National Defense

Chinese Hackers Have Been Feasting On Key US Infrastructure On Biden’s Watch

Flickr/Official White House Photo by Carlos Fyfe

China-linked hackers successfully targeted federal agencies and crucial U.S. infrastructure with cyberattacks on the Biden administration’s watch, highlighting major vulnerabilities that could be exploited to disastrous effect.

Cybercriminals tied to China have successfully targeted federal officials and agencies, telecommunications companies and utility infrastructure since the start of 2023, indicating that important systems are vulnerable to cyberattacks emanating from or supported by Beijing. American officials must wake up to the threat given China’s declared interest in taking control of Taiwan, particularly because the problem is likely much more pervasive than the public understands it to be, according to cybersecurity experts who spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“It’s really very serious, and people do not understand the magnitude of the potential damage. Almost every system we use today is connected in some way to the internet: hospitals, medical system, cars, utilities. Everything that’s digital and has computers in it could potentially suffer failures if compromised by hacking,” Joseph Steinberg, a cybersecurity expert who advises companies on the subject, told the DCNF. “There’s no question that the Biden administration did not take this issue as seriously as it should have.”

Steinberg added that American dependence on inexpensive Chinese tech products also presents a major vulnerability, and that Biden administration policies designed to make the U.S. more self-sufficient — including the CHIPS Act of 2022 — have mostly failed on account of being too diluted by politically-motivated provisions to effectively accomplish their goals.

In the closing days of 2024, the Treasury Department — an agency involved in setting policy pertaining directly to Chinese interests — disclosed that China-linked hackers managed to breach its systems, with The Washington Post reporting that the culprits accessed the office that deals with economic sanctions. That intrusion followed news of a major China-tied hack of at least nine major American telecommunications companies and disclosures of 2023 breaches that successfully targeted the emails of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and officials in the State Department.

However, Raimondo still ventured to China for meetings with Chinese officials after the hacking attack targeting her emails, reportedly telling her counterparts that the breach eroded her trust in them while she was on the trip. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called off a scheduled diplomatic trip to Beijing after a Chinese spy ballon traversed across the U.S. in early 2023.

Beyond their demonstrated ability to breach telecommunications and government systems, China-linked cybercriminals are also capable of shutting down many major U.S. ports and segments of the power grid, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan reportedly told President Joe Biden in 2023, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Biden administration also issued a May 2024 alert warning water utilities and sewage companies to steel vulnerable systems against hacking groups linked to or based out of adversarial countries, including China, amid an uptick in incidents involving their systems.

Major attacks against U.S. infrastructure by Chinese hackers are thought to have started as early as 2019, if not before, and some U.S. officials believe that some of the intrusions are intended to breach American supply lines and disrupt the U.S. response to a possible Chinese move against Taiwan, according to the WSJ. Some specific incidents include gaining access to a regional airport’s systems and a California utility company, probing the latter to figure out how it may respond to a crisis.

“I think the one silver lining to all of that is we are beginning to discover some of these sorts of major computer network exploits or attacks in advance,” Frank Cilluffo, the director of Auburn University’s McCray Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Security, told the DCNF. “I do think that the severity and the consequence, quite honestly, we’re very early in the ability to assess and evaluate just how significant they are. My gut tells me, if you see the tip of an iceberg, it’s probably going to be a whole lot deeper.”

Chinese cyberattackers were thought in the past to be somewhat sloppy in their work and principally interested in stealing U.S. trade secrets, but the emerging picture of Chinese penetration across crucial infrastructure and cyber systems has shocked some American officials and legislators who have received briefings on the issue, according to the WSJ.

“The issue is alarmingly widespread. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has confirmed that Chinese hackers are already inside key parts of our power grid and utilities,” Miles Pollard, an economic policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, told the DCNF. “This not only risks our infrastructure but also gives China leverage in geopolitical and economic conflicts …Their ability to subtly manipulate data over long time spans or linger in systems for months or years undetected is the less obvious, but more sinister, threat. This could allow for strategic sabotage during a crisis or long-term intelligence gathering to preempt our responses.”

The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment.