The Chinese Control the Majority of Argentina’s Squid Fleet

The Chinese Control the Majority of Argentina’s Squid Fleet Chinese companies control nearly two-thirds of Argentina’s own squid fleet. Chinese companies control nearly two-thirds of Argentina’s own squid fleet. ResearcherZero • June 27, 2026 3:37 AM Russia continues to use Western spyware to target and repress civil society. ‘https://citizenlab.ca/research/russia-breaks-into-human-rights-activists-phone-with-cellebrite/ Government spyware is mandatory across Russia and installed on millions of phones. https://meduza.io/en/feature/2026/05/22/you-already-know-russia-s-max-messenger-spies-on-users-you-probably-don-t-know-just-how-many-surveillance-tools-it-hides-including-even-a-neural-network-for-eavesdropping Mobile phones make excellent listening devices to monitor senior officials. https://observatorial.com/news/world/1539292/the-full-transcript-of-the-call-between-trump-envoy-steve-witkoff-and-russian-adviser-yuri-ushakov/ ResearcherZero • June 27, 2026 3:42 AM If Russian kids talk smack about the government, or do not say and do the right things, the Kremlin is watching. The Kremlin is watching all the time, be it at school or in the home. The Russian government is deeply saddened it cannot legally jail small children. To correct the problem, it is changing the rules on forced labour for minors. ‘https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/russia-putin-child-labour-camps-37250248 The Kremlin can already direct law enforcement to lock up kids on dubious charges. https://novayagazeta.eu/en/articles/2026/06/01/russia-has-detained-at-least-240-minors-in-terrorism-and-sabotage-cases-since-start-of-full-scale-war-en-news Russia forces children it abducts through training camps to fight in its war in Ukraine. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/volodymyr-zelenskyy-ukraine-president-russia-abducting-kids/ Ismar • June 27, 2026 5:00 AM @ResearcherZero – Russia is not the only country which does this. In fact, most countries do, albeit in a more targeted manner Clive Robinson • June 27, 2026 8:09 AM @ lurker, With regards your “fun fact” of, “If you drill a hole thru the middle of the earth you will come up in China.” The reverse of that of, “If all the people in China jumped up and down together they could cause an earthquake in South America” Crossed my mind with regards venezuela and the earthquake, that has atleast a 1000 known dead and over ten times that still missing. There are many countries sending help from both National Governments and NGO’s such as charities. But what of Venezuela’s supppsed “new friend” of the Trumper and US Government? The last time I looked “mouthing off as usual” but couched in terms that mean nothing substantive will be done, ‘https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/26/us/politics/trump-venezuela-earthquake-aid.html The “lie of it” can be seen in the table of, https://www.cfr.org/articles/as-death-toll-spikes-venezuelas-earthquakes-test-u-s-disaster-relief Oh and consider the alleged aid that might become available is less than the US used to give Venezuela in better times… Kind of makes a point about the US and supposed “special relationships” with other Nations, And confirms the old adage of, “Talk is cheap”. Hardly surprising as the Trumper has a well established history of doing the same to US citizens. Bearing in mind where you hale from, if the AUKUS nonsense had not made that perfectly clear already in the antipodean nations. Especially to Autralians, their politicians, and diplomatic representatives. Who the UK has now likewise “pissed upon”. Oh and it’s been said that it is a nod to China over it’s Taiwan invasion plans. And in effect the US Executive has green lighted China’s ambitions in the South China seas and West Pacific. All because of the illegal attacks on the Persian (not Arabic) homeland that a nation of maybe 7 million started to keep a war criminal in political power and could only have done with considerable US support. The net result so far being the US has lost a couple of trillion in radar and other installation s in the area designed to keep Russian Aspirations in check. Speaking of which the next places to be attacked will be Cyprus / Turkey as I’ve indicated in the past. Due to the way Russia can nolonger effectively support people in the African Coup Belt I suspect the war criminal sees it as a perfect time for Expansionist Plans into the Meditaranian and Black seas and to the forming but naive nation regions north and east of Turkey. And dragging the US in, in a perfect way to avoid NATO treaty comeback… @ Clive, all Thanks for the heads up on Wynn-Williams’ lawsuit. I hope to keep an eye on how it proceeds. I find alternative dispute resolution, including arbitration, quite interesting. As compared to the public court system, private arbitration can be quicker but is frequently confidential, especially in employment and consumer contracts. Of course this can be a huge public disservice; issues that affect many people can remain undiscoverable. And public case law, which is built on binding legal precedents, does not advance. In regards to public protection, it’s a bit of a tragedy. I requested the audiobook version of ‘Careless People’ from my library. I’m currently 6th in line on 35 copies. I’m glad arbitration, and how it’s being enforced, is getting some serious public review. Her 57-page complaint, is itself, a fascinating read. re: Political bias in AI On the topic of encryption