“The ongoing trade war between China and the U.S. shows no sign of ending in the near future,” Davey Winder reports for Forbes. “Now comes the news, first broken online by the Epoch Times this week, that China is preparing to replace the Windows operating system with an alternative that is being developed within China in order to ‘prevent the United States from hacking into China’s military network.'”
“Quoting a report from a Canadian military print publication called Kanwa Asian Defence, The Epoch Times revealed how the Internet Security Information Leadership Group (ISILG) in China has been created in order to replace Windows, and the UNIX system, used by the Chinese military,” Winder reports. “The ISILG is part of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and falls directly under the control of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).”
“‘The reality of a secure OS is that you need a pipeline of developers to develop and support it,’ [Ian Thornton-Trump, head of security at AmTrust International] explains, ‘given the economy in China a briefcase full of dollars is highly likely to yield you an advanced copy of the OS for opposing nation states to dissect and reverse engineer,'” Winder reports. “That said, Thornton-Trump can understand that with the seemingly never-ending number of zero-day vulnerabilities within Windows comes a feeling that the NSA and other classified agency exploit coffers are likely well stocked.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We wholeheartedly back China in their effort to dump Microsoft Windows and encourage every other country in the world to do the same.
Of course, the rest of the world doesn’t have to roll their own OS. They can simply
dumprecycle their upside-down and backwards fake Macs and upgrade to those running The World’s Most Advanced Operating System and watch their productivity soar and support costs plummet!Related articles:
Apple teams up with SAP to help clients develop business apps for Mac, iPad, and iPhone – May 7, 2019
Mac sales jump highlights purchasing pattern change; ‘great traction in the enterprise market’ seen – November 7, 2017
General Electric to offer Apple Macs to 330,000 employees as company standardizes on iOS for mobile – October 23, 2017
Enterprise use of Apple Macs primed to expand ‘exponentially’ – September 6, 2017
Microsoft’s Windows is doomed – September 1, 2017
Tim Bajarin: Within three to five years, Windows will be an afterthought – November 24, 2015
IBM: Every Mac we buy is making and saving us money – October 28, 2015
Now we know why IT support hates Macs (hint: Windows PCs = job security) – October 19, 2015
IBM: Corporate Mac users need less IT support than those stuck on Windows – October 18, 2015
Just 5% of Mac users at IBM need help desk support vs. 40% of Windows PC sufferers – October 15, 2015
Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ ultimate goal: ‘to take back the computer business from Microsoft’ – June 16, 2005
iPhone, killer – May 13, 2015
In the last five years, Microsoft’s share of personal computing plummeted from 90% to 32% – October 10, 2013
Apple has destroyed the Windows hegemony – July 5, 2012
Now watch this news have no effect on Microsoft stock price. If an alternative operating system becomes available in China, Microsoft could suffer.
MSFT is now up 0.3% in heavy trading.
Microsoft is not dramatically affected because every other computer in China is running a stolen version of windows.
China isn’t paying MS any money, they’ve been stealing Windows for decades – how does this ‘hurt’ MS?
As the situation is strictly political, just keep in mind that China can do the same thing to MacOS.
Just how many iPhones are there in government use in China to begin with?
rainer_d,
More than you might imagine. The government, PLA, and CCP, with their associates and employees, are among the relatively small proportion of Chinese citizens who can afford iPhones.
What makes you think that the ban on Windows, and potentially MacOS and iOS, will be limited to devices in government use? China is a totalitarian state.
China vows to stop import–er… pirating Windows.
LMFAO
Come on guys. We know you can’t live with out Win 95 cds.
You don’t do this overnight. This has been China’s plan for quite some time and it’s very smart. Smarter than how much of our infrastructure is still running XP, 7, and 8.
It would have happened trade war or no trade war.
This is a fools errand. For China to continue trading with the rest of the world, their homegrown ‘secure’ OS will need hooks to the rest of the world’s computing backbone so goodbye security.
Vulnerabilities will happen but I disagree that “this is a fools errand.” The issue at stake here is our claim that routers/switches/DVR’s/cameras that are built by Chinese government supported companies may be rigged to spy on us. They are saying the Microsoft may be doing the same thing to them and that even if they are not, the US government may be taking advantage of vulnerabilities to spy. The assumption would be that Microsoft may be leaving vulnerabilities just so the NSA can use them until somebody finds it. Then they say oops and fix it while opening up something else for the NSA.
As for China’s need for hooks to the rest of the world. They will latch a copy of the TCP/IP stack onto whatever kernel and core they produce. I would guess that they will sandbox the stack and close all of the ports that they are not using/allowing. Since they have the great firewall of China, they can internally reassign any and all standard port assignments and add new protocols to the TCP/IP stack for Chinese use. It would be easy for China to make their portion of the Internet “dark” but then use specific computers to translate protocols for interaction with the rest of the world.
I am not a conspiracy theorist. I do not believe that a relationship like I described exists between Microsoft and the US government but I realise that in the eyes of a foreign power, it could look that way.
You are forgetting why anyone uses windows in the first place. China is so big that the rest of the world will need to hook into China’s OS, not the other way around.
Chinese is getting stronger and stronger each day. It’d be tough for the West challenge China. But who let China getting stronger to begin with?. Now the West faces the consequences.
Windows is far more secure than in the past but still appears to be significantly less secure than Unix and its’ derivatives. The problem appears to be in closing security loopholes while maintaining backward compatibility with the vast array of existing software and hardware.
Once again, a market opportunity that Apple will ignore. Apple has had so many opportunities to offer a popular alternative to Windows. But we know Cook only cares for watches and app sales. A secure kickass personal computer platform at a competitive price? Apple ignores the obvious demand, instead selling old or shoddy sealed hardware and lackluster software at insanely inflated prices. It’s as if someone at Apple is intentionally trying to keep Mac market share below 10%.
MacDailyNews’s take seems to be advocating that China makes Hackintoshes, or at least blatantly copy Apple’s OP. (They could do it easily.) You aren’t seriously expecting China to sit waiting for Apple to make a pro Mac at a reasonable price, are you?
Years ago Germany said that by 2020 they did not know what OS to use in the Government because it was HACKED by Microsoft and USA. Not only did USA spy on Commos but also on friends.
The trade war today is a fight to keep US hegmony in all spheres — money, IT, OS, Guns etc.
USA must learn to be first amungst equals not the BOSS
This is great news. Its time for Linux