Chinese economic theft

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China’s ongoing cyber war against the U.S. has been underway for decades. Intent on stealing intellectual property from private industry, China’s hacking and spying fuels its economic prosperity.

On this episode of CyberChat, host Sean Kelley, former EPA CISO, discusses the Chinese military’s for-profit ventures with Joshua Philipp, an investigative journalist at the Epoch Times, which covers national security and politics.

When it comes to war against the U.S., China, Iran, and Russia are key players.

“China is the most aggressive and largest player in this field. Russia is more of a distant enemy in this age. A lot of what China is using now are methods Russia used during the cold war,” Philipp said. He noted their tactics are laid out in Unrestricted Warfare, a book on military strategy written by Chinese generals. The book details methods of waging unconventional war through political action to cause policy changes, economic warfare or cyber attacks.

Philipp said China is also targeting the U.S. through forced technology transfer, the “stealing of technologies and using them to surpass the West or replace the West as the world leader.” The essence of technology transfer is to transfer knowledge, skills, methodologies and technologies from one company or country to another. “This type of trans-economic theft requires a lot more planning or systems in place to achieve the goal, or a hacker army,” said Philipp. He added that unit 61298, one of the 22 operational bureaus of the hacker army, focuses on waging warfare against American companies, organizations and government agencies.

Philipp also said China’s surveillance system uses supercomputing powers. “In the U.S., there are a lot of private companies collecting the data, but in China, everything is collected under one centralized system. The Chinese communist party has information on every purchase you make, who your friends are, what your beliefs are, what your ideologies are, facial recognition, where you are going. All of this information is collected to give you a social credit score, which determines what you can and can’t do. Your freedoms are determined how well you adhere to the social credit system,” said Philipp.

Top Takeaways

1. Iran, Russia and China are actively waging war against the U.S., but China is the most aggressive and largest.
2. China has a hacker army, with over 22 operational bureaus.
3. Unrestricted Warfare, a well-known Chinese military strategy book, lays out unconventional war techniques.
4. The goal behind forced technology transfer is to surpass the West.
5. China is the largest surveillance state in the world.
6. The Chinese Communist Party collects information about citizens to enforce the social credit system.