backdoors: https://trakkr.ai/bias/questions/encryption-backdoors Clive Robinson • June 28, 2026 1:42 AM @ ResearcerZero, ALL, With regards your point of, “Mobile phones make excellent listening devices to monitor senior officials.” Not just “senior officials” or “listening devices”, it’s why I’ve been warning about “Client Side Scanning”, BLE beaconing, and similar and advising people to, “Change their habits about charging their phones etc.” Mobile phones are a modern pandemic and whilst the death rate is currently low but rising they are becoming ever more malignant in both direct harms and sequelae (especially for Women and their healthcare). As I once mentioned on this blog, back several decades ago when mobile phones were still status symbols even though dumb as rocks, they were ruining social time… I used to go into “the city” in London for drinks in Leadenhall Market and surrounding environs of St Mary Axe (before they were bombed[1]). Back then the most popular phone was the Nokia range which all had the same ring tone. So there you were having a drink and a laugh when a phone would ring, and it would be like being on a movie set “Gun Fight” with everybody “reaching and drawing them out” at the same time. But the serious surveillance side started to be realised with the “Ring of Steel”[2]. The monitoring of mobile phones, 1, IDs 2, State such as on charge ring mode 3, Location and fine movement 4, Geo-Track and gross movement 5, What the user receives and sees 6, What the user sends 7, What the user deletes And much more is now all “known” (or should be assumed to be)[4]. Because it is now all surveilled as standard not just by the Mobile Service providers but “local sensors” in surveillance rings that are increasingly being co-located with CCTV etc. All as part of the extension of the idea of “we kill by meta data” or as others call it “Find, Fix, Finish”. Thus back in 7/7 the sensors had no user content signatures to look for to provide warning as “Client Side Scanning” was not in place back then as the mobiles did not have the CPU capacity. Now they do, and C19 gave “permission” for “BLE beaconing” for “contact tracing” as well as “luggage tags” such as Tile, Ring, and Air Tags. Mobile phones are without doubt a “liability” not just in the “immediate” from the sensors, but in the “habit/social” sense the data builds up. A “Key indicator of Intent” is the breaking of routine. It was first developed in Bletchly Park in England during WWII and we now call it a subset of “Traffic Analysis”. Having habits is both good and bad. The Bad is if they “are real” they make you easy to “Finish”… The good is that you are “not your phone” though those doing “Find and Fix” all to often assume you are “joined at the hip”. Knowing this and thoughtfully considering it makes you a very expensive target for those who want to surveil you as an individual “Person of Interest”. It’s one of the reasons “guard labour” like the UK’s Metropolitan Police are very very keen on “facial recognition” etc. The “guard labour” have “Future Plans” they are starting to put into place… Consider a system of sensors that do various bio-metric and clothing “recognition” continuously. They currently allow human “operators” to follow you “all through town” at their desk. With Facial recognition and other recognition helpers taking it from one or two targets per operator to ten or more at a time. Now consider replacing human operators with low power AI Agent systems thus thousands can be trivially tracked by a single operator or small specialist team. With the AI spotting “habit breaks” or other signifiers to draw you up the human operators “attention stack” along with a precise change of habit description. Yes you can with good OpSec beat their systems but it’s getting increasingly difficult. Especially as there are now few to no “tell tales” as the old “on the hoof” operatives could not avoid doing. Contrary to many peoples beliefs small drones whilst they can be heard and detected and tracked generally necessitate “augmented senses” few of us currently have access to thus some things in the OpSec game have flipped over. Old School advice was “hide in a crowd” coupled with “but track ‘them’ around the block or through the park”… Now nolonger really works the way it did with high flying drones. You need to add such things as “cut under and cover”. Surprisingly to many the smarter criminals are already ahead on this. Take “youth gangs” for instance they have worked out the changes required for themselves… With “steaming gangs” briefly dropping out of sight swapping hoodies and bags etc. It makes CCTV footage at best “unreliable” and not really useable in court. Another example is they all wear black hoodies under black puffer jackets etc, and they “mill around” such that CCTV footage can not say which one is which. They “mill” in various large shops where they know the CCTV is of little use and by the time they all gather in the target shop they are not identifiable either backwards or forwards in time. [1] Known as the Baltic Exchange and Bishopsgate bombings of 92/93. The first of which happened just after John Major “won the general election” for the Conservatives. [2] Both bombings contributed to the formation of the Traffic and Environmental Zone, known as the “Ring of Steel”[3], in the City to supposedly protect it from further terrorism bombing attacks. [3] But now some call it “The Ring of Surveillance” due to the proliferation of CCTV and other more active sensors. Which unsurprisingly