Chinese Peril

U.S. charges four Chinese military members in connection with 2017 Equifax hack
By Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky

Attorney General William P. Barr charged four members of the Chinese military with the 2017 hack of credit rating agency Equifax on Feb. 10. 

The Justice Department has charged four members of the Chinese military with a 2017 hack at the credit reporting agency Equifax, a massive data breach that compromised the personal information of nearly half of all Americans.
In a nine-count indictment filed in federal court in Atlanta, federal prosecutors alleged that four members of the People’s Liberation Army hacked into Equifax’s systems, stealing the personal data as well as company trade secrets. 

Attorney General William P. Barr called their efforts “a deliberate and sweeping intrusion into the private information of the American people.”
The 2017 breach gave hackers access to the personal information, including Social Security numbers and birth dates, of about 145 million people. 

Equifax last year agreed to a $700 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission to compensate victims. 

Those affected can ask for free credit monitoring or, if they already have such a service, a cash payout of up to $125, although the FTC has warned that a large volume of requests could reduce that amount.
Clockwise from top left: Wang Qian, Xu Ke, Wu Zhiyong and Liu Lei, picture unavailable. The four, all members of the Chinese military, were charged with computer fraud, economic espionage and wire fraud. (FBI)

At a news conference announcing the indictment, Barr said China has a “voracious appetite” for Americans’ personal information, and he pointed to other intrusions that he alleged have been carried out by Beijing’s actors in recent years, including hacks disclosed in 2015 of the health insurer Anthem and the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM), as well as a 2018 hack of the hotel chain Marriott.
“This data has economic value, and these thefts can feed China’s development of artificial intelligence tools,” Barr said. 

The attorney general said the indictment would hold the Chinese military “accountable for their criminal actions.”

William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, characterized the breach as “a counterintelligence attack on the nation,” saying China had long been trying to gather massive amounts of Americans’ personal and sensitive data.
The Washington Post reported in 2015 that the Chinese government has been building huge databases of Americans’ personal information through hacks and making use of data-mining tools to sift through the information for compromising details about key government personnel — making them susceptible to blackmail and, thus, potential spy recruits.

The OPM intrusion, for instance, exposed the private data of more than 21 million government employees, contractors and their families, including a complete history of where they lived and all of their foreign contacts.
U.S. officials said the stolen data could be used to help Chinese intelligence agents target American intelligence officials, but they added that they have seen no evidence yet of such activity. 

Evanina said his chief concern was that Chinese intelligence agencies could use the stolen data to target those who work at universities or research firms who have access to useful information.
Barr and other U.S. law enforcement officials in recent weeks have taken a particularly aggressive posture toward China. 

Late last week, Barr warned of that country’s bid to dominate the burgeoning 5G wireless market and said the United States and its allies must “act collectively” or risk putting “their economic fate in China’s hands.”
Those charged with the Equifax hack are Wu Zhiyong, Wang Qian, Xu Ke and Liu Lei. 

Officials said they were members of the PLA’s 54th Research Institute.
According to the indictment, in March 2017, a software firm announced a vulnerability in one of its products, but Equifax did not patch the vulnerability on its online dispute portal, which used that particular software. 

In the months that followed, the Chinese military hackers exploited that unrepaired software flaw to steal vast quantities of Equifax’s files, the indictment charges.
Officials said the hackers also took steps to cover their tracks, routing traffic through 34 servers in 20 countries to hide their location, using encrypted communication channels and wiping logs that might have given away what they were doing.
“American business cannot be complacent about protecting their data,” said FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich.
Barr said that although the Justice Department does not normally charge other countries’ military or intelligence officers outside the United States, there are exceptions, and the indiscriminate theft of civilians’ personal information “cannot be countenanced.”
In the United States, he said, “we collect information only for legitimate, national security purposes.”
None of the four is in custody, and officials acknowledged that there is little prospect they will come to the United States for trial. 

But the indictment does serve as a public shaming, and officials said that if those charged attempt to travel someday, the United States could arrest them.
“We can’t take them into custody, try them in a court of law, and lock them up — not today, anyway,” Bowdich said. 

“But one day, these criminals will slip up, and when they do, we’ll be there.”
The case marks the second time the Justice Department has unsealed a criminal indictment against PLA hackers for targeting U.S. commercial interests. 

In 2014, the Obama administration announced an indictment against five suspected PLA hackers for allegedly breaking into the computer systems of a host of American manufacturers.

Chinese Self-Genocide

Coronavirus originated in PLA lab linked to secret China's biowarfare program
By Bill Gertz
Hospital staff wash the emergency entrance of Wuhan Medical Treatment Center, where some infected with a new virus are being treated, in Wuhan, China, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2020. The number of cases of a new coronavirus from Wuhan has risen to over 400 in China health authorities said Wednesday. 

The deadly animal-borne coronavirus spreading globally may have originated in a laboratory in the city of Wuhan linked to China’s covert biological weapons program, said an Israeli biological warfare analyst.
Radio Free Asia last week rebroadcast a Wuhan television report from 2015 showing China’s most advanced virus research laboratory, known the Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

The laboratory is the only declared site in China capable of working with deadly viruses.
Dany Shoham, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who has studied Chinese biological warfare, said the institute is linked to Beijing’s covert bio-weapons program.
“Certain laboratories in the institute have been engaged, in terms of research and development, in Chinese [biological weapons], at least collaterally, yet not as a principal facility of the Chinese BW alignment,” Mr. Shoham told The Washington Times.
Work on biological weapons is conducted as part of dual civilian-military research and is “definitely covert,” he said in an email.
Mr. Shoham holds a doctorate in medical microbiology. 

From 1970 to 1991, he was a senior analyst with Israeli military intelligence for biological and chemical warfare in the Middle East and worldwide. 

He held the rank of lieutenant colonel.
China has denied having any offensive biological weapons, but a State Department report last year revealed suspicions of covert biological warfare work.
A Chinese Embassy spokesman did not return an email seeking comment.
Chinese authorities said they do not know the origin of the coronavirus, which has killed at least 80 and infected thousands.
Gao Fu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told state-controlled media that initial signs indicated the virus originated from wild animals sold at a seafood market in Wuhan.
One ominous sign, said a U.S. official, is that false rumors circulating on the Chinese internet claim the virus is part of a U.S. conspiracy to spread germ weapons. 

