China Hacking

Atop the stoa, this night, I ponder the state of our intelligence agencies. I ponder the quality of the people we have, regardless of politics, who are tasked with protecting our cyber infrastructure.

Since the night is waning, I shall get right to it. Forwardness seems warranted here.

The Chinese have been attacking our cyber infrastructure for YEARS, denying every attack, despite most of the attacks coming from their version of the NSA. Riiiight. We complain, they deny, and then do it again ten minutes later.

Right now, the hacks mentioned in the news center around them trying to collar Chinese dissidents by hacking Google accounts and the like. The MSM does not mention the attacks against our military infrastructure, power infrastructure, and banks.

We complain, they deny, and then do it again. We tighten up our defenses and then they probe them again. We spend money hardening our sites and all they have to do is get more creative.

Has someone in the NSA or CIA figured out that all we are doing is training their hackers? In the meantime, it places a drain and drag on our business environment.

The Iranian nuclear power plants were crippled and delayed by a worm attack. This is foreshadowing of what I'm speaking about tonight. If a nuclear power plant in the US is hacked and has its cooling system shut down, are we looking at meltdown? In the very least there will be a drop in power on the national grid. What if there is a simultaneous hack on most of our nuclear plants, hacks on our coal plants, and major industrial systems? China has the manpower, the money, and the will to accomplish the task.

How about our national air traffic control system? Might cause some chaos, you think?

There is an old saying that people always train for the last war. The Chinese have a long memory and lots of smart, American educated computer engineers. They are currently equipping themselves to fight a conventional war, on the same level as the United States. At the same time, they are gearing up to launch, preemptively the next war upon the United States.

10,000 hackers shut off the lights, the phones, the Internet, civilian air travel, and our orbital satellite network. Simultaneous to that they will maneuver their military to seize whatever physical assets they feel they must possess, say Siberia? Watch out Russia.

In the old days, we were afraid that the EM pulse from a nuclear device above our airspace. That would accomplish the same thing, but in such an inelegant fashion.

I hope someone in the NSA and CIA are thinking about this, even a little. We must prepare for the next war, not the last war. Special ops, small covert forces, and "flexible" military strategies are not going to work with the Chinese. Liberal use of Tactical nukes and large, WWII style military formations are the only things that will work on a nation as populous as China. Once they have seized the assets of the Western Pacific, all of Eastern Russia, and dominate the orbital zones, there will be few other options.

Don't prove me right. Prove me wrong...I really, really don't mind being wrong on things like this.

Live well.

--Zavost