In 2024, the U.S. government discovered that Chinese hackers had penetrated a huge swath of the American telecommunications system—and remained there for years. That attack came to be known as Salt Typhoon. China has not only managed to steal the data and surveil the communications of hundreds of millions of Americans. It also embedded itself in the United States’ most important infrastructure, giving Beijing a crucial advantage in a conflict.

Anne Neuberger was until recently the top cybersecurity official on the National Security Council. She was in that position when Salt Typhoon was discovered. And to her, the attack is not just an isolated incident of cyberespionage. Rather, it is evidence of American weakness, and Chinese dominance, in a central arena of national security.

“Decades after the widespread adoption of the Internet opened a new realm of geopolitical contestation,” she writes in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, “the United States has fallen behind, failing to secure a vast digital home front.” Neuberger warns that, as artificial intelligence grows ever more sophisticated, the threat of a cyberattack that could paralyze the country in a time of crisis has never been higher.

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