That could indicate China is preparing propaganda outlets to counter any charges that the new coronavirus escaped from one of Wuhan’s civilian or defense research laboratories.
The World Health Organization is calling the microbe novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV. 

At a meeting Thursday in Geneva, the organization stopped short of declaring a public health emergency of international concern.
China has deployed military forces to Wuhan to halt all travel out of the city of 11 million people in an effort to contain the outbreak of the virus, which causes pneumonialike symptoms.
The Wuhan institute has studied coronaviruses including the strain that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), H5N1 influenza virus, Japanese encephalitis and dengue. 

Researchers at the institute also have studied the germ that causes anthrax, a biological agent once developed in Russia.
“Coronaviruses [particularly SARS] have been studied in the institute and are held therein,” Mr. Shoham said. 

“SARS is included within the Chinese BW program, at large, and is dealt with in several pertinent facilities.”
It is not known whether the institute’s coronaviruses are specifically included in China’s biological weapons program but it is possible, he said.
Asked whether the new coronavirus may have leaked, Mr. Shoham said: “In principle, outward virus infiltration might take place either as leakage or as an indoor unnoticed infection of a person that normally went out of the concerned facility. This could have been the case with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”
After researchers sequence the genome of the new coronavirus, they might be able to determine or suggest its origin or source.

Biological weapons convention
Mr. Shoham, now with the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University in Israel, said the Wuhan virology institute is the only declared site in China known as P4 for pathogen level 4. 

That status indicates the institute uses the strictest safety standards to prevent the spread of the most dangerous and exotic microbes being studied.
The former Israeli military intelligence doctor also said suspicions were raised about the Wuhan Institute of Virology when a group of Chinese virologists working in Canada improperly sent to China samples of what he described as some of the deadliest viruses on earth, including the Ebola virus.
In a July article in the journal Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, Mr. Shoham said the Wuhan institute was one of four Chinese laboratories engaged in some aspects of biological weapons development.

He said the secure Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory at the institute was engaged in research on the Ebola, Nipah and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever viruses.
The Wuhan virology institute is under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but certain laboratories within it “have linkage with the PLA or BW-related elements within the Chinese defense establishment,” he said.
In 1993, China declared a second facility, the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, as one of eight biological warfare research facilities covered by the Biological Weapons Convention, which China joined in 1985.The Wuhan Institute of Biological Products is a civilian facility but is linked to the Chinese defense establishment. 

Mr. Shoham said it is thought to be involved in the Chinese Biological Weapons Convention program. 

China’s vaccine against SARS is probably produced there.
“This means the SARS virus is held and propagated there, but it is not a new coronavirus unless the wild type has been modified, which is not known and cannot be speculated at the moment,” he said.
The annual State Department report on arms treaty compliance stated last year that China engaged in activities that could support biological warfare.
“Information indicates that the People’s Republic of China engaged during the reporting period in biological activities with potential dual-use applications, which raises concerns regarding its compliance with the BWC,” said the report, adding that the United States suspects China failed to eliminate its biological warfare program as required by the treaty.
“The United States has compliance concerns with respect to Chinese military medical institutions’ toxin research and development because of the potential dual-use applications and their potential as a biological threat,” the report said.
The biosafety lab is about 20 miles from the Hunan Seafood Market, which reports from China say may have been the origin point of the virus.

Hong Kong is trying to impose Tiananmen by stealth – Carrie Lam herself is now the enemy of the people

This isn't a confrontation between the government and rebellious youths. It is a clash between a lame-duck government imposing the iron will of Beijing and millions of citizens
By Stuart Heaver

The regular weekend street protests in Hong Kong have spilled over into pitch battles in the middle of the working day in the city's busy financial district, as Carrie Lam's beleaguered government gives the police a free hand to impose a Beijing style crackdown on all forms of dissent.
There may be no tanks, but the People's Liberation Army (PLA) troops are already here, disguised as Hong Kong riot police as part of a concerted policy to impose Tiananmen by stealth and create a climate of fear.
It can’t be verified but riot police in full body amour looking like stormtroopers from a science fiction movie, wear masks, show no official ID and are heard speaking in Putonghua dialect. 

They could be anyone. 

The average height of Hong Kong police officers appears to have increased by about 10cm since July and photos circulated online by the Demosisto party, appear to show Hong Kong police mustered inside a PLA barracks. 

Their primary job is to intimidate.
The tragic death last Friday, of student demonstrator, Alex Chow Tsz-lok, who fell from a multi-storey car park while fleeing police tear gas the previous weekend, presented an opportunity for Lam to call for reason and dialogue; to offer concessions and seek political solutions.




Instead of leadership, broken Hong Kong was offered only more lame condemnation and the promise of more crackdowns on the protesters she has described as “enemies of the people.”
Unfortunately for Lam, there is still widespread mainstream support for these so-called enemies, and Hongkongers are typically defiant.
During a peaceful unauthorized rally in Victoria Park earlier this month, which was subsequently broken up by police tear gas, I asked one attendee (not wearing black or a face mask) whether he felt intimidated or in fear for their safety.
“Of course, that is why we are here, once we stop coming, they have won,” he told me.
Lam’s uncompromising stance has only triggered new levels of anger and tension as the government provokes violence and then condemns it in a futile cycle which is destroying this once great city.
The resultant tense and febrile atmosphere has already led to a man being set on fire and an unarmed young protester being shot at close range by a police officer on Monday morning and left critically ill in hospital.
Carrie Lam announces anti-face mask law for Hong Kong protesters
There are widespread rumours and accusations of rapes, beatings and brutality in police custody which are impossible to verify. 

I have witnessed old folks collapsed in doorways receiving first aid for the effects of tear gas inhalation and parents holding wet towels to their children’s faces, rushing for shelter from the new brand of tear gas, manufactured in China. 

It penetrates most gas masks and burns the lungs, causing some to cough up blood.
Bankers and office workers were tear-gassed during their lunch hour in Central’s affluent business district for two days running this week, and students are being attacked by police with baton rounds on campus. 

