Just when you thought things couldn’t any worse, we now hear that the Chinese may have infiltrated the power and communications systems that operate our military bases in the US and abroad.
According to the New York Times, the Biden administration is hard at work looking to find this hidden, malicious Chinese code that could disrupt our military operations:
The Biden administration is hunting for malicious computer code it believes China has hidden deep inside the networks controlling power grids, communications systems and water supplies that feed military bases in the United States and around the world, according to American military, intelligence and national security officials.
The discovery of the malware has raised fears that Chinese hackers, probably working for the People’s Liberation Army, have inserted code designed to disrupt U.S. military operations in the event of a conflict, including if Beijing moves against Taiwan in coming years.
The malware, one congressional official said, was essentially “a ticking time bomb” that could give China the power to interrupt or slow American military deployments or resupply operations by cutting off power, water and communications to U.S. military bases. But its impact could be far broader, because that same infrastructure often supplies the houses and businesses of ordinary Americans, according to U.S. officials.
The first public hints of the malware campaign began to emerge in late May, when Microsoft said it had detected mysterious computer code in telecommunications systems in Guam, the Pacific island with a vast American air base, and elsewhere in the United States.
The effort to put this code in our systems began well over a year ago:
More than a dozen U.S. officials and industry experts said in interviews over the past two months that the Chinese effort predated the May report by at least a year, and that the U.S. government’s effort to hunt down the code, and eradicate it, has been underway for some time. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential and in some cases classified assessments.
They say the Chinese effort appears more widespread — in the United States and at American facilities abroad — than they had initially realized. But officials acknowledge that they do not know the full extent of the code’s presence in networks around the world.
I would have thought we’d be doing a better job protecting our vital national security assets from hackers. Our entire government clearly needs a major overhaul once Biden is gone.