Some data may be interesting in this regard. On March 3, 2020 the Chinese cybersecurity company Qihoo 360 accused CIA of having hacked many Chinese companies for over 11 years.
They are
– almost obviously – aviation companies, large global commercial Internet
networks, research institutions and certainly also Chinese government agencies.
Not to
mention the cryptocurrency operations often organized by people and entities
traceable to the North Korean government.
Both the
Chinese and the US governments, in fact, use various and complex entities and
mechanisms to operate in cyberwar. Firstly, the “front companies”. Just think
of the Chinese group APT40, which even hires hackers – as everybody does, after
all. Secondly, the intrusions to collect cyberdata in the large multinational
companies, or even in State agencies, which often remain blocked for a few days
and, in that phase, transfer vast masses of data to the “enemy”.
Thirdly,
the theft of IP and trade secrets- another mechanism that everybody uses.
Obviously
this is not the case of Italian Agencies, which, at most, can entrust a small,
but good Milanese company to do some hacking, possibly in accordance with the
law.
It now
seems that the Italian ruling classes are composed above all of what in the
1920s Gaetano Salvemini called “the Paglietta of the Naples Court”.
On the
military level, the United States believes that today the Chinese Joint Chiefs
of Staff can hit well and quickly any opposing C3 system (Combat, Control,
Communication) and that it can also carry out automated, but smart warfare
operations, from the very first moments in which a significant regional
military clash occurs.
Although
many US experts in the sector also maintain that, still today, the United
States has a better base of action and, probably some advanced technologies
that could enable the United States to have a better and wider cyber action.
Nevertheless, this is not necessarily the case.
Certainly
China is well aware that the Western and especially North American response to
a harsh cyberattack would entail an even harsher, immediate and ruinous
reaction against Chinese targets in the homeland and in the other regions.
Hence
cyberwar’s parallel IT operations are mainly carried out by Russia: just think
of the attack on French TV5Monde in 2015 or on Ukrainian energy companies in
late December 2015, as well as on Sony in 2014. We can also mention the 2017
attack – through the use of a computer virus, WannaCry – which, however, was a
cyberattack attributed by the United States to North Korea.
On the
technical-legal level, the Chinese legislation that governs the Chinese
cyberwar is mainly contained in the National Security Law of 2015 and finally
in the Intelligence Law of 2017, in which it is laid down that cyber operations
can be conducted both by the Ministry of National Security, the old guoan, and
by the Office for Internal Security of the Public Security Ministry.
The
operations abroad normally concern the Centre for the Evaluation of
Intelligence and Technology (CINTSEC), which is an integral part of the
Ministry for State Security.
The
other autonomous cyber networks operating within the People’s Liberation
Army(PLA) add to this official network.
At
geopolitical level, China does not want to trigger any conflict with the United
States. Neither a traditional conflict nor a cyber one. Quite the reverse.
China’s
current real goal is to bridge the technological and operational gap between
the two cyberwars, both on a strictly military level and, above all, on the
economic and technological one.
China
knows that – as Napoleon said – “wars cost money” and it is good not to make
them if they can be avoided.
For the
United States, China needs cyberwar to win “particularly informationalised
local wars”.
Conversely,
for Chinese theorists, cyberwar is the only real strategic war of the 21st
century, as it was the case for nuclear war in the 20th century.
In other
words, the technological and doctrinal area that allows to win a medium and
large conflict and then sit at the peace negotiating table with of Phaedrus’s
motto Quia sum Leo.
Also on a global and commercial level, China
even plans to build a large private company that can compete on an equal
footing with what in China is called “the eight Kongs”, namely Apple, Cisco,
Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle and Qualcomm.
Therefore,
at military level, China wants first of all its full cyberspace security so as
to ensure the security of critical intelligence, both of regions and economic
activities.
Also on
the American side, however, there is currently a tendency to reduce the Chinese
cyber penetration power, both at military and commercial levels. Some analysts
maintain that, in recent years, the Chinese cyber presence has been very
exaggerated.
There is
a psywar operation – this time, certainly, of North American origin, but
recently present on the Web – which currently makes us add a further analytical
factor on the intelligence cyberwar and, above all, on the implementation of
cyber criteria in psywar.
Nowadays
there is a sort of “Report of a Military Contractor” available on the Web- as
it is officially entitled – which is supposed to reveal just what the United
States would like to hear still today, i.e. that Covid-19 is just a “Chinese
virus” that was designed and made in the now very famous Wuhan laboratory.
This
report was drafted by a previously unknown Multi-Agency Collaboration
Environment (MACE), a group of cyber and non-cyber experts, whose site is only
part of the Sierra Nevada Corporation.