Legitimate election candidates have been arrested or attacked, or both, and peaceful assemblies and rallies attended by families and children are broken up by armed riot police dispensing tear gas.
It is misleading to portray this crisis as a confrontation between the government and rebellious youths. 

It is a confrontation between a lame-duck government imposing the iron will of Beijing and millions of people in Hong Kong. 

If anyone is the enemy of the people, it is Lam, Beijing’s stooge.
Anyone wanting to experience the sudden imposition of a police state and white terror, try a short break in Hong Kong.

Criminal Company

How Huawei became America’s enemy No. 1
By Tripti Lahiri & Mary Hui

Since it was founded by former People’s Liberation Army engineer Ren Zhengfei in 1987, Huawei has grown to become the world’s top provider of telecom equipment, with over $100 billion in revenue and 180,000 global employees. 

That extraordinary success has come with barely a footprint in the US market, where the company has been a target for anxiety about Chinese hacking since the 2000s. 

Today, Huawei is the poster child for that anxiety, and finds itself in the eye of a global storm.
Huawei’s troubles in the US started early: It was met with with suspicion not long after it started competing with US router firms in the aughts, and kept hitting snags after that. 

In 2003, networking firm Cisco accused Huawei of intellectual property theft. 

In 2008, a deal with 3Com collapsed over concerns about Huawei’s ties in China. 

In 2014, T-Mobile sued Huawei for stealing, among other technology, part of a robot’s arm.
But in 2017, US president Donald Trump took office, and since then actions against Huawei have come fast and furious. 

On May 15, Trump signed an executive order that effectively bans Huawei from accessing US supply chains, his strongest action yet against the company. 

Less than a week later, Google pulled Huawei’s Android license—after a grace period allowed by the Trump administration for current users, the company’s future phones will be cut off from the most widely used operating system in the world and the Google universe. 

Suppliers from Britain, such as chip maker ARM, are set to follow Google’s lead.
Trump’s endgame is still unclear. 

Is the only safe Huawei a “dead” Huawei? 

Or is this another gambit in his ongoing trade negotiations with China? 

It may be too soon to tell: On May 23, Trump called Huawei “very dangerous” but also said the dispute might be resolved a trade deal.
What is clear is that this showdown has been a long time coming.

2001
Huawei, then a 14-year-old company with sales of $3 billion, sets up offices in the US (pdf). It also opens its first office in Britain.

2003
January: Router-maker Cisco sues Huawei for copyright violations, alleging its source code turned up in Huawei products. It later drops the suit.
November: Huawei’s joint venture with California-based networking company 3Com to make and sell routers and switches begins operations.

2005
The idea that Huawei is linked to the Chinese military surfaces prominently in a Rand Corporation report commissioned by the US Air Force. 

The think tank notes that major IT players like Huawei appear to be private-sector actors (pdf, pages 217-8), but “many of these electronics companies are the public face for, sprang from, or are significantly engaged in joint research with state research institutes.” 

It adds:
Huawei maintains deep ties with the Chinese military, which serves a multi-faceted role as an important customer, as well as Huawei’s political patron and research and development partner.
The report also says sales linked to the Chinese military could be anywhere from less than 1% of Huawei’s revenues to as high at 6%. 

2007
In July, the FBI interviews Huawei’s founder, Ren, in relation to violations of US trade sanctions on Iran.

2008
Huawei’s efforts to take a 16% stake in 3Com collapse amid lawmakers concerns (paywall) about Huawei’s ties to the Chinese military, forcing Huawei and its partner in the acquisition to abandon the bid. 

3Com was a provider of anti-hacking software for the US military, among other contracts. Lawmakers cited the 2005 Rand report.

2009
February: At Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress, Huawei releases its first Android smartphone, under license from Google.
October: Huawei hires an American, Matt Bross, from British Telecom to be its CTO, and to help it make a real foray into the US market. 

Bross apparently runs operations from his basement in St. Louis. 

“I am looking to create an environment where we can grow trust,” he tells Bloomberg in 2011. 

“The fact of the matter is that Huawei is here to stay.” (He leaves Huawei in 2012.)
November: Huawei signs a lease in Plano, Texas, for 100,000 square feet of office space for its North America sales and marketing headquarters. 

“We are honored that Huawei will grow and prosper in Plano for years to come,” the town’s mayor says in a statement.

2010
July: Phone-maker Motorola files a lawsuit accusing Huawei of corporate espionage, but later settles with the company.
November: Citing security concerns, Sprint excludes Huawei (paywall), as well as Chinese telecom ZTE, from bidding for a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars to modernize its network. Huawei had been hoping this would be its first major US equipment contract win.

2011
February: The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States tells Huawei to sell (paywall) the assets of bankrupt startup 3Leaf Systems, which it had acquired the previous year. 

Huawei says it didn’t flag the deal to CFIUS because it had only bought some of 3Leaf’s assets, but the panel decides to engage in a retroactive review.

April: Huawei opens a 200,000-square-foot R&D facility in Silicon Valley. 

It continues to grow revenue from equipment sales to mid-tier telecoms in remote areas of the US.

2012
October: A House committee issues a 52-page report (pdf) warning against using equipment from Huawei and ZTE. 

The report states:
In sum, the Committee finds that the companies failed to provide evidence that would satisfy any fair and full investigation. 

Although this alone does not prove wrongdoing, it factors into the Committee’s conclusions below.

Further, this report contains a classified annex, which also adds to the Committee’s concerns about the risk to the United States. 

The investigation concludes that the risks associated with Huawei’s and ZTE’s provision of equipment to U.S. critical infrastructure could undermine core U.S. national-security interests.


2013
Reuters reports that a Hong Kong-based company that tried to sell US computer equipment to Iran’s largest cellphone carrier, in violation of US trade sanctions, is closely linked to Huawei. 

The story says that Ren Zhengfei’s daughter Meng Wanzhou, “a rising star” at Huawei, served on the board of the Hong Kong firm, among other links.

2014
March: The New York Times reports (paywall) that the NSA infiltrated the servers in Huawei’s Shenzhen headquarters, obtaining sensitive information about its giant routers and complex digital switches, and monitoring the communications of top executives.

September: T-Mobile files a lawsuit against Huawei, accusing it of stealing technology, including part of a robot’s arm, from its headquarters. 

