This is your Tech Shield: US vs China Updates podcast.

Hey listeners, Ting here, your go-to cyber sleuth on all things China hacks and US shields. This week in the US-China cyber showdown, it's been a brutal blitz from Beijing's crews, but America's defenses are firing back—sort of. Picture this: I'm hunkered down in my digital war room, caffeine-fueled, watching CISA, NSA, and Cisco Talos drop bombshells left and right.

First off, Chinese state-sponsored ops unleashed BRICKSTORM malware, a sneaky backdoor beast hitting VMware vSphere and Windows setups in government agencies and critical infrastructure across North America. Smarter MSP reports CISA's joint advisory with NSA and Canada's Cyber Centre exposing how these hackers lurked undetected for 17 months in one case—from April 2024 to September 2025. It uses layered encryption, DNS-over-HTTPS for stealth chats, and auto-reinstalls if you try to boot it. Nasty, right? The Defense Post echoes this, calling out PRC hackers targeting US networks hard.

Then bam, Cisco drops a zero-day bombshell on December 17. Chinese hackers, linked to known gov groups per Cisco Talos, exploited a critical flaw in AsyncOS software on Secure Email Gateway and Web Manager appliances. No patch yet—Cisco says wipe and rebuild if compromised. TechCrunch notes the campaign kicked off late November 2025, hitting internet-facing Spam Quarantine features. Researcher Kevin Beaumont warns big orgs are exposed since these boxes are everywhere.

Patching frenzy ensued: Microsoft fixed CVE-2025-62221 under active exploit, plus CISA added D-Link router overflow (CVE-2022-37055) and Array Networks injection (CVE-2025-66644). Fortinet patched auth bypass bugs in FortiOS and FortiWeb—Australia's ACSC and Canada's Cyber Centre screamed urgency. CISA also blasted 12 ICS advisories for Mitsubishi Electric, Advantech, Johnson Controls, even medical gear.

Government moves? DOJ's Data Security Program, live since April 2025, slaps export controls on bulk sensitive data to China and five other adversaries, per FTI Consulting. And President Trump's nominating Lt. Gen. Rudd—Indo-Pacific Command deputy—for NSA/Cyber Command head, eyeing China counters, says Nextgov.

Industry's scrambling: Check Point tracks China-linked Ink Dragon (aka Jewelbug) chaining ShadowPad and new FINALDRAFT malware across Europe, Asia, Africa govs and telcos. The Hacker News details their web shells, Cobalt Strike, and Google Drive C2 tricks—super stealthy, turning victims into relay nodes.

Expert take? These patches and advisories are clutch, buying time, but gaps scream loud. BRICKSTORM's persistence and Cisco's no-patch wipe show detection lags—17 months? Oof. Zero-days like AsyncOS exploit unpatched sprawl, and Ink Dragon's mesh network means one breach fuels global ops. US needs faster attribution, AI-driven anomaly hunts—MITRE's expanding D3FEND for OT helps—and mandatory bulk data audits. China's hybrid game, per Craig Singleton's House testimony December 16, blends cyber espion with supply chains; we're reactive, they're prepositioned.

Witty wrap: Beijing's hackers are like that ex who won't delete your number—persistent and everywhere. US shields are tougher, but plug those holes before New Year's fireworks.

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This is your Tech Shield: US vs China Updates podcast.

Hey listeners, it’s Ting, your friendly neighborhood China–cyber–hacking nerd, and today we’re diving straight into Tech Shield: US vs China.

Over the past few days, Washington has basically gone from “patch your stuff” to “we’re redesigning the whole firewall for China.” Nextgov reports that the Trump White House is rolling out a new cybersecurity strategy with a big offensive pillar aimed squarely at foreign adversaries like China, built around “preemptive erosion” of their hacking capacity. That means more aggressive disruption ops, tighter integration between private threat intel companies and agencies like NSA, and a push to harden critical infrastructure while quietly burning down Chinese access inside it.

On defense, that same strategy leans into quantum‑safe cryptography and zero‑trust architectures across federal networks, plus stricter benchmarks for China‑linked hardware in critical infrastructure. Think fewer Huawei‑style surprises in the grid and more scrutiny on everything from routers to industrial controllers. The policy folks are also talking about a U.S. cyber academy and venture‑backed cyber startups to close the talent gap, which, if it works, is like finally hiring SREs for the entire country.