However,
it is still a current relevant contractor of the US Department of Defence.
Hence
the usual “external centre” that is used to say things that it would be
unreasonable to say directly.
The
report states it is based on evidence related to the posts of the intra-and
extra social networks, both of the laboratory and its employees, as well as on the
data provided by non-military satellites and finally on the positioning data of
mobile phones.
All this
in view of even saying that “something” happened – probably by chance and
accidentally, but in any case extremely severe and uncontrolled – in the Wuhan
laboratory, only with regard to the Covid-19 virus.
This is
a further phase of the modern misinformation technique: at first, it was said
that the virus deliberately came out of the Hebei laboratory, while now it is
underlined that it probably “escaped” unintentionally from its microscopic
cage.
It is
easy to understand what they really want to communicate: even if the Chinese
government were not responsible, international lawsuits for claiming damages
would still be possible.
Nowadays,
at least in the West, misinformation is carried out at first by hardly hitting
the opponent and later possibly apologizing for saying something inaccurate or
wrong. A psychological warfare technique that creates the “aura” of the case
without later supporting and corroborating it. It is very dangerous.
A really
dangerous tactic, especially in the presence of an increasingly evolved and
advanced Network.
The
document, however, does not report as many as seven locations of mobile and
institutional phones within the Wuhan laboratory – too great a flaw to be
accidental.
MACE
also states that, allegedly, a whole conference inside the Hebei laboratory was
“cancelled”, due to an unspecified disaster, while, again in the documents of
the laboratory, there are pictures with a clear internal date concerning
precisely that event, the conference of November 2019.
One of
these pictures was also found in the social media of a Pakistani scientist who
had participated.
Even the
aerial photographs provided by the company Maxar Technologies are a sign of
obvious and normal repairing of roads, certainly not specific roadblocks placed
due to an unforeseen and very severe event.
A few
days ago President Trump stated that the “virus came out of the lab because
someone was stupid”. Too easy and, I believe, useless even for a legal and insurance
case against the Chinese government itself.
Moreover,
these is the more or less manipulated data which, however, has certainly been
useful to develop and spread the theory of “Chinese fault” for the outbreak of
the epidemic and then pandemic, just in the midst of the great “acquisition of
intelligence data” to which Trump and Pompeo referred.
All this
just to reaffirm, without any reasonable doubt, the willful or culpable guilt
of the Chinese government in the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, and
hence to stop the development of China and make it retreat, – with huge legal
costs – from a development rate that was already within reach.
Moreover,
the aforementioned MACE report lacks some data that we would simply call
cultural intelligence, i.e. not knowing that the first week of October is a
“golden” week for China, e.g. the National Day which commemorates the
foundation of the People’s Republic of China, announced by Mao Zedong in a very
famous speech at the Square of Heavenly Peace Square, with an even more famous
phrase: “the Chinese people have stood up!”
How can
they not know this, even believing they are intelligence people?
The same
happened with a US report on the coronavirus issue transmitted from US to
Australian intelligence agencies and later immediately published in a Sydney
newspaper. Obviously everyone also “manipulate” documents to defame the
opponent, but there are many ways and means of doing so.
On a
more strictly doctrinal level, however, the issue brings us back to the
analysis developed in 1999 by the two famous PLA Colonels, Quiao Lang and Wang
Xiangsui, entitled Unrestricted Warfare.
It was a
manual on what we would today call asymmetrical warfare.
Today,
however, Quiao Liang thinks that – even at this stage of the conflict -war is
still linked to the manufacturing industry. This means you can have excellent
scientific research and a good network of research centres, but if you do not
turn all this into mass and important industrial products, as Quiao Liang says,
“you have just won a medal, but nothing more”.
Liang
also maintains that the United States is therefore using up its weapons and
industrial equipment stocks.
Furthermore,
the more the coronavirus crisis worsens -considering the scarcely effective
reaction of the US economic and health system – the more the consumption of
North American military and civilian stocks increases, although the ability to
produce them decreases more than proportionally.
Hence
has the United States still have a manufacturing and mass industry, as well as
the ability to turn technological evolution into mass products, to wage an
asymmetrical or conventional war but, above all, to continue it until the final
victory?
The
Chinese Air Force General seems to imply that this is not the case.
Hence,
in his mind, currently the only reasonable solution for China is to expand its
production system, but never underestimate the “traditional” medium-low
technology manufacturing industry, which is the one that reproduces and expands
production forces and enables it to last over time, which is the only real
guarantee of victory.
You do
not eat fintech products, but rather Californian tomatoes and Midwest meat.
Those
who want to collect technological jewels can certainly do so and – as the
General maintains – obviously also China must do so, but what is still and
always needed is the great mass production and items that, coincidentally, have
become scarce all over the world: masks, respirators, food, traditional
infrastructure, as well as means of transport.