Huawei workers spied on and stole part of Tappy, a robot developed by T-Mobile in 2006 to test smartphones. 

Huawei admits that two of its employees had acted "inappropriately".

2015
January: Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Huawei founder Ren seeks to play down his connection with the Chinese army, saying it was “quite by chance” that he entered the military. 

“We are a Chinese company,” Ren says. 

“Of course we support the Chinese Communist Party and love our country. We comply with the laws of every country we operate in.”
September: Huawei and Google join forces (paywall) to make the Nexus 6p phone.

2016
June: The US Commerce department issues a subpoena (paywall) to Huawei as part of a probe into whether the company violated US export controls on the export or re-export of American technology to Cuba, North Korea, Syria, and Sudan over the previous five years.
December: The Treasury department gets involved with the investigation (paywall) and issues its own subpoena. 

The subpoena comes shortly after the US government restricts sales of American technology to ZTE, saying the Chinese phone-maker violated sanctions against Iran. 

US officials also release internal ZTE documents detailing how the company managed to do business with Iran, and how it modeled its approach off of a rival’s efforts in that country. 

The rival company is not named in the documents, but its description matches Huawei (paywall).

2017
A Seattle jury rules in favor of T-Mobile in its case against Huawei, determining that the latter misappropriated T-Mobile’s trade secrets, and breached a handset-supply contract between the two companies that stipulated each would protect secrets learned through their partnership. 

The jury awards T-Mobile $4.8 million in damages for the breach of contract, but does not award damages for T-Mobile’s trade-secrets claim.

2018
January: AT&T, America’s second-largest wireless carrier, is on the verge of becoming the first carrier in the US to offer Huawei’s handsets, which would be a major breakthrough. 

But it abandons the plan after lawmakers and federal regulators lobby against the idea. 

Concerns around Huawei deepen as the rollout of next-generation wireless technology approaches; a leaked White House memo on 5G names the company a strategic threat. 

Lawmakers want AT&T to cut all commercial ties with Huawei, ending their collaboration on 5G network standards.
April: Huawei lets go of several US staff (paywall), including its vice president of external affairs, William Plummer, a Nokia veteran who joined Huawei in 2010. 

Plummer goes on to detail the company’s (and some of his own) PR missteps in a memoir called Huidu.
May: The Pentagon bans the sale of Huawei and ZTE phones in stores on military bases over concerns that the Chinese government could order the companies to track soldiers’ movements or spy on their communications.
August: The National Defense Authorization Act, which includes language barring government agencies from buying equipment or services from Huawei and ZTE, goes into effect.
October: Two leading US lawmakers—Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, and Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican—urge Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau to bar Huawei from helping build its 5G networks, saying it could pose dangers for US networks. 

The call is part of a broader US effort to get foreign allies to shun Huawei, the Wall Street Journal later reports (paywall), warning the UK, for example, it could be forced to cut off intelligence sharing. 

In November, New Zealand bans Huawei from supplying technology to the country’s 5G rollout, following in the steps of Australia earlier in the year.
December: Huawei’s chief financial officer and the daughter of its founder, Meng Wanzhou, is arrested in Canada at the request of US law enforcement on suspicion of violating trade sanctions on Iran. 

The arrest is seen as a serious escalation of US action against Huawei. 

Trump is criticized for suggesting he could intervene in the Justice Department case against her if it would help secure a trade deal from China. 

2019
January: The US files criminal charges against Huawei, slamming it with two dozen allegations that include conspiring to evade US trade sanctions and steal trade secrets, and also formally seeks Meng’s extradition from Canada. 

Meanwhile, Poland arrests a Huawei employee on allegations of spying for China. 

May 15: Trump signs an executive order banning US telecommunications firms from using the equipment of “foreign adversaries.” 

The order does not name Huawei, but effectively blacklists the company and cuts it off from US supply chains. 

Days later, Google makes a shock announcement that it will terminate Huawei’s license to the Android OS, which powers 86% of the world’s phones and all of the phones sold by Huawei. 

Huawei says it’s developing its own OS, but being cut off from Google’s email and app universe would drastically reduce its appeal overseas. 

Already, mobile carriers are holding off on Huawei 5G phone sales (paywall).
May 20: The restrictions are temporarily eased: The Commerce Department says it will allow Huawei to buy US goods through Aug. 19. 

But that same day, top US chip companies including Intel and Qualcomm cut off vital Huawei supplies, while Microsoft is also said to have stopped taking software orders from the firm.
This month’s moves present the most serious threats yet to Huawei’s future.

Chinese military researchers exploit western universities

Study shows US and UK scientists aiding high-tech progress for People’s Liberation Army 
By Kathrin Hille in Taipei

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping inspecting forces of the People's Liberation Army. A study shows the PLA's scientists have contributed to the development of Beijing's military technology by collaborating with researchers at western universities 

