The Role Of Offensive Cyber Operations On Chinese Military Strategy

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).

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.

The book “Conquest in Cyberspace” went in depth on the United States’, Russia’s, and China’s views on information warfare and cyber warfare. It also discussed the areas where their policies, guidance, and operations differ and are the same. One of the most interesting things which I noticed in the completion of this assignment is how the United States has the most well defined and in depth policies and governances regulating their information warfare and cyber warfare operations and how both China and Russia has taking the policies and governances created by the United States and mimicked them in the creation of their own policies and governances for information

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”.

The hawk perspective laid out by Colonel Jayson Spade in China’s Cyber Power and America’s National Security, focuses on American conventional military supremacy. Colonel Spade paints cyber tactics as tools to extend American military

General Clapper, the United States Director of National Intelligence, recently briefed the Senate Armed Services Committee on the worldwide threat assessment. His brief addressed the implications of technology on national security, and characteristics of the nation’s leading threat actors that include China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, as well as non-state actors. The entirety of the briefing demonstrates that the United States will face numerous increasingly complex national security challenges into the foreseeable future.

Based on current sources available, we have medium confidence that China will continue to conduct cyber espionage against United States defenses and military systems. It is not a new development as China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) cyber team has been behind many attacks against US defense firms and military systems as early as 2007. The KIQ for this assessment is: How vulnerable our Military and Defense sectors systems to cyber-attacks? It is imperative to US National Security, because outside actors, like the PLA, are exploiting our defense and military systems that can disrupt future operations both domestic and abroad. After a short background on China we will address the fallowing: Their motives, methods, targets, and challenges we face to combat Chinese cyber warfare.

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:

For thousands of years warfare remained relatively unchanged. While the tactics and weapons have changed as new methods of combat evolved, men and women or their weapons still had to meet at the same time and place in order to attack, defend, surrender or conquer. However, the advent of the of the internet has created a new realm of combat in which armies can remotely conduct surveillance, reconnaissance, espionage, and attacks from an ambiguous and space-less digital environment. Both state and non-state actors have already embraced this new realm and utilized both legal and illegal means to further facilitate their interests. What complicates cyber security further is as states attempt to protect themselves from cyber-warfare, private

The relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic of China is perhaps the most important bilateral tie shaping the future of the world. China’s economy for the past 20 years has been riding a phenomenal wave of growth surging to become the world’s second largest economic power. This prospering economy has additionally generated the necessary resources for China to rapidly strengthen and modernize its military and capabilities. These additional resources and capabilities makes China a viable partner with the United States to promote security and prosperity in Asia and around the world. However, China’s relative lack of transparency and openness from its leaders regarding both military capabilities and intentions is

Davis, M. in his Stuxnet: How It Happened and How Your Enterprise Can Avoid Similar Attacks, indicated that another case example of SCADA systems being attacked was the cyber-attacks conducted in 2009 and 2010 when the worm referred to as Stuxnet was used. This worm was primarily directed at Iran in their nuclear facilities and was mainly for disruption of their processing mechanism in their enriched uranium deposits industry. Piggin, R. in his journal The Reality of Cyber Terrorism 2010, stated that the whole idea behind the Stuxnet worm was in reprogramming the systems in a way that would result in the plant sabotage and somehow hide the changes that would be made from the users and programmers in Iran. As explained earlier, one crucial flaw of these type of cyber-attacks is the potential that the government or company will be unable to detect the resultant damages from such attacks therefore, will not be in a position to effectively counter the attack and the damage that results from it. Henry, W., Jacob, S. and Eric, T. in their Pearl Harbor 2.0: When Cyber-Acts Lead to the Battlefield 2010, indicated that many of the U.S cyber-attacks seem to be originating from China, however, a connection has never been proved as to whether these attacks are sponsored by the state but it is believed that Chinese patriots could be behind the attacks being witnesses on most of the websites belonging to Americans for so long now. The motivation drivers that influence China to conduct

A cyber attack was made on Estonia in 2007, on 26 April 2007 at sharp 10'o clock; government of Estonia was made the target for a preplanned cyber attack by some secret foe (Stacy Prowell, 2010).

For some time now, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been suspected in the theft of critical and highly sensitive information from the United States (U.S.). Through the exploitation of the stolen data, the PRC has successfully designed, built, and ultimately tested several nuclear weapons as well as other military related data such as fighter aircraft design. For good reason, these actions have raised a significant level of concern with U.S. officials. Due to this concern, the U.S. commissioned an official committee to investigate the theft of information by the PRC to include how, why, and possible consequences of the stolen information. The committee has conducted a significant amount of research and investigation into the

The branches of the military, for a couple generations, have always been the Army, Navy, Air force, Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard; however, in an ever evolving digital world, the notion that outer space would be the next military front is being rapidly replaced by the idea that cyber space will be the next arms race. The United States has been defending attacks on their infrastructure day after day, night after night, when one hacker on one side of the world sleeps, another takes their place to attempt to compromise the US government. The motives may range from a political ‘hacktivist’ trying to prove a point, to an economic spy, trying to gain a competitive edge on its more upstart rivals, to an attempt to control the United States

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.