China Saper Threat

When considering the technological advances over the past 50 years, the Internet has undoubtedly had the greatest impact on everyday life of developed economies and its citizens. The world has become smaller, societies interconnected, and the pace of global integration dramatically increased since the introduction of the Internet. With the world connected, cyber actors represent a very real and often underestimated threat to the United States’ ability to defend national security, protect industrial innovation, and secure privacy information. As a result of globalization, the foreign cyber actors represent the most imminent threat to national security, corporate innovation, and citizen privacy rights.

Cyber threats have increased dramatically over the past few years, with large companies such as Amazon, Netflex, PayPal, Wikipedia and most recently Equifax, experiencing high profile breaches. Traditional tools, defenses and responses have been strained with keeping up with the level and sophistication of an very organized and ubiquitous hacking community, which has coalesced into organized crime syndicates that the FBI and law enforcement continues to battle.

Cyber espionage is the act of attempting to penetrate an adversarial system for the purposes of extracting sensitive or protected data of either social or technical in nature. They are illicit activities that range from the commercial and economic to the political and strategic. They include small nuisance attacks to matters of high magnitude and importance like the national security and intelligence (Cornish 2012). Chinese cyber espionage has continued to escalate in recent years; it has continued to gain attention in many institutions including the media, the technology and information services industries, in scientific research and innovations, and as well as the general public. All these institutions are aware that china is taking part in the systematic development of cyber techniques that they intentionally use to invade international organizations, national governments, commercial companies, universities, and research institutes (Cornish, 2012).

The most recents detections of how cyber warfare is inevitably coming was the accusations of Russia hacking the the Democratic National Committee and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email’s releasing damaging evidence against them which ultimately lead to Donald Trump being named the President of The United States (Diamond, 2016). The effects of cyber warfare have leaked over in to televise series, forming shows such as CSI cyber, and the gaming world, Call Of Duty Infinite Warfare. Neglect regarding cyber security can: undermine the reputation of both the government and elected officials; force unacceptable expenditures associated with the cost of cleaning up after security breaches; cripple governments' abilities to respond to a wide variety of homeland security emergency situations or recover from natural or man-made threats; and disable elected officials' ability to govern (Lohrmann, 2010). Classified information such as overseas operators and attacks, missile locations, response plans and weaknesses, and much more cripples America’s ability to defend itself from enemies both foreign and domestic. To combat cyber terrorism is the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA. In an article titled “Why Cybersecurity Information Sharing Is A Positive Step for Online Security” it is discussed that under CISA, the Department of Homeland security will have more responsibility for domestic cybersecurity. CISA’s fundamental purpose is to better enable cybersecurity information to be shared between the private and public sectors (2016). The sharing of threat information between public and private sectors can give the the United States a head start by allowing them to share information rapidly and more often to combat enemy threats while still providing safety for privacy and civil

In a documentary by Admiral Vern (2002), “the events of September 11, 2001 tragically illustrated that the promise of peace and security in the 21st Century is fraught with profound dangers”. The US foreign policies and interest in key geographic regions of the world sparks controversies resulting in state funded cyber attacks, cyber espionage and terrorism against the United States and its allied nations. When several attempts to cripple the United States and its allied nations through negotiations failed, enemy states and nefarious groups have shifted their focus to cyber attacks and cyber espionage. According to Gady (2016), “China continues cyber espionage against the United States”. Drezner (2014), “Washington and Beijing hardly agree on everything, but they agree on the big things, like maintaining an open global economy, reducing the likelihood of a military confrontation, and tackling climate change”.

When all is said and done, the United States Internet is fully exposed to any threat from outside the country’s borders. What security that exists relies solely on independent security methods, be them from the United States government, from private companies, or just individuals. As has been noted recently, all these have failed miserably, be it China’s stealing of millions of records from the United States Office of Personnel Management (Gertz, 2016), January, to the Sony hack by the North Korean’s (Elkind, 2015) and have demonstrated the total lack of needed national Internet boundary

This hypothesis is based on events that have taken place within the United States. A good explanation for this hypothesis is “information technologies and defense systems that make the U.S. military so advanced are themselves targeted by hackers from China and Russia, potentially leading to increased vulnerabilities. Consequently, ongoing and persistent cyberattacks are considered a threat to U.S. national security” (Klein,2015, pg.23). This is still a problem due to the recent accusations of hacking that was conducted in the 2016 United States Presidential elections.

