The FBI recently took out a massive internet scam network, arresting over 300 people, freeing over 2,000 people from human trafficking, and seizing over $8 billion in cryptocurrency. 
The FBI said last week that it primarily focused on taking down what it <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/fbi-seizes-record-8-billion-182232782.html">calls</a> “scam compounds” in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The scam compounds are typically guarded and filled with trafficked workers who are forced to conduct romance scams and fake investment schemes that target many Americans. Over 2,000 people were freed from the compounds. 
The operation focused on Prince Holding Group, a company in Cambodia. Authorities also took out a criminal compound in Dubai, Myanmar, and Thailand. Altogether, the FBI seized over 127,000 bitcoin from the nine scam compounds, which is over $8 billion, making it the largest crypto seizure in human history.
<iframe style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; max-width: 100%; width: 100%; border: 0; height: auto;" title="DW Player" src="https://public.dailywire.com/preroll-player/embed.html?playback-id=NJImACtyd8qr901jiXzUj00P9jus01iozN02&amp;ad-tag-url=https%3A%2F%2Fpubads.g.doubleclick.net%2Fgampad%2Fads%3Fiu%3D%2F61914415%2Fdw.video.article%26description_url%3Ddailywire.com%26url%3D%26tfcd%3D0%26npa%3D0%26sz%3D640x480%26min_ad_duration%3D5000%26max_ad_duration%3D60000%26gdfp_req%3D1%26unviewed_position_start%3D1%26vpos%3Dpreroll%26output%3Dvast%26plcmt%3D1%26env%3Dvp%26vpa%3Dclick%26vpmute%3D0%26impl%3Ds%26correlator%3D%5Bcachebuster%5D" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
The United States worked with Dubai police to arrest 275 people, six of whom will be transported to the United States to face federal charges.
FBI Director Kash Patel, said the major crackdown gives a clear message to scammers across the world.
&#8220;If you target Americans, we will find you, disrupt your network, and bring every available tool of the federal government down on you,” Patel <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/fbi-seizes-record-setting-8-billion-cryptocurrency-amid-intercontinental-scam-compound-crackdown">told</a> Fox News. 

The FBI also took down the &#8220;Democratic Karen Benevolent Army,” an armed militia in Myanmar that has ties to Chinese mobsters and has been engaging in this criminal scam network..
The U.S. seized thousands of smartphones and other office equipment in Thailand, severely crippling the scam infrastructure there.
During the whole operation, the FBI <a href="https://x.com/jacobincambodia/status/2060184532104700246">worked</a> with the Royal Thai police, the Burmese army, Dubai’s police, and some Chinese investigators. The FBI also utilized Elon Musk’s Starlink to take down over 7,000 terminals in Myanmar that criminals were using to facilitate communications.
The FBI’s 2025 &#8220;Internet Crime Report&#8221; <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/cryptocurrency-and-ai-scams-bilk-americans-of-billions">states</a> that Americans have been defrauded of $21 billion in cyber-related crimes, with AI and crypto-related scams being the costliest. 
 
Apprehending these con artists and hackers is difficult as the internet allows them to be scattered across the world, seemingly untouchable by American authorities.

