Fake news: “The Biden administration is beginning to retaliate against China for its sweeping hack of U.S. telecommunications companies earlier this year” (CBS News, December 18, 2024).
I’m going by the article itself in declaring the above to be a fictitious assertion, for the article then says: “Last week the Commerce Department issued a notice to China Telecom Americas, the U.S. subsidiary of one of China’s largest communications firms, alleging in a preliminary finding that its presence in American telecom networks and cloud services poses a national security risk. The company has 30 days to respond, although the Commerce Department has not said what action it plans to take next.”
“We’ve found that you’re part and parcel of a huge national security threat originating in China, and in order to begin to take immediate action to retaliate against this threat and secure the arena in which you constitute a threat, we don’t know what we’re going to do! You have 30 days to respond!”
It seems that a previous expulsion of China Telecom Americas either did or did not do the trick:
It’s unclear what the impact on China Telecom [of having to come up with a response in 30 days] would be, since the FCC has already limited China Telecom Americas’ ability to operate in U.S. communications infrastructure. In October 2021, the FCC revoked its license to provide phone services in the US.
The FCC found that China Telecom “is subject to exploitation, influence, and control by the Chinese government and is highly likely to be forced to comply with Chinese government requests without sufficient legal procedures subject to independent judicial oversight.”
If this is what the FCC found in 2021, it is unclear why there would be a single electron of China Telecom Americas lawfully remaining within the U.S. communications infrastructure.
Jim Himes, a Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has a better idea than giving 30-day deadlines to respond as a way of responding to China’s “sweeping hack of U.S. telecommunications companies earlier this year.” Himes says: “We are going to go into their networks and give as good as we got.”
More recently, national security advisor nominee Mike Waltz has said: “We need to start going on offense and start imposing, I think, higher costs and consequences to private actors and nation-state actors that continue to steal our data, that continue to spy on us.”
We are hopefully definitely maybe going to begin to respond a little more firmly to sweeping Chinese Communist Party cyber incursions, starting in 30 days.
Also see:
StopTheChinazis.org: “How to Thwart China’s Cyberattacks”
“What to do? For a start: close the back doors. The next chance to sunset Public Law No: 118-49 comes in less than two years. Meanwhile, we have a company, its address, its stock, more. But we’re combatting its projects while leaving the firm itself alone.”
