Men Waiting to Start a Family: Mature Men and Younger Women

Young women hold a strong erotic attraction to men of all ages. So it is natural for mature men, once they have achieved success and comfort in life, to seek relationships which give him the most pleasure. Throughout history, older men have started families with younger women, who are still in their fertile period. In most human cultures such things are considered normal and natural.

But in many decadent western societies, ideologically radical feminism has taken over politically correct cultures. Relationships involving older men and younger women are strongly discouraged by the PC thought police.

Scientific research in mice has been performed in an attempt to prove that older fathers lead to disabled and dysfunctional children. But however much feminists would like for human males to be mice, humans are not actually mice and should not be treated as such. A better science would look at human subjects in order to determine the facts about the children of older fathers and younger mothers.

And that is what Sweden's Karolinska Instutute has done, in a massive study:

This present study is based on data from over 135,000 children in Stockholm, who left compulsory school between 2000 and 2007, and tested the hypothesis that any negative consequences of the father's age on the child's IQ would be offset by the social advantages that being raised by older parents brings.

"To the delight of fathers choosing to wait before having children, our results suggest that children of older fathers perform no worse in school," says Anna Svensson, study leader at the Department of Public Health Sciences. "When we studied children's final year-nine grades we could see no difference between children of fathers in their 50s and children of fathers in their 30s."

Children of even younger fathers performed slightly worse in school, although these difference could largely be attributed to differences in the parents' own educational background. _SD

According to the report above, children of older fathers actually performed better than children of younger fathers.

The point is not to advocate the pairing of older men with younger women. The point is rather to be honest about the consequences of such pairings, in order to allow humans to make informed choices. When science is subsumed within political ideology -- as in modern PC science -- no one can truly trust the results of such politicised research.

From "climate science" to cognitive science to reproductive science to energy sciences and technologies, the destructive influence of PC leftism and lefist green dieoff.orgiasm has cost modern societies trillions of dollars in dysfunctional economic and social policies. Much of the modern economic and cultural malaise being suffered by modern societies is directly due to the malignant influence of a dieoff leftist influence on science, politics, and culture.

In modern times it takes men longer to mature and become financially independent, on average. The pairing of mature and economically self-sufficient men with younger, fertile women of erotic appeal, makes a lot of sense when these men do finally get around to starting a family.

If feminists cannot keep their hands off normal human relationships, perhaps it really is time for the backlash.

Update 8Oct2011: Here is a news report of a Dutch study that attempts to link older sperm with mental disabilities in offspring. The actual findings do not actually support the claims being made for the study, and in fact contradict actual results studies performed by the Karolinska Institute, as noted above.

Just as older mothers increase the risk of chromosomal and genetic problems in offspring, it is also logical that a theoretical risk of genetic problems from older fathers also may exist. But such a risk still needs to be proven beyond the merely theoretical -- and needs to be quantified and individualised so that appropriate precautions can be taken, if needed in the particular case.

In the meantime, humans should be free to go about their lives without being held hostage by a feminist-overlord culture of PC repression.

Human Babies Born with Intuitive Sense of Numbers

Humans have an intuitive sense of number that allows them, for example, to readily identify which of two containers has more objects without counting. This ability is present at birth, and gradually improves throughout childhood

_ScienceDaily

Johns Hopkins scientists have tested the Approximate Number Sense (ANS) in human pre-schoolers, then compared their ANS scores with later standard tests of math ability administered in school at age 6. They discovered a high correlation between the ANS score in preschool and the later math ability scores at age 6.

The Approximate Number System (ANS) is a primitive mental system of nonverbal representations that supports an intuitive sense of number in human adults, children, infants, and other animal species. The numerical approximations produced by the ANS are characteristically imprecise and, in humans, this precision gradually improves from infancy to adulthood. Throughout development, wide ranging individual differences in ANS precision are evident within age groups. These individual differences have been linked to formal mathematics outcomes, based on concurrent, retrospective, or short-term longitudinal correlations observed during the school age years. However, it remains unknown whether this approximate number sense actually serves as a foundation for these school mathematics abilities. Here we show that ANS precision measured at preschool, prior to formal instruction in mathematics, selectively predicts performance on school mathematics at 6 years of age. In contrast, ANS precision does not predict non-numerical cognitive abilities. To our knowledge, these results provide the first evidence for early ANS precision, measured before the onset of formal education, predicting later mathematical abilities.