China has sent thousands of scientists affiliated with its armed forces to western universities — especially in countries that share intelligence with the US — and is building a web of research collaboration that could boost Beijing’s military technology development.
 About 2,500 researchers from Chinese military universities spent time at foreign universities — led by the US and UK — over the past decade, and they hid their military affiliations, according to a new report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a think-tank partly funded by Australia’s department of defence.
 The research effort focused on members of the so-called “Five Eyes” group of countries with which the US shares an intelligence relationship: the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
Over the past five years, researchers affiliated to the People’s Liberation Army published more joint papers with scientists from the UK and the US than with those of any other country. 
 The findings will fuel the debate raging in some western capitals over how to control the flow of cutting-edge and especially dual-use technology to Beijing — one of the main fronts in their struggle to adapt to a rapidly rising China.
 The PLA’s international research collaboration “focuses on hard sciences, especially emerging and dual-use technologies”, said Alex Joske, author of the report that is being published by ASPI today.
Dual-use technology has civilian and military applications.
 While the US and other western militaries have expanded exchanges with China’s armed forces, the scientists the PLA sends abroad usually have no contact with military officers in their host countries. Instead, the focus is on collecting knowledge to power China’s military technological progress. 
 In 2015, the science publication Shenzhou Xueren wrote about an interdisciplinary project between the PLA’s National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) and the University of Cambridge.
The article said the collaboration would produce the next generation of supercomputer experts for China and eventually “greatly enhance our nation’s power in the areas of defence, communications, anti-jamming for imaging and high-precision navigation”.
 Mr Joske found that navigation technology, computer science and artificial intelligence (AI) were the dominant areas of exchanges after reviewing collaborations between Chinese and foreign scientists since 2006 and statistics on Chinese researchers who were sent abroad.
 In one example, several researchers visited UK universities and are continuing joint research on topics such as combustion in scramjet engines, which could power hypersonic aircraft capable of flying at six times the speed of sound.
Wang Zhenguo, deputy chief of the PLA’s scramjet programme and head of the department of postgraduate studies at the NUDT, has co-authored 18 papers with foreign scientists.
 Huang Wei, an NUDT scramjet researcher and aircraft design expert for the PLA’s General Armaments Department, worked on his PhD while visiting the University of Leeds between 2008 and 2010, a researcher at the UK university told the FT.
Luo Wenlei, another NUDT scramjet researcher, wrote his PhD thesis on scramjet engines at Leeds in 2014.
 Both Huang and Luo, as well as Luo’s doctoral thesis supervisors, have published together with  Wang on scramjets.
Derek Ingham, a professor at Leeds and one of Luo’s thesis supervisors, did not respond to a request for comment.
 Qin Ning, a professor at the University of Sheffield involved in some of the exchanges with Chinese scramjet experts, said their joint research was "academic" in nature.
 He added that a number of EU-China collaborative projects strongly encouraged by the university — with the participation of Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, which is administered by the State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence, China’s weapons industry regulator — had produced “fruitful collaboration”.
Scientists working in PLA universities do not mention this affiliation when applying to western universities or publishing in English, but present themselves as members of civilian-sounding academic institutions instead. 
 One of the persistent pushes for international technology collaboration has come from the PLA’s Rocket Force, which includes China’s missile and nuclear weapons programmes. 
Major General Hu Changhua, one of the leading missile experts at Rocket Force Engineering University, spent three months at Germany’s University of Duisburg-Essen in 2008, while Zhou Zhijie, another lecturer at RFEU, was a visiting scholar at the University of Manchester in 2009. Both concealed their affiliation with RFEU and named the Xi’an Research Institute of High Technology, a non-existent institution, instead, the ASPI report said.
They continue to publish in English under this fake affiliation, entries in digital science publication databases show. 
 Yang Jianbo and Xu Dongling, two professors at Manchester, published a book with Maj-Gen Hu and Zhou in 2011, and have continued to collaborate with RFEU researchers, according to entries on ResearchGate, the online database of scientific papers. 
Yang and Xu did not respond to requests for comment.
Zhou did not respond to a request for comment.
Maj-Gen Hu could not be reached for comment.
 Among universities in the US, which hosted about 500 visiting scholars from PLA-affiliated schools over the past decade, Georgia Tech scientists published the highest number of joint papers with PLA researchers, according to Mr Joske.
 Liu Ling, a professor at Georgia Tech’s College of Computing who works on big data and cloud computing, has co-published papers with scientists from the NUDT according to the digital library of IEEE, a scientists’ association.
 She told the FT that her work with NUDT visiting scholars “has been on pure (fundamental) research” and unrelated to military applications, adding: “While I am not familiar with all of Georgia Tech collaborations, I know for sure that I have never worked with PLA directly”.
 However, defence experts cast doubt on such a distinction. 
While many staff of PLA-affiliated universities are so-called civilian cadres who focus on scientific work and are not supposed to be used in combat, they are still members of the PLA.
NUDT is supervised by the Central Military Commission, China’s top military body.
 In 2015, the US government added NUDT to its list of organisations that require case-by-case licensing for the transfer of any item to them, including technology, under the Export Administration Regulations.

Espionage: China’s Military Sends More "Scholars" Abroad, Often Without Schools’ Knowledge

The People’s Liberation Army has sent thousands of "scientists" overseas in recent years, but the "scholars" obscure their affiliation
By Kate O’Keeffe and Melissa Korn

Carnegie Mellon University says it does background checks of foreign scholars and entrusts vetting to the U.S. government.

Scientists from China’s military are significantly expanding research collaboration with scholars from the U.S. and other technologically advanced countries, often obscuring their affiliation from their hosts, according to a new research report and interviews with academics.
The People’s Liberation Army has sponsored more than 2,500 military scientists and engineers to study abroad over the past decade, according to research by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. ASPI is a nonpartisan think tank that was created in 2001 by the Australian government, which is engaged in a sharp debate about Chinese Communist Party interference in its domestic affairs.
The volume of peer-reviewed articles produced by PLA scientists working with academics outside China grew nearly eight times during the same period, from 95 in 2007 to 734 last year, the report says.
In some cases, the Chinese "scientists" masked their ties with the PLA, enabling them to work with professors at leading universities like Carnegie Mellon without the schools’ knowledge of their military affiliation, according to Wall Street Journal interviews.
The revelations come as the U.S. and China vie for technological superiority in a variety of fields that have both commercial and military applications, such as quantum physics, cryptography and autonomous-vehicle technology—some of the same topics studied by the PLA researchers who went abroad.
The report raises questions about how well governments and universities have considered exchanges with academics from the Chinese military.

Standard military exchanges between nations frequently involve sending officers to visit each other’s institutions to improve relationships and communication. 

But the report notes "scientists" sent abroad by the PLA often have “minimal or no interaction” with military personnel in their host countries.

Typically, these PLA "scientists" are civilian Communist Party members with sound “political credentials,” who go through intensive training before leaving, the report says.

It quotes the PLA Daily, a military publication, warning that if students sent overseas “develop issues with their politics and ideology, the consequences would be inconceivable.”
Cai Jinting—who also goes by Gill Cai—engaged in linguistic research while at Ohio University during the 2012-13 academic year, working with a professor who studied how a native language affects the way people learn additional languages. 

Linguistics can have applications in artificial intelligence.
Cai didn’t disclose his affiliation with the PLA until after he had arrived, instead citing the civilian institution where he received his undergraduate degree, according to Scott Jarvis, who worked with Cai when he was an associate professor at Ohio University. 

