Alla hot deets and big phased cookies re: Collectivist China"s hack attack on Great Satan"s tender, sensitive portions is really just old school intell gathering (CyberInt, nicht wahr?)
As GfGs"s hyperpuissance expert sweetly succinctly splains...
What we have here is industrial espionage on a grand scale – pure and simple. Yes, the PLA wants to know how to cause as much infrastructure mischief as possible in the event of a shooting war with Great Satan, but let’s not be naive about the extensive and ongoing efforts to do the same to China (much less our Rubicon-crossing cyber strikes against Iran).
That sort of spying and military espionage is nothing new. All that says is that both sides plan to go heavy on cyber warfare in the event of war. It does not prove that cyber is its own warfare domain – as in, constituting genuine war in isolation.
As for the industrial espionage, China’s ambitions are magnificently broad. Check out the list of industries targeted, check it outers
- Information technology
- Aerospace
- Government-related agencies
- Satellites and communications
- Scientific research and consulting
- Transportation
- Energy
- High-tech electronics
- Constructing and manufacturing
- Engineering
- International organizations
- Legal services
- Media, advertising, entertainment
- Navigation
- Financial services
- Chemicals
- Health care
- Food and agriculture
- Metals and mining
- Education.
Clearly, this is a scope far and beyond thwarting Great Satan’s AirSea Battle Concept.
In the end, all of that is really cover.
What really drives China is its own leadership’s fears. Beijing knows it has mortgaged just about everything to grow so rapidly. Besides the environment (which is enough, trust me), a good example is found in China’s unprecedented demographic aging – i.e., the vast piling up of elders. China’s entitlement burden there will dwarf our own. By mid-century, China will have more elders (400 million-plus) than we’ve got citizens (around 400 million total). The massive trade-offs on guns-vs.-butter are coming just as China’s reliance on foreign sources of food and energy skyrocket, and America “pivots” to East Asia in a transparent “boxing in” military containment strategy.