...Further longitudinal studies are needed to evaluate whether and how mediators of the relationship between ANS skills and symbolic mathematics vary as a function of other child characteristics, and how ANS skills might predict not only math performance at a given time but also trajectories of growth in formal mathematics skills over development. _PLoS (Full paper)

The authors were unable to determine whether ANS skills could be improved through early childhood intervention. But their findings add to a growing body of knowledge demonstrating a wide range of cognitive abilities between individuals, starting from a very early age. One should note that ANS precision correlates only to later math skills, and not to language skills.

It is important for scientists and educators to determine how much of individual cognitive capacity can be improved, and how much is relatively fixed. This should be done on an individual-to-individual basis to avoid prejudgement, and to better customise and optimise the education experience for each child.

This Johns Hopkins study offers some suggestive hints as to the nature of pre-verbal and non-verbal metaphor development in young children, prior to any formal math training.

EU: Europeans Must Learn to Live on Insects

Telegraph
It is easy to grow tasty insect larvae almost anywhere, on scraps and waste. But these plump, juicy larvae are not only suitable for fish bait. According to the EU, an entire continent of humans can and should be taught to live on insects.

Experts in Brussels believe insects and other creepy crawlies could be a vital source of nutrition which will not only solve food shortages but also help save the environment.

They have launched a three million euro (£2.65 million) project to promote the eating of insects while also asking national watchdogs like the UK's Food Standards Agency to investigate the issue.

...According to one study, small grasshoppers offer 20 per cent protein and just six per cent fat, to lean ground beef's 24 per cent protein and 18 per cent fat.

Crickets are also said to be high in calcium, termites rich in iron, and a helping of giant silkworm moth larvae apparently provides all the daily copper and riboflavin requirements. There are even claims that bees boost the libido.

Insects emit less greenhouse gases than cattle and require less feed, supposedly making them environmentally-friendly. And supporters claim they could help feed [Europe], because they are so abundant they provide at least 200kg of biomass for every human.

The European Commission is offering the money to the research institute with the best proposal for investigating "Insects as novel sources of proteins". _Telegraph

Europe's population is imploding, due to low birthrates. Europe's elites and overseers are looking for ways to cut costs, to meet the increasingly burdensome social obligations of Euro nanny-states, in the face of a shrinking demographic and disappearing taxpayers.

It is not clear how the rapidly growing Muslim population of Europe will accept new EU food guidelines.
H/T ImpactLab

Brave New Baby: Genius Training for Infants

Image Source
We have heard of the "better baby" and even the "superbaby." But those approaches to creating the "brave new baby" have been around for a while, and yet, here we are. Still looking for workable ways of training smarter, more cognitively capable children.

University of London researchers have come up with a new approach, beginning with 11 month old infants:

The researchers trained 11-month-old infants to direct their gaze toward images they observed on a computer screen. For example, in one task, a butterfly flew only as long as the babies kept their eyes on it while other distracting elements appeared on screen. Infants visited the lab five times over the course of 15 days. Half of the 42 babies took part in training, while the other half watched TV. Each child was tested for cognitive abilities at the beginning and end of the study.

Trained infants rapidly improved their ability to focus their attention for longer periods and to shift their attention from one point to another. They also showed improvements in their ability to spot patterns and small but significant changes in their spontaneous looking behavior while playing with toys.

"Our results appeared to show an improved ability to alter the frequency of eye movements in response to context," Wass said. "In the real world, sometimes we want to be able to focus on one object of interest and ignore distractions, and sometimes we want to be able to shift the focus of our attention rapidly around a room -- for example, for language learning in social situations. This flexibility in the allocation of attention appeared to improve after training."

The fact that the babies' improvements in concentration transferred to a range of tasks supports the notion that there is greater plasticity in the unspecialized infant brain.

...The findings reported online on Sept. 1 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, are in contrast to reports in adults showing that training at one task generally doesn't translate into improved performance on other, substantially different tasks. _ScienceDaily

Study abstract from Science Direct

This type of research is likely to continue and intensify -- particularly in parts of the world with more authoritarian government control. It is likely to continue because it is quite probable that infant brains can eventually be functionally shaped to approximate a preconceived "ideal." Infant brains are highly plastic, and experience incredibly rapid shaping and re-shaping of local neuronal assemblies and white matter pathways.

