This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast.

Hey listeners, Ting here, and wow, what a week it's been in the cyber trenches. Let me tell you, China's digital offensive against American infrastructure just shifted into overdrive, and we need to talk about it.

So here's what went down. Chinese threat actors are getting scary creative with their toolkits. According to SC World, we're seeing China-nexus groups weaponizing open-source tools like Nezha in sophisticated campaigns targeting critical infrastructure. These aren't your garden-variety DDoS attacks anymore, folks. We're talking about a deliberate evolution from nuisance attacks to surgical strikes on the systems that keep America running.

The scale is staggering. Multiple international firms got hit by what researchers are calling Scattered Lapsus Hunters, with the UTA0388 operation running spear-phishing campaigns across North America, Europe, and Asia. And get this, they're exploiting OpenAI's ChatGPT in their social engineering tactics. Yeah, AI versus AI, because 2025 isn't dystopian enough already.

But wait, it gets juicier. Microsoft's Storm-2603 group is abusing Velociraptor, which is ironically a digital forensics and incident response tool, to maintain persistent access to victim networks during ransomware attacks. Dark Reading reported they're essentially turning our own defense tools against us. That's like breaking into a house using the homeowner's locksmith kit.

The American Security Project is sounding serious alarms about agentic AI cyberweapons becoming the tool of choice for state-sponsored attackers. These autonomous systems can conduct reconnaissance, modify system settings, and adapt to new environments without human intervention. We're talking about cyber attacks that learn and evolve in real-time.

Now, attribution is getting clearer. Bloomberg reports the U.S. is considering an initial determination that TP-Link Systems poses a national security threat. Why? Because Chinese state-sponsored groups Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon have been exploiting TP-Link routers to hit U.S. critical infrastructure. This could lead to outright bans on their operations.

The impact is bleeding into geopolitics too. President Trump is threatening massive tariff increases after China restricted rare earth exports, calling their timing especially hostile. There's even talk of canceling his meeting with Xi Jinping. Trade wars and cyber wars are now completely intertwined.

On the defense side, the Senate just moved Kirsten Davies closer to becoming Pentagon CIO. Over a hundred cybersecurity experts backed her nomination, calling her a battle-tested CISO with the operational realism needed for this increasingly hostile cyber terrain. Her philosophy? Commercial solutions first, government-unique solutions only when absolutely necessary.

The lesson here? Supply chains are battlefields, and as War on the Rocks puts it, adversaries can win without firing a shot by targeting our digital and physical infrastructure simultaneously. We need to stop treating cyber defense as reactive and start building resilience into everything we do.

Thanks for tuning in, listeners. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss the next update on this digital cold war.

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