Beijing’s Doctrine on the Conduct of “Irregular Forms of Warfare”
Testimony to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, 29 Mar 07:
Asymmetric Military Aspirations and Capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army of the People’s Republic of China
Quote:
...Chinese aspirations to acquire capabilities which focus on US civil and military vulnerabilities are illustrated by the PLA’s investment in integrated network electronic warfare and space/counter-space capabilities.
The PLA has a large infrastructure that is focused on exploiting and attacking computer networks that will diminish the need to attack many targets by kinetic means or will magnify the effectiveness of kinetic attacks. China’s concept involves a fusion of computer network attack and exploitation with electronic warfare. Computer network attacks are a good illustration of asymmetric capabilities China has been developing to leverage its investment in traditional military capabilities....
China’s Military Modernization and its Impact on the United States and the Asia-Pacific
Quote:
...China does not want to confront the United States or be perceived as a threat, peer competitor, or rival of the United States. China needs the United States to continue its economic growth to meet the needs of its population. To counteract both real and imagined dangers of itself, China refutes threat claims and builds coalitions within the developing world to support it. I expect this behavior to continue and only to be effectively countered by local reactions to China’s policies. The answer lies not in a more aggressive US foreign policy, but in allowing China’s aggressiveness to alienate those countries it hopes to court....
Beijing, Unrestricted Warfare, and Threat Potentials
Quote:
...Based on the current state of sophistication, skill sets, and culture of the People’s Liberation Army, the “what if” scenarios posed by the Commission concerning actual methods of attack against the US are not likely to be conducted via Beijing’s own military. Beijing’s military never had a monopoly on Unrestricted Warfare and, in fact, may never get really good at it....
General: China taking on U.S. in cyber arms race
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/interne...eut/index.html
Quote:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- China is seeking to unseat the United States as the dominant power in cyberspace, a U.S. Air Force general leading a new push in this area said Wednesday.
"They're the only nation that has been quite that blatant about saying, 'We're looking to do that,"' 8th Air Force Commander Lt. Gen. Robert Elder told reporters.
Elder is to head a new three-star cyber command being set up at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, already home to about 25,000 military personnel involved in everything from electronic warfare to network defense.
The command's focus is to control the cyber domain, critical to everything from communications to surveillance to infrastructure security.
"We have peer competitors right now in terms of doing computer network attack ... and I believe we're going to be able to ratchet up our capability," Elder said. "We're going to go way ahead."
The Defense Department said in its annual report on China's military power last month that China regarded computer network operations -- attacks, defense and exploitation -- as critical to achieving "electromagnetic dominance" early in a conflict.
China's People's Liberation Army has established information warfare units to develop viruses to attack enemy computer systems and networks, the Pentagon said.
China also was investing in electronic countermeasures and defenses against electronic attack, including infrared decoys, angle reflectors and false-target generators, it said.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry rejected the U.S. report as "brutal interference" in China's internal affairs and insisted Beijing's military preparations were purely defensive.
Elder described the bulk of current alleged Chinese cyber-operations as industrial espionage aimed at stealing trade secrets to save years of high-tech development.
He attributed the espionage to a mix of criminals, hackers and "nation-state" forces. Virtually all potential U.S. foes also were scanning U.S. networks for trade and defense secrets, he added.
"Everyone but North Korea," he said. "We've concluded that there must be only one laptop in all of North Korea -- and that guy's not allowed to scan overseas networks," Elder said.
In October, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff defined cyberspace as "characterized by the use of electronics and the electromagnetic spectrum to store, modify, and exchange data via networked systems and associated physical infrastructures."
The definition is broad enough to cover far more than merely defending or attacking computer networks. Other concerns include remotely detonated roadside bombs in Iraq, interference with Global Positioning Satellites and satellite communications, Internet financial transactions by adversaries, and radar and navigational jamming.
Unfortunately most people equate war to dropping bombs or other delivered by aerial threats. If it doesn't go boom and splatter collateral damage around the countryside it can't be considered combat or war.
I guess SEALS, and other black OP's types sneaking and peeking at the enemy aren't engaged in war efforts either. In an effort to geekify computers and marginalize the threats of cyber warfare most people are missing that real cyber warfare is about espionage, intelligence gathering, and probing enemy weaknesses.
Cyber warfare is NOT about defacing political opponents websites or stealing credit card numbers. In joking about North Korea the General misses the point that they DON'T HAVE TO BE IN NORTH KOREA to engage you. The enemy can be anywhere or appear to be everywhere. Argh.
China spying 'biggest US threat'
More on the China information warfare campaign. Not kinetic but definitely asymmetric.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7097296.stm
Quote:
Chinese espionage poses "the single greatest risk" to the security of US technology, a panel has told Congress.
China is pursuing new technology "aggressively", it says, legitimately through research and business deals and illegally through industrial espionage.
China has also "embraced destructive warfare techniques", the report says, enabling it to carry out cyber attacks on other countries' infrastructure.
A foreign ministry spokesman in Beijing denied any spying activities by China.
"China and the US have a fundamental common interest in promoting sound and rapid development," said Liu Jianchao, quoted by the Associated Press news agency.
More at link
This has been a long time coming.
PRC intelligence, espionage, IO, and the like in many Western countries, the U.S. in particular, reached a critical level at least a decade-and-a-half ago, perhaps even as far back as nearly 20 years ago. This intelligence campaign has, over the 15-20 years since it more or less hit its stride (after a testing of the waters and subsequentl build-up of about the same length of time), reaped rewards that would have made the old KGB and GRU green with envy over much the same time period.
Critical, not just significant, information, technology, intelligence, etc., has come into PRC possession. Similarly, PRC use of, and infiltration into, the political lobby system has been strikingly effective in influencing some U.S. Government policy-making or execution. The Chinese Government has the U.S. Government reasonably-well "framed" if you will in many respects; the U.S. Government, by contrast, is not unaware of this, but its own internal divisions (successfully and subtly exploited to a certain extent by the PRC) impede its ability to fully grasp the scale of the problem and especially to deal effectively with it.
The PRC Government does not want to become an enemy of the U.S. Government any more than the U.S. wishes to become an enemy of China. Chinese strategic manoeuvering, of both its own position and that of the U.S., is of course in order for the former to gain a position of relative advantage over the latter; fortunately the PRC does not conceive of its strategic competition with the U.S. as necessarily a relationship of hostility.
But Chinese strategic miscalculation and American strategic erraticism can lead to serious misunderstandings. PRC intelligence penetration of the U.S. on the scope and scale as it presently exists (so far as we know) does not meet with the same equanimity on the U.S. side (which tends to see such as an attack) as it does on the PRC side (which tends to see the same as just a part of diplomacy - a non-violent jockeying for advantage).
The Chinese Underground Hacker Economy and its ties to the PLA
10,000 Methods Combined as One: Chinese Hackers and Unrestricted Warfare:
I reference the Chinese military text "Unrestricted Warfare", a newly released academic study "Studying Malicious Websites and the Underground
Economy on the Chinese Web" and a DOD investigative report "Red Storm Rising" to show the relationship between the "Red Hacker" unions and the PLA, and how thousands of these youths are hacking networks pretty much anywhere that they want, all in the name of the People's Republic of China and the all-mighty Yuan.