Of course there are ethical approaches to this type of research, which should be freely carried out in more open societies. And of course individual parents are free to incorporate elements of such research into their child's overall, well-rounded upbringing. It is likely that there are easily devised "games" which the baby would enjoy playing, which could lead to a faster-thinking, more imaginative child. Perhaps even a child capable of multi-tasking in many ways.

But experimenting parents should beware. The super-baby which you raise may rapidly grow beyond your ability to comprehend and control. Children are essentially amoral creatures who are capable of incredible destruction if given too much power too soon, without superb training in executive function.

It is not wise to train a child in particular areas of genius without incorporating safeguards, executive function training, and ethical training in the overall program. This training should resemble an assortment of games and engaging interactional narratives to the very young child.

At the Al Fin Institute for the Brave New Baby, we are concerned about current trends toward a dumbed-down future. We will share the results of our research into brave new babies as it becomes available.

Important Information for Would-Be World Dictators

By manipulating the activity of particular brain areas, scientists can now make people more vulnerable to marching in lock-step with the crowd. Controlling conformity will make it easier for would-be world rulers to capture the masses in one fell swoop.

Telegraph

Volunteers whose posterior medial frontal cortex, an area in the middle of the brain that is associated with reward processing, were exposed to the magnetic pulses suffered reduced levels of conformity.

The researchers believe this part of the brain dates back a long way in the evolution of animals and is responsible or automatically "correcting" our performance when we fall out of line with a group.

They say that by suspending this mechanism, it allows people to think and behave differently. They now believe it may be possible to develop drugs or behaviour changing techniques that could increase or decrease people's conformity.

..."Drug manipulation of dopamine could also affect conformity."

Such drugs would be controversial, however, as they could be used by companies hoping to make their employees more reliable or to help control rebellious individuals.

In the study, the researchers asked 49 female volunteers to take part in a study where they were asked to rate the attractiveness of 220 photographs of female faces, but they were allowed to change their ratings after seeing what others in the study had scored.

When Transcranial Electromagnetic Stimulation (TMS) was used to inhibit the activity of the neurons in the posterior medial frontal cortex, the participants did not change their ratings of the photographs so they were more in line with the rest of the group. _Telegraph

We already know that using TMS to stimulate the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex has the effect of decreasing inhibition and increasing risk-taking behaviours. Further experiments will determine more specific areas of cortex involved in judgment and decision-making. TMS can be used to either reduce the activity of the part of the brain that is targeted, or to increase the activity.

The Telegraph article discusses the idea of using drugs to increase or decrease conformity. But a more effective method for would-be dictators would be to utilise targeted nano-capsules which contain genetic programming for more long-term alteration of outlook and allegiance to the collective.

The USSR collapsed because science had not developed far enough to provide these useful tools to the guardians of the collective. In the future, managing the loyalties of large collectives should become easier, using these new methods of brain control.

As far as world dictatorship, the main threat will be multiple stable regional dictatorships which refuse to assimilate into a central world collective. Al Fin cognitive scientists have been asked to provide solutions to this possible complication, but at this time we are maintaining a strict neutrality. We are, however, moving strategic labs and offices of the Al Fin Institutes to a secure, undisclosed, island location.

For those who remain in the population centres, resistance may very well become futile. The chances are growing, that you will be assimilated. Try to resolve yourselves to your likely fate. It will be easier that way.

Improving Higher Education in the US

Many universities, and not a few colleges, have come to resemble Fortune 500 companies with their layers of highly paid executives presiding over complex empires that contain semi-professional athletic programs, medical and business schools, and expensive research programs along with the traditional academic departments charged with providing instruction to undergraduate students. Like other industries, higher education has its own trade magazines and newspapers, influential lobbying groups in Washington, and paid advertising agents reminding the public of how important their enterprise is to the national welfare. In contrast to corporate businesses, whose members generally agree on their overall purpose, colleges and universities have great difficulty defining what their enterprise is for. What is a college education? On just about any campus, at any given time, one can find faculty members in intense debate about what a college education entails and what the mission of their institution should be. Few businesses would dare to offer a highly expensive product that they are incapable of defining for the inquiring consumer. Yet this is what colleges and universities have done at least since the 1960s, and they have done so with surprising success. _NewCriterion

James Piereson has published an incisive review of US higher education -- and of recently published scholarly books which examine US higher education. He summarises some key reforms which should bring about critical improvements in relatively short order:

(1) Shelve the utopian idea that every young person should attend college and also the notion that the nation’s prosperity depends upon universal college attendance. Many youngsters are not prepared or motivated for college. Let them prepare for a vocation. The attempt to push them through college is weakening the enterprise for everyone else.


