This is your Cyber Sentinel: Beijing Watch podcast.

# Cyber Sentinel: Beijing Watch - November 30, 2025

Hey everyone, Ting here. Welcome back to Cyber Sentinel. So we've got quite the week unfolding in the cyber realm, and listeners, it's getting spicy. Let's dive straight in.

The big story dominating headlines is Salt Typhoon, the Chinese state-backed operation that's been running wild for five years targeting American telecommunications infrastructure. According to former FBI cyber official Cynthia Kaiser, the scale here is honestly staggering. She says she can't envision a scenario where any American was spared from this campaign. Think about that for a second. We're talking telecommunications companies, government networks, transportation systems, even military installations all potentially compromised by hackers working for China's Ministry of State Security and People's Liberation Army units.

Pete Nicoletti, who runs information security at Check Point, laid out exactly how bad this is. Salt Typhoon had what he calls full reign access to telecom data, meaning they could monitor your grandmother calling about groceries, your text messages, everything. Senior US government officials got specifically targeted. Former President Trump, Vice President Harris, Special Counsel Vance, and dozens of other officials had their communications intercepted. What makes this unprecedented is that the Chinese operators established persistent access and exfiltrated data for five years without detection. That's almost unheard of.

Now here's where it gets really concerning. The threat likely isn't over. Check Point's Nicoletti says his biggest worry isn't future attacks but that these operators might still be embedded inside various organizations completely undetected, potentially doing damage right now as we speak.

But listeners, there's another massive problem emerging this week. According to reporting from major outlets including the Daily Herald, the US federal government is actually cutting cyber defenses while AI is supercharging attacks. CISA, that's the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, has suffered a one-third staff reduction, and internal memos show they're dealing with approximately forty percent vacancy rates across key mission areas. Meanwhile, AI company Anthropic just revealed that Chinese government-backed hackers used AI coding tools to create autonomous agents running sophisticated espionage campaigns against tech companies, financial institutions, and government agencies.

The irony is brutal. While adversaries are accelerating with artificial intelligence, federal cyber posture has been scaled back. Plus, the FCC just dropped telecommunications security standards that were mandated specifically because of Salt Typhoon. Rolling back these rules leaves some of America's most valuable networks essentially unsecured.

This week also saw Akira ransomware hitting American Public Television, exfiltrating about twenty-two gigabytes of sensitive data. It's part of a broader pattern where ransomware groups keep targeting high-impact industries.

The strategic implications here are staggering, listeners. China's getting deeper intelligence on US government decision making, military capabilities, and critical infrastructure vulnerabilities while American defenses are actually shrinking. That's a dangerous trajectory.

Stay alert out there, and thanks for tuning in to Cyber Sentinel. Make sure you subscribe for more coverage. This has been a quiet please production. For more, check out quiet please dot ai.

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