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How China Will Use Cyber Warfare To Leapfrog Foes
The Walking Dude writes "A lengthy article published in Culture Mandala details how China is using cyber warfare (PDF) as an asymmetric means to obtain technology transfer and market dominance. Case studies of Estonia, Georgia, and Project Chanology point towards a new auxiliary arm of traditional warfare. Political hackers and common Web 2.0 users, referred to as useful idiots (PDF), are being manipulated through PSYOPS and propaganda to enhance government agendas."
MS will counter China's threat by issuing a critical update imminantly! That's all.
The Chinese have a bunch of those here in America. We know them as Obama supporters.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
"A lengthy article published in Culture Mandala details how China is using cyber warfare (PDF) as an asymmetric means to obtain technology transfer and market dominance."
And when they've achieved their goals how will they feel when the next superpower does them the same way?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
China practically owns the USA. Their dollar reserve is huge!
If China wanted to destroy the USA, they simply would dump the dollar and financially destroy the USA.
Conclusion; this article is FUD
"Information Warfare" (IW), sometimes called Information Operations (IO), spans several arenas, from the purely technical to the social and psychological. The goals and missions of IO and intelligence in general, particularly against and within non-free societies, will constantly be at odds with the democratic nature of the United States and the West. Even so, the United States currently doesn't appear to acknowledge the scope of the information campaigns China has executed against it. The thought in some circles that China isn't the danger others believe it to be is apparently proof that China's long-standing information campaigns to convince Americans of just that appear to be working quite well. China's motives are strategic rather than tactical in nature; that is, they do not necessarily serve any direct or immediate specific purpose, but rather serve to create influence in its own favor over long periods of time. For this reason, many in the US see China as something of a misunderstood ally, while China simultaneously builds out its military capability.
While cyber warfare is now routinely considered in various analyses of China and other nations, the larger question of why China is so diligently pursuing this path is overlooked. China's activities in this realm are assumed to be part of a natural technological progression. However, a study of literature examining China's efforts in Information Warfare viewed against the backdrop of the importance of the Information Revolution which is sweeping the globe paints a picture of a nation looking to the information realm as a critical and key mechanism to modernize its military capabilities. Similar to how the Industrial Revolution ushered in a new era and greatly enhanced nations' abilities to wage war, the Information Revolution again could change the face of conflict. China's motivations for expanding its cyber warfare capabilities against the United States may transcend that of simple technological evolution, and warrant a deeper examination. Why, then, can China be expected to expand its Information Warfare capabilities, particularly with respect to the United States?
The US Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute encapsulates these findings in one simple thought: to China's leadership, it could mean a pathway to modernization that would obviate the need for costly and time-consuming interim modernization. "IW offers opportunities to win wars without the traditional clash of arms" (Yoshihara 2001). Indeed, China appears to be focused on the notion of such asymmetric warfare. Yoshihara (2001) goes on to explore the current state of Chinese IW and IO philosophy. The focus of Chinese theoreticians appears squarely focused on the possibility of IW offering China a decisive option to defeat a superior adversary by crippling its command and control capabilities. Moreover, Yoshihara (2001) notes that some Chinese military scholars consider the notion of victory without conventional battle; not only via disabling information-based attacks in the electronic realm, but even via more subtle psychological operations (PSYOP) designed to alter and shape an adversary's thinking.
Part of China's motivations for the intense focus on the information realm stems from China's fascination with recent conflicts driven by information. China witnessed the decisive US tactical victory in the Persian Gulf War, and wondered how such practice could be applied by its own military. China is cognizant of the fact that it, too, will be subject to information-based attacks as it becomes more dependent on information-based systems. China's focus is on building a high technology war-fighting machine, with the prospect of skipping costly interim steps to modernize its military capabilities.
Pervasive in the Chinese writing on IW is the notion of shaping the environment to facilitate military objectives; critically, the Chinese "view information warfare as a tool to counter the overwhelming military superiority of the United States" (Armistead 2001). It is this thought
"Useful idiots" in this document is referring SOLELY to the 'patriotic hackers' - ie unofficial pro-China hackers who cheerfully attack anti-Chinese or other targets of opportunity without official support or sanction.
The Useful Idiots that the summary refers to have been around forever: people who are easily manipulated by professional intelligence services without a great deal of effort because they are naive, idealistic, or simply ignorant - such as the Red Army Faction, the German anti-nuke movement, and protests against Reagan in the 80s.
-Styopa
In two days, their left wing buddies will be elected and they will be able to just ask for it.
This is my sig.
It's a lot easier to perform the manufacturing for a competing country and then just copy their design. It amazes me how naive American companies are when they outsource to China and then are amazed when their products are copied.
What's the deal with tags on the front page? On older stories it's an overlapping mishmash of words that's pretty useless. Does Malda consider this to be a "feature"?
so lets increase copyright laws and stifle innovation now!!!
We need more laws to through smart people in jail, we have to gouge our people into not affording stuff so we CEO's can then sell ( short term gain ) to the Chinese who will then just loan us cash back when we need it. Yes and then they can tell us later what laws we need more of.
