As war clouds loom over the Western Pacific, there are alarming signs that America has already lost the intelligence war to China.
Communist China’s intent to forcibly overturn America’s historic dominance in the waters of east Asia, sooner rather than later, is not in doubt. The People’s Liberation Army’s most recent maneuvers around Taiwan, involving more than a hundred PLA combat aircraft and over 30 warships, were condemned by the Pentagon. The problem for Washington is that Beijing doesn’t care.
What’s worse is the media is even starting to notice that Western counterintelligence is simply overwhelmed by the scale and intensity of Beijing’s espionage. At the beginning of this year, the normally tightlipped National Security Agency entered the debate by issuing a cybersecurity advisory regarding a Chinese state cyber actor, Volt Typhoon. These hackers spent as many as five years burrowing into America’s critical infrastructure, including communications, energy, transportation, water, and even wastewater, before the NSA detected them. Volt Typhoon is prepared by Beijing’s spies to shut down American critical infrastructure at the start of any war, to literally turn off the lights across the country. Think IT networks suddenly going dark, airplanes being unable to take off or safely land, water systems shutting down, and banks freezing.
There’s also Flax Typhoon, which masquerades as a Beijing cybersecurity firm but is really Chinese intelligence. It has targeted Taiwan’s IT networks, as well as its government and private sectors. However, it has also targeted the United States. Last month, the Justice Department announced the FBI’s disruption of this worldwide botnet directed by Beijing.
Most alarming of all, however, is Salt Typhoon, a Chinese cyber spy operation designed to defeat American counterintelligence. Beijing penetrated the networks of Verizon, AT&T, and Lumen, three of the country’s top IT providers. The extent of the damage isn’t yet known outside highly classified places, such as the NSA, but Salt Typhoon was operating inside those networks for at least months, perhaps years, and there are hints that more than just three telecom firms were compromised. It appears that Salt Typhoon, which is run by elite hackers working for China’s Ministry of State Security, got illicit access by compromising Cisco routers.
The counterintelligence implications of Salt Typhoon are staggering. Our intelligence community relies on cooperation by major IT firms, such as Verizon and AT&T, to execute lawful surveillance activities inside the U.S. and beyond. For instance, when the FBI or NSA obtain a court-approved wiretap against suspected foreign spies under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, they are able to collect such communications with the assistance of American telecom firms.
That’s what the MSS was targeting with Salt Typhoon. If Beijing had gotten its eyes on those activities by the IC, which it appears it did, Chinese spies would have known who and what American counterspies were spying on, including the names of whom we suspect to be Beijing’s secret agents in America and across the West. At best, we’ve shown the enemy our hand in the “Spy War.” At worst, we’ve gifted the MSS a golden opportunity to deceive us.
After all, if Beijing knows which of its personnel we’ve identified as its spies, it’s easy to employ them in an offensive counterintelligence scheme to deceive the FBI, NSA, and CIA with lies. No wonder a senior U.S. counterspy described Salt Typhoon to me this week as “Our worst nightmare. Beijing stole our lunch.”
That’s a priceless advantage for the enemy in the event of hostilities with China. The ability to fool U.S. intelligence about Beijing’s plans and intentions in any Taiwan crisis would be worth a couple of aircraft carriers to the PLA. Beijing’s spy games have defeated the Biden administration.
Cleaning up after these Chinese espionage typhoons will be a tall order for the new administration. There’s room to doubt Harris-Walz on Chinese spy matters, but whoever moves into the Oval Office in three months must confront this counterintelligence crisis.
Before we find ourselves in a shooting war with China — and losing it.
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John R. Schindler served with the National Security Agency as a senior intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer.