Both China and Russia have waged a netwar against America, which is the second test of “how feeble” the Biden administration is. The first one is the coup in Myanmar.

According to a report by The New York Times, email systems of American enterprises, local governments and major military contractors were attacked by hackers from China. When Microsoft was fixing the loopholes, the Chinese hackers launched seven more assaults in an attempt to steal as much information as possible before the systems got back to work. The US National Security Council stressed the criticality of the situation: “The White House is undertaking a whole-of-government response to assess and address the impact.” Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor to Biden, is paying close attention to the loopholes of Microsoft Exchange to see if it poses a threat to US think tanks and brick-and-mortar operations of national defense industry!

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has responded with a netwar to the cooperative rivalry policy towards China adopted by US State Secretary Antony Blinken. In fact, this “shadow war” started long time ago, but Biden has since been like faring in dreams. It seems like Blinken has just found the CCP number one rival this morning. The leftard administration is at its wit’s end, and is only able to play it by ear with a fuzzy strategy. Before the Chinese hackers hit Microsoft products, Russian hackers attacked products of the SolarWinds Orion Platform late last year, a tech enterprise headquartered in Texas whose systems are extensively used by American government bodies and private enterprises. What Russians did this time was unprecedented. The hackers broke into the SolarWinds system via American cloud servers, put in a code, then waited quietly for the next system updates which would take place within six months. When the moment came, a malware was downloaded simultaneously, infiltrating into 18,000 users, gaining access for the hackers to steal what they wanted. This “attack on supply chains” by breaking into products of enterprises and penetrating into ultimate targets is the start of a “shadow war” waged by China and Russia.

Crimea annexed by Russia is one of the successful examples of shadow wars: mainly psychological warfare on the net with fake news, made-up accounts and KOLs stirring up social hatred and division to influence Ukrainian government’s judgement on the political scene; covering up operations of the Russian army with armed clash among militias; hackers paralyzing the command system of the Ukrainian army; spreading fake information about non-resistance. If we still think that geopolitical conflicts in the future will materialize in hot wars with fighters, bombers and cannons everywhere, we might be wrong. A hot war is costly, politically risky, and easily reaches stalemate with both sides waiting for their rival to take action first, while a shadow war is asymmetric with attacks launched in grey zones, and both sides free to go forward or back out without even the spirits knowing about it. However, the Obama administration did not escalate the hacking issue to national security and warfare. Only after Trump signed an executive order in August 20218 was the US Cyber Command empowered to engage in small-scale short-term daily combats on the net without presidential authorization.

China and Russia still gain the upper hand in shadow wars. Why did they launch the attacks with cloud server services rented in the US at the same time? Because they knew well that secret service agents are banned from looking into computer systems situated in America. So, the recent attacks by China and Russia were discovered by private corporations. Shadow wars are not only hidden, but also have no protocol, and sometimes sufferers are kept in the dark. That’s why it is called “asymmetric warfare”. What’s saddening is that the more democratic a society, the easier it is used as a bunker to launch attacks.

The UK Prime Minister declared that the Queen Elizabeth class of aircraft carriers are dispatched to “roam about” the South China Sea, taking part in military drills with the US and Japan. Last week, the UK media reported at the same time that UK aircraft carriers heading over to the South China Sea might come under cyber-attack from the CCP. The clever British shouted in advance to deter China from launching internet attacks.

(Lau Sai-leung, political commentator)

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