The United States needs to be very vigilant regarding Chinese tech companies and their products.
Our weak and indecisive Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces President Barack Obama has never spoken of the gathering threat that China represents for our nation. China is waging cyber and currency warfare against our nation. Why has Obama not being able to stop the Chinese who have almost a digital-vacuum approach to American computer systems?
The People’s Republic of China (PRC), according to the CIA World Factbook 2014, has a population of 1,355,692,576 (July 2014 estimate), the largest in the world. The PRC’s inhabitants represent close to 20% of the world’s population. The gross national product (GNP) was $13.39 trillion in 2013, and it grew at a rate of 9.2% in 2009, 10.5% in 2010, 9.2% in 2011, 7.7% in 2012, and 7.7% in 2013. China is the largest nation in the world in exports with $2.21 trillion in 2013. Unemployment was 4.1% and the GNP per capita was $9,800 in 2013. China’s economy is growing at a rapid pace and very soon it will become the largest economy in the world. China and Russia have stated several times that they want to destroy the dollar as an international currency. China has been buying secretly several tons of gold in an effort to convert its currency as the new international medium of exchange.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)
Logo of the SCO
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is a Eurasian political, economic and military organization which was founded in 2001 in Shanghai by the leaders of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Except for Uzbekistan, the other countries had been members of the Shanghai Five, founded in 1996; after the inclusion of Uzbekistan in 2001, the members renamed the organization.
The annual meeting or summit of the Shanghai Cooperation 
Organization, which is a military and economic alliance to oppose the United States and NATO, met in Dushanbe, Tajikistan on September 11 and 12, 2014. The SCO mainly focused on security issues and wants to drive the United States out of Asia.
The SCO now wants to expand to become more powerful and is completing procedures for taking in new member nations. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization wants India, Pakistan, and Iran to join its military and economic alliance before its next annual summit. If the SCO accepts Iran into its alliance and later Israel or the United States goes to war against that country, World War III could start as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization will have to defend Iran against its enemies.
Security issues were at the top of the SCO agenda, and terrorism continues to be the major security concern. In his speech at the summit, the powerful Chinese dictator Xi Jinping called for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to “focus on combating religion-involved extremism and internet terrorism.” Xi Jinping also said SCO members should set up consultations regarding an eventual “anti-extremism” treaty. Ultimately, Xi Jinping wants to see Asian countries, led by the SCO, to take care of regional security, thus eliminating the need for the United States or NATO countries to have any role in Afghanistan or any other Asian nation. As the Chinese dictator Xi put it, the SCO member nations “should take it as our own responsibility to safeguard regional security and stability, enhance our ability to maintain stability, continue to boost cooperation on law enforcement and security, and improve the existing cooperation mechanisms.”
The age for compulsory military service in China is 18 to 24, with a two-year military service. The manpower fit for military service is as follows: males age 16-49, 385,821,101 and female age 16-49, 363,789,674 (2010 estimate). Obviously, it would be very difficult for any nation to fight a successful land war with China, unless it uses nuclear, space, and cyber weapons.
China has been rapidly modernizing its armed forces and nuclear forces by increasing the expenditures for defense. However, one of the most serious threats that our nation is facing from China is the fact that it has been engaged in a very successful cyber warfare for several years. As it would be explained in this article, China has stolen our most valuable military and industrial secrets.
China continues to hack U.S. computers and presents serious threat to our national security
James Rosen from the McClatchy Washington Bureau wrote an article entitled “Chinese Hacking into Pentagon Contractors” which was published in The Miami Herald on September 18, 2014. Rosen explained that China has frequently hacked into the computer systems of defense contractors for the U.S. Transportation Command. This is very serious as the U.S. Transportation Command is the Pentagon agency responsible for deploying American troops and military equipment worldwide. Rosen stated the following: “A bipartisan Senate investigation found that in one year, from June 1, 2012, through May 31, 2013, the Chinese government had gained access to sensitive U.S. defense logistics information at least 20 times, but that the Transportation Command, known as TRANSCOM in military circles, was aware of only two of the security breaches.”
