Last week, reports of major Chinese hacking campaigns were published. The timing was bad. Because of the presidential race, the news didn’t get much attention, but it is as serious as a heart attack.
Chinese hackers are targeting service providers AT&T, Verizon, and Lumin to steal users’ data. They are also targeting high-profile people, including Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, senior government officials, and even Trump’s personal attorney, Todd Blanche. In many cases, they have succeeded in penetrating their devices and stealing their data.
The ancient Chinese war philosopher, Sun Tzu, wrote about “winning without fighting.” This remains a major idea in Chinese foreign policy. Hacking is a way of winning without fighting.
Think of what data the average American has that might embarrass them. Some of this might be innocent, like pictures and videos spouses send to each other only for the two of them to see. But nobody would want that picture published on the internet. Some might be sinister. For example, some people cheat on their spouses. There are also people who cheat on their taxes or have any number of pieces of information that would put them in personal or legal jeopardy.
Now, imagine that there is a senior government official with some jeopardy like this, and the Chinese can expose it. That person could easily be manipulated into all sorts of things.
Hacking senior officials is intended in large part to enable the Chinese to blackmail our policymakers. Imagine if the Secretary of State or the National Security Adviser were exposed. He could begin recommending policies to the president that would harm U.S. interests. He could also send top-secret information to the Chinese and expose our military secrets.
This is not just about government officials. CEOs are also powerful people in America. For decades, they have invested in China, but now that things are changing, they are moving their investments out. China can use similar information to force them to keep their businesses in China or to push other CEOs to begin investing there.
CEOs also influence the government. Every corporation has a large office in D.C. China can blackmail them into lobbying the government to take a softer approach to China. For decades, CEOs did exactly this because tough-on-China policies would harm their investments. They have mostly been giving up and redirecting their investments, but China can now blackmail them into returning to lobbying for accommodating China.
This is also to benefit China in the long-term.
Stealing the data of Americans is, in part, for China to develop artificial intelligence that could best manipulate the American people. We know that the TikTok algorithm in the U.S. is totally different from the one in China. It is designed to make Chinese children interested in math and natural sciences and to make American children hate our country. Stealing our mass data will help them do this more effectively.
It also allows them to find the data of future important people. Let’s say there is a guy named Joe Schmo who’s in his 30s and not important. In 20 years, Joe Schmo becomes a U.S. Senator. The Chinese will search the data they’ve stolen from millions of Americans and find everything about him. Then they could manipulate him in all sorts of ways for things he did as a young person, even if he spends the next 20 years as an exemplary citizen. (There is also a serious suspicion that the TikTok app steals your data for China for this exact purpose.)
Because of human fallibility, we all have done things we are not proud of. We all have embarrassing stuff on our phones. But we never thought that China could exploit these things. Now China can—and will.
We need a cybersecurity policy that would prevent hacks like this in the future.
Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Chuck Stone only and not his co-host Sam Stone or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.
