years. The Trump State Department is all about threatening other nations with either economic sanctions or war.
And where has it gotten us? The US is becoming a pariah in the eyes of the rest of the world. Even our allies are turning against us. The Intelligencer reports:
Two weeks into the Trump presidency, the British parliament has barred America’s commander-in-chief from addressing the House of Commons; a leading German newspaper has called on all freedom-loving peoples in Europe and Asia to mobilize against the United States; a senior cabinet minister in the Australian government has coined the phrase normal Trump tantrum; Israeli intelligence agents are (reportedly) unsure if they can safely share information with the White House; the Mexican president can’t meet with the U.S. president without inviting a political backlash; members of the global economic elite have started referring to China as “the leader of the free world”; and Canada won’t stop putting its southern neighbor to shame.
Trump's approach to world affairs is a zero, but the whole Republican approach in the last 20 years has been led by neocons and super hawks, people who saw threats everywhere rather than opportunities to peacefully resolve situations and further increased understanding between potential partners. Their approach has been to bully, alienate and piss off the other countries of the world especially those chosen nations who they decided would be our enemies. They need enemies in order to make Americans think we live in a dangerous world that requires spending a trillion dollars a year on the military-industrial complex, more than the next 10 highest spending nations combined. If we chose to get along with other nations instead, such large expenditures on "defense" would not be justified. All this money did nothing to defend us from the coronavirus pandemic. Maybe our priorities are totally out of whack.
