Chinese government hackers steal designs of advanced U.S. weapons systems

industrial secrets from American corporation, China is also hastening its ascent to a position of military parity with the United States – and, eventually, strategic superiority – by stealing advanced military technology from U.S. defense contractors.

“You’ve seen significant improvements in Chinese military capabilities through their willingness to spend, their acquisitions of advanced Russian weapons, and from their cyber-espionage campaign,” James Lewis, a cyber-policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies told the Post. “Ten years ago, I used to call the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] the world’s largest open-air military museum. I can’t say that now.”

The situation could impose “severe consequences for U.S. forces engaged in combat,” he added.

The Defense Board report says that China’s increasing cyber capabilities, coupled with the intimate knowledge of U.S. weapon and communication systems Chinese military planners have gained through cyber-espionage campaign, would allow the Chinese military to sever communication links critical to the operation of U.S. forces, and engage in a systemic data corruption to misdirect U.S. operations. Stokes says that “if [the Chinese] have a better sense of a THAAD design or PAC-3 design, then that increases the potential of their ballistic missiles being able to penetrate our or our allies’ missile defenses.”

American military commanders have expressed their concerns publicly.  General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral James Winnefeld Jr., the vice chairman, and General Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency and commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, have all said the breaches pose a threat to U.S. security.

“In many cases, they [U.S. defense contractors] don’t know they’ve been hacked until the FBI comes knocking on their door,” a senior military official told thePost. “This is billions of dollars of combat advantage for China. They’ve just saved themselves 25 years of research and development. It’s nuts.”

Two years ago the Pentagon started a program to help defense contractors bolster their network defenses by, among other things, allowing the National Security Agency (NSA) to share  classified threat data about malware with the companies.

The Chinese military hackers tried to get around that move by focusing their cyberattacks on subcontractors.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney commented:  

“It is an issue that we raised at every level in our meetings with our Chinese counterparts, and I’m sure will be a topic of discussion when the president meets with President Xi in California in early June,” Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One.