FBI Makes Largest Crypto Seizure Ever In Global ‘Scam Compound’ Crackdown

Africa

Cambodia

China

Communist China

Crime

Cryptocurrency

Cyberattack

Cybercrime

Cybersecurity

fbi director

India

kash patel

Middle East

Myanmar

Organized crime

scams

Thailand

With an April 30 deadline now looming, Capitol Hill is locked in a high-stakes standoff over the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). What began in 2008 as a tool to close intelligence gaps has transformed into a digital-age lightning rod, pitting the urgent demands of national security against a growing, bipartisan demand for Fourth Amendment privacy.
On Friday, the House and Senate <a href="https://www.nextgov.com/policy/2026/04/house-passes-10-day-fisa-extension-after-prospects-long-term-deal-collapse/412933/">passed</a> a 10-day extension of the program via unanimous consent after broader reauthorization efforts collapsed amid GOP divisions. This temporary measure, which moves the expiration date from April 20 to April 30, grants lawmakers a narrow window to negotiate as the Trump administration continues its push for a renewal without a warrant requirement.
At the heart of the &#8220;warrant debate&#8221; is whether the FBI should be required to get a judge&#8217;s permission before searching a database of intercepted foreign communications for information belonging to Americans. The Trump administration initially sought a &#8220;clean&#8221; 18-month extension of the law, which would exclude warrant reforms entirely. This bid, along with a separate five-year proposal that included FBI limits but no warrant requirement, unraveled in the House due to opposition from Democrats and GOP hardliners.
The intelligence community&#8217;s defense relies on several pillars:
<ul data-path-to-node="4">
<li>
Proven Results: In 2023, Section 702 provided 97% of the FBI’s raw technical reporting on cyber threats and assisted in military operations.
</li>
<li>
Operational Speed: Gen. Josh Rudd (NSA/Cyber Command) and the White House argue a warrant requirement acts as a &#8220;de facto ban,&#8221; slowing investigations into fast-moving threats from actors like Iran.
</li>
<li>
Compliance: Officials point to a 90% drop in U.S. person queries between 2021 and 2022, with a FISA Court-calculated compliance rate of over 98%.
</li>
</ul>
Conversely, a coalition of &#8220;privacy hawks&#8221; argues the system allows for &#8220;backdoor&#8221; searches. This debate has taken on a civil rights dimension, particularly regarding ethnic profiling. Statistics from the FBI’s 2023 transparency report indicate that while queries have dropped, &#8220;U.S. person&#8221; queries still numbered 119,383 in 2022. Additionally, AAPI organizations have highlighted that the lack of safeguards disproportionately affects minority communities; for instance, historical data has shown that Asian Americans are roughly twice as likely to be charged under the Economic Espionage Act than those of other backgrounds, fueling fears that FISA tools could amplify such disparities.
The current fight is more complex than the 2024 renewal. Three major &#8220;wildcards&#8221; are shaping the April 30 deadline:
<ol style="font-weight: 400;">
<li data-path-to-node="13,0,0">The Data Broker Loophole: Lawmakers are pushing the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, which would stop agencies from simply buying sensitive data — like location history — from private brokers to bypass the warrant process.</li>
<li data-path-to-node="13,1,0">Transatlantic Trade: The European Union has repeatedly threatened to curtail data flows, citing Section 702 as a violation of EU privacy standards. The $1.3 billion fine levied against Meta in 2023 highlighted how U.S. surveillance laws could directly <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/reforming-section-702-foreign-intelligence-surveillance-act-digital-landscape#:~:text=These%20privacy%20standards%20are%20lower,immediate%20threats%20of%20mass%20violence">threaten</a> $1.3 trillion in annual bilateral trade.</li>
<li data-path-to-node="13,2,0">The &#8220;Spy&#8221; Provision: Critics are still fighting to repeal a 2024 expansion that widened the definition of &#8220;electronic communication service providers,&#8221; which some fear could force a broader range of U.S. businesses to assist in state surveillance.</li>
</ol>
The Trump administration has already notified Congress that the FISA Court renewed program certifications for another year, but without Congressional authorization, tech companies may still challenge their obligation to comply. As the clock ticks toward April 30, Republican leaders must now decide whether to revise legislation to satisfy the House Freedom Caucus or lean on holdouts to align with the White House’s wishes.

Cyber intelligence team of experts in a governmental hacking room

A Quiet Deadline Could Leave America Blind To Terror And Cyber Threats

Congress

FISA

Terrorism

U.S.

