Tag: china

New Biden Cyber Strategy Takes Aim at China as ‘Most Persistent Threat’

The Biden administration’s new cybersecurity strategy takes aim at China’s communist regime and other authoritarian powers for subverting the international order through malign cyber activity.

The 2023 National Cyber Strategy, released on March 2, says that communist China and other regimes are attempting to export their own forms of authoritarianism through the use of technology.

“The governments of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and other autocratic states with revisionist intent are aggressively using advanced cyber capabilities to pursue objectives that run counter to our interests and broadly accepted international norms,” the strategy states.

“Their reckless disregard for the rule of law and human rights in cyberspace is threatening U.S. national security and economic prosperity.”

China in particular is threatening U.S. interests and dominating emerging technologies critical to global development with the intent of reshaping the world order, the document states.

“[China] now presents the broadest, most active, and most persistent threat to both government and private sector networks and is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do so.”

“Having successfully harnessed the Internet as the backbone of its surveillance state and influence capabilities, [China] is exporting its vision of digital authoritarianism, striving to shape the global Internet in its image and imperiling human rights beyond its borders.”

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US Power Alliance Says It’s Preparing An “Information War” Against China

In an article published last week titled “US working with ‘Five Eyes’ nations, Japan on information warfare,” a publication on military intelligence and communications technology called C4ISRNET reports that the US and its allies are collaborating “to share and sharpen information-warfare techniques in the Indo-Pacific” with the goal of “countering” the “increasingly aggressive China.”

Here’s an excerpt:

Dialogues and exchanges of best practices are ongoing with Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and other countries including Japan, according to Vice Adm. Kelly Aeschbach, commander of Naval Information Forces.

“I want to say we have at least a dozen countries or so that are either establishing information warfare programs, or are interested in partnering further in the information warfare realm,” she said Feb. 15 at the West 2023 conference in San Diego. “We are leaning in there, we are focused.”

Japan, specifically, has expressed significant interest in information warfare, “in a really positive way,” Aeschbach told C4ISRNET. Japan and Australia, among others, are considered critical U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific, a region national security officials are invested in as they seek to counter an increasingly aggressive China.

Libertarian Institute’s Kyle Anzalone and Connor Freeman have a good write-up on this latest revelation in which they explain that information warfare is “a broad swath of military operations a country can use to disrupt another” which “can include spreading disinformation or preventing the spread of information.”

As Anzalone and Freeman note, one significant recent instance of the US government’s acknowledged use of information warfare was when US officials told NBC News that the US government has been deliberately circulating unsubstantiated information to western news media “as part of an information war against Russia.”

Which is to say, they lied. When you do things like telling New York Times reporters that “Russia asked China to give it military equipment and support for the war in Ukraine after President Vladimir V. Putin began a full-scale invasion last month,” only to have NBC report that you knew this claim “lacked hard evidence,” you lied. You used your country’s mass media institutions to circulate disinformation.

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U.S. Plans To Drastically Increase Troop Numbers In Taiwan

The United States reportedly plans to significantly boost its military presence in Taiwan as tensions with China grow.

Officials told The Wall Street Journal and Fox News the U.S. is preparing to send between 100 and 200 troops to Taiwan in the coming months, which would be the largest such deployment in decades and a marked increase from the approximately 30 troops stationed there last year.

These added troops will reportedly train Taiwanese forces on using U.S. weapons systems and military maneuvers.

“We don’t have a comment on specific operations, engagements, or training, but I would highlight that our support for, and defense relationship with, Taiwan remains aligned against the current threat posed by the People’s Republic of China,” Defense Department spokesman Army Lt. Col. Marty Meiners said in a statement shared with The Daily Wire.

“Our commitment to Taiwan is rock-solid and contributes to the maintenance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and within the region,” Meiners continued.

Taiwan is a self-governed island nation that the Chinese Communist Party has sought to bring under its control. The United States provides defense support to Taiwan but does not formally recognize it as a country.

In October, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for a “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan, but stressed China “will never promise to renounce the use of force and we reserve the option of taking all measures necessary.” Amid increasing provocations by China, President Tsai Ing-wen announced in December that Taiwan would increase its mandatory military service requirement for eligible men from four months to a year.

U.S. military and intelligence officials have said Xi is gearing up his country’s forces to invade Taiwan as early as 2027. Some warned an attack could come sooner.

