Big tech companies of the United States like SpaceX, Google, Apple, NASA and NYC Schools banned the use of Zoom for remote operations after it was reported by many security experts that the technology has various security flaws that make user data vulnerable to exploitation. Earlier this week, the FBI warned that Zoom teleconferences and live classrooms are being hacked by trolls and Zoom’s CEO, Eric Yuan has this week publicly admitted that he “messed up” on privacy and security.
We found out that Zoom has security flaws but the question rises who controls the platform that gained so much acceptance in such little time period.
Zoom received its seed funding from TSVC, which presents as a Los Altos-based venture capital firm but invests with the funds of a Chinese State-owned Enterprise, Tsinghua Holdings.
Zoom’s mainline app is developed and founded by China-based subsidiaries. The app is also operated by a Chinese entrepreneur, its servers in China appear also to be manufacturing its AES-128 encryption keys, including, as a Citizen Labs report documents, some used for meetings among North American participants. Beijing’s privacy laws likely obligate China-manufactured keys to be shared with Chinese authorities.
Looking at the brief development and operation of Zoom, its the proper tool that China values and it also belongs to the decades-long grand strategy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to develop and grab the global market and making them the new global standards.
Since, joining the World Trade Organization in 2001, China has officially put the mark on this desire when it launched the National Standardization Strategy.
The CCP has put this plan into aggressive actions and the country is on the path to launching China Standards 2035, an industrial plan to write international rules and regulations that will be the successor to Made in China 2025 an even broader plan for the coming decade that is focused not on governing where the global goods are made, but on setting the standards that will define the production, exchange, and consumption of the goods.
In March, China completed the planning for the China Standards 2035 while the final strategy document and the specifics of the report still have to be published but the intent and the focus areas of the report are already visible. The National Standardization Committee of China released its preliminary report for the year ahead, the “Main Points of National Standardization Work in 2020.”
Horizon Advisory has translated and analyzed that preliminary report and reports the past two years of planning that informed it. The full report can be read here.
In the report, it has been found that the country wants to “seize the opportunity” that COVID-19 creates by reproducing China’s authoritarian information regime, to co-opt global industry by capturing the industrial Internet of Things; to define the next generation of information technology and biotechnology infrastructures; to export the social credit system – and Beijing’s larger litany of incentive-shaping platforms.
The report also finds that there is an explicit global ambition that weaponizes business, resources, and participation.
China views the current scenario as the world is on the edge of transformation. Dai Hong, Director of the Second Department of Industrial Standards of China’s National Standardization Management Committee in 2018 explained that the “Industry, technology, and innovation are developing rapidly, Global technical standards are still being formed. This grants China’s industry and standards the opportunity to surpass the world’s.”
Speaking at the inauguration of China Standards 2035’s planning phase, Dai said that the plan would focus on “integrated circuits, virtual reality, smart health and retirement, 5G key components, the Internet of Things, information technology equipment interconnection, and solar photovoltaics.” During this transformation, the importance would be on the “internationalization” of standards set by China.
The initial research results of the China Standards 2035 reveals that it will focus on setting standards in emerging industries like high-end equipment manufacturing, unmanned vehicles, additive manufacturing, new materials, the industrial internet, cybersecurity, new energy, and the ecological industry.
Strategic Emerging Industries Initiative published in the Made in China 2025 report is also the part of China Standards 2035.
Pingback: PUBG Mobile could be banned in India over National Security concerns - Falken Tech