On Tuesday, the House Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection held a hearing titled, “Defense through Offense: Examining U.S. Cyber Capabilities to Deter and Disrupt Malign Foreign Activity Targeting the Homeland.”
Chairman Andy Ogles (R-TN) opened the hearing by declaring that the United States can no longer rely solely on a defensive posture. Citing recent breaches like Salt Typhoon (targeting Congressional staff) and Volt Typhoon (targeting critical infrastructure), Ogles argued that adversaries — primarily China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea — operate with impunity because they face no meaningful consequences.
The consensus among the subcommittee and the witnesses was that the U.S. must shift toward a proactive, &#8220;industrial-scale&#8221; offensive strategy to alter the risk calculus of state-sponsored actors.
Joe Lin, the CEO of Twenty Technologies, Inc., provided a blunt assessment: the United States is currently losing the cyber war because it treats offensive operations as &#8220;bespoke,&#8221; elite activities while adversaries operate at &#8220;machine speed.&#8221;
Lin called for codifying operator tradecraft into automated software systems. He argued that one operator should be able to manage hundreds of targets simultaneously to match the scale of Chinese campaigns. He emphasized that &#8220;patching&#8221; alone will never secure critical infrastructure. Deterrence requires the demonstrated ability to impose asymmetric costs upstream before attacks reach U.S. soil.
Emily Harding, the vice president of the defense and security department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), focused on the &#8220;escalation ladder,&#8221; noting that adversaries currently control it because U.S. responses have been muted.
CSIS war games revealed that senior U.S. officials often freeze during cyber crises due to a lack of a shared framework for what constitutes an &#8220;act of war.&#8221; Harding proposed several key shifts: treating cyber-attacks that imperil life as kinetic attacks, flipping risk tolerance so that the default answer for an operation is &#8220;yes,&#8221; and creating a dedicated Cyber Force to consolidate talent.
Frank Cilluffo, the director of the McCrary Institute, argued that the U.S. has allowed adversaries to define its strategy. He pushed for &#8220;operational collaboration,&#8221; where the private sector — which owns the vast majority of infrastructure — is treated as a partner in active defense rather than a passive victim. He noted that campaigns like Salt and Volt Typhoon are &#8220;pre-positioning&#8221; efforts designed to be triggered during a future kinetic conflict (e.g., a Pacific contingency).
Drew Bagley, the chief privacy officer at CrowdStrike, offered a nuanced view, reinforcing the necessity of defense while supporting targeted offense. While he cautioned against a &#8220;federated&#8221; or &#8220;vigilante&#8221; hack-back regime due to risks of collateral damage, he supported more persistent disruption of malicious infrastructure. He recommended that CISA and the private sector maintain a prioritized list of threat actors to be dismantled systematically through coordinated law enforcement and military action.
The subcommittee discussed the severe workforce shortage. Witnesses noted that while thousands of personnel were lost during recent agency &#8220;right-sizing&#8221; (DOGE-related shifts), the solution isn&#8217;t just &#8220;more bodies.&#8221; AI is being used by the PRC to automate espionage; the U.S. must adopt &#8220;Agentic AI&#8221; to defend and counter-attack at the same speed. Suggestions included a &#8220;Cyber Reserve&#8221; (similar to the National Guard) and a &#8220;Teach for America&#8221; style program for cyber professionals to serve in rural areas in exchange for loan forgiveness.
Rep. Morgan Luttrell (R-TX) raised the critical issue of undersea cables, through which 95% of global data flows. There is currently no &#8220;single home&#8221; in the government for undersea cable security. Harding and Bagley called for an increase in repair ships and the use of AI-driven maritime surveillance to identify &#8220;anomalous&#8221; ship patterns (like &#8220;fishing&#8221; vessels lingering over cable lines) before they can sabotage infrastructure.
A major takeaway was the need to move past &#8220;tit-for-tat&#8221; cyber responses. Witnesses argued that if China hits a U.S. water plant, the U.S. shouldn&#8217;t necessarily hit a Chinese water plant; it should use diplomatic, economic, or kinetic tools to hit a &#8220;pain point&#8221; that the adversary actually values.
Ogles concluded by signaling a &#8220;forward-leaning&#8221; posture, emphasizing that the Monroe Doctrine now extends into the digital realm. The subcommittee intends to pursue &#8220;operational collaboration&#8221; between the private sector and government to ensure that any breach of American digital boundaries carries a significant, punishing price.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LZkm35vQv68?si=KYHJSUF6_LaMvLZS" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>

Faceless hackers and malware hackers use laptops with dangerous digital code on binary code background.

