Cyberwar -- an Opportunity for Carly

Although not surprising these days, news this morning that China has been reading the emails of top U.S. officials should provide yet more impetus to the emerging campaign of that “other woman candidate,” Carly Fiorina.  From NBC News:

China’s cyber spies have accessed the private emails of “many” top Obama administration officials, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official and a top secret document obtained by NBC News, and have been doing so since at least April 2010.

The email grab — first codenamed “Dancing Panda” by U.S. officials, and then “Legion Amethyst” — was detected in April 2010, according to a top secret NSA briefing from 2014. The intrusion into personal emails was still active at the time of the briefing and, according to the senior official, is still going on.

Getting a hold of Hillary’s emails during all this should have been a walk in the park for the Chinese.  In fact it should have been a walk in the park for just about anybody, including precocious seventh graders in Sandusky, Ohio. Mrs. Clinton, it will be recalled, informed us she wasn’t even aware you could have two email accounts on one cellphone.  Of course, that was a lie, but the kind of lie only a technological illiterate would make.  It was absurd and almost daffy.

Carly Fiorina, on the other hand, is the only presidential candidate with any kind of real tech expertise, having led Hewlett Packard for seven years.  Cyberwar of all kinds, from spying to sabotage, is clearly the wave of the future, indeed of the present, and will get increasingly complex with players as nefarious as the Chinese, the Russians, ISIS and, of course, the recently empowered and soon-to-be-rich Iranians deeply in the game.

Leaders with no training of their own will be completely in the hands of the putative experts.  We have seen where this leads on issues like global warming with the current president of the United States, another scientific illiterate, relying on a supposed consensus of scientists — one that is even now diminishing — to push forward a destructive agenda.

This is yet another reason to take a serious look at Fiorina, who is rising in the polls after her performance in last week’s debate.  People are speaking of her as a potential American Thatcher and, while that is vastly premature, she is demonstrating a clarity of speech and thought reminiscent of the Iron Lady.  She is the only candidate thus far to criticize Hillary Clinton with the effectiveness that would be necessary in a general election.

The other candidates should pay attention and learn from Fiorina.  It was that focus on Clinton that helped her emerge as the most powerful speaker during the debate.  After all, that is what it’s about, dethroning a progressive agenda before it continues for another four or eight years until it can no longer be undone.  More than any candidate, Fiorina articulates this clearly.

As are many of you, I am well aware of the criticisms of her sojourn at HP.  We will undoubtedly be hearing plenty about that soon given the new-found success of her candidacy.  We will all have to make a judgement for ourselves.  My guess is that there are two sides to this story, as there usually are with corporate infighting.

I have personally encountered Fiorina three times.  The first was some years ago when I did a podcast interview with her for PJ Media when she was running against Barbara Boxer for the Senate. She seemed intelligent, but I wasn’t overly impressed.  Something was missing.  The woman I saw give a speech a couple of months ago in Los Angeles and then interviewed in Boone, Iowa, was vastly different, extraordinarily improved as a candidate.  She had gone to the head of the class.  I don’t know about you, but I’m impressed with people who grow and change for the better, who learn from their mistakes and become really good at what they do.  In a way, that’s the best we can hope for in this life.