Chapter 1 Conclusion – There Will Be Cyberwar

ANN

ARBOR – Over the next few weeks, MITechNews.Com will be publishing excerpts

from cybersecurity expert Richard Stiennon’s

latest book, called There Will Be Cyberwar. The book makes the case that

the US military rushed to “network

everything” and,

like most organizations, neglected to secure its most critical systems. One

point he makes is that an orchestrated effort on the part of China over the

past 15 years to hack the defense industrial base networks and US military

networks, “such as

stealing designs of the advanced military systems such as the Joint Strike

Fighter, was in reality to discover weaknesses in those systems that the People’s

Liberation Army could exploit in conflict. While the knowledge that source code

and configuration data was stolen was recognized by the NSA and FBI, they never

surmised anything beyond industrial espionage.”

 

We

pick up the book in chapter one when Stiennon writes a fictitious REPORT ON SPECIAL INVESTIGATION INTO

THE TAIWAN STRAITS CONFLICT OF MARCH 18, 2018

Presented

to the Armed Services Sub-Committee May 12, 2018.

 

This

excerpt concludes the investigation and presents the findings.

 

There is still no

evidence that China launched the nuclear EMP device from the land or sea. It is

now apparent that one and possible more of China’s satellites were armed with

nuclear warheads capable of being launched with precision and guided to an

exact upper atmosphere location for detonation. The committee views this

capability as destabilizing and

counter measures should be developed while ongoing diplomatic pressure brought

to bear to stop the militarization of space.

 

In less than 45

minutes since the fighter squadron launched within China territorial waters,

the 7th fleet was disabled, and the USS Minnesota was rendered inoperable,

which apparently was calculated on the part of China to ensure that no

deterrent force was left to interfere with the Chinese ultimate goal: the

re-unification of Taiwan. That process was facilitated by the complete power

and communication grid failure across Taiwan, leaving them in a state of

turmoil as China immediately gained control of the air and sea domain around

Taiwan. Once it was evident to Chinese leaders that the 7th Fleet was

effectively destroyed the Taiwanese President had no option but to surrender.

His fate, upon returning to Taipei, as well as that of his cabinet, are still

unknown.

 

The capitulation

of Taiwan and subsequent reunification marks the greatest setback for the

United States in the region since the loss of South Viet Nam. The economic

impact could be much greater because the future of trade with Taiwan, let alone

China, is in doubt. The repercussions throughout the Pacific Rim will be long

lasting. The peaceful overtures to China from Japan, Korea, and even

Australia’s new labor government marks the end of the Obama initiated pivot to

Asia.

 

The committee

convened to investigate this military defeat can point to several underlying

causes.

 

1. The most important factor was the misreading of

China’s intentions. The West in general and the US in particular had moved

ahead with economic development and normalization with the Communist-led

state based on incorrect assumptions about the inevitability of advanced

nations moving towards liberal democracy. Despite many researchers and China

experts’ warnings about China’s long-term, even 100 year goals, warnings were

dismissed. From the perspective of a liberal democracy where long-term planning

rarely surpasses the next election cycle, execution of a strategy over more

than 20 years is hard to comprehend. Yet, that strategy was well documented in

Chinese academic and military writings, especially the use of cyber attack to

gain asymmetric advantage in battle.

 

2.The

DoD, while investing heavily in network defenses and its own cyber attack

capabilities, led by the 2010 formation of US Cyber Command, completely

overlooked the vulnerability of its own platforms for communication, precision

targeting, guidance and navigation, and ISR.

 

3.The NSA had used network intrusions against

the Defense Industrial Base to further its own buildup of cyber capacity but

never reported all of its findings to Congress. In particular, the concerted

effort of PLA cyber teams to find and exfiltrate the source code and technical

configurations of radar, sensing platforms, targeting platforms, and encryption

key distribution methods was omitted from reports. This targeting, if properly

reported, would have been the first indicator of China’s intentions for future

war fighting.

 

 

4. The billions of

dollars invested in cyber defense since 2008 were primarily applied to

operational networking and email systems. No thought was given to hardening

weapons platforms against cyber attacks.