Cyber security is a major concern for every department, business, and citizen of the United States because technology impacts every aspect of our daily lives. The more we use technology the more complacent, we get with the information that is stored within our cyber networks. The more complacent, we get, the more vulnerable we become to cyber-attacks because we fail to update the mechanisms that safeguard our information. Breaches to security networks are detrimental to personal, economic, and national security information. Many countries, like Russia, China, Israel, France, and the United Kingdom, now have the abilities and technology to launch cyber-attacks on the United States. In the last five years there have been several attacks on cyber systems to gain access to information maintained by major businesses and the United States Government. Cyber-attacks cause serious harm to the United States’ economy, community, and the safety, so we need to build stronger cyber security mechanisms. Based on my theoretical analysis, I recommend the following:

One main security attack that was big to me was the U.S. government of personnel records database. It’s report that 22.5 million was affected by this breach including me; therefore, not only the federal employee’s information but family’s sensitive information as well. James B.Comey of the FBI and other U.S. officials feel China is the mastermind of this security attack. According to article Hacks of OPM database the security attack may have expose information dating back to 2000. A cybersecurity tools had been installed and this is where the breach of personnel records was discovered. The report of how this breach happen boils down to thieves using stolen contractor logins and passwords. There was a trace done which pointed to the Chinese government; on the other hand, the Obama administration has not formally accused Beijing off this breach. Mr. Comey’s strongly feels the hackers obtained his “SF 86” form, which all applicants for security clearances must fill out. This kind of information contains known address

Pfleeger, S. Pfleeger, and Margulies (2015) outline possible examples of cyber warfare between Canada and China (p. 844). According to Pfleeger, S. Pfleeger, and Margulies (2015), “the Canadian government revealed that several of its national departments had been victims of a cyber attack…” (p. 844). Eventually, the attack was unofficially traced to a computer in China (p. 844). Cyber warfare can be used negatively and positively. It is evident that China was seeking to gain protected information form Canada. Although a purpose of cyber warfare, it is not a conventional way of obtaining information. Additionally, cyber warfare can be used to collect intelligence on an enemy. Anyone seeking to gather intelligence on another individual or group can launch a cyber attack that gains access to protected files. This could be used to help future militant operations or expose critical information. Lastly, cyber warfare can be used to test systems internally. Acting with no malicious intent, “insiders” can utilizing cyber warfare tactics to attack their own cyber security barriers in order to test the strength of their systems. Seeking to expose the vulnerabilities in a system that contains important assets without actually harming the assets provides the system a diagnosis of what needs to be strengths and fixed. Identifying the problem or threats before an actual attack can ultimately save the protected

We are a Nation on the fringe of another war. We have military personnel engaged in advise and assist roles in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, attacks occurring on our home soil, and cyber-warfare issues still unresolved. These issues are prevalent across various organizations, as seen in the weekly updates that I receive from the U.S. Naval Academy Information Technology department in which employee personal information was compromised, describing how our home network has been affected and security measures that have been implemented to protect us from further attack. The United States code and the United Nations charter provide a great framework for the determination of the cyber-attacks, with each organization implementing their own written doctrine and instructions. The U.S. code defines an “act of war” and the United Nations charter provides the foundation to determine what is deemed an “act of aggression” (U.N. Code, 1992, U.N Charter, 1945).

Private organizations in the United States come under attack weekly if not daily and their cyber defenses must be kept up to par otherwise there will be an extreme loss of information and resources. FBI director James Comey can be quoted as saying “There are two kinds of big companies in the United States. There are those who 've been hacked by the Chinese and those who don 't know they 've been hacked by the Chinese” (Comey). Comey can also be quoted as having said that, “China was seeking to obtain "information that 's useful to them so they don 't have to invent" (Comey). This stolen information can be used against these companies when brokering a trade deal or even Chinese companies could begin manufacturing American goods illegally

The United States of America faces many key security challenges in the current world order and will continue to face evolving challenges under the leadership of the new Trump administration. Some of the national security challenges that the American government faces have been issues since the founding of the country, such as the existence of adversary states, but several others have arisen because of advancing technology and the rapid exchange of information in a globalized world. Examples of fairly recent national security challenges include international terrorism and cyber security threats, which have both had a large presence in the news lately and have drawn the focus and concern of the American people. As a result of the existence of

The damage of a full-fledged cyber attack would be devastating, the destruction would be unparalleled to any other tragedy that has occurred America. Since technology is responsible for providing America with vital entities and resources, an unadulterated cyber attack would nearly fail the American economy; this is what is known as critical systems failure. Weapons of mass destruction and cyber attacks present imminent threats of critical systems failure. Although currently Americas’ critical infrastructures are coordinated by controlled systems, majority of these systems are indeed connected to the American cyberspace. This exposes one of America’s most vulnerable spot amidst cyber security. Another major vulnerable spot within the nations IT security would be the geographical physical location for each of Americas primary infrastructures, as well as their productivity. Due to the proximal locations, the major infrastructures could very well be infiltrated by one efficient CNA.

While China, in particular organs of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), has historically and will likely continue conducting cyber espionage and network exploitation for information gathering and related purposes, for reasons nested in the individual, state, and international levels, and assuming the classic rational-actor paradigm of decision making, it is increasingly likely that offensive cyber operations (OCO) will be preferred elements of China’s military strategy in the coming years. For reasons including an increasing American ability to detect, counter, and reciprocate OCO as well as cost efficiency and regional factors and regional power dynamics, China will increasingly choose to target U.S. allies vice U.S. interests directly. This will consequently create a requirement