Slashdot Mirror
The Invasion of The Chinese Cyberspies
HorsesAss writes "Time Magazine has an article up entitled 'The Invasion Of The Chinese Cyberspies and the Man Who Tried to Stop Them', which outlines how Chinese PRC is cracking DOD networks and downloading massive sets of files detailing every aspect of military planning and practice." From the article: "The hackers he was stalking, part of a cyberespionage ring that federal investigators code-named Titan Rain, first caught Carpenter's eye a year earlier when he helped investigate a network break-in at Lockheed Martin in September 2003. A strikingly similar attack hit Sandia several months later, but it wasn't until Carpenter compared notes with a counterpart in Army cyberintelligence that he suspected the scope of the threat. Methodical and voracious, these hackers wanted all the files they could find, and they were getting them by penetrating secure computer networks at the country's most sensitive military bases, defense contractors and aerospace companies."
If the DoD systems are so easy to crack, what is stopping others to attack them?
Wow. And it isn't an article written by John Markov? I'm shocked!
I guess the government and corporate world should have been paying more attention to what breeches by harmlessly curious teenagers signaled rather than harassing and fining and jailing them for embarrassing them for their own incompetence while letting actual national threats from foreign nations occur.
It's a good thing they turned those 13 little kids from that one school into felons for typing in a password that was obvious and widely available to install stuff on the laptops they were given to use. Today, installing iChat. Tomorrow? - secret highly paid communist spies haxoring into the super elite United States government. OH NOES!
Oh, and this guy is a moron. Part of the counter-intelligence game is to make sure the enemy doesn't know he's been caught. This guy is such a bull in the china shop he's destroyed any chance we'll be able to learn "means and methods" information from this ring.
While the article was written to be dramatic and exciting, this scenario is assuredly based on truth.
Does anyone seriously doubt that China, India, Russia, and Israel have teams of computer scientists probing U.S. government and corporate networks?
Does anyone doubt the U.S. has many, many teams (NSA, CIA, DIA - especially AirForce Intelligence) probing foreign networks and eavesdropping on practically ALL digital communication?
Would you be surprised if a CIA field op were found in China? Digital espionage is the future. Expect it.
Look at your clothes, computer, TV, video, car labels.
Well, 20 years ago, you'd have said the exact same thing about Japan. They themselves were banking on their demonstrably superior manufacturing ingenuity, efficiencies, and focus to make them dominant. They then totally overextended themselves, and their economy has been more or less in the tank ever since.
Now, the difference between them and the Chinese situation (also sitting on top of an economic bubble they won't be able to sustain) is that the Chinese, having not been aggressors in WWII, don't have any of the politically correct inhibitions about using force to prop up the weak spots in their system. Taiwan would certainly be their first target, and that will cause a wretched mess. But the whole southeast Asia area will feel their influence as they look, themselves, for more resources.
I'd like to say that the currency float you mentioned was a good thing, but there isn't a single economist who sees it as anything other than an empty political gesture. All they did was let it "float" within very narrow bounds, defined by them, with essentially no impact whatsoever on the real underlying exchange mechanics.
The real issue here is going to be energy. Probably the most alarming development is the Chinese coziness with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. They're taking a lot of their cash surplus (um, that would be the cash we're spending on their inexpensive products) and pumping a lot of it into investments in that oil producing country. That's fine with Chavez, because China is the nearest thing to an idealogical opposite to the US he can find (well, one that isn't clearly a broken-down mess, like Cuba).
My guess is that Venezuela will become, is essence, a Chinese outpost. And a huge foothold, economically, in Central/South America. Just in time for the economies in Brazil and Argentina to start looking ripe for more investment.
So, we may see Wal-Mart eventually filling up with "Made in Brazil" goods, but made by firms operated by Chinese interests.
I'd not, though, call them the next "superpower" any more than one could refer to the Soviets in that sense. They were, in that they had the military and the nukes to be hugely influential, but it was a house of cards. That won't be as true of the Chinese, in that their businesses are tilting capitalist despite the (now mostly smoke) communist creed of their heavy-handed government. But as long as they are to a large degree centrally managed, they're going to make a lot of the tone-deaf mistakes that the Soviets did. And this time, a whole lot of Chinese citizens are going to be a whole lot quicker to step up and try to prevent the economic flushing that happened in Russia after the USSR tanked. It's going to be fascinating. In the meantime, I'd vote for policies that encourage more US investment in central and south America, and policies that ask the same thing of China that the US must do to do business in their country.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
"Invasion", hackers (with a sense of purpose no less!), "new breed of enemy". Typical Time insight.
The reason to release information on this is almost purely a Pentagon press game. They have their own little war going on with China already. It's mostly been bearucratic (arguing over how much money is being spent on military budgets, saying one side is a threat, etc.) Occassionaly they move major pieces of the Pacific fleet, just to stir up speculation (in the U.S. press mostly). The Pentagon does have some necons nesting there, so taking a coarse line is in vogue.
Practically speaking, the Pentagon has also long been aware of the "soft-power" threats, especially IT. They have invested in computer networks for decades. Over the last decade work has gone into networking everything (in terms of information) and finding ways to control their resources electronically. The technocrats are keen on the U.S. military's weaknesses. This is translated by the more politically-minded managment into a counter-statement: The U.S. is vulnerable to an information war, but the better way to say this is to play up the threat of China in terms of cyber*buzzword*.
The Pentagon can argue for more funding this way and field little/no criticism. Same with the PLA in China (who has a growing budget). Both militaries are getting what they want without a huge payout in budget (i.e. a traditional war). And I definitely wouldn't rule out ego on both sides of the Pacific.
Actually nothing you've said indicates that China is an "enemy" of the US.
Everything you've said is related to China increasing its economic development and exerting influence over its historical area of influence to assist that development and the large Chinese populations in those areas.
The problem with your concept is that the US believes it and it ALONE can hold ANY influence ANYWHERE in the world. This was EXPLICITLY stated in the PNAC documents that formed the foreign policy of the neocons and Bush. It is a pure implementation of imperialism.
Therefore it stimulates conflict with states attempting to build their own influence. Iraq, for example, had NO conflict with the US in its sphere of influence. It DID, however, have a conflict with ISRAEL, which used its control over US foreign policy to force a war with Iraq which could cost the US up a trillion dollars.
The bottom line: the state is the problem, not the populations of those states. The Chinese have no quarrel with Americans, and vice versa. It's our "glorious leaders" and their rich backers who have the problem.
You want to stop war, get rid of the state.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!