By Matthew Holloway – Trending Political News
Breaking reports Monday from the Washington Post and Fox News have indicated that a large-scale infiltration of American infrastructure and about two dozen “critical U.S. Services” is underway, and has been for the past year. Oil and gas pipelines, electrical grids, and local utilities have been targeted.
Fox News’ Alexandria Hoff reported from Washington reported on the attack Tuesday morning citing the Washington Post.
WATCH:
“It is very clear that Chinese attempts to compromise critical infrastructure are in part to pre-position themselves to be able to disrupt or destroy that critical infrastructure in the event of a conflict, to either prevent the United States from being able to project power into Asia or to cause societal chaos inside the United States — to affect our decision-making around a crisis,” Brandon Wales, executive director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said according to WaPo.
“That is a significant change from Chinese cyber activity from seven to 10 years ago that was focused primarily on political and economic espionage.”
The concerted attack known as “Volt Typhoon” conducted by hackers affiliated with China’s People’s Liberation Army is part and parcel of a “broader effort to develop ways to sow panic and chaos or snarl logistics in the event of a U.S.-China conflict in the Pacific,” experts told the Post.
As of Monday, it is known that a water utility in Hawaii, at least one major West Coast Port, at least one oil and natural gas pipeline, and the independent power grid of Texas were targeted. The experts cited by the publication specifically noted that U.S. officials indicated that industrial control systems that operate pumps, pistons, and critical functions were not affected or disrupted.
However, the officials noted that the attention to Hawaii, the home of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, a major West Coast Port, which could be either San Diego or Seattle-Tacoma, both homes to major U.S. Navy installations suggests the Chinese military is seeking to stymie U.S. mobilization capabilities “to complicate U.S. efforts to ship troops and equipment to the region if a conflict breaks out over Taiwan.”
Many of the attacks were reportedly executed through innocuous devices such as home and office internet routers to avoid detection. Morgan Adamski, director of the National Security Agency’s Cybersecurity Collaboration Center, confirmed via email to WaPo that the attack “appears to be focused on targets within the Indo-Pacific region, to include Hawaii.”
Joe McReynolds, a China security studies fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, said about the attacks, “This is stuff they pretty clearly see as relevant to a Taiwan scenario.”