China and, oh yeah, More China

Information security experts say that China could retaliate against US tariff in a different way.

What if President Xi calls in his army of hackers, rumored to be in the neighborhood of 300,000 to go after the United States? He could do this in one of two ways.

The first way is to go after US businesses – maybe manufacturing or financial services. They have done both already in the past.

OR, more concerning, he could tell them to go after critical infrastructure. They have already gone after the electric grid (Guam), water (Massachusetts) and others.

Even the government has admitted that the Chinese are buried inside our critical infrastructure. If we knew where (and the NSA might, maybe), we could remove them (maybe). But since we haven’t rooted them out, I am guessing we don’t know where they are.

Remember that 90+ percent of critical infrastructure is private so the feds have limited visibility inside. Given the turmoil in DC these days, people are probably more concerned about staying employed than they are concerned about protecting some electric grid in Montana.

What if the attack against the major telecoms last year, including AT&T and Verizon, was just a practice drill?

“The intelligence community has assessed that China has conducted operational preparation of the battlefield to disrupt US critical infrastructure and cause societal panic, impede US government decision making, and degrade our ability to mobilize forces,” Fixler told The Register.

Remember, of course, that the president historically has not trusted the intelligence community, so he might not be listening. Or, he might be.

Maybe they are just interested in stealing our money. Credit: The Register

Speaking of China, the former Facebook director of global public policy told a Senate committee that Zuck was willing to do almost anything to get access to China’s 1.4 billion customers. So eager that he was willing to build a transoceanic fiber cable with a stop in Hong Kong, so the Chinese government could tap it.

That plan was foiled when Congress stepped in.

Facebook was desperate to stop the testimony of Sarah Wynn-Williams. Let’s assume that Facebook’s smear campaign of her (taking a page out of the administration’s playbook, they say her testimony is divorced from reality and riddled with false claims) has some validity. We do know that Facebook tried to land the fiber in Hong Kong. Even a teenager could figure out that doing that would expose the data to the Chinese Communist Party.

China is the adversary. While we are fighting a tariff war with them, they might be fighting a cyber war with us.

What companies and agencies are the Chinese inside right now that we don’t know about? Do you think that China is above using the chaos in DC to their advantage? I can GUARANTEE that they are using it. And will continue to do so. Credit: The Register

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