Senator Carl Levin, Democrat from Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, stated the following: “These peacetime intrusions into the networks of key defense contractors are more evidence of China’s aggressive actions in cyberspace. Our findings are a warning that we must do much more to protect strategically significant systems from attack and to share information about intrusions when they do occur.”
James Rosen wrote that Richard Bejtlich, chief security strategist for FireEye, a cyber security firm in Milpitas, California, said his company tracks three dozen hacking groups that it traces to Chinese military, intelligence or other government agencies. Bejtlich stated the following: “They’re the worst in terms of scope. They’re hitting the most number of targets, and they are the most aggressive. When you kick them off a system, they’ll try to get back on the next day.”
Rosen pointed out that the Senate investigation found that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) knew of about half of the 20 cyber attacks on the defense contractors but had not informed the contractors or TRANSCOM of most of them.
Why not? I thought that the FBI is there to protect our nation so why would this agency not inform TRANSCOM that their computers are being hacked repeatedly? Has Attorney General Eric Holder, who is the boss of the FBI, has anything to do with the failure of the FBI to inform the contractors of the cyber attacks? What about the traitor who lives in the White House? Obama has never informed the nation about the existence of the dangerous Shanghai Cooperation Organization or for that matter of the danger of radical Islam and Shariah law. Moreover, Obama has deliberately allowed members of the Muslim Brotherhood to infiltrate his government.
The Senate report explained that: “Cyber intrusions into operationally critical contractors pose a threat to defense operations. It is essential that potentially affected commands such as TRANSCOM be aware of such intrusions so that they can take steps to mitigate the threat.”
James Rosen reported that the examples provided by the Senate report found that between 2008 and 2010, one TRANSCOM contractor “was compromised by the Chinese military, who stole emails, documents, user accounts, passwords and even source code.” In another, “In 2010, the Chinese military compromised the computer network of a Civil Reserve Air Fleet contractor, stealing documents, flight details, credentials and pins and passwords for encrypted email.”
Rosen explained that Bejtlich said that the Chinese could be interested in obtaining U.S. military logistical information because of Beijing’s increasing control of Taiwan. “The most likely event that would cause a shooting war between the United States and China would be an invasion of Taiwan,” Bejtlich said. He added that “In the event that the Chinese decide to take over Taiwan, they want to disrupt our logistics and slow us down so that we won’t be able to get our forces to Taiwan as quickly.”
Senator Jim Inhofe, Republican from Oklahoma and the senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said Congress must ensure that cyber attacks don’t disrupt military readiness. The Oklahoma Senator said: “It is essential that we put into place a central clearinghouse that makes it easy for critical contractors, particularly those that are small businesses, to report suspicious cyber activity without adding a burden to their mission-support activities.”
James Rosen explained that Ben Johnson, a senior technical analyst for Bit9, a Waltham, Massachusetts, firm that sells security software, said it is difficult to protect defense contractors because many use more open computer networks than government agencies use. Johnson stated the following: “They’re going to be the first ones breached because the Defense Department or the CIA operate behind classified networks. Defense contractors may be doing a lot of sensitive work, but it’s usually not on classified networks, so it’s easier to access.” TRANSCOM is one of nine U.S. unified military commands across all services, seven of which are geographically based.
Rosen wrote that Johnson said the Chinese have almost a digital-vacuum approach to American computer systems. Johnson stated that “They’re going after all sorts of information relative to our country, relative to our businesses. They’re going after everything.” Johnson explained that the systems of defense contractors should be put behind bigger firewalls, but that it’s nearly impossible to stop all cyberattacks.
China is conducting cyber warfare and stealing our military and industrial secrets
General Keith Alexander, the former director of the National Security Agency, has described the cyber theft from China, and perhaps from other nations, as “the greatest transfer of wealth in history” and has estimated our loss to be a trillion dollars. Former Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, as well as former Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Joe Lieberman, warned us several times of the great danger that the United States is facing of an impending surprise Pearl Harbor-like cyber attack coming from space and that could devastate our electrical grid, banks, financial institutions, water and sewer systems, and military and government computers.
On January 24, 2013, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, speaking at the Wilson Center, a think tank, said that we are facing an impending threat of a cyber attack equivalent to the attack of September 11, 2001. She said that many of our banks have experienced many cyber attacks. Similar other officials, she is concerned that our electrical grid, water and sewer systems, as well as our armed forces are facing a clear and present danger.
Janet Napolitano explained that our Navy is being subjected to 100,000 cyber attacks per hour. She wanted Congress to approve laws on cyber security since cyber attacks are coming from everywhere and are increasing in number and sophistication. China has also penetrated U.S. computer systems that regulate our oil and natural gas pipelines.
China stole the design of the F-35, our most modern aircraft, which cost us $392 billion to develop. Now the Chinese will improve the design of our most modern aircraft and develop one that could be superior to ours.
Only a few years ago, China’s military was extremely weak and did not have a space program or cyber warfare capability. After stealing our military technology, China’s armed forces were modernized rapidly and now they have a great capability to conduct space and cyber warfare.
It did not help our national security when many U.S. multinational corporations, such as General Electric, General Motors, and Boeing, established research and development centers in China. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) was able to acquire our highly sophisticated technology for free, in addition to the technology that it continues to steal through spying or cyber theft from the United States and other developed Western nations.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration, as well as previous administrations, has been unable to stop China’s increasing cyber warfare against our nation. Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst and senior House of Representatives Intelligence Committee staff, wrote an article called “High-Level Panel Sees Trouble Ahead for China” in the February 2013 issue of Newsmax magazine. He explained that Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA and a retired four-star general, warned that China had been trying to catch up with the U.S. military for several years, especially after the first Gulf War. General Hayden said the following regarding China: “I stand back in awe about the Chinese espionage effort against the United States. We have a nation-state successfully attempting to steal secrets not just from our nation-state, but from American industry.”
General Michael Hayden, Jon Huntsman, former U.S. ambassador to China and Utah governor, and other experts were also concerned of the growing threat posed by a possible serious downturn of the Chinese economy. Fleitz pointed out in his article that if China´s economy goes into a recession, China may escalate tensions with our nation. General Hayden said that the Chinese will put up with the Communist leadership as long as the economy is growing. However, a serious slow down of the Chinese economy could provoke its Communist government to act in an overly nationalistic manner and this could lead to a confrontation with our nation. In fact, Lignet, a national security firm, wrote on June 12, 2013 that China is preparing for war.
Richard A. Clarke, who served several presidents in the Security Council of the White House, wrote a book entitled Cyber War (2011). He described how China has sold the United States “chips, routers, and hardware” for our computers and digital networks that have “logic bombs, trapdoors, and Trojan horses.” The Chinese government can press a special button and our Chinese computers and parts will no longer work.
Our country purchased 84,000 false electronic parts from China and installed them in airplanes, helicopters, and missiles. General Patrick O’Rielly, director of the Agency of Missile Defense, stated the following: “We do not want that a missile interceptor of $12 million will not function due to a $2 false electronic part.” How could the Obama administration purchased anything from China for our defense when that nation is engaged in cyber warfare and currency warfare against us?
Panic in the United States and other nations over cyber theft from China
Geoff Dyer in his book The Contest of the Century (2014) explained that the American business community, which was once the most important supporter of strong ties with China, has become greatly concerned over cyber theft of American multinationals and businesses. Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, who has placed factories and research and development centers in China, is now having regrets. He stated “I am not sure that in the end they (Chinese) want any of us to win, or any of us to be successful.”
