An internal Navy review presented to U.S. Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer last week came to a troubling conclusion: the United States is under a relentless cyber attack by Chinese hackers and other foreign adversaries. From the Wall Street Journal:
The 57-page document is especially scathing in its assessment of how the Navy has addressed cybersecurity challenges facing its contractors and subcontractors, faulting naval officials for not anticipating that adversaries would attack the defense industrial base and for not adequately informing those partners of the cyber threat. It also acknowledges a lack of full understanding about the extent of the damage.
“For years, global competitors, and adversaries, have targeted and breached these critical contractor systems with impunity,” the audit says. “These enterprises, regardless of their relationship with the department, are under cyber siege.”
The Chinese have been hacking into American universities to get much of the stolen maritime information.
Chinese hackers have targeted more than two dozen universities in the U.S. and around the globe. […] The University of Hawaii, the University of Washington and Massachusetts Institute of Technology are among at least 27 universities in the U.S., Canada and Southeast Asia that Beijing has targeted, according to iDefense, a cybersecurity intelligence unit of Accenture Security.
And if you think that’s bad (and it is), wait’ll you are reminded of this move the Trump administration made in May 2018.
The White House eliminated the position of cybersecurity coordinator on the National Security Council on Tuesday, doing away with a post central to developing policy to defend against increasingly sophisticated digital attacks and the use of offensive cyber weapons.
A memorandum circulated by an aide to the new national security adviser, John R. Bolton, said the post was no longer considered necessary because lower-level officials had already made cybersecurity issues a “core function” of the president’s national security team.
Cybersecurity experts and members of Congress said they were mystified by the move, though some suggested Mr. Bolton did not want any competitive power centers emerging inside the national security apparatus.
And if that doesn’t make you feel good about our cybersecurity, recall Donald Trump tapped this man, who doesn’t seem to understand how the internet works at all, to be his cybersecurity advisor!
Aside from the fact these hacks could be detrimental to our military security, hacks on our nation’s infrastructure—banking systems, electrical grid, etc.—could do extreme damage to the U.S. economy. This is a time when the United States should not only be working overtime to shore up our defenses and we should doing everything we can to attract the best and brightest foreign cybersecurity experts and their families to the U.S. for permanent residency.