Meanwhile, the operational tempo hasn’t slowed. Reuters and The Straits Times relay how CISA, NSA and the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security dropped a joint advisory on a Chinese‑linked malware family nicknamed Brickstorm that’s been burrowing into VMware vSphere environments. That advisory doesn’t just name‑and‑shame; it ships indicators of compromise, playbooks, and a pretty blunt message: patch your virtual infrastructure now or you’re basically letting Beijing camp in your data center. Google’s Threat Analysis Group has already seen Brickstorm across legal, IT and outsourcing firms, hinting at classic supply‑chain pivoting.

Politico’s cyber newsletter adds another twist: Chinese government‑linked operators are now hijacking AI tools to automate intrusion and espionage campaigns, enough of a concern that the House Homeland Security Committee is teeing up a hearing on adversarial AI and the future of cybersecurity. Pair that with China’s own newly amended Cybersecurity Law, which Mayer Brown notes now has sharper penalties, extraterritorial reach, and explicit support for AI‑enabled cyber governance, and you’ve got both sides weaponizing AI—but under very different legal umbrellas.

So, effectiveness check: US agencies are getting faster at publishing advisories, baking in zero trust, and coordinating with allies. Offensive disruption plus quantum‑safe crypto is the right theory. The gaps? Patch adoption in the private sector is still glacial, operational technology in energy and defense is under‑secured, and adversarial AI is moving faster than our policy hearings. China’s long‑term, state‑directed cyber and AI fusion still outpaces America’s fragmented implementation.

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This is your Tech Shield: US vs China Updates podcast.

I’m Ting, and let’s jack straight into this week’s US‑China cyber showdown.

The headline story is Senator Mark Warner warning that Chinese operators tied to the Salt Typhoon campaign are “still inside” US telecom networks, with access to unencrypted communications for potentially “almost every American.” According to Warner’s remarks reported by the Financial Times and Newsmax, the FBI is saying the networks are “pretty clean,” while other intel components insist the intrusions are ongoing, which tells listeners one thing: the defenders are not fully aligned, and China’s Ministry of State Security is loving that gap.

On the defensive side, the US is scrambling to harden the stack. The NSA and CISA have been pushing advisories all week reminding carriers and cloud providers to lock down exposed edge devices that Salt Typhoon loves to pop. Huntress and other threat intel shops describe Salt Typhoon as a Chinese state‑sponsored APT focused on telecom and critical infrastructure, exploiting known but unpatched bugs in routers, VPNs, and web front ends. Translation: patch hygiene is still the weak link.

Speaking of patches, CISA just blasted out an emergency directive on the new React2Shell flaw, CVE‑2025‑55182. Western Illinois University’s cybersecurity news feed and The Hacker News report that two China‑linked groups weaponized this React Server Components bug within hours of disclosure, and CISA ordered federal agencies to patch by December 12 or pull affected services off the internet. React shipped fixes in versions 19.0.1, 19.1.2, and 19.2.1, and Microsoft added its own round of 56 security fixes this week, including actively exploited Windows issues. That’s not just housekeeping; it’s the US trying to slam doors before Beijing’s operators can turn a web framework bug into a beachhead in .gov and defense contractors.

At the strategic layer, the FCC’s ongoing push to “protect the nation’s communications systems from cybersecurity threats” has turned into concrete moves against high‑risk Chinese‑linked hardware in US networks, while the Department of Treasury has sanctioned entities tied to Salt Typhoon, and the FBI is literally offering a $10 million bounty for tips on that crew. That’s lawfare plus wallet‑warefare: make it painful to do Beijing’s bidding.

Now, effectiveness check. The good news: faster advisories, coordinated patch deadlines, more aggressive sanctions, and bounties are raising the cost for Chinese operators. Industry is starting to respond with better default encryption, zero‑trust architectures, and AI‑assisted anomaly detection tuned specifically to PRC tradecraft.

The bad news: Warner is right that the US telecom ecosystem is still a “hodgepodge” built for profit, not security. Replacing insecure hardware, ripping out legacy gear, and enforcing minimum security baselines will cost billions, and carriers are dragging their feet. While Washington argues budgets, Salt Typhoon keeps quietly living in the walls.

So the tech shield is thicker than last year, but still full of legacy rust and political duct tape. Until encryption is ubiquitous, patching is near‑real‑time, and insecure gear is ripped out at scale, Chinese state hackers will keep finding seams to pry open.

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This is your Tech Shield: US vs China Updates podcast.

Hey listeners, Ting here, your favorite China-watching, packet-sniffing cyber nerd, and this week the US–China tech shield got some serious upgrades…with some very on-brand gaps.

