Hacks and other escalations as China shows its true colors

It has not escaped notice that in the weeks before President-elect Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration, China has upped the ante in its high-stakes pushback against the US ring-fencing of its geopolitical and technological ambitions.

In short, China has hacked the US Treasury Department, carried out massive naval drills, deployed ships to the South China Sea, launched the world’s biggest amphibious warship, sabotaged undersea cables and imposed export controls and sanctions on US firms.

And that was before The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that China’s military and intelligence hackers have achieved deep penetration of American infrastructure and telecommunications networks, positioning Beijing to potentially paralyze US response capabilities in any future conflict.

‘Massive hacking’

China, we now know, has been enjoying access to Trump’s calls, for example, while methodically positioning itself to impede American response to any future Pacific conflict.

The two massive hacking operations have upended the West’s understanding of what Beijing wants, while revealing the astonishing skill level and stealth of its keyboard warriors – once seen as the cyber equivalent of noisy, drunken burglars.

China’s hackers were once thought to be interested chiefly in business secrets and huge sets of private consumer data. But the latest hacks make clear they are now soldiers on the front lines of potential geopolitical conflict between the U.S. and China, in which cyber warfare tools are expected to be powerful weapons.

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As for those cable attacks, one tweet that has yet to be verified claims that “China’s systematic undersea cable sabotage” has been “patented as ‘Towed Undersea Cable Cutting Technology” by Lishui University.”

Taiwan is seeking the help of South Korea in investigating a Chinese-owned ship that Taiwanese operator Chunghwa Telecom and the Taiwan Coast Guard believe caused damage to a communications cable on January 3.

As for whether China will invade Taiwan in 2027, the latest revelations suggest that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) may well be ready. Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping has reportedly commanded it to be. Meanwhile, Chinese planners seem to be hopeful that the US will be hamstrung from intervening. Cue Bloomberg:

US officials have recounted in testimony and briefings how Chinese hackers are building the capacity to poison water supplies nationwide, flood homes with sewage, and cut off phones, power, ports and airports, actions that could cause mass casualties, disrupt military operations and potentially plunge the US into “societal panic.”

The aim, US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly told Congress in January 2024, would be to take down “everything, everywhere, all at once.”

Perhaps it is time to shrug off that ever-present counter argument that China, with its “5,000 years of civilization,” is “special” – unique and deserving of different treatment.

As if China’s very existence challenges the possibility of the universal applicability of Western international relations theory – because … well, standard models of state behavior do not fully capture China’s motivations and actions.

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To the likes of Martin Jacques, whose civilization-state argument revolves around the idea that China fundamentally operates on a different historical and cultural paradigm than Western nation-states, welcome to a Beijing that will shut down your plumbing to feed its revanchist territorial claims.

After all, presumably the aim of the hack of the century – so far – is that before a single bomb falls on Taiwan, China can potentially turn off utilities, disrupt communications, and create domestic havoc that would severely hamper any military response.

Primary goal

As Brandon Wales, a former top US cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security, tells The Wall Street Journal “prepositioning and intelligence collection by the hackers … are designed to ensure they prevail by keeping the US from projecting power, and inducing chaos at home.”

That chaos is a primary goal, not a side effect. And the methodical penetration of infrastructure since 2019 suggests this is not just contingency planning – it is a core part of the strategy.

When the war comes to our kitchens – and it seems it is as likely to start there as on foreign soil – nobody is going to be thinking about giving China, the special case, the civilizational wonder, a break. But by then, it will be too late.

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The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of China Factor.