Donald Trump’s bigger China cyber threat isn’t TikTok

Catherine Thorbecke, Tribune News Service

If a conflict between the US and China were to emerge, potentially over Taiwan, Americans would have a far more serious threat to their everyday lives than TikTok propaganda. In a worst-case scenario, they may not be able to put gas in their cars or turn on their lights. Chinese hackers are burrowing into the networks of major critical US infrastructure, including energy grids, water treatment plants and transportation networks. These cyber intrusions are part of a plan for Beijing, if it wants, to “land low blows against civilian infrastructure to try to induce panic and break America’s will to resist,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said at a cybersecurity summit last April. In other words, these keyboard warriors are gearing up their ability to bring crucial aspects of American life to a screeching halt.

As the government was still investigating the extent of this cyber-espionage campaign by a group dubbed Volt Typhoon, the White House confirmed in December that another outfit called Salt Typhoon was able to breach major US telecom giants. One lawmaker called it the “worst telecom hack in our nation’s history — by far.” Americans were recently caught off-guard again, when the Treasury Department disclosed that a separate state-sponsored hacker had breached its network. It was reported that even Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s computer was infiltrated.

The recent barrage of cyber-espionage, which Beijing has officially denied any involvement in, represents a massive and embarrassing US failure. America will never come out on top of a tech war with China if it can’t protect even basic civilian infrastructure or government devices from such hacks. Despite the high risks of potentially dramatic consequences, the vaguer aspects of cybersecurity have never been a rallying point in Washington. Tangible targets like TikTok, and even the 2023 Chinese spy balloon, easily suck much more oxygen and attention from the public. But protecting and countering Beijing’s sophisticated — and invisible — cyber-espionage campaigns will ultimately emerge as incoming President Donald Trump’s biggest China test.

The investigations into the recent attacks remain ongoing, and we’ll probably learn a lot more in the months to come (as well as witness a fair amount of finger-pointing as authorities locate the soft spots). But some initial reporting suggests that the Salt Typhoon attacks on telecom networks resulted from vulnerabilities wrought by aging equipment. Lawmakers should work with the private sector to ensure that identified weaknesses are immediately patched. The government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency last month urged “highly targeted individuals” — such as those in senior positions in government or politics, or likely to possess information of interest to Beijing — to start using only end-to-end encrypted communications, among other best practices.

The guidelines warn that they “should assume that all communications between mobile devices — including government and personal devices — and internet services are at risk of interception or manipulation.” It’s imperative that organisations and government agencies require potential targets to abide by the recommendations; breaches often occur in the weakest links, which are frequently individuals who ignore such theoretically required protocols. The US is starkly outnumbered in this battle. Beijing-backed hackers exceed the FBI’s cyber agents by “at least 50 to one,” Wray has repeatedly warned lawmakers, adding that China has a “bigger hacking program than every other major nation combined.” Countering such threats will take significantly more investments in manpower and building out teams exclusively focused on this risk.