Let’s start on Capitol Hill. According to Akin Gump’s breakdown of the new FY2026 defense authorization bill, Congress just shoved a truckload of cyber muscle into the Pentagon’s toolkit, clearly with China in mind. Lawmakers are pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into US Cyber Command, locking in its “dual-hat” link to the NSA, and ordering tougher defenses around critical infrastructure and Indo‑Pacific‑relevant assets. Translation: they’ve finally admitted that Chinese operators don’t just want your data; they want the power grid, the ports, and the rail lines that move the tanks.

JDSupra notes that same bill forces the Defense Department to harden senior officials’ mobile phones with strong encryption, anti‑tracking, and continuous monitoring, and to bake AI-specific threats into everyone’s cyber training. That’s basically Washington saying, “Yes, Beijing’s AI‑driven hacking is real, and no, General, you can’t keep using that sketchy messaging app.”

Now zoom to Congress’s new obsession: Chinese hardware in US networks. Nextgov reports that Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi dropped a bill to phase out LiDAR systems made by companies tied to the Chinese Communist Party from federal use and critical infrastructure. If you’re wondering why lasers suddenly matter, it’s because those sensors can quietly map ports, highways, and energy sites in exquisite detail. Krishnamoorthi calls them a “silent gateway” into American infrastructure, and he’s not wrong; that’s prime targeting data for PLA cyber and electronic warfare.

Meanwhile, on the pure cyber front, The Hacker News says CISA is screaming about active exploitation of a new React2Shell vulnerability. That’s your weekly reminder that while Congress designs grand strategy, Chinese-linked groups are happily smashing unpatched servers today. The government advisories are clear: patch now or become an unwitting node in someone’s botnet.

Here’s the gap: New Hampshire Business Review’s 2025 recap makes it painfully obvious that fragmented tools and checkbox compliance still fail against campaigns like China’s Salt Typhoon, which quietly lived in global telecom backbones for years. The US is throwing laws, budgets, and warnings at the problem, but without integrated defenses and real operational discipline in companies, Chinese actors still live “left of boom.”

Expert take? The upgrades are real and overdue: better funding, AI-aware training, hardware bans, and supply‑chain scrutiny are exactly the right direction. But the US still lags China in deployment speed and ruthlessness. Beijing moves from concept to capability fast; Washington moves from hearing to pilot program to “we’ll report back next year.”

So, listeners, the tech shield is thicker, but it’s not airtight. Think progress, not victory lap.

Thanks for tuning in, and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss your next cyber intel drop with me, Ting. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

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This is your Tech Shield: US vs China Updates podcast.

Hey listeners, I’m Ting, and this week the US–China cyber chessboard lit up like a misconfigured data center.

Let’s start with the big fire drill: the React2Shell vulnerability, CVE-2025-55182. CISA warned that attackers are actively exploiting this bug in React Server Components and frameworks like Next.js, letting a single unauthenticated HTTP request drop arbitrary code on servers. The Hacker News reports that exploitation has gone global, with Cloudflare’s Cloudforce One seeing intense scanning of US and allied networks, including government sites, academic labs, and critical‑infrastructure operators. Some scans even deliberately skipped Chinese IP space, which, let’s be honest, is a pretty loud hint about likely tasking.

In response, CISA yanked React2Shell to the top of its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog and moved the federal patch deadline up to December 12, a rare acceleration that tells you how nervous Washington is about a China-aligned actor turning this into strategic access at scale. Wiz and Kaspersky both say they’re watching mass exploitation, with more than 88,000 US systems still exposed as of December 11, according to Shadowserver.

Now zoom out to the policy layer. Akin Gump’s analysis of the new FY 2026 defense authorization bill shows Congress shovel-feeding capabilities to US Cyber Command and locking in its “dual-hat” relationship with NSA. The bill pushes more money into cyberspace operations, bans cuts to NSA-certified red teams, and hardens the basics: encrypted mobile devices for senior officials, AI-specific threat content in mandatory cyber training, and stricter rules for using commercial cloud for high-risk systems. All of that is clearly written with China, Russia, Iran, and “foreign entities of concern” in mind—but China is explicitly named as the pacing threat for supply-chain risk and Indo-Pacific contingency planning.

On the intelligence-sharing side, Nextgov reports that at a House global threats hearing, officials again labeled China the predominant cyber threat to the United States and warned that a bedrock data-sharing authority is at risk of expiring. That’s the plumbing that lets CISA, NSA, and the private sector swap indicators fast when groups like Volt Typhoon, or whoever’s behind these React2Shell campaigns, start moving.

