Introduction:

Trade war is a situation where countries restrict each other’s trade by imposing tariff or quota on imports. Trade tensions are a manifestation of the strategic competition between the two countries China and USA. US had imposed tariffs on as much as 25 percent on $34 billion in Chinese imports. China responded with retaliatory tariffs of 25% on US goods worth an equivalent $34 billion, including soybean, automobiles, and marine products such as lobsters.

Body:

There is now a changing trend in the approaches to the Trade wars:

It appears that the background battle between American and Chinese intelligence agencies for hegemony over sensitive data is yet another frontier in the ongoing US-China trade war.

• Big Tech Companies and Data:
  • NSA realizes that it has other tools at its command, including access to detailed location data for the billions of people worldwide who use Big Tech platforms.
  • Big Tech companies are all US based and that is where their data resides.
  • Despite Apple Inc’s capitulation last year to the Chinese government, where it promised to keep data from Chinese iCloud users in China, other firms have exited the Chinese market.
  • Besides, being a US company, it is entirely possible that Apple keeps a mirror of its China users’ data in a database that resides in the US.
  • The fact that these data are available to US intelligence agencies on their own native soil allows them the comfort that they can always access such data should they want or need to.
• Ghidra and Data:
  • The NSA has released a powerful open-source reverse-engineering hacking tool called Ghidra into the public domain.
  • Ghidra reduces programming code down to the level of “Assembler” language, which is an expression of programming code down to the level of machine level instructions into the binary 1s and 0s that are understood by computer chips.
  • Ghidra’s release levels the playing field and has been welcomed by many.
  • However, not all experts are convinced that this is a selfless gesture, because they believe that the Ghidra code may well have “back doors” into computer systems and telecommunications networks.

• Hegemony of USA:
  • the NSA and its sister agencies are making sure that non-US governments will not have an easy time if they seek to access similar back doors to user data.
  • NSA told that China’s Huawei and ZTE were not to be trusted because they could allow China’s government a back door into communications infrastructure, thereby giving Chinese intelligence agencies broad access into personal data and other sensitive information.
  • Huawei now faces a ban on its equipment in the US as legislation passed last year restricted its equipment in the US.
  • Huawei’s chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of founder Ren Zhengfei, faces potential extradition from Canada to the US over charges of Iran sanction violations.

Conclusion:

 As the experts proclaim, Data is the new oil and the future trade wars will be fought over the data. The ease of crippling another nation without any collateral damage makes Cyber-war a lucrative option for many countries. With the US-China trade war currently reducing on a direct front is changing its form into a data war.