Beyond Defense: Congress Wants To Industrialize U.S. Cyber Offense

United States

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) warned on Sunday that the United States was quickly losing ground when it came to cybersecurity — and that communist China was stepping up its game equally quickly and had already &#8220;replaced Russia as the most formidable cyber threat.&#8221;
Bacon, who currently serves as Chairman of the Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation (CITI),  joined CBS host Margaret Brennan on &#8220;Face the Nation,&#8221; where he broke down the obvious threat following the news that state-sponsored Chinese hackers had already succeeded in carrying out the first Artificial Intelligence-driven cyber-espionage operation.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
“China has replaced Russia as the most formidable cyber threat,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) says after Anthropic announced Chinese hackers used its artificial intelligence technology in what the company believes is the first cyber-espionage operation largely carried out using AI.… <a href="https://t.co/kPC3W73pLY">pic.twitter.com/kPC3W73pLY</a>
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) <a href="https://twitter.com/FaceTheNation/status/1990108692834828456?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 16, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;AI firm Anthropic said that Chinese state-sponsored hackers used their technology to automate break-ins and carry out the first cyber-espionage operation largely carried out using AI, it hit like 30 different companies,&#8221; Brennan began, asking, &#8220;What can you tell us about the scope and the targets of this attack?&#8221;
&#8220;China has replaced Russia as the most formidable cyber threat,&#8221; Bacon replied. &#8220;They have much higher technology, they are using AI, which gives you a lot more capability at finding weaknesses in your adversaries&#8217; cyber-defenses.&#8221;
&#8220;What concerns me more than anything, while China is attacking us every single day — and Russia — we&#8217;ve had no commander in charge of cyber command for eight months,&#8221; Bacon continued, noting that the previous commander had been fired but hadn&#8217;t yet been replaced. &#8220;Also the top two positions at the National Security Agency are vacant.&#8221;
&#8220;Our cyber capabilities are going backward. We’re rudderless in a time when China is attacking us every day,&#8221; he concluded. &#8220;That’s something that really concerns me, and I’ve been pushing the White House to deal with this.&#8221;

House GOP Caucus Meets On Tuesday Morning

‘We’re Rudderless’: Lawmaker Warns That China Is Stepping Up Its Cyber-Threat Game As U.S. Flounders

'We're Rudderless': Lawmaker Warns That China Is Stepping Up Its Cyber-Threat Game As U.S. Flounders

Media

Politics

Chinese hackers unleashed the first autonomous AI cyberattack against dozens of U.S. companies and government agencies earlier this fall, with artificial intelligence executing “80-90%” of operations at “physically impossible” speeds.
The suspected Chinese state-sponsored hackers manipulated Anthropic’s AI coding tool, Claude, to target roughly 30 entities, including major technology corporations, financial institutions, chemical manufacturing companies, and U.S. government agencies, according to a detailed <a href="https://assets.anthropic.com/m/ec212e6566a0d47/original/Disrupting-the-first-reported-AI-orchestrated-cyber-espionage-campaign.pdf">report</a> published by Anthropic.
In what the company calls “the first documented case of a large-scale cyberattack executed without substantial human intervention,” the Chinese hackers bypassed Claude’s safeguards by claiming to be part of a credible cybersecurity firm conducting defensive testing.
This social engineering of Claude provided enough cover for the hackers to evade detection by the company for months, allowing the hackers to freely manipulate the coding tool into autonomously performing complex infiltration techniques “more efficiently than any human operator.”
“This campaign demonstrates that the barriers to performing sophisticated cyberattacks have dropped substantially—and we can predict that they’ll continue to do so,” Anthropic warned in its report. “Threat actors can now use agentic AI systems to do the work of entire teams of experienced hackers with the right set up.”
The attack required minimal human intervention, relying on Claude’s “agent” — a form of AI that can operate autonomously for long periods without human intervention — to substantially ease the workload for the hackers.
“Analysis of operational tempo, request volumes, and activity patterns confirms the AI executed approximately 80 to 90 % of all tactical work independently, with humans serving in strategic supervisory roles,” the report states, adding that each hacking campaign only required 4-6 critical decision points from the human operator.
“The AI made thousands of requests per second — an attack speed that would have been, for human hackers, simply impossible to match,” the company <a href="https://www.anthropic.com/news/disrupting-AI-espionage">said</a> in its blog post.
Once safeguards had been bypassed, Claude autonomously probed for vulnerabilities in the selected targets, wrote custom exploit code to harvest usernames and passwords, and exfiltrated the data with minimal human intervention.
Hackers have been utilizing AI for years to perform minor tasks, such as scanning the web for vulnerable sites and managing phishing attacks. However, the most recent hacking campaign has proven that AI is not far off from conducting fully autonomous cyberattacks, only held back by hallucinations that hinder autonomous offensive capabilities and safeguards implemented by companies like Anthropic.
The company reports that only four of the targeted institutions were successfully breached by the Chinese attacks, which managed to steal troves of sensitive information. The U.S. government was not among the institutions breached, Anthropic <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/china-hackers-ai-cyberattacks-anthropic-41d7ce76?mod=hp_lead_pos4">told</a> the Wall Street Journal.
Anthropic managed to stop the attack before more companies were breached, banning the hackers’ accounts and updating the methods used to identify similar attacks in the future.
Anthropic’s strategy is to focus on using Claude to identify vulnerabilities in its own defenses, thereby staying a step ahead of malicious hackers who exploit AI for autonomous attacks, per the Journal.
“These kinds of tools will just speed up things,” Logan Graham told the Journal, who leads the team that tests for vulnerabilities in Claude. “If we don’t enable defenders to have a very substantial permanent advantage, I’m concerned that we maybe lose this race.”