So how good is the US tech shield right now? Tactically, pretty sharp: rapid CVE triage, accelerated patch deadlines, and a Congress that, at least this week, is writing big checks for Cyber Command instead of arguing about whether cyber is real. Strategically, there are gaps you could drive a PLA research cloud through: too many unpatched internet-facing apps, still-fragile information-sharing authorities, and a chronic lag between cutting-edge Chinese deployment of AI and US defenses built for last year’s threat model.

My expert take: the US is improving its armor, but China’s game is persistence plus scale. Until patching and secure-by-design stop being optional in American industry, Beijing’s operators will always find that one forgotten Next.js box in a dusty Kubernetes cluster and treat it like a golden ticket.

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This is your Tech Shield: US vs China Updates podcast.

Hey listeners, Ting here – your friendly neighborhood China-and-cyber nerd. Let’s jack straight into this week’s “Tech Shield: US vs China” feed.

The headline shift comes from a new Check Point analysis warning that the US has moved into a full-on “strategic cyber competition” phase with China and other state-aligned actors, where intrusions into government and critical infrastructure aren’t just spying anymore, they’re long-term beachheads designed to be flipped into disruption during a crisis. Check Point describes these as “strategic access actors” quietly camping inside power grids, health systems, and government networks, pre-positioned to coerce or disable the US if Taiwan or the South China Sea ever goes hot.

On the defense side, US agencies are leaning hard into guidance and coordination. CISA, NSA and their friends keep hammering critical infrastructure operators about locking down operational technology – those industrial control systems that run water, power, pipelines, ports – because that’s exactly where Chinese state-backed crews love to lurk. They’re pushing “secure-by-design” for OT vendors, strong authentication, and the very unsexy but lifesaving rule: if your industrial device is directly on the public internet, you are basically offering it as a practice target.

In parallel, MITRE just expanded its ATT&CK Evaluations to focus more on cloud and multi-platform espionage campaigns, explicitly to help defenders emulate state actors like China that blend identity abuse, supply chain compromise, and stealthy persistence across hybrid environments. That’s nerd-speak for: enterprises now get better test ranges to see if their shiny EDR and XDR tools can actually catch a stealthy PRC operator hopping from cloud to on-prem and back again.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers are sharpening the outer moat. Some senators are pushing tougher telecom and satellite security measures in the wake of Chinese-linked campaigns like Salt Typhoon, arguing that if your baseband and your space segment are compromised, everything else is cosplay. Others worry too much regulation will slow 5G, 6G, and commercial space innovation – which, ironically, could hand Beijing the edge anyway.

Industry, for once, isn’t just doomscrolling. US vendors are racing to bake AI into detection – think models trained specifically on Chinese tradecraft patterns – and rolling out managed threat-hunting for mid-sized utilities and hospitals that will never have a 24/7 in-house SOC. The catch? As Check Point points out, China is also using AI to accelerate zero-day discovery and social engineering, so we’re in an algorithmic arms race, not a one-sided upgrade.

Effectiveness check: the good news is US visibility and coordination are way better than even two years ago, and the shift toward preemptive “hunt forward” operations plus better public advisories is closing some of the easiest doors. The bad news is structural: critical infrastructure still runs on decades-old gear, patching windows are tiny, and a lot of smaller operators treat cyber like a paperwork problem, not an existential one. That’s the gap Chinese operators are betting on.

If I had to grade this week’s US tech shield against China: improving, but still too much legacy shrapnel in the stack and too many incentives to fix breaches after the fact instead of hardening before the next campaign.

Thanks for tuning in, listeners – don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss the next deep dive into the US–China cyber chessboard. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

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This is your Tech Shield: US vs China Updates podcast.

Hey listeners, Ting here, your friendly neighborhood China-cyber-nerd, and this week’s Tech Shield story is all about how the US is scrambling to harden the walls while Chinese operators keep rattling the doors.

Let’s start with the new fire drill: the React2Shell vulnerability, CVE-2025-55182. This is a critical remote code execution bug in React Server Components with a perfect 10.0 severity score. According to Infosecurity Magazine and Cybersecurity Review, China‑nexus groups Earth Lamia and Jackpot Panda jumped on it within hours of disclosure, aiming at more than two million exposed instances worldwide. Amazon’s CISO C.J. Moses wrote that AWS MadPot honeypots are seeing multiple Chinese state‑linked clusters probing this bug, while AWS rushes out Sonaris active defense rules, WAF protections, and perimeter blocking. The expert view? Great layered defenses in the cloud, but Moses basically waves a big neon sign: none of this replaces patching. The gap is brutal: too many US orgs still can’t patch internet‑facing apps in under 48 hours, and China’s betting on that lag.

