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The Chinese cyber-threat…
Yesterday, we channeled Michael Pillsbury's warning that It's not Russia that we should be worrying about … it's China!
Today, let's dive down on a specific … the Chinese cyber-threat..
Michael Pillsbury nails the point in his book The Hundred Year Marathon: China's Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower…
Here's an edited excerpt from 100-Years:
China has identified a major U.S. weakness: America's reliance on high-tech information systems.
No nation in the world has been as active as China in exploiting the vulnerabilities of computer systems involving key U.S. military, economic, intelligence, and infrastructure interests.
There is strong evidence that the Chinese government is directing and executing a largescale cyber espionage campaign against the United States.
The People's Liberation Army has sixteen spy units that "focus on cyber penetrations, cyber espionage, and electronic warfare."
One unit of the People's Liberation Army – Unit 61398 -"has penetrated the networks of at least 141 organizations, including companies, international organizations, and foreign governments.
Chinese cyber intruders had accessed more than 24 American weapons system designs, including "the Patriot missile system, the Aegis missile defense system, F/A-18 fighter, the V-22 Osprey multirole combat aircraft, and the Littoral Combat Ship."
Chinese hackers have attacked tech companies such as Google and Adobe, financial service providers, defense contractors, and government agencies.
According to senior U.S. information security officials, more than 730,000 American computers are infested by Chinese "zombies" – malicious software packages that infect computers and allow hackers to turn them into "slave" computers for use in cyberattacks that can bring down a network or website with an overwhelming data dump.
Major General Sun Bailin of China's Academy of Military Science has written that the United States depends too much on "information superhighways" that are vulnerable to attack by "electrical incapacitation systems" that could disrupt or destroy electrical power systems, civilian aviation systems, transportation networks, seaports, television broadcast stations, telecommunications systems, computer centers, factories, and businesses.
Attacking space satellites, airborne early-warning and electronic warfare aircraft and ground command sites is a military research priority.
That includes weapons that can disable surveillance systems, land-based electronic infrastructure, or U.S. aircraft carriers.
They include electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons, which knock out all electronics over a wide area by replicating the electromagnetic effects of a nuclear explosion.
In recent years, China has been researching high-power microwave weapons that are designed to destroy the opponent's electronic equipment.
Imagine trying to fight World War III after computer viruses and weapons that emit EMPs and microwaves have incapacitated America's computers, cell phones, and air traffic control centers on the home front, and the command and control mechanisms for fighters and smart bombs on the battlefield.
To me, that sounds like a bigger threat than Macedonians conjuring false blog posts or s[ear-phishing the DNC.
P.S. This week, there have been detailed reports that Comey's "foreign agent who may have penetrated Secretary Clinton's email server" was China, not the Russians.
Specifically, it is reported that a Chinese operation penetrated Clinton's server and embedded code that that auto-generated Chinese-bound cc's of all inbound and outbound emails.
According to a former U.S. intelligence agent: The Intelligence Community Inspector General did a deep-dive that"found in the actual metadata — the data which is at the header and footer of all the emails — that a copy, a 'courtesy copy,' was being sent to a third party and that third party was a known Chinese public company that was involved in collecting intelligence for China."
The findings were reported to the FBI and DOJ, but no action was taken.
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This entry was posted on May 16, 2019 at 6:59 am and is filed under Uncategorized.	You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
One Response to "The Chinese cyber-threat…"
Right on point! I want to know what happened with that big story last October about a Chinese company putting an extra hardware chip onto servers that ended up getting bought by Amazon, Apple and even the DoD. Big story…frightful potential…then nothing.