What are the "security concerns" for a direct cable between the Americas and Hong Kong?
At that point, the Chinese government gets to dictate whether or not that traffic is allowed, and to snoop on any part of it they can.
if you're paying for lit L2 transport service between two sites then all bets are off, you don't get to see the underlying optical characteristics except for the customer hand off port on each side, and the carrier can of course just mirror an entire port to some capture entity.
I'm curious, how does one "do it right"? Is there a technical explainer somewhere on how this works (in theory)?
the general principle is actually not much different from some things you do in ordinary DWDM system engineering (where you want to give an analysis port to a spectrum analyzer) or the various types of splitters that exist for GPON network builds.
there are also lots of ways to hand-wave away the loss from a tap to a carrier customer, like "oh yeah there's some dirty patch panels over there" or "that segment of fiber was fusion spliced in an emergency repair at 3am eight years ago after it got taken out by a truck, there may be some slightly higher loss on some strands". And even more so for an inter-city fiber link that's way under 80 km (more like 30-40km, tops), where the optical link budget POP-to-POP isn't in question, and well within the reach of ordinary optics even when considering old or dirty fiber in between. The ISP customers might not look too hard at it.
google "fiber plc splitter" for some manufacturer info and datasheets.
See also "optical tap".
That's at least been the case at Google for something like a decade since the China hacks, the Snowden revelations, etc.
That said, I imagine there would be a big capacity crunch if all fibers transiting HKG were completely disrupted. As I understand it, HKG is primarily a stepping stone between SIN and TPE / NRT. There are comparably direct alternatives (e.g. MNL), but the capacity just isn't there yet.
(Networking often uses airport codes to describe metros, e.g. TPE for Taipei or NRT for Tokyo (Narita).)
Anyways point being, China/HK could just subpoena the private keys for individual SSL certificates and decrypt traffic on their end while it passes through the pipeline. Having sovereignty over the cable is still an advantage for them.
If China / HKG has that subpoena power for arbitrary SSL certificates, then we've already lost. As I mentioned, significant traffic already transits through HKG. But even so, what enforcement mechanism does China have? Facebook as well as many other services are already blocked...
And honestly, if China starts using subpoena power to take control of SSL certs, that's a _very_ strong incentive to leave that market entirely, as not only can they decrypt your traffic; they can also impersonate you.
"True e2e" as offered by Signal / Telecom still relies on Diffie-Hellman key exchange, and therefore some notion of public / private keys with custom PKI servers. It's no different from an attacker's perspective -- instead of the global PKI infra underpinning the web, you're just dealing with a single entity. Compromise the PKI, and you can MitM to your heart's content.
Law enforcement might subpoena, say, search result records in connection with a specific crime (certain keywords + location + timeframe), but larger companies with the resources would absolutely have the ability and incentive to fight something as overly broad as requesting SSL keys.
2) traffic interception/analysis (basically everything that the Chinese equivalent of the NSA is presently capable of doing now, or plausibly might be doing in 5, 10, 15 years from now).
If you look at existing maps of submarine fiber cables coming out of WA, OR, CA going across the ocean, as the article points out, there's not many cables that land directly in hong kong first. The US, I think, wants to maintain the principle of landing cables in other places like south korea, japan, taiwan, singapore, malaysia, etc rather than straight to mainland china.
It seems to boil down to:
(1) The PRC likely has visibility into the traffic, while the NSA wouldn't, and
(2) The President has the authority to unilaterally deny the operation of undersea cables, so you'd better play by our rules.
[1]: https://licensing.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/ib/forms/repor...
[2]: https://licensing.fcc.gov/myibfs/download.do?attachment_key=... (PDF download)
However, MITM has always been an advantageous position for bad actors. So this is probably the concern, without evidence.
Taiwan was a four tiger of Asia, now, not so much, and Philippines same.
Philippines has geography and it's own internet issues with PLDT and Globe the two biggest telecom players are not doing changes because they are blocked by the government at all layers and vice versa, with the government more interested in bringing in and establishing a third telecom backed by China called Dito https://www.dito.ph/
Until 2016, there was no internet peering in the Philippines because Globe and PLDT really did not want to cooperate with each other, all traffic had to exit the PH via SG/HK and come back.
An insecure phase other countries went through and usually grow out of with time.
What does growing out of this phase mean to you?
I don't see how this won't cause further escalation… perhaps just one ohio class authorized to target up to 288 civilian and military installations needed to "bring Taiwan in line"…
I think that would be game over for Taiwan and the only blowback on China would be sanctions. It would go over exactly like what happened with Russia in the Ukraine. Everyone would be pissed at China but no one would want to start ww3.
Of course none of this has to be made public with the proper FISA authorizations…
In such a scenario the PRC is the one starting ww3, but perhaps not if the ROC goes public and states that its simply defending itself… if NK can get away with it, I don't see why any other nation state cannot pursue the same strategy…
PRC would know something like this is in place when the ROC no longer decides to scramble the fighters as much :P
And yes, invading Taiwan after China took over is an option, but I don't see how it's possible that option would be chosen. Engaging another super power like China is extremely dangerous and would lead to a massive conflict. Our carrier strike groups are mighty, but they would be overwhelmed by anti ship missiles very quickly. If the United States were serious about defending Taiwan in a conflict, we would have troops in Taiwan as a deterrent like we do with other countries in the region.
Agreed. And not just iron ore, military and civ populations need to be fed:
There's also the fact that most of China soybean supply comes from imports (around 90 percent of its soybeans are imported from the international market and are mostly used in oil and animal feed)… China would have to be able to deploy/resupply some sort of protection for those ships for any cargo imported.
There's lots of different avenues that can be pursued by a varying number of state/non state actors, that will have varying levels of impact and feasible response to such, so I really find the thinking "ww3 is highly unlikely so, [x] actor/nation state can do w/e it wants with no material consequences" really lazy…
Neither is Hong Kong; that happened in 1997.
Crackdown on speech and democracy movements? If in one year, there are no protest movements and no crackdowns, and in a later year there are several protests and several crackdowns, has the level of cracking-down-on-protests gone up?
In recent history, there were record breaking, HUGE protests of thousands and thousands HKers with umbrellas, at first marching mostly unhindered and somewhat successful in at least postponing the illusion of democratic law.
Now, lighting a candle gets an activist arrested.
[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/...
China is doing similar things to other SEA nations with their island building, and they do incursions on Japan for sure.
Expect the nature of the situation to change in the next ten years as these systems become more automated. Why become fatigued when your F-16s fly themselves.
If their intelligence services aren't successful in Taiwan, I don't put it past the CCP to invade and install a puppet. Russia has proven that no one wants world War 3. If they were to avoid a protracted engagement in Taiwan, I just don't see the United States risking attacking ccp forces when coming to the aid of Taiwan.
Taiwan is more complicated; it may be de jure part of China, but there are two governments that de facto govern distinct territories.