CISA reacted fast, adding React2Shell to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog and setting a December 26 patch deadline for federal agencies, which is DC‑speak for “drop everything and fix this now.” That’s a big shift from slow advisory PDFs to hard timelines with accountability, but the blind spot is obvious: this mandate doesn’t touch state, local, and most private networks where a lot of critical infrastructure still lives.

Zooming out, The Hacker News and CyberDaily detail a broader China playbook: groups like Warp Panda and UNC5221 using BRICKSTORM malware to quietly burrow into VMware vCenter, especially in US legal, tech, and manufacturing environments. CrowdStrike calls out their deep cloud and virtualization chops. From my vantage point, that’s the real strategic threat: persistent access, not smash‑and‑grab ransomware. US defenders are finally treating ESXi, vCenter, and hypervisors as crown‑jewel assets, but segmentation and monitoring in virtual environments lag behind endpoint security by years.

On the policy side, Politico and Nextgov break down the new National Defense Authorization Act: billions more for US Cyber Command operations, a mandate for “enhanced security” mobile devices for top Pentagon officials, and preserved dual‑hat leadership with NSA to keep intel and cyber offense tightly fused. There’s also a Pentagon‑wide framework coming for securing AI and machine‑learning systems used in defense. Smart move, because the same LLMs the Pentagon loves can be weaponized by Chinese operators to automate recon and exploitation. But key programs for broader information‑sharing and state‑local cyber grants got left on the cutting‑room floor, which means your small-town utility is still playing defense in flip‑flops.

Industry is not just waiting around. Amazon is pushing automated guardrails for React2Shell. Health‑ISAC is warning hospitals about China‑linked exploitation and pushing tailored guidance. But as Fox’s David Shedd argues in his China IP‑theft piece, the US still hasn’t fully adapted its legal and intel machinery to economic and cyber espionage that runs through commercial channels, shell firms, and cloud providers.

Net assessment from Ting? The US is getting faster at spotting and flagging Chinese campaigns, better at funding Cyber Command, and more serious about AI security. But patch speed, legacy infrastructure, and uneven protections outside the federal bubble remain the soft underbelly that groups like Earth Lamia, Jackpot Panda, and Warp Panda are counting on.

Thanks for tuning in, listeners, and don’t forget to subscribe for more deep dives on China, cyber, and everything in between. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

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This is your Tech Shield: US vs China Updates podcast.

Hey listeners, Ting here – your friendly neighborhood China, cyber, and hacking nerd – and this week’s Tech Shield story is very much US versus China in the wires.

Let’s start with the big one: according to a joint advisory from CISA, the NSA, and the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, Chinese state‑sponsored hackers have been quietly camping inside government and IT networks using a custom malware family they’re calling Brickstorm. Reuters, Homeland Security Today, and Times of India all describe Brickstorm as the kind of toolkit you use when you’re not smashing windows, you’re copying keys: credential theft, long‑term persistence, and deep access into VMware vSphere environments that many US agencies and cloud providers rely on. Broadcom’s VMware team is basically begging customers to patch and harden their virtual infrastructure.

On the US defense side, that advisory wasn’t just “hey, bad stuff”: CISA pushed out fresh hardening guidance for critical infrastructure, including strict access control around virtualization stacks, continuous monitoring for anomalous admin behavior, and mandatory patching windows for exposed management consoles. Agencies are also leaning harder into zero‑trust: assume every login could be compromised, verify every step, log everything.

Speaking of patching, the bug of the week is the React2Shell remote‑code‑execution flaw, CVE‑2025‑55182, in popular React/Next.js stacks, flagged by Tenable Research and dissected on the AWS Security Blog. Multiple US security vendors report China‑nexus threat groups weaponizing public proof‑of‑concept exploits against unpatched web apps in finance, healthcare, and SaaS. The defensive playbook here is fast: emergency web app firewall rules, overnight code deploys, and mass password resets for any app that might have been scraped.

Zooming out, Homeland Security Today highlights that this Brickstorm episode lands just as CISA and the War Department are preparing to operationalize the new National Security Strategy and an upcoming six‑pillar national cybersecurity strategy. Those drafts, previewed by National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross at the Aspen Cyber Summit, put China and AI‑driven attacks at the center, and call for more aggressive “cost‑imposition” – think offensive cyber, sanctions, and criminal charges – alongside classic defense.