(2) Terminate most Ph.D. programs in the humanities and social sciences. There is little point in training able people in research programs when they have no prospect of gaining employment afterwards. The research enterprise has also corrupted all of these fields, particularly in the humanities.

(3) Develop programs in these fields that will allow students to earn graduate degrees based upon teaching rather than research. Such programs will be intellectually broad rather than specialized and will equip graduates to teach in several fields in the humanities. This will strengthen teaching in the liberal arts and perhaps even revive the field from its current condition.

(4) Reverse the expansion of administrative layers, especially those offices and programs created to satisfy campus pressure groups. If campus groups want their own administrative offices, they should pay for them themselves, rather than asking other students (and their parents) to do so. Colleges and universities should make it a practice to hire at least three new faculty members for every new administrator hired.

(5) Bring back general education requirements and core curricula to ensure that every student is exposed to the important ideas in the sciences and humanities that have shaped our civilization. There are many ways of doing this. Columbia University has always done it through a “great books” approach; other institutions do it through a series of survey courses in the sciences and liberal arts. How it is done matters less than that it is done. _NewCriterion

Al Fin education specialists assert that these reforms should be seen as a bare beginning. US higher education is in need of a thorough overhaul, which is only likely to happen in the lee of some very unfortunate events for society as a whole. Much of the dead weight in the staff and faculty of US colleges will be ejected as a result of upcoming economic difficulties occurring in both the private and public sectors of the US economy.

Dead weight government programs which affect education, such as affirmative action, Title IX, etc. will cling to existence for as long as possible -- to the detriment of affected institutions and society at large. Eventually, they too will have to fall by the wayside.

Finding One's Place In The Known Universe

Video via Tahoe Is Walking On

Our brains require nourishment, exercise, and frequent stretching. If we are to lay the groundwork for the next level of human existence, we need to think outside of the box, outside the lines, beyond conventional limits.

Assembly line schools and universities cannot prepare you for what the real universe is like. The ruling classes want you to be a good drone and automaton, follow orders, and mind your place.

If you have other ideas, consider joining us.

Genetics and Intelligence: Steve Hsu's Google Tech Talk

PDF Slides for Steve Hsu's talk

Genes and Intelligence study looking at genes of individuals with IQ > 145: High IQ volunteers needed

This talk by Hsu is likely to be a very big deal, simply due to its clarity of presentation, vast quantity of reliable evidence, and its venue.

IQ is not everything, in terms of life success. Executive function and conscientiousness, as well as a certain social facility, are all important as well. But for an increasingly complex high technology society, the smart IQ fraction is becoming more important.

It is an issue that must be confronted by society, and the sooner the better.

With This Kind of Heat You Can Kill Peak Oil

With plentiful process heat provided at temperatures between 700 C and 950 C, a person could kill peak oil and have plenty of energy left to power industry and a broad spectrum of industrial processes.   Specifically, one could:

1. Unlock the trillions of barrels oil equivalent in oil sands (PDF)
2. Unlock the trillions of barrels oil equivalent in coal to liquids and gas to liquids (PDF)
3. Unlock the trillions of barrels oil equivalent in shale oil kerogens 
4. Provide abundant industrial process heat for production of fertilisers, refining fuels, making plastics, etc 
5. Split CO2 into CO to use as a hydrogen carrier 
6. Overturn conventional fears of EROEI and Peak Oil 

Those things, and many more, will be accomplished by next generation gas-cooled high temperature nuclear reactors. Helium gas coolant will run gas turbine generators at high temperatures, which provides electrical power at higher efficiencies than older steam cycle generation systems. And as mentioned above, the higher temperature process heat will find a wide range of practical uses in industrial processes and energy production.

Conventional fears about EROEI and peak oil will be overturned since the energy used to produce hydrocarbon fuels, fertilisers, plastics, and other products of industry and energy, will come from the high temperature heat effluent of nuclear reactions -- of which there is no conceivable near term shortage.  Unless political lefty-Luddite dieoff.orgy forces of faux environmentalism intrude even further than at present.  In that case, all bets are off, and the leftist inspired great human dieoff is put on the table by government planners.

But that would be political peak oil and political energy starvation.  Which is yet another reason why choosing your political leaders wisely can be a matter of life or death.

