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

Let’s cut straight to the chase—if you’ve been laser-focused on TikTok drama instead of network traffic, you might’ve missed what’s probably the biggest cyber headline of the year: Salt Typhoon and its partner in digital crime, Volt Typhoon. This week, Chinese cyber operatives have raised the stakes in America’s game of digital poker, laying bare not just their hand, but their intent to own the whole table. Imagine waking up and knowing Beijing’s hackers were waltzing through telecom networks, utility grids, hotel chains—even presidential communications. Not just an episode of Mr. Robot, but breaking news. I’m Ting, your friendly cyber oracle, here to decode the Dragon’s Code.

Start with Salt Typhoon—described by US officials as China's most ambitious and aggressive cyberespionage to date. We’re talking years of sustained, coordinated attacks breaching not only American telecoms—think AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile—but also transportation and lodging networks. According to Cynthia Kaiser, who ran point at FBI cyber, this breach is so vast that it likely reached every US citizen, including President Trump and VP Vance. All those “private” calls, texts, and location records—now fodder for Chinese intelligence. It’s not just who called whom, but the ability to track dissidents, military officials, and activists worldwide. Salt Typhoon isn’t that clever malware in your spam folder—it’s all about taking over the backbone of global communications.

But that’s Act One. Volt Typhoon took aim at Guam’s military, power, port, and water networks—operational tech, the nuts and bolts of American defense infrastructure. Their goal: to preposition inside systems so, should tensions escalate over Taiwan, they could flip a switch and black out critical assets. Jen Easterly at CISA warned Congress: “Volt Typhoon wants panic—they want our lights out and our defenders in the dark.” Meanwhile, Google’s cyber wizards traced the attack straight to Chinese companies: Sichuan Juxinhe Network Technology, Huanyu Tianqiong, Zhixin Ruijie—all feeding their digital muscle to units in the PLA and China’s Ministry of State Security.

And get this—methodology was classic APT (advanced persistent threat) meets brute persistence. They didn’t just exploit zero-day vulnerabilities; they layered backdoors in network hardware, logged credentials, slipped quietly into law enforcement directives, and embedded destructive code in vital OT systems. Once discovered, these hackers didn’t hightail it. They dug in, daring defenders to kick them out. Even as their presence became public, they stayed, leveraging contractor firms that muddied the attribution waters.

Defensive moves were swift: CISA, FBI, and western partners shouted global alerts, urging patching of known exploits, logging system events, and tightening network edge security. The Five Eyes and European allies teamed up in rare coordination. More than that, they pushed for

This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI.