The Asia Times just published this piece by Steve Soble and myself. Here’s the link and here’s a taste of the text:
US and its allies are undergoing a digital Pearl Harbor attack
The reports may seem fragmentary and anecdotal but they add up to a devastating pattern. Chinese state-affiliated hackers cracked Microsoft’s email cloud system and penetrated the email systems of the US departments of Commerce, Treasury and State. Other hackers penetrated the US military’s communications in Guam, a key command and control center for the Navy’s Seventh Fleet.
The US government has announced that the Chinese attack group Salt Typhoon, affiliated with the Chinese government, used vulnerabilities in Cisco routers to penetrate the systems of nine US telecommunications companies, including AT&T and Verizon, in what is being called one of the worst intelligence compromises in American history.
The ministry is China’s equivalent of the US Central Intelligence Agency. Chinese spies also targeted the phones of candidates in the 2024 US election. And the government has announced that the Chinese have placed malware in America’s critical infrastructure that presumably could be activated at the time of Beijing’s choosing.
Overall, China’s cyber espionage activities surged by 150 percent in 2024, according to CrowdStrike’s 2025 Global Threat Report.
The Russians also have penetrated deeply. A thriving ransomware attack system is now hitting not just corporate targets but also schools, churches, hospitals and even blood banks.
Microsoft’s threat intelligence team has recently revealed that a Russian attack group called BadPilot has breached systems in numerous English-speaking countries around the world. The group’s targets have included “energy, oil and gas, telecommunications, shipping, arms manufacturing” and “international governments.”
In short, the Chinese and the Russians have staged a devastating Pearl Harbor-scale attack on America’s critical infrastructure and Information Technology systems. Much the same pattern is playing out for America’s traditional allies because US tech companies built large parts of their systems. Targeted data capture by adversaries is now a persistent threat.
At least some planning in the West’s military, diplomatic and trade realms could be monitored and anticipated. Aided by artificial intelligence, these penetrations also help to sow misinformation and disinformation throughout the social media universe in what has come to be called cognitive warfare. That represents an assault on all democracies.