On emerging tech, a US‑allies warning covered by BankInfoSecurity and CISA stresses that dropping AI models into industrial control systems can open fresh attack surfaces. That’s a polite way of saying: if you bolt ChatGPT‑for‑Pipelines onto a power grid without security engineering, someone in Chengdu is already scanning for it.

Now, expert take: are these defenses working? Short term, yes – rapid advisories and patches blunt the sharpest edge of campaigns like Brickstorm and React2Shell. The fact that CISA can go from indicators of compromise to concrete mitigation guidance in days is a huge evolution from a decade ago. Industry response is also maturing: major cloud and virtualization players are shipping emergency updates and even default‑on hardening.

But the gaps are stubborn. First, persistence: the advisory notes Chinese operators maintained access at one victim from April 2024 to September 2025. That means detection and hunting are still far behind initial compromise. Second, fundamentals: HEAL Security’s recent analysis on healthcare cyber points out that organizations keep buying shiny tools while under‑investing in patching, configuration hygiene, and access control – exactly the basics Brickstorm and React2Shell prey on. Third, talent: the skills gap is widening faster than federal strategies are closing it, especially in state and local government and smaller critical‑infrastructure operators.

Most importantly, the US still treats too many of these campaigns as isolated “incidents” instead of a long, grinding strategic competition. China’s goal is durable access, data theft at scale, and options for future sabotage. The US response is improving, but to really close the gap, zero‑trust, continuous threat hunting, and secure‑by‑design software have to become boring, default reality, not emergency measures after the latest advisory drops.

That’s the Tech Shield story for this week. I’m Ting, thanks for tuning in, and don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss what China’s hackers – and America’s defenders – do next. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

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This is your Tech Shield: US vs China Updates podcast.

Hey listeners, Ting here. Let's dive straight into this week's cyber showdown between the US and China because things are getting spicy.

So here's the headline: China's not trying to blow up the power grid tomorrow. They're playing the long game. According to Michael Ball, CEO of the Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center, Volt Typhoon—basically China's state security service's hacking crew—is focused on maintaining ongoing access to US network systems for future potential disruptions. Think of it like they're leaving backdoors everywhere, waiting for the right moment to flip the switch. And that moment might come sooner than we'd like because Harry Krejsa from Carnegie Mellon's Institute for Strategy and Technology says China is preparing for conflict over Taiwan potentially in the very near term, and their strategy is literally to prevent the United States from mounting a successful rescue mission.

The kicker? Our infrastructure is basically Swiss cheese. According to Zach Tudor from the Idaho National Laboratory, China has embedded itself in our energy, communications, and water systems through operations called Volt Typhoon, Salt Typhoon, and Flax Typhoon. Our aging grid is a hodgepodge of digital tools sitting on top of an analog foundation, creating seams where adversaries can slip in like they own the place.

Now here's where it gets wild. Beyond just targeting infrastructure, China's weaponizing AI. According to recent analysis from retired Admiral Mike Studeman, the former commander of the Office of Naval Intelligence, China is developing military AI systems that interpret battlefield action and adjust tactics on the fly. An AI-assisted cyber intrusion in September by a Chinese state-sponsored group even targeted Anthropic's Claude AI system, steering it to penetrate government agencies and financial institutions. At peak attack, the AI made thousands of requests per second—something human hackers couldn't dream of matching.

But there's more. North Korean actors are literally infiltrating US companies using fake job applicants, according to threat researcher Tom Hegel from SentinelOne. They're recruiting Americans to buy laptops at Micro Center and plug them into home networks. It's surprisingly effective and massively hard to detect.

On the defense side, Congress is calling for expanded funding and programs like the Energy Threat Analysis Center. Utility executives like Tim Lindahl from Kenergy are urging reauthorization of the Rural and Municipal Utility Cybersecurity Program worth 250 million dollars. Meanwhile, according to Representative Robert Menendez from New Jersey, recent administrative actions cut 5.6 billion in funding for state and local grid hardening programs and fired over a thousand cybersecurity staff.

The reality? No major blackouts have been attributed to cyberattacks yet, but according to Ball, the threat landscape is dynamic and requires continuous vigilance. We're essentially in an arms race where China's setting conditions for conflict while the US scrambles to patch holes in infrastructure that's older than some of your coffee makers.

Thanks for tuning in, listeners. Make sure you subscribe for more deep dives into the cyber warfare happening right now. This has been a Quiet Please production. For more, check out quietplease.ai.

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