He said Cai was helpful in recruiting Chinese students to participate in research studies and, once on campus, told him of his actual school affiliation.
“At some point I became aware it was a military university,” said Dr. Jarvis, now chairman of the linguistics department at the University of Utah. 

“In my mind it was like a West Point kind of place. Even today I don’t really know what it is.”
An Ohio University spokeswoman said the school doesn’t independently vet scholars “for academic connections nor their background” and relies on the U.S. State Department for that.
Following debate in Congress, the U.S. is taking steps to stop China from acquiring critical technology made by U.S. companies. 

But it could be even more challenging to address such problems at the university level. 

The American academic system prides itself on its openness, and many Chinese scholars bring both expertise and funding.
The PLA, which is the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party, could be one place to draw the line, the Australian report suggests. 

“Helping a rival military develop its expertise and technology isn’t in the national interest,” it says.
At the same time, failing to address the issue risks “tarring all research ties with China with the same brush,” writes author Alex Joske, who found that the U.S.—followed by the U.K., Canada, Australia and Germany—was the top country involved in PLA academic research collaboration.
“National security is our top priority when adjudicating visa applications,” said a State Department spokesman. 

“We are constantly working to find ways to improve our screening processes and to support legitimate travel and immigration to the United States while protecting U.S. citizens and national interests.” 

The State Department added that any applicant who hides material facts relevant to national security risks removal. 

The Chinese embassy in Washington didn’t respond to requests for comment nor did the PLA "scholars" mentioned here.
ASPI found most researchers sent abroad by the PLA obscured it by listing affiliations such as the Zhengzhou Institute of Surveying and Mapping or the Zhengzhou Information Science and Technology Institute (Zisti).
According to the ASPI report, more than 1,600 peer-reviewed papers have been published by people claiming to be from one of those two institutes, both of which refer to the PLA Information Engineering University (PLAIEU). 

But without fluency in Chinese, it would be difficult to decipher the Zhengzhou schools’ military affiliations.

A student and an instructor at the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Information Engineering University in Zhengzhou, China in 2015. 

Qu Dan, an associate professor at PLAIEU, claimed to be from Zisti while a visiting computer science scholar at Carnegie Mellon University’s Language Technologies Institute from 2016-2017, according to her published research papers.
The bio on one of her 2018 papers says her research interests include speech signal processing and machine learning. 

Qu—who is distinct from other CMU scholars of the same name—also published research with Professor Michael T. Johnson while he was                        in Marquette University’s electrical and computer engineering department.
A spokesman for Carnegie Mellon said the university wasn’t aware of Qu’s affiliation with the Chinese military. 

He said the school does background checks and entrusts vetting to the U.S. government, which issued her a visa. 

He added that Qu worked on “openly publishable, fundamental research.”
Dr. Johnson, now chair of the University of Kentucky’s department of electrical and computer engineering, said that, while he knew one of his publications included a co-author from Zisti, he wasn’t familiar with the institution and didn’t know anyone there.
Dr. Johnson didn’t respond to questions seeking additional clarity on four researchers, including Qu, all of whom claimed to be from Zisti and appeared as co-authors on papers with him. 

Marquette didn’t provide comment.
In another case, Qian Haizhong visited Texas State University to work on GPS trajectory data and published a paper in October 2017 with the San Marcos school’s Professor Lu Yongmei. 

The paper lists his affiliation as the Zhengzhou Institute of Surveying and Mapping. 

Lu, now chair of the university’s geography department, said she hadn’t known of Qian’s military connection.
A spokeswoman for the university said Texas State had been unaware of the connection. 

She said the university has a robust vetting process but that ultimately it is up to U.S. officials whether to issue a visa.
“A known direct military relationship would raise the level of scrutiny especially to ensure the research clearly did not have a military-end use,” she said.

Sina Delenda Est

China's ready for war against the U.S.
By Graham Allison

"We’re going to bomb them back into the Peking Man Age."

To mark the 90th birthday of the People’s Liberation Army on Aug. 1, Xi Jinping went to the Inner Mongolian steppe to the site where Genghis Khan began his conquest of Eurasia.

There, at Zhurihe, he was welcomed by an impressive display of China’s martial might: a parade of Chinese troops, tanks, helicopters, aircraft and missiles. 

But the main course was a massive war game demonstrating the state of China‘s preparation to “fight and win” future military conflicts.
For what war is the PLA preparing?
Recent events should make the answer abundantly clear. 

In July, North Korea conducted two ICBM tests that put the American heartland within reach of its nuclear weapons. 

In response, the U.S. flew two B-1 bombers over the Korean peninsula to send the message, in the words of Pacific Air Forces commander Gen. Terrence J. O’Shaughnessy, that the U.S. is “ready to respond with rapid, lethal and overwhelming force at a time and place of our choosing.”
Trump has directed his ire at China, tweeting after the North Korean missile test: “I am very disappointed in China … they do NOTHING for us with North Korea, just talk. We will no longer allow this to continue.”

Xi’s parade, along with recent Chinese military maneuvers, sends an equally unambiguous message: If war breaks out on the Korean peninsula, China is ready to protect its national interests. 

A major pillar of Xi’s program for “making China great again” is building a modern military fully “capable of fighting and winning” the war against the United States.
In recent months, China has moved additional military units to its border with North Korea. 

It has established new fortifications and 24-hour video surveillance using aerial drones. 

But PLA special forces and airborne troops have begun repeatedly drilling for missions that go far beyond closing the border or establishing a buffer zone: They appear to be preparing to push deep into North Korea in the event of crisis.
Those who doubt China’s willingness to act should review what happened in 1950. 

That June, North Korea invaded South Korea and would have gained control of the peninsula had the American-led United Nations Command not come to the rescue. 

With little thought for how China ― which had barely 1/50th the GDP of the U.S. ― might react, allied forces under Gen. Douglas MacArthur pushed North Korean troops back across the 38th parallel and advanced rapidly toward the Yalu River bordering China. 

U.S. intelligence officers discounted the possibility that China might intervene on behalf of the North.
Nonetheless, MacArthur awoke one morning to find the vanguard of a 300,000-strong Chinese army slamming U.S. and allied forces. 

Caught off-guard, American units suffered severe losses. 

One regiment of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division lost 600 men in close combat in a matter of hours. 

