The DoD’s Critical Infrastructure Is Dangerously Insecure
As a nation, we must demand accountability for safeguarding our mission-critical infrastructure and action from our legislators and DoD leaders.
by Alison King Michael McLaughlin
As simmering tensions in East Asia rise to a boil, the recent discovery of a Chinese penetration of the U.S. military’s telecommunication systems in Guam should be setting off alarm bells across the executive branch and in the halls of Congress. Though Chinese penetration of U.S. networks for espionage has been well documented for more than two decades, the targeting of critical infrastructure represents a significant escalation by China and highlights critical vulnerabilities the Department of Defense (DoD) needs to immediately address.
Though the United States tends to view warfare as a challenge for the military to confront, our enemies have a vastly different outlook.
America’s adversaries are always eager to deny or degrade our military’s ability to mobilize globally and execute national security objectives at scale. The war in Ukraine, saber-rattling in the South China Sea, and a U.S. presidential election on the horizon further exacerbate geopolitical tensions. Lately, they have succeeded by exploiting vulnerabilities in operational technology (OT) devices that control much of our critical infrastructure.
The recent discovery of Chinese malicious code embedded in the telecommunications systems used by the U.S. military in Guam, which is home to three strategic U.S. bases, sent waves through the national security community. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) currently uses cyberspace to achieve espionage and intellectual property theft objectives. However, they aspire to use malware hidden in our critical networks to disrupt our response to a future CCP invasion of Taiwan. This cannot be overstated: denying the availability of weapon systems in the garrison is as effective as destroying them on the battlefield.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/techland/dod%E2%80%99s-critical-infrastructure-dangerously-insecure-206832