Peter Thiel, SeaSteading's Financial Backer, Doesn't Like Boats

SeaDragon
The website "Details.com" provides an interesting profile of the billionaire backer of the Seasteading Institute, Peter Thiel. One of the things you learn is that Thiel doesn't particularly like boats, and doesn't plan to be an early adapter of seasteading. Another thing you will learn is that Thiel is something of a maverick provocateur.

If the seasteading movement goes forward as planned, Thiel won't be one of its early citizens. For one thing, he's not overly fond of boats, although maybe, as Friedman says, "he just needs to be on a large enough structure." Thiel characterizes his interest as "theoretical." But whether Thiel himself heads offshore or not, there's a whole lot of passion underlying that theoretical interest. Thiel put forth his views on the subject in a 2009 essay for the Cato Institute, in which he flatly declared, "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." He went on: "The great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms," with the critical question being "how to escape not via politics but beyond it. Because there are no truly free places left in our world, I suspect that the mode for escape must involve some sort of new and hitherto untried process that leads us to some undiscovered country."

Until a libertarian colony can be established in outer space—Thiel is bullish on that idea, too, though he thinks the technology needs at least a half-century to develop—seasteading will have to suffice. "[It's] not just possible, or desirable," he said in an address at the 2009 Seasteading Institute Conference, "but actually necessary." _Details

Also check out this Cato-at-Liberty article on seasteads from the perspective of tax havens. It includes a 9 minute video on the economic benefits of tax havens.

This short article on Peter Thiel and seasteading at The Week.com, includes a number of criticisms of seasteading from a small number of web personalities.

The near-term vision of seasteading as promoted by The Seasteading Institute is not particularly inspiring. Front man Patri Friedman does alright in public speaking, media appearances, and writing articles. But he does not have the type of maritime heavy industry background that would inspire confidence in truly serious investors.

Seasteading is desperately in need of a "killer app," and it is not clear that offshore gambling, banking, and tax havens will be good enough -- particularly if the legal question of sovereignty is not settled.

In a global boom economy, seasteading might have better prospects, and a lot more millionaire and billionaire investors. But there is a need for more "heavy hitters" with backgrounds in large marine structures and financing, and in the various offshore industries which might bring quick profits to such a speculative venture.

The challenge of building a robust seastead able to stand up to anything the ocean might throw at it, is not as great a challenge as building a robust space elevator to geosynchronous orbit. But it is still a significant challenge.

The challenge of raising new generations of young people with practical real world competencies, plus a sense of adventure, is likewise a significant challenge -- given the state of today's perpetual adolescent incompetents, psychological neotenates, and academic lobotomates. But challenges tend to bring out the greatness in innovators.

Stay tuned.

Mega-Super WiFi 802.22 Can Cover 12,000 Square Miles

To put it in a nutshell, 802.22 was designed to run on a totally new spectrum which was made available when analog TVs were outlawed some years back in the US. For those who prefer more solid scientific figures, the 802.22 spectrum will work in ranges from 54MHz to 698MHz, where such frequencies are the perfect vehicle for long distance transmissions.

Imagine sending out 22 Mbps of data within a 62 mile radius from a sole base station – that would certainly bring Wi-Fi connectivity to even the most rural areas around the country. _Ubergizmo

IEEE has created a new 802.22 WiFi standard to take advantage of the FCC "Super WiFi" classification.

IEEE, the world’s largest professional association advancing technology for humanity, today announced that it has published the IEEE 802.22TM standard. IEEE 802.22 systems will provide broadband access to wide regional areas around the world and bring reliable and secure high-speed communications to under-served and un-served communities.


This new standard for Wireless Regional Area Networks (WRANs) takes advantage of the favorable transmission characteristics of the VHF and UHF TV bands to provide broadband wireless access over a large area up to 100 km from the transmitter. Each WRAN will deliver up to 22 Mbps per channel without interfering with reception of existing TV broadcast stations, using the so-called white spaces between the occupied TV channels. This technology is especially useful for serving less densely populated areas, such as rural areas, and developing countries where most vacant TV channels can be found.

IEEE 802.22 incorporates advanced cognitive radio capabilities including dynamic spectrum access, incumbent database access, accurate geolocation techniques, spectrum sensing, regulatory domain dependent policies, spectrum etiquette, and coexistence for optimal use of the available spectrum.

The IEEE 802.22 Working Group started its work following the Notice of Inquiry issued by the United States Federal Communications Commission on unlicensed operation in the TV broadcast bands. _IEEE Press Release via Tekgoblin

More on Super WiFi:

Super Wi-Fi is inching closer to reality, and now the IEEE, the standards organization responsible for all things Wi-Fi, has published the IEEE 802.22standard.