Some companies, such as the Canadian Nortel, have been subjected to cyber theft for many years. Nortel discovered that it was being hacked in 2004. This company eventually went bankrupt in 2009. When businesses and multinationals are subjected to constant cyber theft over the years, there comes a time when they can no longer compete with Chinese companies.
Mandiant, a U.S. Internet-security company, has stated that it has traced hacking attacks on 141 companies in the United States and 15 other countries to one particularly Chinese military unit based in Shanghai. The hackers are actually part of a People’s Liberation Army group called the unit 61398.
Richard Clarke, who served in the National Security Council of the White House, stated the following: “What has been happening over the course of the last five years is that China-let’s call it for what it is-has been hacking its way into every corporation it can find listed in Dun & Bradstreet. Every corporation in the United States, every corporation in Asia, every corporation in Germany. And is using a vacuum cleaner to suck data out in terabytes and petabytes.”
Dyer wrote that as the result of China’s cyber warfare against the United States, “Congress has started introducing restrictions in some areas for all Chinese information-technology products, from computers to smart phones.” This writer hopes it is not too late for our nation to defend itself from China’s outrageous cyber warfare attacks.
Will Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu, the gigantic Chinese Internet multinationals, end the U.S. dominance in world tech?
Paul Bedard wrote an article entitled “Alibaba expert: ‘End of U.S. dominance in world tech'” in The Washington Examiner which was published on September 19, 2014.
Bedard explained that the enormous success of China’s Alibaba’s debut on the New York Stock Exchange on September 19, 2014 is confirmation that American dominance in the tech sector on Wall Street is over, according to a world expert on the firm. Professor Qing Wang, who is an expert on Chinese corporations that compete with the United States and the West stated the following: “Alibaba’s IPO could well be the end of U.S. dominance in the world technology sector. Alibaba’s annual growth rate of more than 30% shows that the gap between the Chinese companies, Alibaba and Tencent, and U.S. companies is getting ever closer.”
Alibaba, the online retailer similar to Amazon raised a record $21.8 billion in its IPO on September 19, 2014. Alibaba is valued at more than Amazon and EBay combined. It is a wake-up call for U.S. technology companies, including Google, Apple, Facebook, EBay and Amazon.com
Professor Qing Wang explained that with the inclusion of Alibaba on the New York Stock Exchange, “Chinese internet companies are already sharing the top four spots with the United States. She said that these are in descending order: Google, Alibaba, Tencent and Amazon.”
Paul Bedard wrote that Professor Qing Wang stated the following: “The strong performance and fast rise of the Chinese technology companies in the world may shock some outsiders. It is certainly helped by an enormous and fast growing domestic market, but there is more: the competition in that domestic market among the Chinese companies, as well as with multinational corporations that have entered it, is extremely fierce and successful private companies like Alibaba have to be highly entrepreneurial and market-oriented.”
Professor Qing Wang concluded by saying the following: “Alibaba continue to innovate in many areas of their business to keep existing customers happy and attract new customers. This ability to understand customers intimately and continuously innovate should enable them to expand overseas with U.S. dominance in the world technology sector gradually being broken.”
Jessica Guynn wrote an article entitled “Alibaba a wake-up call for U.S. Tech” which was published in USA Today on September 19-21, 2014. She explained that China has three Chinese Internet giants – Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent – which are known as the BAT. A third of the top Internet companies with the highest market caps are based in China. Professor Oded Shenkar at Ohio State University said the following: “U.S. companies have been complacent for a long time. I am sure some people were paying attention, but a lot were not.”
For years Chinese and United States Internet multinationals operated in separate spheres, but this is no longer true. U.S. tech companies have invested in China, where the number of Internet users is more than 600 million, which is about twice the size of our nation’s population. Some of our companies have run into trouble with the Chinese government due to their desire to block content that criticizes the communist government.
Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent have now captured a major share of the Chinese market and they are now expanding into the United States and other Western countries. Guynn explained that in the past two years, Alibaba and Tencent have made major investments in 13 American tech startups. These Chinese tech gigantic companies are growing rapidly in the United States and in Latin America.
Computer hackers steal credit and debit cards from Home Depot and Target store chains
Home Depot and announced on September 18, 2014 that cyber thieves placed a malicious software, or malware, on their cash registers or point-of-sale terminals from April to September 2014. As a result of the security breach, 56 million credit and debit cards information was stolen in their stores in the United States and Canada.
A similar situation occurred late in 2013 in Target stores. Target reported that 40 million credit cards were compromised over a three week period. Cyber theft attacks of this nature are very damaging to the United States economy and show how vulnerable our nation is to this type of theft. Due to the millions debit cards information that was captured, millions of Americans may find that their bank accounts could be wipeout. If these cyber attacks continue, Americans may pull out their money from banks, creating a major economic problem. This cyber warfare from China and other nations is a form of terrorism in an effort to destroy our beloved country.
The road ahead may be very difficult for our nation to protect our industrial, businesses and military secrets from countries such as China and others. If China continues to steal our technology and our inventions over a prolonged period of time, Chinese multinational corporations and industries will be superior to ours. After a while we could no longer compete with China. Sadly, what the Chinese do not steal, our multinational corporations give it to them for free. This appalling situation reminds me of what Vladimir Lenin said many years ago: give the capitalists enough rope and we shall hang them with that rope.
Conclusion
One concern that I have is that China is a dictatorship and if their corporations expand into the United States, the Chinese will surely used these tech companies and their products that Americans buy to spy upon the United States. Let us not forget that the Chinese have been doing this espionage and stealing our secrets for the past several years. The United States needs to be very vigilant regarding Chinese tech companies and their products.
Our weak and indecisive Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces President Barack Obama has never spoken of the gathering threat that China represents for our nation. China is waging cyber and currency warfare against our nation. Why has Obama not being able to stop the Chinese who have almost a digital-vacuum approach to American computer systems?
Geoff Dyer, author of the book The Contest of the Century: the New Era of Competition with China- and How America Can Win (2014), explained that according to a professor at Beijing University, it is a major humiliation to see American warships sailing so close to China’s coasts, specially near to the enormous naval base in Hainan Island. Dyer described how Captain James Fanell, Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence for the United States Pacific Fleet, stated the following: “They (Chinese) are taking control of maritime areas that have never before been administered or controlled in the last 5,000 years by any regime called China… China’s conduct is destabilizing the Asian maritime environment.”
China created and has expanded its military and economic alliance called the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to challenge the United States and NATO and now it wants to incorporate Iran into its alliance. China is threatening our allies in Asia, including Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and the Philippines. China is claiming the entire East China Sea and the South China Sea as its territory including the airspace above those two immense seas. Many of the islands that have a large amount of oil and gas in the East China Sea and the South China Sea belong to our allies. China wants to take these islands away from them.
China is harassing the ships of our Navy and the airplanes from our Air Force. And worst of all, China has continued to hack our computers from our largest multinational corporations as well as from the Pentagon. Barack Obama have been silent as China is becoming more aggressive and more imperialistic.
Now Obama is implementing a failed strategy to defeat the brutal Islamic Caliphate. All of the generals have told our indecisive and weak president that boots on the grounds are needed if we are going to defeat the diabolical Islamic Caliphate.
There is no question in my mind that the national security and foreign policies of this president have put our beloved country in great risk. The U.S. is a superpower in rapid retreat from the world. Barack Obama has deliberately made the United States weaker by severely cutting the Pentagon’s budget making our Army the size it had in 1939 and our Navy the size it had in 1913. At the same time, China and its ally Russia are getting stronger each day by modernizing rapidly their nuclear weapons and improving their armed forces. May God help America!