Very good write up, but repeats itself and occasionally goes off on tangents. The US GPS info is wrong. GPS is not used for communications. L-Band is one way with no receivers on the bird. It (GPS) does cross-link NUDET data, but again, this isn't comm. There also aren't "five alternate constellations." There's just one constellation of 24 satellites. There are 6 orbits, with 4 birds per orbit. As he mentions, if you knock one out, then there is no way you're taking another satellite from another orbit and bringing it over. It would defy the law of physics (aka orbital mechanics) and even if those could be overcome, there's no where near enough hydrazine on the satellite to pull it off. There is a possibility they'd knock one satellite out that had an on-orbit spare nearby, but that would be an exception not norm.
What do you think freepers are? They may be dumb as bricks, but they know how to stay on message and work as a team.
Now they're really starting to lose it as Obama is practically a shoe-in. Expect them to start lashing out in the coming months, online and off-line. Everything from website vandalism to murdering people like that guy in Tennessee.
Please fill in the gap above with the latest buzz-fear word.
This is propagandising at worst, fearmongering bullshit at best. Most of the attacks in the second link were unattributed or only loosely attributed to China, the pdf assumes from the start that China is developing asymetrical warfare capabilities then ponders on what they might be. Logically, of course every large nation has some form of cyber warfare capability, it's just that I doubt that China has any real advantage in this sphere.
The real problem is that govs like USA have pushed MS in place in SPITE of the security issues. NSA and CIA were REQUIRED by the white house to convert their web site to Windows even though they fought it. In addition, they have not locked down certain tech.
At this time, the western gov MUST create its own secured network that is separate from the internet. In fact, it is already happening. Verizon, ATT, and QWest won a big part of that. It is quietly being extended to certain allies (namely Britain, Canada, Australia, and Israel). It will most likely be extended later to the rest of NATO.
Make no mistake. We are in a cold war with CHina. They are building 2-4 new nuke subs/year. They are about to launch their long march 5 next year, even though they keep claiming 2014 for launch. That is due to a LOT more money in the space program than is widely known. In fact, more money flows there than NASA ever had, because the chinese program is controlled by their military. Even now, they DO have space weapons in place (though so does Russia and USA).
LOL. Anything China does in the military or IT has been done by the US 30-100 years prior. Please save us all the comical anti-US bragging foreigners are so intent on. The Chinese economy is headed to the toilets, so forget your boasts about it ever equaling the US which is comical in itself.
America and Russia back in the 60's put in place a red phone. It was used for communications between our nations to avoid mistakes with catostrophic consequences. We also opened up our sides to each other to inspect. Neither of us wanted to have a war. More importantly, we both showed a lot of info to each other. It was kept somewhat quiet. Finally, we had spies on each other. What was interesting is that we knew it, and allowed it. In both cases, it was more about systems then little items. It all made sense since it kept us from attacking each other. That is why when the cold war ended, we did help them
Both America and Russia have approach China with similar deals. China will not allow it. We have had to find out on our own about their hidden sub base. They actually bore into an island QUIETLY, and have hidden entrances to it, so as to try and hide their try number of boomers and attack boats. China has tried hard to hide exactly how much money is being spent by their military. More importantly, their spying is not geared towards knowing what the other side has, but trying to obtain the info on the system to implement the same.
China is gearing up for a war. They are not trying to prevent it. This is why totalitarian has issues. There is a small group of ppl who are trying to build a true total world domination.
The national debt of USA is 10 trillions US $ and grows by 4 billions every day.
From this, China owns 4000 billions US $ in a governement bank somewhere, and this has doubled since 5 years.
The economic victory of China is only a matter of time.
Why does this kind of tendentious fearmongering regularly make the front page at slashdot?
Every week there's some story about evil Chinese hackers or evil Russian hackers stealing others' secrets. The equivalent stories about evil US/UK/French government hackers doing this are mysteriously absent though. That despite the fact that these countries have larger and much longer established electronic intelligence programs than the Chinese could hope to (Echelon anyone?).
I'll go along with the idea that the electronic intelligence gathering programs of major Governments are a worrying development, though calling this "cyber warfare" and pretending it's somehow qualitatively different from traditional spying seems a little silly. But why is there the pretense that other major governments are somehow less keen to exploit electronic intelligence than the Chinese? The American foriegn policy bias on this site is worrying. If this level of paranoia was directed at the US government there'd be a hundred posts complaining of "anti-americanism", yet I see no posts decrying the "anti-chinese" or "anti-russian" bias of these types of articles. Funny that...
Software Skeleton Keys "People's Liberation Army cyberwarfare units now have the source codes for America's ubiquitous office software, which Microsoft provided to the Chinese government as a condition of doing business in China. This means that they essentially have a skeleton key to almost every networked government, military, business, and private computer in America. But Chinese government hackers do not restrict their operations to U.S. targets." How does having the source code to Office give you access to every networked computer in America?
And that got modded up?
What?
Oh wait, I see, someone is being extra special clever and is now going to point out that "America" != "United States".
That song went out of tune by the end of freshman year. (High school or college, your choice).