ChineseHacker

Chinese Hackers Hijack U.S. AI In First Autonomous Cyberattack

Artificial Intelligence

Hackers

World

Amazon.com said on Monday that a cloud computing unit at its data center in northern Virginia had largely contained fallout from a widespread internet outage that caused global turmoil among thousands of sites, including some of the web&#8217;s most popular apps like Snapchat and Reddit.
Amazon said it had addressed the underlying issue and was close to a resolution, but some users were still complaining of lingering difficulties using services such as digital wallet Venmo and video calling site Zoom. The disruption knocked workers from London to Tokyo offline and halted others from conducting normal everyday tasks like paying hairdressers or changing their airline tickets.
It was the largest internet disruption since last year&#8217;s CrowdStrike malfunction hobbled technology systems in hospitals, banks and airports, highlighting the vulnerability of the world&#8217;s interconnected technologies. It was at least the third time in five years that AWS&#8217;s northern Virginia cluster, known as US-EAST-1, contributed to a major internet meltdown.
Amazon did not address a request for more clarity about why that particular data center keeps being impacted, instead pointing to an online statement that said the matter had been &#8220;fully mitigated.&#8221; The problems stemmed from what is known as the Domain Name System, or DNS, which prevented applications from finding the correct address for AWS&#8217;s DynamoDB API, a cloud database relied upon to store user information and other critical data.
After hours of disruptions, many applications were gradually coming back online in the afternoon in the U.S. But AWS acknowledged that elevated errors were still affecting several services.
There were &#8220;tons of broken internal services still now as individual resolution and repair occurring,&#8221; read language from an internal problem ticket describing the outage and reviewed by Reuters.
Lambda, one of AWS&#8217;s computing services, was experiencing errors due to issues with an internal subsystem, AWS had said earlier. &#8220;We are taking steps to recover this internal Lambda system,&#8221; it said.
Earlier, AWS said the root cause of the outage was an underlying subsystem that monitors the health of its network load balancers used to distribute traffic across several servers.
The issue, AWS said, originated from within the &#8220;EC2 internal network.&#8221;
EC2 refers to Amazon&#8217;s &#8220;Elastic Compute Cloud&#8221; service, which provides on-demand cloud capacity within AWS. Businesses use EC2 to run virtual servers to develop, launch and host applications.
AWS had said earlier in the day it was seeing signs of recovery for EC2 use at a few data centers.
It was taking similar measures at the remaining locations and expects the problems to subside, AWS added, without providing a specific timeline.
While some apps like Reddit and Roblox had largely stabilized, according to outage tracking website Downdetector, others, including Snapchat and Duolingo, were showing a resurgence in issues seen earlier in the day.
Ken Birman, a computer science professor at Cornell University, said software developers need to build better fault tolerance into their code. He said AWS provides tools developers can use to protect themselves in the event of a problem at one of any of its sprawling network of data centers, and developers can also create backups with other cloud providers.
&#8220;When people cut costs and cut corners to try to get an application up, and then forget that they skipped that last step and didn&#8217;t really protect against an outage, those companies are the ones who really ought to be scrutinized later,&#8221; Birman told Reuters.