failed in the 2005 “7 7 London Bombings” under Tony Blair’s Labour leadership. The attackers being “clean DNA” just used different methods, not driving vans but public transport and backpacks, and their aim was to kill many, not inflict economic damage. Thus revealing the failings of CCTV surveillance rings as a modern example of “Generals re fighting the last war”. [4] The Met Police realised the advantage of this in the London / South Croydon / Reves Corner Riots in 2011. The looting gangs were organising themselves via BlackBerry “encrypted” messaging they assumed could not be evesdropped on. However as they were single user not corporate client, BlackBerry controlled the encryption keys and kept backed up messages on their servers. The Met thus could show sufficient “probable cause” to get the paperwork to serve on BlackBerry and retrieve the messages. The publicity resulted in other journalists checking BlackBerry in various authoritarian states such as Saudi, Pakistan, etc. Which had been using them to catch “women” who were not doing as they should do according to religious law. It pretty much destroyed BlackBerry’s reputation and might account for why Apple takes the attitude it does. ResearcherZero • June 28, 2026 3:13 AM @Clive Robinson, To side step security, a ransomware group hired people in the US to show up at law firms and impersonate cyber security, in attempts to plug in USBs for remote access. Similar versions of the same tactic were used by Russians to gain access to banks or telco exchanges. Sometimes an inside man and another posing as a telecom worker, were used to run a cable into the targeted building to establish a connection to a nearby building. Those steps can be avoided today thanks to the connectivity and capabilities available on chip, along with software providing a range of accessibility. Given that the Kremlin has mandated government malware be installed to access government services, the FSB should not be surprised if their domestic networks are compromised. They have plenty of experience exploiting backdoors intentionally placed in products by Western intelligence services. Now an access point can be added to a network by an unsophisticated actor, who can be hired remotely at arm’s length. Criminal groups can do it themselves. Criminal gangs are often providing access for intelligence services to networks, either by intention, or by leaving open an entry point. Sophisticated capabilities can now be provided to unsophisticated actors by technology, with AI providing simplified instructions and the UI. ResearcherZero • June 28, 2026 3:40 AM @Clive Robinson While AI can provide unsophisticated actors capabilities, it cannot provide wisdom to the brains of those who employ its uses. Even if the White House and the Pentagon use LLMs to produce reports, the administration will not become any more receptive to sound advice. Those determined to make reckless and foolish decisions will remain fixed in their beliefs and even more determined to prove themselves right, regardless of evidence to the contrary. Trump’s assertions he can open the Strait of Hormuz by bombing Iran out of existence or by military campaign, runs counter to his midterm objectives. Even attempting to fix elections will not solve the problems of his own making. ResearcherZero • June 28, 2026 3:47 AM The link to story on cyber criminals hiring third parties to pose as cybersecurity. https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/27/politics/cybercriminals-hire-burglars-russian-us-law-firms ResearcherZero • June 28, 2026 7:39 AM @Ismar To successfully destroy ourselves, we must keep a constant eye on our adversaries. Without knowing the details of their plans, we can adjust accordingly to ensure coordinated and mutual annihilation. A rain of fire that produces a scorched and poisoned Earth, followed by a suitably long enough nuclear winter, that ensures minimal survival rate and collapse. Populations must be monitored to make it all work perfectly and avoid unintentional mishaps. Nobody wants a half-baked apocalypse. That wouldn’t be very enjoyable. JG5 • June 28, 2026 3:28 PM This is a little richer than my first try. I made a very lean post and it got held for moderation. Links 6/28/2026 https/_/www_nakedcapitalism_com/2026/06/links-6-28-2026.html Posted on June 28, 2026 by Haig Hovaness … The Year 536 AD Was So Bad It May Have Been the Worst Time in Human History to Be Alive ZME Science … Rohit @ai_rohitt · Follow INSTEAD OF WATCHING AN HOUR OF NETFLIX TONIGHT. This 60-minute Cambridge lecture by Demis Hassabis will teach you more about the future of AI than most people will learn in the next 5 years. Bookmark it and give it an hour, no matter what. … Mike • June 29, 2026 12:41 AM Just going to throw this out here. Seems “interesting”. Not unexpected. Just the next logical step. How a Seemingly Harmless Image Can Jailbreak Vision-Language AI Models astrologer tejas • June 29, 2026 1:06 AM The statement refers to concerns that Chinese-owned or Chinese-linked companies have gained significant influence in Argentina’s squid fishing industry through investments, vessel ownership, and fishing operations. Critics argue this may affect local economic control and marine resource management. Subscribe to comments on this entry Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis. lurker • June 26, 2026 6:44 PM Fun Fact Argentina is one of the few places where the old saw holds true: If you drill a hole thru the middle of the earth you will come up in China.