This new wireless networking standard promises speeds up to 22Mbps to devices as far as 100-kilometers (roughly 62-miles) away from the nearest transmitter. This new band of Wi-Fi on steroids comes through the patch of "white space" frequencies that were previously used to analog television broadcasts.

There’s no word on when and which regions of the United States will be the first to get in on this super Wi-Fi. Houston is currently the only access point for a white space Wi-Fi, which comes courtesy of Rice University researchers. Super Wi-Fi has been slow in coming since the FCC originally approved it back in September 2010. _PCWorld

Similar technologies can create dynamic wide range data networks on the open seas, to improve safety and expand exchange for large fleets of working seasteads. New colonies built across the Arctic and Antarctic could likewise use this type of wide range networking, to coordinate activities, weather warnings, etc.

Las Vegas Hot and Dry for Black Hat Conference

The Black Hat security conference opens in Las Vegas, Nevada, today to hot, dry weather, and a very full schedule.

Security researchers will demonstrate new hacking techniques that probe networking devices, exploit holes in common database management systems and target vulnerabilities deep inside various operating systems. Other experts will reveal research into the destructive power of new, more sophisticated malware strains designed to remain virtually undetectable long after they penetrate target systems.

...The focus will turn to weaknesses in cloud architecture when two members of WhiteHat Security Inc.'s Threat Research Center, Matt Johansen and Kyle Osborn, show off serious holes in Google Chromebooks, notebook computers that run the Google Chrome OS. Users of these new devices primarily use the Chrome browser to navigate the operating system and access email, files and other documents on the Web.

In a Black Hat webinar last month, Johansen said the Chromebook platform is open to Web browser attack techniques. It uses a browser-extension trust model, Johansen said, and those extensions act like Web applications, which can be attacked using the same techniques that cybercriminals have been using for years. _SearchSecurity

Meanwhile, the "biggest-ever" series of cyber attacks has been revealed in a McAfee report. Signs point to China (or perhaps Russia) as the origin of the cyber mischief.

Security experts have discovered the biggest series of cyber attacks to date, involving the infiltration of the networks of 72 organizations including the United Nations, governments and companies around the world.

Security company McAfee, which uncovered the intrusions, said it believed there was one “state actor” behind the attacks but declined to name it, though one security expert who has been briefed on the hacking said the evidence points to China.

The long list of victims in the five-year campaign include the governments of the United States, Taiwan, India, South Korea, Vietnam and Canada; the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); the International Olympic Committee (IOC); the World Anti-Doping Agency; and an array of companies, from defense contractors to high-tech enterprises.

In the case of the United Nations, the hackers broke into the computer system of the UN Secretariat in Geneva in 2008, hid there unnoticed for nearly two years, and quietly combed through reams of secret data, according to McAfee.

“Even we were surprised by the enormous diversity of the victim organizations and were taken aback by the audacity of the perpetrators,” McAfee’s vice president of threat research, Dmitri Alperovitch, wrote in a 14-page report released on Wednesday.

“What is happening to all this data … is still largely an open question. However, if even a fraction of it is used to build better competing products or beat a competitor at a key negotiation (due to having stolen the other team’s playbook), the loss represents a massive economic threat.”

McAfee learned of the extent of the hacking campaign in March this year, when its researchers discovered logs of the attacks while reviewing the contents of a “command and control” server that they had discovered in 2009 as part of an investigation into security breaches at defense companies.

It dubbed the attacks “Operation Shady RAT” and said the earliest breaches date back to mid-2006, though there might have been other intrusions as yet undetected. (RAT stands for “remote access tool,” a type of software that hackers and security experts use to access computer networks from afar).

Some of the attacks lasted just a month, but the longest — on the Olympic Committee of an unidentified Asian nation — went on and off for 28 months, according to McAfee.

“Companies and government agencies are getting raped and pillaged every day. They are losing economic advantage and national secrets to unscrupulous competitors,” Alperovitch told Reuters.

“This is the biggest transfer of wealth in terms of intellectual property in history,” he said. “The scale at which this is occurring is really, really frightening.” _FinancialPost

Given its shady history, China is the most likey perpetrator, although Russia cannot be ruled out entirely. The cyber and crypto arms races are ongoing and unlikely to end until humans stop using advanced computing, communications, and codes.