I got your egg roll hanging low!

The suffering in Haiti is undoubtedly the major story hitting the headlines this week. And that is as it should be. But there is another story that I found particularly unsettling. No, not the Jay-Conan debacle (Go Conan!). I'm talking about the Chinese government's putative hacking of Google and perhaps other major software companies.

If you're not familiar, read about it here.

I find this disturbing because the major threat to the world in the coming century is not from Islamic extremists; it's from the possibility of a great powers war between China and the U.S. I really, really, really don't want that to happen. I think a war between a country that is obsessed with guns and a country that survived the Great Leap Forward would be a brutal one indeed. From my EXTREMELY non-expert vantage point, it appears that the world is keeping its fingers crossed that the interdependencies that have emerged from the globalized economy will prevent war with China, and that, slowly but surely, the force of capitalism will pry open its oppressive political system.

That would be nice.

But it's stuff like this cyber invasion of Google, a major (and highly visible) American company, that worries me. How could we not respond to that? How ridiculously provocative! How could we not respond to what appears like a babystep toward China's attempt to colonize the internet? Ugh! WTF, China! I really hope Google goes through with its threat to withdraw from China. Or, alternatively, that we hack one of THEIR companies and steal the specs for lead-laced toys and counterfeit handbags. That'll show em!

*Note: I know nothing about any of these topics and am completely talking out of my ass. I study domestic politics and domestic social policy, which, someday, I may actually discuss on this blog. Discussing something I'm actually qualified to opine about? Preposterous!