Obama snubs Waldorf-Astoria hotel amid Chinese espionage fears

By Matt Kwong, CBC News Posted: Sep 24, 2015 5:00 AM ET

With the increase of technology these days, many world leaders including U.S President Barrack Obama are getting increasingly more fearful of communication bugs that may have been deployed in an attempt to gain information on opposing powers. This year during the 2015 U.N General Assembly, will be the first year since the 1930's that an American head of state will not be staying in its famous presidential suite. This fear could be because a Chinese company,  Angbang Insurance Group, bought it last fall. The Angbang Company also has been reported to have strong ties with the Communist Party back in China. This would not be the first time one of the countries have tried to send hearing devices to other world leaders. In 2002 the US sent a plane to China to serve as a Air Force 1 replica for the Chinese to use, however when the Chinese looked at the place carefully, they found many listening devices.

In my opinion, I don't think that any of the countries are going to stop trying to spy on each other because everyone wants to be on top and have to most power. I also think that Obama was doing the right thing because the timing of when the hotel was bought and who it was bought by does not seem like a coincidence. I think this will have a long term effect because as technology improves and more and more governments starts to use bugs to find secrets about others, many countries will start to be more paranoid and will start to fall apart. If countries continue using this, many of the people inside the country will also stop talking and socializing because they would be too worried because they would think that the government is listening at every moment.