Red China attacks

The equivalent of land mines

It seems both sides are preparing for battle. Each in its own way.

Word came down Wednesday that the United States military had been “training” in the Pacific, and conveniently left a lot of equipment in allied countries. We mean a lot. Military vehicles. Food. Fuel. Ammo.

Those who know about these things say that war gamers think the Red Chinese—should they invade Taiwan— will target fueling ships first to disrupt the American forces. So the proactive thing to do is to put a lot of that stuff in storage containers closer to the action. Should action ever come. Speaking of being proactive . . . . The ChiComs apparently think they need to get ready for battle, too. So they tried to “pre-deploy” a lot of malware—inside the United States. Targeting civilian stuff.

There was a lot of jargon in the news stories we saw, but we’ll try our best to translate into English: The Red Chinese tried to plant the equivalent of land mines in our computers.

We’d allow that this is a step further than leaving behind ammo dumps and fuel in allied countries. This is an attack. On these borders. We’d also allow that an attempted attack that fails is still an attack.

The American government doesn’t appear to be downplaying this, either. U.S. officials say this was a “statebacked Chinese effort” to plant malware that could kick water treatment plants, pipelines, and airports off-line. And throw this country into chaos— presumably just as the first Chinese bombers take off for Taiwan.

Thankfully, the American spooks are good, too.

Our spies and IT types disrupted the plan, officials say. But the FBI warns that the disruption of most things we take for granted is part of the Chinese plan, should they decide to move on Taiwan.

The reports say something about routers being hijacked, meant to “sow malware” and likewise. Some of that stuff makes our eyes glaze over. But not stuff like this, from the front-page report in this paper Thursday: “Their ultimate targets included water treatment plants, the electrical grid and transportation systems across the United States.”

Jen Easterly is the director of the Department of Homeland’s cybersecurity agency: “This is a world where a major crisis halfway across the planet could well endanger the lives of Americans here at home through the disruption of our pipelines, the severing of our telecommunications, the pollution of our water facilities, the crippling of our transportation modes—all to ensure that [the Red Chinese] can incite societal panic and chaos and deter our ability” to marshal a response.

As an American general quoted in one of the stories pointed out: This isn’t how responsible states do business. They shouldn’t be in our water. They shouldn’t be in our power. Beijing denies it all.

We’ll believe our computer nerds. Beijing has a habit of denying it all.

And our computer nerds have a habit of being right.