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China successfully tests ‘phantom space strike’ weapon which can overwhelm an enemy’s missile defence systems ahead of a nuclear attack

China has successfully tested a ‘phantom space strike’ – a new tactic to overwhelm and sabotage missile defences by emitting fake target signals from space.

Military engineers announced earlier this month they had completed a computer simulation and achieved positive results.

The tactic is designed to overwhelm the enemy on the basis that there is only so much a missile defence system would be able to cope with.

This can lead to exhaustion of the enemy’s weapon supplies, making it easier to destroy it. 

In the simulation, a ballistic missile was launched against an enemy which had a missile defence system. 

After surpassing the atmosphere, the missile released three spacecrafts containing radio interference equipment which picked up enemy radar network signals and sent back dummy signals, successfully triggering enemy forces to launch an interceptor.

‘Generating phantom tracks in space is extremely difficult,’ the team wrote, according to South China Morning Post.

‘We solved one of the major challenges … with a clever design.’

The team was led by Zhao Yanli, a senior engineer in the People’s Liberation Army Unit 63891 – a military agency based in the central Chinese province of Henan that develops new technologies.

Dummy attacks are often used in combat to exhaust the enemy’s supplies. 

The team said this tactic was not previously feasible in space. Now the positive results of the simulation have given them hope as they move the project onto the next stage to battle any engineering challenges.

Researchers exploited a weak spot in radar stations where signals can become fuzzy and crossed over. 

The spacecrafts’ direction, speed and formation would be decided before the launch and would be based on the information obtained about the enemy’s radar station.

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Congressional Republicans Urge Biden to Provide More Military Funding to Taiwan

The authors of the new letter to Biden reasoned that arming and equipping Taiwan “to make it a stronger and more capable partner” would be an improvement for the “national and economic security” of the United States.

Republican members of the US Congress’ foreign relations and defense committees have penned a letter to US President Joe Biden asking him to ramp up military aid to Taiwan, according to a US media outlet familiar with the contents of the missive.

The letter was reportedly authored by Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Jim Risch and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Mike McCaul, as well as Senator Roger Wicker and Rep. Mike Rogers, Republican leaders of the Senate and House armed service committees, respectively.

“Using every authority, we must arm and equip Taiwan to make it a stronger and more capable partner — which will only help the United States’ national and economic security,” the politicians declared in their letter.

They also argued that the United States “must be willing to accept the tension that comes with supporting Taiwan.”

As the media outlet points out, in December the US Congress did authorize foreign military aid financing for Taiwan – $2 billion per year – but that money comes in the form of “US-backed loans,” and the letter’s authors claim that “without FMF grants, loans are not enough to address the scale of this challenge.”

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US Officials Now Say Chinese “Spy Balloon” Flew Over The US Accidentally

The Washington Post has a weird new article out citing multiple anonymous US officials saying that the Chinese “spy balloon” we’ve been hearing about for the last two weeks was never intended for a surveillance mission over North America at all.

The article is titled “U.S. tracked China spy balloon from launch on Hainan Island along unusual path,” and throughout it alternates between the objective journalistic terms “suspected spy balloon” and “suspected Chinese surveillance balloon” and the US government’s terms “spy balloon” and “airborne surveillance device”. There is at this time no publicly available evidence that the balloon which was famously shot down on February 4th was in fact an instrument of Chinese espionage; the Chinese government has said that the balloon was a civilian meteorological airship that got blown off course, and the Pentagon’s own assessment is that a Chinese spy balloon would not “create significant value added over and above what the PRC is likely able to collect through things like satellites in Low Earth Orbit.”

What makes the article so weird is that it actually contains claims which substantiate Beijing’s assertion that this was in fact a balloon that got blown off course, yet it keeps repeating the unevidenced claim that it was a “spy balloon”.

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Balloons, UFOs, fighter jets, oh my! What’s really going on in the skies above America…

In case you’re living under a rock and hadn’t heard, there was another “UFO” shot down over the Great Lakes this weekend.

According to reports, the US military had been monitoring Lake Michigan earlier in the day, and even closed the airspace for a short while before giving the “all clear” and reopening.

And just as Americans breathed a collective sigh of relief and returned to their Super Bowl snacks, word came down that fighter jets had shot down yet another “UFO” over Lake Huron, near the Canadian border, after the object ventured too close to a sensitive military site.

