OPINION:
Is your refrigerator spying on you? If it was manufactured in China, it could be.
About five years ago, a friend of mine bought a drone for his teenage son. The two of them took it out to a shooting club, of which we are both members, and flew it around, taking videos of the scenery and of them breaking clay targets.
The most interesting part of this story is that my friend signed onto the manufacturer’s website a few weeks later and found the videos he and his son had taken online for everyone to see.
The drone had obviously invaded his home’s internet and broadcast the videos back to China.
Is this sort of event a commonplace? We don’t know because so many appliances — from drones to refrigerators and dishwashers — are manufactured by China under several trade names including LG (i.e. “Lucky Goldstar”).
Now we are informed that one or more British naval drones sent data back to an internet address in China. The U.K. Ministry of Defence tells us that the data wasn’t sensitive information and that the sending was detected in a routine security check.
Righto, and carry on, old chap.
It’s pretty obvious that the ministry hasn’t a clue as to which data was sent to China or what value it had to the Chinese. Was it data on how fast or maneuverable the naval drones were? Was it trivia, such as how fast the drones could sail, or data on where they had been stationed?
Last December, the Federal Communications Commission banned all drones and critical components made in foreign countries. That’s a good step, but much damage has already been done.
The whole point is that the drones — like my friend’s and the British ones — are all part of a clear Chinese effort to steal and assemble data relating to damn near everything the West does.
China’s population is about 1.4 billion people, which means that it has enough eyes and hands to gather whatever data it wishes. It has been very busy.
According to a 2019 release by the FBI, “China is the world’s principal infringer of intellectual property, and it uses its laws and regulations to put foreign companies at a disadvantage and its own companies at an advantage.”
The cost of Chinese and other nations’ theft of intellectual property — pirated software, aircraft designs and much more — is estimated to be between $225 billion and $600 billion annually.
The Chinese espionage effort, which includes its theft of intellectual property, reached Lockheed-Martin and its suppliers. Im 2007 and 2008, it stole terrabytes of design data on the F-35 strike aircraft. China’s J-35 stealth aircraft bears a strong visible resemblance to the F-35.
The United States is probably equal to China now in the development of artificial intelligence, but how long can that last if China simply steals what it needs to know to propel its own efforts?
Since President Trump entered his second term, U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) has taken a more offensive approach and strategy.
Gen. Joshua Rudd, commander of USCYBERCOM and director of the National Security Agency, testified before Congress on June 5: “China seeks a world order more amenable to the Chinese Communist Party’s vision and ideology — and views cyber as a critical domain for modern warfare. Not only is China confronting us in cyberspace, it is also expanding its sway in the Pacific while insisting that it is only acting to defend itself. China has constructed a substantial cyberspace operations force, supported by capable and adaptive enablers in its native defense, cybersecurity, and information technology industries.”
USCYBERCOM acts by “persistent engagement,” taking the initiative daily by hunting and contesting adversary networks and “defending forward,” operating on foreign networks to identify malware, mapping adversary infrastructure, and neutralizing threats at their source.
But is that enough?
Chinese aggression comes in many forms. We see it daily through China’s aggression against Taiwan and its ambitious strategy to dominate the South China Sea and the area around it. We see it in the reports of Chinese drone parts sending messages to Chinese strategists.
China remains relentlessly ’on mission.’ It intends to gain, through espionage and theft of intellectual property, every advantage over us that it can. It intends to force us out of Asia and to reduce us to a former superpower.
China is our adversary, regardless of how President Trump feels about Chinese leader Xi Jinping. It must be treated accordingly.
• Jed Babbin is a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times and a contributing editor for The American Spectator.
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