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The U.S. government has long known that state-supported hackers in China penetrated many government and corporate computer systems in an attack that it labeled "Salt Typhoon." Now, The New York Times is reporting that the attack was far more thorough than previously thought and also hit over 80 other countries. It was the most ambitious (and successful) cyberattack ever.
The attack presents two dangers. First, the hackers may have scooped up all manner of valuable information, ranging from chip designs and other corporate secrets to information about every American, potentially useful for blackmail. Second, cell phones may have been infected, allowing the hackers to track politicians, military leaders, spies, and activists. Third, critical infrastructure was probably penetrated and backdoors potentially planted. This could allow for future sabotage. Imagine that China invades Taiwan, the U.S. starts to respond to aid Taiwan, and just then, all the electric power in D.C. and the Pentagon (which is in Virginia) goes out and all the military computer systems suddenly refuse to run, even those on backup power produced by local generators. How would the U.S. response go? Oh, and for good measure, to make sure Americans didn't know what was going on, China might be able to at least temporarily disable AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and some of the other big Internet providers (which would also black out the television and phone service they provide). A fine kettle of sweet and sour fish that would be.
The U.S. government has known about Chinese hacking for a long time. So what is the Trump administration doing? Well, for starters, Trump fired four-star general Timothy Haugh, head of the U.S. Cyber Command and the person most responsible for cybersecurity in the U.S., because Laura Loomer told Trump he was friends with former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley, whom Loomer distrusts. Haugh was also head of the NSA and has decades of experience in cybersecurity. But that doesn't count for much when your friendly house crackpot tells you to dump him. Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said: "At a time when the United States is facing unprecedented cyber threats, as the Salt Typhoon cyberattack from China has so clearly underscored, how does firing him make Americans any safer?" Loomer also told Trump to fire six staffers at the National Security Council, which he did.
And there is more. The main government agency defending the country from cyber attacks is CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. So naturally, Trump is beefing it up in response to Salt Typhoon, right? Er, well, not exactly. In fact, Trump and Elon Musk have fired (or driven out) fully one-third of the CISA workforce. How come? The former director of CISA, Chris Krebs, has said the 2020 election was not stolen and Joe Biden legitimately won. Trump didn't like that so he fired Krebs and gutted the agency.
Rob Joyce, who once led the NSA's cybersecurity division, recently said: "I really think we've backslid. We didn't just lose the top layer of government, we lost operational capability across any number of departments and agencies. I don't care how you slice it, we've lost capability."
Surely private companies will pick up the slack now? Well, no. A report out last month shows that among 500 IT and cybersecurity decision makers in the U.S. and U.K, 85% have faced budget cuts in the past 6 months. Half of all companies are planning to cut investments in cybersecurity—just when they should be ramping it up. Also, 8 in 10 respondents fear that government budget cuts will hinder intelligence sharing.
So the bottom line is that China has already demonstrated that it can hack into almost any U.S. system, including key infrastructure. Instead of rapidly increasing defenses against future attacks and removing backdoors already planted, the U.S. government and private companies are drastically cutting back on cyber defense capabilities. When the next attack comes, there will be nobody home to stop it. (V)