What Is America’s Strategy To Win the Cyber Cold War With Communist China?

There is growing evidence that Communist China is engaged in an enormous cyber offensive to gather data about America — and acquire the ability to infiltrate and control our systems.Because there is no bloodshed, uniformed military, or obvious battlefield, most Americans don’t realize we are in a new cyber Cold War with the People’s Republic of China — and the Chinese Communist Party which runs it.China is a totalitarian state. The government and Communist Party monitor everything. It is impossible to believe the constant cyber spying, infiltration, and groundwork for a cyber-attack on our infrastructure are happening because of random bad actors.The FBI director, Christopher Wray, said at a security conference in Germany, “the cyber threat posed by the Chinese government is massive. China’s hacking program is larger than that of every other major nation, combined.” This should have inspired a national outcry — and a demand for a vigorous response with a clear strategy for winning this new Cold War.So far, it has not.Mr. Wray is not a lone voice in the wilderness. Almost a year ago, in February 2024, the Annual Threat Assessment of the United States Intelligence Community warned:“China remains the most active and persistent cyber threat to U.S. Government, private-sector, and critical infrastructure networks. Beijing’s cyber espionage pursuits and its industry’s export of surveillance, information, and communications technologies increase the threats of aggressive cyber operations against the United States and the suppression of the free flow of information in cyberspace.”America must take notice and design a strategy to defeat the Chinese Communist efforts.The scale of China’s cyber operation can be seen by studying Salt Typhoon, a hacking operation run by China’s Ministry of State Security. The group has repeatedly waged a series of major cyber espionage campaigns against America.In late 2024, Salt Typhoon allies broke into the computer systems of Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and four other major American communication companies. Salt Typhoon’s hackers accessed detailed location and time information about calls and text messages made by more than 1 million of the companies’ customers. Most of these customers lived in the Washington, D.C. area.One example of the scale of the threat occurred in December 2023. American agents halted a Chinese-sponsored attack on hundreds of private American internet routers which had been hijacked. The attack, called a botnet, involves a hacker taking control of a network of devices to send messages without the owners’ knowledge.Salt Typhoon hackers “burrowed into America’s broadband networks,” the Wall Street Journal reported in September 2024. “In this type of intrusion, bad actors aim to establish a foothold within the infrastructure of cable and broadband providers that would allow them to access data stored by telecommunications companies or launch a damaging cyberattack.”Furthermore, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency reported in February 2024, that another China-backed cyber espionage program called Volt Typhoon compromised the computer systems of multiple critical American and territorial infrastructure organizations — primarily in the communications, energy, transportation, and water and wastewater sectors.The Biden administration’s response has been pathetically weak and ineffective.After the Department of Justice halted the previously mentioned botnet attack, Attorney General Garland said, “The United States will continue to dismantle malicious cyber operations — including those sponsored by foreign governments — that undermine the security of the American people.”Mr. Garland’s promise is baloney. The Chinese Communist efforts are vastly bigger and bolder than the Biden administration’s response.This is not a new problem. Ten years ago, in June 2015, the Office of Personnel Management announced it had been the target of a data breach targeting personnel records.Approximately 22.1 million records were affected, including records related to government employees, civilians who had undergone background checks, and their friends and families.How much insight into America — and individual Americans’ personal lives — do you think could be exploited for spying or sabotage from 22 million personal records?This cyber Cold War is so alarming, I dedicated a podcast on Newt’s World to it. I was joined by the senior advisor for the Office for Fiscal and Regulatory Analysis at the America First Policy Institute, Weifeng Zhong. He is also a co-creator of the Policy Change Index, an open-source project that uses AI to analyze and predict governments’ actions based on their words.Mr. Zhong asserted that our response has been totally insufficient, and we need a much bigger, bolder, and more aggressive strategy to win the Chinese Communist cyber Cold War.This is going to be one of the great battlefields of the Information Age. America can choose to dominate it — or risk being dominated.

What Is America’s Strategy To Win the Cyber Cold War With Communist China?

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