FBI Director Christopher Wray’s speech and subsequent comments at the Hudson Institute yesterday, seen here, certainly validate my findings in The New Art of War and establish that the pattern of Chinese government activities is continuing. But the biggest surprise was his comment that as soon as an American company or research institute makes a public announcement about promising research related to Covid-19 treatment, the FBI sees a surge in digital activity coming from China targeted at that institution, sometimes starting a day after the announcement was made.
That is clearly a hostile pattern of activity. The only way we can stop it is to harden our IT systems and to get serious about human behaviors that may allow U.S. companies and other institutions to be hacked. The Chinese IT skills have exploded and we still have not awoken to the need to improve the security of our computer systems. Wray seems to believe that “calling out” the Chinese will influence them to stop. But that’s a Western moral concept. Being “named and shamed” is not going to stop any Chinese goverment-affiliated player if the Chinese government is urging them onward. The burden of fixing the problem falls on us however expensive and difficult it may be.