In the weeks that followed, what MacArthur and his fellow commanders had dismissed as a “peasant army” not only halted the U.S. advance but beat allied forces back to a stalemate at the 38th parallel.
If Chinese and American forces once again meet in Korea ― perhaps in what Gen. Raymond Thomas has warned could become a “vertical track meet” to secure the North’s nuclear weapons ― the PLA will not at all resemble the low-tech army of the past.
In 1991, Chinese leaders were stunned by the devastating effectiveness of the U.S. military during Operation Desert Storm in Iraq, when it defeated Saddam Hussein’s forces in less than a month with fewer than 150 U.S. combat deaths. 

Watching America’s “full-spectrum technological dominance” via space-based navigation and surveillance systems, long-range precision-guided bombs and radar-evading stealth aircraft, Chinese leaders determined to acquire the technical capabilities to counter and ultimately surpass what they referred to as “American magic.”
Accordingly, Xi has made it his mission to ruthlessly rebuild and reorganize China’s armed forces on a scale that Russia’s foremost expert on the Chinese military, Andrei Kokoshin, calls “unprecedented.”

And the Pentagon is taking notice. 

Its annual report on the Chinese military, released in June, warned that the PLA had “modernized its conventionally armed missile force extraordinarily rapidly,” while the PLA Air Force was also “rapidly” closing the gap with the U.S.
“The world is not peaceful,” Xi said at Zhurihe, warning, “we need more than any period in history to build a strong people’s military.” 

Notably, the exercises there featured Chinese forces facing off against a “Blue Force” modeled on the command structure, technology, weaponry and tactics of the United States.
As Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis keeps saying, North Korea is a “clear and present” threat. Events there could drag the U.S. and China into a major war.

Once military machines are in motion, misunderstandings and miscalculations could escalate all too easily to a conflict no one intended.

The Necessary War

How China Plans to Win the Next World War
By Michael Raska

China’s cyber capabilities are continuously evolving in parallel with the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) ongoing military reforms and modernization drives. 

As the PLA invests in the development of comprehensive cyber capabilities, the character of future conflicts in East Asia will increasingly reflect cyber-kinetic strategic interactions.
In a potential conflict with Taiwan, for example, the PLA may put a strategic premium on denying, disrupting, deceiving, or destroying Taiwan’s Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems. 

This would be followed by the deployment of the PLA’s conventional air wings, precision ballistic missile strikes, and sea power projection platforms – all within the first hours of the conflict.
A key target for the PLA, for example, would be the highly-advanced US-made ultra-high frequency (UHF) early warning radar system located on top of Leshan Mountain near the city of Hsinchu. Activated in February 2013, the radar is reportedly capable of detecting flying objects up to 5,000km away, and provide a six-minute warning in preparation for any surprise missile attack from the Chinese mainland. 

The radar essentially tracks nearly every sortie of the PLA Air Force flying across China’s opposite coastline.
The Leshan Mountain radar also has capabilities to electronically jam China’s major signal intelligence station located at Dongjing Shan. 

Moreover, the radar is likely linked with the US Air Force’s Space Command Defense Support Program (DSP) that operates reconnaissance satellites for the US Satellite Early Warning System. The system is reportedly capable of providing comprehensive surveillance of North Korean missile launches.

PLA Concepts of ‘Network Swarming Warfare’:
The PLA’s Strategic Support Forces (SSF) envisions such operations under the conceptual umbrella of integrated network electronic warfare (INEW), or wangdian yitizhan. 

In China’s strategic thoughts, INEW has a holistic representation that combines coordinated use of cyber operations, electronic warfare, space control, and kinetic strikes designed to create “blind spots” in an adversary’s C4ISR systems.
These concepts have also been reflected in the PLA’s recent writings on “network swarming warfare” that envisions future campaigns as “multi-directional maneuvering attacks” conducted in all domains simultaneously: ground, air, sea, space, and cyberspace.
While specific operational aspects and capabilities are clouded in secrecy, papers by the PLA’s semi-authoritative military sources such as the National Defense University indicate a simultaneous application of multiple force elements, including small and multi-functional operational forces, electronic warfare and counter-space forces, cyber units, and long-range precision firepower.

Space-based information asset control
An essential element for China’s cyber operations is the control of space-based information assets as a means of achieving “information dominance.” 

Specifically, PLA authors acknowledge that space dominance is essential for operating joint campaigns and for maintaining the initiative on the battlefield. 

Conversely, they view the denial of an adversary’s space systems as an essential component of cyber operations and a prerequisite for victory.
Interestingly, Chinese writings note that the overall space system encompasses not only satellites in orbit, but also terrestrial launch, mission control, tracking, and telemetry and control (TT&C) facilities, such as the Leshan Mountain radar in Taiwan.
Consequently, establishing space dominance must incorporate offensive and defensive measures covering the full range of targets – orbiting systems, ground-based systems, and data.
To this end, the PLA maintains a strong focus on counter-space capabilities, both kinetic and cyber. These include developing space launch facilities; space tracking, telemetry, and control facilities; orbital space combat capabilities and units; strategic missile forces; ground-based space defense forces, and space logistics and safeguarding capabilities and forces.

Cyber Exploitation:
During peace time, PLA’s cyber units under the SSF are likely involved in comprehensive cyber reconnaissance – probing the computer networks of foreign government agencies as well as private companies.
These activities, which China denies, serve to identify weak points in the networks, understand how foreign leaders think, discover military communication patterns, and attain valuable technical information stored throughout global networks.
The scale, focus, and complexity of China’s cyber espionage over the past decade strongly suggest that these operations are state-sponsored or supported with access to financial, personnel, and analytic resources that far exceed what organized cybercriminal operations or multiple hacker groups operating independently could likely access consistently over a long duration.
Meanwhile, it is important to note that China is also relying on traditional human intelligence operations. 

According to Defense News, for example, China has been able to use its human intelligence network in Taiwan to gather information that would compromise the Leshan Mountain radar, as well as the island’s other strategic assets, including the Anyu-4 air defense network upgrade program, Po Sheng C4I upgrade program, Shuan-Ji Plan (electronic warfare technology project), Wan Chien (Ten Thousand Swords) joint standoff weapon, and the Mirage 2000 fighter aircraft.

