This is your Cyber Sentinel: Beijing Watch podcast.

Hey listeners, Ting here with your weekly Cyber Sentinel Beijing Watch. It's Wednesday night and things are heating up faster than a Shanghai summer, so let's dive straight in.

China's been busy this week, and I'm not talking about holiday shopping. According to recent reporting from Politico, Beijing is quietly embedding artificial intelligence into its military operations in ways that would make your average defense strategist lose sleep. We're talking about the People's Liberation Army using AI to accelerate battlefield planning, predict adversary behavior, and execute tactics on the fly. Retired Admiral Mike Studeman from Naval Intelligence put it perfectly when he said this isn't just machines handling strategic planning and execution. These systems will constantly and dynamically predict what opponents might do next. The terrifying part? If Xi Jinping sees a thousand AI simulations showing the PLA can seize Taiwan quickly, that's not a deterrent anymore. That's a green light.

But the military brainstorm session is only half the story. According to House testimony reported by Utility Dive, the Chinese state security service is running Volt Typhoon, and they're systematically targeting America's energy infrastructure. We're not talking about imminent blackouts, but they're absolutely positioning themselves for future disruptions. Michael Ball from NERC explained that China's embedding itself in our energy, communications, and water systems. They're winning without fighting. Our aging grid, with its patchwork of digital tools sitting on analog foundations, is basically a welcome mat. Harry Krejsa from Carnegie Mellon laid it out bluntly: China's preparing for a Taiwan conflict in the very near term, and their strategy depends on preventing the US from mounting an effective response. That means targeting civilian infrastructure to create chaos.

Here's where it gets weird though. According to SentinelOne's threat research, North Korea is also in the mix, running IT worker schemes that have infiltrated hundreds of Fortune 500 companies. They're hiring people, paying them modest salaries, and funneling most of it back into weapons programs. But SentinelOne discovered something clever: North Korean operators are recruiting Americans to buy laptops from Micro Center and host them in residential areas, making it look like traffic's originating from inside the US. That's operational art, listeners.

Meanwhile, the Qilin ransomware gang claimed responsibility for attacks this week against Mr Christmas and Tlusty and Kennedy, a US law firm. These aren't random strikes. They're intelligence gathering exercises wrapped in extortion demands.

The telecommunications industry is pushing back against regulation, saying they want to handle Chinese hacking threats voluntarily. Good luck with that strategy.

So what does this mean? China's combining military AI advancement with infrastructure reconnaissance and elder ransomware operations. It's not one attack vector. It's a coordinated pressure campaign across military, cyber, and financial domains.

Thanks for tuning in to Cyber Sentinel Beijing Watch. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss next week's update. This has been a Quiet Please production. For more, check out quietplease.ai.

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