Wasn't it Lenin who once said: "The capitalists will sell us the fiber-optic cables by which we can hang them"? Or something like that. Yes, it turns out that the improved system of Iraqi air defenses that U.S. and British bombers have been going after, and on which the Chinese are feverishly working, is tied together by a rather impressive system of fiber-optic communication cables whose technology was first provided to China by U.S. corporations. Free trade has some hidden costs.
On the good news front, however, reports out of London following the airstrikes also indicate that American and British defense planners were given a good deal of intelligence assistance by Serbs who had worked on the Iraqi upgrades during Slobodan Milosevic's tenure as head of Yugoslavia. With the election of new Yugoslav president Vojislav Kostunica, Serb assistance to Iraq has apparently stopped and cooperation with the West begun. As Lenin might also have said: "It's better to be on the winning team than the losing one."