Extraordinary US–China Cyberattack Meeting Revealed

A member of an alleged Chinese hacking group is seen in this file photo. Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

The Wall Street Journal recently revealed that an unprecedented meeting occurred in Geneva in December 2024 that addressed the ongoing series of cyberattacks on U.S. critical infrastructure. In this meeting, described as a “summit,” about 12 U.S. national security officials engaged in candid discussions with their Chinese counterparts.

This meeting was the first acknowledgment by China that the Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon cyberintrusions originated with the Chinese regime.

The Journal reported, “The Chinese official’s remarks at the December meeting were indirect and somewhat ambiguous, but most of the American delegation in the room interpreted it as a tacit admission and a warning to the U.S. about Taiwan, a former U.S. official familiar with the meeting said.”

Chinese Cyberassaults

Volt Typhoon was first publicly reported in early 2023, as Microsoft and the Department of Homeland Security revealed cyberintrusions into critical infrastructure in Guam. A Chinese state-sponsored group was the announced culprit, and one U.S. official said this was part of a broader Chinese intelligence-gathering system.

The department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released an advisory that described Volt Typhoon as “living off the land,“ a new cybersecurity buzz phrase referring to a cyberactor’s use of ”built-in network administration tools” to complete objectives. One article posited that this event signaled preparation for a Chinese attack.

In 2024, congressional testimony by then-FBI Director Christopher Wray and then-CISA Director Jen Easterly was sobering. Easterly characterized the Chinese actions starkly, saying, “This is truly an ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ scenario.”

The Journal article, published on April 10, provided further information on the motives of the Chinese regime.

“The Chinese delegation linked years of intrusions into computer networks at U.S. ports, water utilities, airports and other targets, to increasing U.S. policy support for Taiwan ... underscoring how hostilities between the two superpowers are continuing to escalate,” the article reads.

Leadership Accountability for Cyber Failures

In his first term, President Donald Trump’s initial executive order on cybersecurity stressed one theme: leadership accountability.

The executive order states: “The President will hold heads of executive departments and agencies (agency heads) accountable for managing cybersecurity risk to their enterprises.

“In addition, because risk management decisions made by agency heads can affect the risk to the executive branch as a whole, and to national security, it is also the policy of the United States to manage cybersecurity risk as an executive branch enterprise.”

In other words, the Trump administration will consider cyberbreaches a direct reflection of the senior leadership of the affected departments and agencies.

The revelation of the December 2024 Geneva meeting may provide further background on the recent leadership changes at Fort Meade, Maryland.

Beijing’s cybercampaign has been relentless since early 2023. It targets the full spectrum of U.S. critical infrastructure, including power, water, telecommunications, air traffic control, and maritime navigation-related systems.

A Cyber ‘Plucking’ to Ensure Best Leadership

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s initial national security adviser during his first term, said that “there are more flag officers [generals and admirals] that need to go.”

He called this “a ‘Marshall moment,’” referring to the “plucking” board used by Gen. George Marshall before and during World War II to eliminate unfit officers.

Herm Hasken, retired military officer and senior adviser to several cyberwarfare and electronic warfare companies, said, “The public is only getting a portion of the whole story regarding the size and scope of China’s intrusions across all 16 sectors of our critical infrastructure.”

Retired Secret Service senior executive Robert Rodriguez said industry practitioners are extremely concerned about the Chinese regime’s Salt Typhoon cyberattacks.

Rodriguez helped establish the early cybercapabilities of the Secret Service. He is still active in cybersecurity innovation efforts.

“The threat was so serious they formed a coalition of U.S. and Canadian [chief information security officers] to host a series of ongoing workshops” to address the broad and pervasive Chinese cyberintrusions, Rodriguez said.

He said the Chinese regime is “by far the No. 1 threat” to the United States and the world.

In December 2024, a Senate hearing dove deeply into the Salt Typhoon cyberattacks. The bipartisan dissatisfaction in Congress regarding the U.S. government’s inability to shut down and remove Chinese cyberintruders was evident.

“I think the American people need to know the extent of the breach here, I think they will be shocked at the extent of it,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said at the time. “I think they need to know about their text messages, their voicemail, their phone calls. It’s very bad, it’s very, very bad, and it is ongoing.”

Then-Senate Select Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.), who has direct experience as an executive in the telecommunications market, said at the time that he was concerned about the unaddressed “gaping holes” in the U.S. cybersecurity posture.

“I think there is huge concern,” Warner told reporters. He called the Salt Typhoon breach “far and away the worst telecom hack.”

“And the fact is that they are still in the systems,” he said.

The unabated and continuous Chinese cyberassault, confirmed by The Wall Street Journal’s revelation of the high-level Geneva summit between the outgoing U.S. national security team and Chinese officials, may be a significant factor driving changes in U.S. cybersecurity leadership.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.