It is
fine if you believe that war and the economy are a superhero scenario, but you
have to win, i.e. “to last one minute more than your opponent” – hence you need
to go back to a mass, industrial, stable and growing civilization for the
“real” economy.
The myth
of high technology as the key to everything, induced by the development of the
current United States, has made everyone else in the world lose the true sense
of modernization, the key concept of the Chinese political narrative, from Deng
Xiaoping to present days and in the future.
You
cannot think of a future civilization in which social verticalization is such
that a share of over-rich countries slightly higher than 1% follows the
vertical impoverishment of all the others.
A mass
impoverishment which also leads to a reduction of manufacturing production. The
products are later sent to “Third World” countries to trigger a process of
social pyramidalization that is almost unprecedented in human history. And what
is it for? For uselessly spending the mad money produced by fintech?
Therefore,
the Chinese General believes that a US decoupling from China – as all the
economists close to the White House preach-is needed to prevent China from
taking all the most important technological and defense patents. In his
opinion, however, also China must not decouple from the USA at all. This is not
useful for high technology, but if anything, to avoid doing the same as the
United States on a mass level.
If there
is decoupling – as the current US economists preach – the Chinese products will
become more competitive compared to the US and US-related products. Hence the
US monetary hegemony would soon disappear and the same would be true for the
its double use of the dollar that made an old FED Governor say to his European
colleagues: “the dollar is our currency, but it is your problem”.
Therefore,
in the long run, it will also be impossible to let China – with its low-cost
productions – be replaced by Vietnam, Myanmar and the other countries in the
so-called “pearl necklace” of Southeast Asia.
Moreover,
if after the coronavirus crisis, there will be further robotization of the
workforce, how will it be possible to maintain many and sufficiently high wages
which, after the pandemic, will obviously be distributed to a smaller number of
available workers?
Low
wages – and hence also scarce tax revenues – as well as crisis of State
spending and decrease in social and military spending, especially in the high
tech sector, which always has a very high unit cost.
Therefore,
just to recap, the Empire is facing severe danger.
As the
Chinese General maintains, “we must not dance with wolves”, i.e. we must not
follow the pace of US dance to reap only the technological fruits, but rather
maintain and expand the great manufacturing production and, above all, even
avoid taking up the cultural, industrial and scientific traits of the United
States, which the Chinese General deems to be at the end of its civilization cycle.
According
to Chinese analysts, the United States is a “country that has gone directly
from dawn to decadence”, just to put it in the words of a French ambassador.
Hence
China needs to solve the Taiwan issue autonomously, as well as also harshly
oppose the actions against Huawei, by reacting blow-for-blow with the U.S.
companies in China, such as IBM, Cisco, etc., and stopping their activities in
China, where necessary. Anything but hybrid warfare.
Here we
are at a commercial and quasi-conventional war between two powers, i.e. an old
Western power, on the one side, and an Asian power on the other which, however,
does not want at all to be relegated and closed in the Pacific, as implied and
assumed by the new US military projects for closing the Ocean, from California
to Japan, or for trying to block the expansion of the Silk Road or still trying
to block the expansion line to the South and East of China, as President Xi
Jinping has recently advocated.
Certainly
China is currently not lagging behind on the cyberwar issue. Nevertheless it
does not want to use it as a substitute for conventional war or psywar for
dual-use technologies, nor to play the game of the total defeat of a
hypothetical “enemy”.
China
can now avail itself of the Third Department of the People’s Army, the network
dedicated to cyberwar within the PLA, but also of the Strategic Support Force.
This
will be the new “Cold War 2.0”, i.e. a series of IT, economic and industrial
guerrilla warfare actions, and of actions of defamation – specifically at
military level – of confidential information to be stolen from the enemy in a
tenth of a second, as well as of cultural manipulation and-eventually, but only
in the end-of fake news.
https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2020/05/23/cyberwar-between-the-united-states-and-china/
***Giancarlo
Elia Valori ; Advisory Board
Co-chair Honoris Causa Professor Giancarlo Elia Valori is an eminent Italian
economist and businessman. He holds prestigious academic distinctions and
national orders. Mr. Valori has lectured on international affairs and economics
at the world’s leading universities such as Peking University, the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem and the Yeshiva University in New York. He currently
chairs “International World Group”, he is also the honorary president of Huawei
Italy, economic adviser to the Chinese giant HNA Group. In 1992 he was
appointed Officier de la Légion d’Honneur de la République Francaise, with this
motivation: “A man who can see across borders to understand the world” and in
2002 he received the title “Honorable” of the Académie des Sciences de
l’Institut de France. “