And if that wasn’t enough fuel for the already-raging media “UFO” bonfire, things heated up even more after General Glen VanHerck, commander of U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) announced that he wasn’t ruling out “aliens.”

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BELIEVE IT OR NOT: China Claims It Sighted an Unidentified Flying Object Near Its Border

China state-affiliated media outlet The Global Times reported on Sunday that authorities in China’s Shandong Province have spotted an unidentifiable flying object over the coastal city of Rizhao.

Authorities in China are now preparing to shoot down the UFO and have sent out a message to local fishermen to stay out of the waters until the operation is complete.

The new report by China comes less than 24 hours after the United States shot down a high-altitude object in Canada and 48 hours after the United States shot down another object in Alaskan airspace.

Previously, China claimed the surveillance balloon that flew over Montana and was shot down in South Carolina was a “atmospheric research instrument” however the US military refuted those claims.

Many geopolitical analysts are confused about China’s new reports.

Some are claiming the report by China is a false flag in order for China to “pretend like it’s happening to us too”.

Others believe China is shooting down their own balloon in order to claim they “shot down a US balloon” in a move to not look weak after the US shot down their balloon.

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First Balloons, Now Space Lasers: Chinese Satellite Blasts Green Lights Over Hawaii

Chinese spy balloons aren’t the only strange thing flying over U.S. airspace as of late.

Numerous green laser lights were spotted over Hawaii on Jan. 28, initially believed to be from a NASA satellite that monitors the thickness of ice sheets on earth. However, the claim was retracted on Feb. 6, and responsibility was instead attributed to a Chinese atmospheric monitoring satellite.

The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan published a photo of the lasers on Jan. 28 saying they were “thought to be from a remote-sensing altimeter satellite ICESAT-2/43613,” the NASA satellite. Then, on Feb. 6, NAOJ released an updated report and said it was unlikely to have come from the NASA satellite due to the trajectory of the lasers.

NASA scientist Dr. Alvaro Ivanoff determined via a simulation that the culprit was likely China’s Daqi-1/AEMS satellite, according to Science Alert.

Daqi-1 monitors the earth’s atmospheric environment and can project lasers from its Aerosol and Carbon Dioxide Detection Lidar (ACDL), according to The Science Times.

NASA’s IceSAT-2 functions similarly and fired 10,000 lasers per second to measure changes on the earth’s surface, according to The Science Times.

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Nothing About the Chinese Balloon Saga Makes Sense

Nothing about the “Chinese spy balloon” story makes sense—but that hasn’t stopped U.S. officials from using it to stoke anti-China sentiment and cancel an attempt to ease diplomatic relations.

The basics: A Chinese balloon started drifting into U.S. territory about 10 days ago. It first entered Alaskan airspace, then drifted over Canada, then made its way back into U.S. airspace, appearing over Montana on February 1. By Saturday, when U.S. forces shot down the balloon, it was floating over the shores of South Carolina.

What the Chinese say: It was “a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes”—a weather balloon, essentially—that veered off course due to westerly winds and “limited self-steering capability.”

What Americans are saying: It’s a spy balloon! It’s an act of open hostility! U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken called it “a violation of our sovereignty” and “a violation of international law.” House China Select Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) declared the balloon “a threat to American sovereignty” and “a threat to the Midwest.” Mitt Romney used it as an opportunity to call for banning TikTok.

The fallout: Blinken was supposed to visit Beijing this past weekend, on a trip designed to help keep relations cordial and keep lines of communication open between the countries. He was even scheduled to meet with Chinese president Xi Jinping. But Blinken canceled the trip last week, as the Chinese balloon loomed large (literally and figuratively) over America.

Not only did the balloon nix a diplomatic visit, it’s inflaming tensions—and paranoia—here in the States. The balloon is “more fodder for China hawks in Washington, for sure,” NPR correspondent Michele Kelemen said on Saturday. Kelemen described the incident as sounding like a story out of the Cold War, which was “exactly what [Blinken’s] trip was supposed to prevent.”

The absurdity: The balloon in question is absolutely massive, with “an undercarriage roughly the size of three buses,” as The New York Times put it. This would be an absolutely bonkers way to spy on the United States—especially since the images it picks up are reportedly no better than those it can obtain through satellites. One defense official said, as summarized The Washington Post, that the images a balloon like this could obtain “wouldn’t offer much in the way of surveillance that China couldn’t collect through spy satellites.”

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