I prefer a president that is preferred AND financially backed by China, Talibahn, North Korea, Al Qaeda, Abramhoff, W, cheney, rove, delay, hastert, Turkey, Pakistan, and Keating. I want a president that is SO dumb that he get's 5th to last in a free ride.
Mine Shaft!
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Our heavy trade relationship with China is based on the assumption that capitalism leads to democracy. But, what if this is not the case? If we are wrong, we've merely created another Soviet Union. Is there any current evidence that the premise is working? Chinese citizens seem as nationalistic as ever.
Table-ized A.I.
As one Chinese military expert put it, such an asymmetric information-based attack would render US military forces "blind," "deaf," and "paralyzed" (Cliff 2007). Direct, large scale attacks against US computer and information systems, either via disabling electromagnetic weapons or hacking, would be a part of this attack strategy.
Just so you know, a single high-altitude atomic detonation would create such a powerful EMP, it would fry any and all devices that use unshielded silicon chips. It would throw the victimized country back to an era of vacuum tube technology (assuming the infrastructure is tooled for production).
While such a scenario would be a "bloodless" war, the philosophy of MAD would quickly be put to practice. Given China's accelerated economic development and a billion chinese to look after, I seriously doubt they would walk down this path. As for religious countries with an axe to grind (and a nuke) such as Iran, Israel and Pakistan...we can only speculate their desires for an EMP war. At least two of those three don't have that much to lose. No doubt they would find it nice to level the technological playing field as well.
Life is not for the lazy.
The "enemy" sends in the bailiffs.
Want the Chinese knocking on doors all over the US demanding their money back?
...how the subterfuge and misinformation that China is employing on the internet these days influences our opinions.
For example, did you know that Windows is actually a perfectly secure and stable operating system and that Linux was just invented by the Chinese propaganda mongers to weaken the US dominance in the OS business?
lol niprnet.. how appropriate!
I think this country vs country thinking is old and outdated. It is even irrelevant, when the reality is that we have hundreds of multinational corporations who don't give a frag about borders or nationalities and only look for the biggest profit they can make. They don't care about the borders, only the money.
This should be more than evident in how these corporations have bypassed democracy in most countries and control governments to do their bidding, be it war or copyright legislation to enslave the consumers.
Something about not learning from history here and repeating it.
So what is your excuse for re-electing Bush in 2004? That you had no idea what he would do in 2003?
In order to even begin to comprehend the issues facing US Videography Lab, long ago, proffered "Battlespace Videography", where we are all vidiots . . . "useful idiots". So it is no surprise to us that China is capitalizing on cyber intelligence and warfare. The Chinese are skilled in the field of visual anthropology, which we know well. Visit www.videographyblog.com to understand how we are currently immersed in "the age of videography". Only the brainless believe that videography is just about using video cameras.
YOU have a govt that want slife in prison for music tunes and movies and tc watching.
AND whats china after?
dont they alrady make like everything?
What tech then need , how i put underwear on in morning?
Sigh, it is quite unfortunate that just because one nation rises, it must usually have a very nasty war to get to the top. But this truly is the nature of things, I suppose.
So, operating under the unfortunate assumption that the US and China will be enemies, we must build India. It is out only chance to have a decisive advantage. India + USA + Europe will beat China + Russia(?) + (portions of) Africa(??). Maybe we can get the Brazilians on our side for good measure.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
You mean like how Microsoft keeps innovating instead of copying others to ... er... never mind.
Oliver.
An electromagnetic weapon, such as an E-bomb, doesn't imply only an above-ground nuclear detonation for the purpose of creating an electromagnetic pulse -- though that is often the first thing that comes to mind. Nor does it even imply a bomb or explosion.
You can also have directed energy weapons that disable electronic gear on a much smaller scope and scale (say, a naval vessel). This is the kind of attack we're talking about -- not a nuclear detonation.
That's not to say the US still wouldn't respond with overwhelming force; but if other command and control functions are also similarly degraded, it would give China valuable time to position itself as it desired.
to this kind of asymmetrical warfare. If China cripples the US economy with information warfare, or even by ceasing to by US debt, then the US loses the ability to buy cheap Chinese crap. If no cheap Chinese crap is bought, the peasants get restless and start doing things like protesting in Tiananmen Square, which is what happened the last time the Chinese economy was doing anything but growing by leaps and bounds.
Given a situation in which the United States and China and Europe are going through rocky economic times, which government is most likely to fall and whose society to fall into utter chaos? I would say China's.
Unlike America or Europe, civil society and non-governmental organizations are strongly repressed in China, because they represent a challenge to the CCP's power. In free societies, however, they augment the government's power and can function even if something happens to the top leadership in the government. In China, the instant the soldier stops point a gun at everyone, everything turns Malthusian. Given enough unrest, even in China you arrive at a point where there are not enough soldiers to go around and point guns at everyone.
So in the end I rather suspect these kind of "asymmetrical" weapons will turn out to be boomerangs.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
the "human idiots" pdf actually uses the term, "hacker war."
hack the planet!
where he ponders the implications of using traditional military force to take out a zombie machine that is being used to infiltrate or DoS attack a critical military system. That could really suck.