They can do whatever they want. Operating systems are effectively divided into two partitions, privileged kernel space and user space.

When you run a kernel level anticheat what you're really doing is running a custom program in the kernel space. It effectively becomes part of Windows.

This means that anything that an operating system can instruct hardware to do, that program can do. It can read your files, check your email, print letter you wrote to your crush in Word but "deleted" because it was embarrassing, log every key you type, turn on your webcam, listen to the microphone, download explicit or illegal imagery, upload your hard drive to the NSA, disable your computer fans, etc

You really only want to run this stuff if it's from a trustworthy vendor and even then it's completely defensible to object to running one of these programs.

Currently these things have yet to be caught doing any of these things, but that's because they haven't been instructed to, not because they can't.

Don't get me wrong, Vanguard is BS, and I quit playing riot games because of it. However, simply having low level access isn't sufficient to classify it as spyware, otherwise drivers would be spyware. I still haven't seen any evidence that it currently does anything nefarious with that access, which means it's quite unlikely it's being used for mass surveillance.

To me, there are 2 problems: 1) It could be used for targeted attacks, and the likelihood anyone would find out is much lower than in a widespread surveillance scenario. 2) It could be used to deploy a massive bot-net.

I think the US reclassification here is precautionary in nature.

I was thinking of reddit

And what DOES Tencent have full ownership of? They dip into almost everything as rich as they need to carry China's water.

RIOT is an American company that was bought by Tencent.

Sure but it ignores that Tencent gave $20 million to create LoL (first 10 then another 10 to buy out the other investors)

Never was that popular

COD and Fortnite are much bigger with the latter even making sports radio talk

The popularity spike was when MLG needed to fill in the Halo Reach spot due to that game’s lack of appeal

And Reddit

It's been state capitalism forever.

K. Which president does that not equally apply to? Could probably count on one or two hands the number congresspeople that can’t be bought.

Oh yeah? Hahaha. When was this? Didn’t hear the news about free insulin.

Americans are blind. They think their capitalism is also not state funded. The only difference is that in China corporations are owned by the state, and in the USA the state is owned by corporations. "It's not fair" yeah, obviously it isn't, the USA has been imperialistic and monopolistic over the entire global south for the past 7 decades, nobody wants to be playing with your bullshit rules anymore. The "free market" is heavily stacked in their favor, and always will be. Case in point? BRICS are about to move away from the dollar, and the USA immediately goes ballistic saying it will impose tariffs and sanctions and whatnot if we dare challenge their authority. Where's the free market in that? Where's the free market when your 2nd in command has said before that the USA will invade and coup whatever country they feel like it in order to get resources? Yeah, we're not playing your stupid free market game anymore, it's rigged. And yes, China is part of the global south, they have been so since they were oppressed and enslaved and explored by the global north for decades, they just did a good job of turning around. I wish my country had done as good of a job...

While China is considered part of the global south, its economy is so massive and it is so influential globally it really shouldn't be.

Edit: Also in China's case, that was the UK, not the US.

You’re totally right, China isn’t actively sending missiles to Taiwan yet

Well, looking at the Corning company, they specialize in glass wares/technology in general of which heat-resistant kitchenware is a sector as well as bulletproof glass but also mirrors for astronomy. So this seems more like a parallel than sequential development.

There are some interesting cases of companies who have never before even dealt with large scale production suddenly getting awarded military contracts. But tasking some of the largest machine manufacturers of the country such as Ford and Singer with production of military gear during wartime seems hardly surprising.

And I don't even question the overall narrative of companies doing whatever makes a quick buck. I was more interested in the specific example of a tea company of all places production military goods.

That’s when they become the Outerprise.

Imo whataboutism is not even a real thing.
That's just a dumb label made up for use against ussr it was just never intended to be used against US lol. But pointing out that ur opponent has ulterior motives is properly legal

I'm sure the US military already has a list of its own operations. Where is the hypocrisy?

that is its own topic, bringing it up here is trying to shift attention away from the topic at hand. Its also topic that should be talked about more, but in its own context.