China is pursuing an aggressive spying program to acquire critical American know how for beefing up its military and industrial might, posing the biggest threat to US technology, a US Congress-appointed commission warned Thursday.
"Chinese espionage in the United States, which now comprises the single greatest threat to US technology, is straining the US counterintelligence establishment," the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission said in a report to Congress.
To underline the seriousness of the espionage problem, the panel called for immediate steps to determine the country of origin of every US weapon system components and a "full assessment" of US intelligence capabilities related to China's military.
The United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission website does not have the full report available for download yet, but it does have the full list of 42 recommendations available. I had a commenter the other day in some other post flame me for calling on the US to file complaints about China to the WTO when they shutdown access to US search engines and redirected all their users to Chinese search engines, after all, that is basically stealing from one company in favor of another, a violation of the WTO. Well, in the 42 recommendations are three specific items to take to the WTO.
The Commission recommends that Congress urge the Administration to bring a World Trade Organization case against China for manipulating its currency to gain an unfair trade advantage, which is a violation of the principles of the International Monetary Fund of which China is a member.
The Commission recommends that Congress petition the Administration to initiate a Section 301 investigation of Chinese worker rights violations in preparation for bringing a case before the World Trade Organization alleging suppression of labor rights as an unfair trade practice.
The Commission recommends that Congress urge the Administration to employ all necessary trade remedies authorized by World Trade Organization rules, including antidumping and countervailing duty penalties and temporary relief, to protect the U.S. economy from the Chinese government’s extensive subsidies for companies in China.
However that is just the beginning of the AP article. It goes on to address the security issues between the US and China.
Commission vice-chairman Dan Blumenthal said the panel found that the pace of military modernization in China had exceeded official US estimates.
China's defense industry, he said, was producing new generations of weapon systems with impressive speed and quality, in part because China had developed the capacity to integrate commercial technologies into military systems.
"In addition, industrial espionage has given Chinese companies an added source of new technologies," he said at a news conference where the report was released.
This was predictable, there will be a chapter in next years annual DoD report on China about the "the pace of military modernization in China" because it simply can't be ignored anymore. The evidence is there and we continue to see it not only in the domestic systems produced, but the export systems as well.
The industrial espionage part is troubling, however it should be noted we only hear about this one way. We almost never hear about a citizen jailed for spying in China, or a security breech in China, we will only really hear about these things happening in the US. Either way, securing our information is critical to holding our technological military advantage over China, and given the strides they are making and how similar their systems appear to ours (as opposed to Russian systems), breeches are clearly occurring.
"Chinese military strategists have embraced disruptive warfare techniques, including the use of cyber attacks (which) if carried out strategically on a large scale, could have catastrophic effects on the target country's critical infrastructure," it said.
A report earlier this year said China's military had successfully hacked into the US military computer network.
The Chinese military's cyber-attack was carried out in June following months of efforts, the London-based Financial Times reported, citing unnamed current and former US officials.
Officials had told the paper the attack was by China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) and that it led to the shutdown of a computer system serving the office of Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
This stuff is added as a distraction, because the evidence to support this as the main threat doesn't really add up. Earlier this summer, in perhaps one of the most rediculous stories ever printed, the Times ran a story claiming " Chinese military hackers have prepared a detailed plan to disable America’s aircraft battle carrier fleet with a devastating cyber attack."
Unfortunately, the "Chinese hacker plan" the Times got its hand on is actually for sale in China, it called Tactical Datalinks in Information Warfare and was published by the Beijing Post and Telecommunications College Press in 2005. I guess our carriers are safe after all...
The disruptive warfare strategies China may attempt are in good summery though in this report available from the Strategic Studies Institute, see Chapter 5. For the most part, this stuff is overrated, in reality the Times story highlights this as well.
The Pentagon logged more than 79,000 attempted intrusions in 2005. About 1,300 were successful, including the penetration of computers linked to the Army’s 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions and the 4th Infantry Division. In August and September of that year Chinese hackers penetrated US State Department computers in several parts of the world. Hundreds of computers had to be replaced or taken offline for months. Chinese hackers also disrupted the US Naval War College’s network in November, forcing the college to shut down its computer systems for several weeks. The Pentagon uses more than 5 million computers on 100,000 networks in 65 countries.
Ok so 1,300 successful intrusions / 5,000,000 total systems = .02% of DoD systems. Maybe the Times failed math, but like the rest of the media they are making a lot of nothing. When you consider the depth of low security systems among the 5,000,000 total DoD systems out there, and the best the rest of the world can do is .02% breech or .00026 of all computer systems, I'd say the DoD cyber secuirty plan is highly effective.
Considering all the news media attention around cyber attacks when they occur, you would think this is a serious problem. It is a serious issue, but I'm not sure it is worth the hype, or more specifically, there appears to be misappropriate attention given to cyber attacks compared to physical theft of technologies, of which the Chinese are actively engaged in.
Which makes it incredibly frustrating when you read the crap put out by people like the Council for Foreign Relations, who earlier this year released their report on China. The entire report reads as a paper in denial of the nature of the Chinese, and is centered around recommendations for Washington to adapt to China. Excuse me? Are we really the people who need to change?
The Council for Foreign Relations report fails to deal with the fundamental nature of the Chinese regime, as a dictatorship having no legal or electoral processes and thus fundamentally wanting in legitimacy. The report gives an overly optimistic assessment (from the US defense perspective) of China's military build up, and ignores the nature of the buildup as it is clearly directed and geared to target the US and our allies. It gives a happy tone assessment of the Chinese economy that doesn't address the lack of market mechanisms or genuine private entrepreneurship, and doesn't even address the state allocation of capital through political bank loans leading to bad debt, stock market and property market bubbles, and unwillingness to make the currency convertible. The report also decided to punt the Taiwan issue.
In watching the China bubble, I keep thinking we are watching some form of the former USSR leading up to its big bomb, and yet just like the end of the cold war, there doesn't appear to be any consideration that perhaps the US should be preparing for the Chinese bubble to pop so we don't get caught off guard like we were when the USSR bubble popped. It is as if we are looking to relive history only because we don't see or don't want to see the China bubble popping in the future. We were unprepared for the events of the USSR, it sure would be nice if we were ready if they happened to China, even if it is 'just in case.'
After all, the nature of China is too often forgotten, and Americans tend to forget the little things. The last paragraph of that original AP article reminds us the nature of China.
Dangerous exports from China ranging from toys to seafood have sparked a wave of global bans and recalls in recent months and severely tarnished the made-in-China label.
Beijing has taken various steps to contain the problem, and in July executed the former head of its food and drug safety watchdog for corruption.
Executed. At least the AP had the gonads to print it, most Americans probably didn't know that. Even worse, most Americans probably think this is a good thing, which at a minimum would highlight our hypocrisy when it comes to justice in the United States.
Food for thought.
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