In today's episode of State of (Cyber)War, Hugo Tarrida and John Salomon talk about China's approach to cyberwar. What is the history behind Chinese cyber capabilities? What are Chinese geopolitical, economic, and social objectives that drive their international cyber activities? What are some of the biases that we should be aware of when evaluating the trajectory of China and its cyberwar abilities?

Also don't forget to check out our previous video about Chinese disinformation activities here: https://youtu.be/xBAJ2rBKrMc

Notes and links:

Hugo Tarrida on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hugo-tarrida-32915a204/
John Salomon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnsalomon/

Wikipedia article worth reading about Chinese cyber warfare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare_by_China

05:42 Granted, Stuxnet was a joint US-Israeli venture - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet
07:06 https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-says-its-working-major-new-agreement-with-iran-2023-12-12/
14:05 Titan Rain - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Rain
Related: Operation Aurora (2009) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora
15:20 https://www.npr.org/2022/05/11/1098368201/a-spying-scandal-and-the-fate-of-western-sahara
17:07 The case of Wen Ho Lee, one of several perpetrators of military espionage: https://sgp.fas.org/crs/nuke/RL30143.pdf
20:30 https://nattothoughts.substack.com - Nellie Ohr and her team do excellent analysis work
20:50 "An Analysis of China's Great Cannon" - https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/foci15/foci15-paper-marczak.pdf
Shoutout to fellow UC Berkeley CSUA member Nick Weaver for co-authoring this paper)
27:48 E.g. "The 'Century of Humiliation' and China's National Narratives" - https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/3.10.11Kaufman.pdf
29:42 Belt and Road Initiative - https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-massive-belt-and-road-initiative
32:38 Referenced here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_information_operations_and_information_warfare ("Definitions" section)
32:45 The Three Warfares: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADB372300.pdf
34:04 The Nine-Dash Line: https://chinaus-icas.org/research/map-spotlight-nine-dash-line/
34:52 In fact, ruled to be explicitly illegal by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016:
https://pca-cpa.org/en/news/pca-press-release-the-south-china-sea-arbitration-the-republic-of-the-philippines-v-the-peoples-republic-of-china/
36:19 US FBI director Christopher Wray recently warned about this: https://www.npr.org/2024/01/31/1228153857/wray-chinese-hackers-national-security

The State of (Cyber)War is a project by members of the Cybersecurity Advisors Network (CyAN), with an interest in information security topics relevant to geopolitics, military cyberdefence, diplomacy, and other international topics. We discuss various aspects of both current and past issues from the point of view of interested amateurs with varying degrees of experience in the field, in a not-always-entirely-serious format.

Visit the Cybersecurity Advisors Network at https://cybersecurityadvisors.network

Intro music courtesy of AlexiAction via Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/users/alexiaction-26977400/

Outro music courtesy of Studio Kolomna via Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/users/studiokolomna-2073170/

Original YouTube video at https://youtu.be/HLVPDojARh0