It seems that the innumerable attempts to hack into US government computers – even seemingly innocuous systems – have had far-reaching consequences. When you put together information from several otherwise disconnected systems, quite often 2 + 2 = 4.
The CIA has concluded that their overseas espionage efforts have suffered long-term damage as a result of several hacking operations that obtained personnel records for most of the U.S. population. Large scale data thefts apparently began at least a decade ago and reached a pinnacle when the U.S. government personnel office, or OPM (Office of Personnel Management), had its entire database of detailed records on 22 million current and former government employees, including data on people who had applied for jobs and did not get one, copied by hackers in 2014. Intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, realized that could have a catastrophic effect on American espionage efforts overseas as well as counterintelligence (catching spies) in the United States. The damage has come to pass and has been worse than anyone imagined. The OPM hack was traced back to China although earlier large-scale data hacks may have been the work of Russians or freelancers who knew China would pay a good price for such data.
The OPM hack got everyone’s attention but when it was considered in light of the many other hacking events before and after 2014 that made off with large quantities of personnel data that, taken together, gave Chinese intel analysts a comprehensive picture of the American population. Not just currently but in the future. The Chinese soon had a better database on the American population than any U.S. government agency or commercial firm. The CIA was one of the first U.S. agencies to discover how damaging that was first hand. After 2010 the CIA not only began losing a large network of informants and operatives inside China, but eventually in all foreign nations. This was most visible in how the Chinese counterespionage agents would, after 2014, no longer go to great lengths to conceal their efforts as new American agents, including those whose CIA employment was unknown to anyone, even most family members, back home, were identified and monitored by the Chinese secret police as soon as the CIA personnel arrived. But the Chinese always knew and eventually they were flaunting it. This was an intimidation tactic and it worked. China was using George Orwell’s 1940 novel “1984” as a how-to manual rather than a cautionary tale.
There’s more at the link.
The article also goes into detail about how China uses a network of its citizens studying abroad, and other individuals of Chinese origin, to spy on other nations. It’s breathtaking in the extent to which it’s been used – and succeeded. Effectively, China has made few or no technological advances of its own. It’s simply stolen the work of others, adapted it, and used it.
Food for thought indeed.
Peter
Two thirds of the Chinese people who have arrived in the USA since Nixon are spies. That's what we have confirmed. We're not sure about the rest.
The Chinese used the data from the opm database to look for pay rates and locations to identify who was a cia asset. A brilliant use of big data. What happened per another article (I can’t remember where I read this) was China’s leadership became alarmed after they found how high American spies had gotten in the Chinese hierarchy, due to their ability to buy their positions with cia cash. They were identified during the Obama administration fuecto use of a cia internet message system that Iran identified and shared how to track. The result was the US Chinese spy network was rolled up.
Plus, look at what Fang Fang signifies. The Chinese were targeting up and coming Democratic mayors using sex. Very long term thinking that is brilliant.
Plus the use of invitation only investments as a way to bribe the elites.
Plus funding for universities and think tanks.
Plus the use of / threat of commercial retaliation as a way to get businesses to censor themselves such as the nba, etc.
Plus the use of Hauwei Telecom equipment for back doors into any country using it.
I’m in awe of the Chinese spying ability.
Is it true that several of the board members of Dominion, who made the voting machines, are Chinese nationals? You know, the ones who counted the votes?
Y'all are both stupid, and very, very late to the show.
There was no "OPM hack". That's revisionist history that conceals the worst of it all. What happened was that the incoming Obama administration put a Democratic Party hack, whose sole qualification to the job was that she'd worked housing policy for Mayor Cisneros in Denver. That was the sum total of her qualifications–Nothing at all in terms of data security or anything else.
The permanent non-appointed bureaucrats told her upon her taking over that they had severe security issues coming up. She did nothing, and indeed, ensured that the subcontract for a lot of the IT work went to a Democrat-backed company. Which then put the work into the hands of foreign nationals, quite against policies that she'd waivered.
This was a deliberate act on the part of the Democratic Party and its Republican enablers, because none of this was ever brought up and/or investigated in Congress. Just like the crew of Pakistanis working IT for the Democratic Party congressional delegation was never properly investigated.
Face it–They sold us out years ago, and are still selling us out. They're not going to stop until they have sold off every asset they can, and monetized it just like they did with Loral back in the 1990s.
"Hack", my ass. This was part of a bust-out, and someone in the oligarchy made mint doing it. Then, they had the gall to offer up as recompense for selling our personal data some cheap-jack low-bid "credit monitoring", as though that were the problem.
Bastards. When the day comes, and I'm watching them all swing from the limbs of the cherry trees along the Mall, I'm not going to feel the least little pity for them. They'll have earned their fates, and then some.