Future Conflicts:
The progressive complexity in strategic interactions and interdependencies between cyber, information, cognitive, and physical domains will likely challenge traditional kinetic uses of force in future conflicts in East Asia.
For example, in ensuring operational access in the East or South China Seas, the US military will have to ensure the security, reliability, and integrity of its mission-critical C4ISR systems as well as combat support and logistics systems that will become increasingly vulnerable to cyber threats as well as other emerging forms of electronic warfare, including threats from electromagnetic pulse and high-powered microwave weapons.
A sophisticated cyberattack on these systems, whether by the PLA or other potential adversary, would likely result in cascading effects with ramifications on the individual US services and their abilities to carry out operational missions.
As conflicts move into the cyber and information domains, the centers of gravity are also going to shift. 

The value and more importantly, the accuracy and reliability of strategic information relevant for the situational awareness and function of the nation state as a system will become even more important with the increased dependence on cyberspace.
Cyber-enabled conflicts will evolve parallel with technological changes – e.g. the introduction of the next generation of robots, artificial intelligence, and remotely controlled systems that will continue to alter the character of future warfare. 

Ultimately, however, both cyber and information domains – whether civil or military – may become simultaneously targets as well as weapons, including for the armed forces of China, Russia and the US.

Nation of Thieves, Land of Copycats

The case of the Scottish wave energy firm Pelamis is the latest to raise questions about China and intellectual property.

By Tania Branigan

Pelamis wave energy equipment in the water at Leith docks in Edinburgh. 

It was once renowned as the home of the four great inventions: paper, gunpowder, printing and the compass. 

These days, China is more often portrayed as a land of copycats, where you can buy a pirated Superdry T-shirt or a HiPhone and where smaller cities boast 7-12 convenience stores, Teabucks outlets and KFG fried chicken shops.

Behind the startling brand infringement on display in markets and shopping streets lies a deeper intellectual property issue. 

Chinese entities have consistently sought to play catch-up by piggy-backing on other people’s technological advances. 

They have pursued software, industrial formulas and processes both through legitimate means – hiring in expertise, buying up startups, tracking publicly available information – and questionable or downright illegal ones: digging genetically modified seeds out of the fields of Iowa so they can be smuggled on a Beijing-bound flight, or paying for details of a specialised process for making a whitening pigment used in Oreos, cosmetics and paper – which sounds like a niche concern until you learn that the titanium dioxide market is worth $12bn a year.
The British carmaker Jaguar Land Rover is suing a Chinese firm for copying its Range Rover Evoque, in the latest of several motor industry cases. 

In the best known, China’s Chery reached an undisclosed settlement with General Motors over cars so similar that the doors were interchangeable. 

That case had one really striking feature: when GM approached Chinese manufacturers detailing the components they would need for the Matiz, they were told that Chery had already ordered identical parts.
This week came the curious case of Pelamis Wave Power, an innovative Scottish company which lost several laptops in a burglary after being visited by a 60-strong Chinese delegation – and then noticed the launch of a strikingly similar project in China a few years later. 

Chinese experts had certainly demonstrated a close interest in the work of Pelamis.

Li Keqiang, now Chinese premier, visits the Pelamis Wave Power factory in 2011. 

Whether engineers had been working along similar lines, were paying close attention to what Pelamis had made public, or somehow obtained information by other means is impossible to say.
What is certain – say western governments, business experts, analysts and security experts – is that Chinese businesses are routinely benefiting from the theft of intellectual property. 

Companies doing business in China are routinely advised to take clean laptops rather than their usual work devices on trips; to ensure that their work is protected with patents and trademarks internationally; and to be careful about the information they hand over to partners or potential manufacturers.
But their greatest vulnerability is operating in the age of the internet. 

In 2012, Keith Alexander, then director of the US National Security Agency, described commercially targeted cyber-attacks as “the greatest transfer of wealth in history”. 

The following year, a commission suggested such intrusions cost the US $300bn a year – with China responsible for up to 80%. 

They range from phishing expeditions to narrowly targeted approaches – and even attacks designed to find out what legal and other means firms are using to challenge earlier thefts.
China is consistent and angry in its denials of state-sanctioned industrial espionage: “The Chinese government does not engage in theft of commercial secrets in any form, nor does it encourage or support Chinese companies to engage in such practices in any way,” Xi Jinping said last year.
Chinese firms – even state-owned ones – are not always acting at the behest of officials, still less in the interests of China per se. 

But security experts have linked commercial incursions to People’s Liberation Army buildings and personnel and Nigel Inkster, formerly of MI6 and author of China’s Cyber Power, observes: “It’s safe to say that there’s been a general policy imperative to catch up with the west technologically, by whatever means.”
Not only are there clear international agreements on intellectual property, there is also vastly more to steal, the internet makes it much easier to do so – and the speed with which breakthroughs are seized upon by others is increasing all the time.

The Chinese intellectual property regime has developed rapidly: Xiaobai Shen, an expert on intellectual property and business at Edinburgh University, says courts could soon be overwhelmed by the number of domestic cases.

But foreign firms and governments still struggle to pursue cases. 

In the titanium dioxide case, an individual was jailed in the US – but prosecutors were unable to serve documents on the Chinese firm concerned.
That has prompted pushback at state level. 

In 2014, the US Justice Department announced it was charging five Chinese military officers with stealing trade secrets. 

Just over a year later, following the threat of sanctions, China signed landmark deals with the US and then the UK, agreeing not to conduct or support hacking and intellectual property theft for commercial gain; it was tacitly understood that old-school nation-state spying was still on the cards.
Those agreements were greeted with scepticism – but Dmitri Alperovitch of the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike says intrusions on commercial targets in the “Five Eyes” – the intelligence alliance made up of the US and UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – have fallen by as much as 90%, with hackers apparently shifting to domestic targets and Russian entities.
“Prior to the agreement, we have seen pretty much every sector of the economy targeted: insurance, technology, finance. They have scaled back,” he says.

Inkster thinks that may mean a focus on different sources, such as human intelligence. 

The agreements are also ambiguous, because of the blurry line between commercial and national security interests when it comes to sectors such as food and energy – with China interpreting national security much more broadly than western nations do.