Join us now during our exclusive Deal of the Decade. Get everything for $7 a month. Not as fans. As fighters. Go to <a href="https://get.dailywire.com/subscribe/plus/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DailyWire.com/Subscribe</a> to join now.
AWS provides computing power, data storage and other digital services to companies, governments and individuals and is the world&#8217;s largest cloud provider, followed by Microsoft&#8217;s Azure and Alphabet&#8217;s Google Cloud.
Disruptions to its servers can cause outages across websites and platforms &#8211; ranging from food delivery apps to gaming platforms and airline systems &#8211; that rely on its cloud infrastructure.
AWS said on its status page that Monday&#8217;s outage originated at its US-EAST-1 location in northern Virginia, its oldest and largest for web services. The site suffered outages in 2021 and 2020.
According to documentation on the AWS website, the US-EAST-1 site is often the default region for many AWS services.
The problem highlights how interconnected everyday digital services have become and their reliance on a small number of global cloud providers, with one glitch wreaking havoc on business and day-to-day life, experts and academics said.
&#8220;This outage once again highlights the dependency we have on relatively fragile infrastructures,&#8221; said Jake Moore, global cybersecurity advisor at European cybersecurity firm ESET.
In Britain, Lloyd Bank, Bank of Scotland, and telecom service providers Vodafone and BT were all hit, according to Downdetector&#8217;s UK website, as was UK tax, payments and customs authority HMRC&#8217;s website.
&#8220;The main reason for this issue is that all these big companies have relied on just one service,&#8221; said Nishanth Sastry, director of research at the University of Surrey&#8217;s Department of Computer Science.
Ookla, which owns Downdetector, said over 4 million users reported issues due to the incident.
&#8220;For major businesses, hours of cloud downtime translate to millions in lost productivity and revenue,&#8221; said Ryan Griffin, U.S. cyber practice leader at insurance broker McGill and Partners.
Wall Street was largely unfazed, sending Amazon shares 1.6% higher to $216.48.
Ookla said at least a thousand companies were affected by the outage.
Snapchat last had over 7,500 reports on Downdetector, lower than the peak of more than 22,000 but still higher than the 4,000 outage instances at around 7:00 a.m. ET.
Artificial intelligence startup Perplexity, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and trading app Robinhood all experienced platform disruptions and attributed them to AWS.
Amazon&#8217;s own services, including its shopping website, Prime Video and Alexa, were also hit, although Downdetector last showed a decrease in severity.
Fortnite, owned by Epic Games; Clash Royale and Clash of Clans were among the gaming platforms affected. Uber rival Lyft was also knocked down in the United States.
In a post on X, Signal President Meredith Whittaker confirmed the messaging app was hit by the outage as well, though billionaire Elon Musk, who owns X, said his platform continued to work.
(Reporting by Shubham Kalia, Devika Nair, Ananya Palyekar and Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by James Pearson, Jaspreet Singh and Arsheeya Bajwa; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty, Joe Bavier, Richard Chang and David Gregorio)

Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services Nears Recovery After Major Outage Disrupts Apps, Services Worldwide

Amazon

Business

General

Internet

Imagine leaving your front door unlocked with a note that reads, “Back in 15. Please don’t steal the silverware.” That, in essence, is what the United States government — yes, including the Pentagon — may have unwittingly done through its long-standing relationship with Microsoft and the tech giant’s disturbingly lax attitude toward cybersecurity oversight.
Microsoft’s China-linked engineers should be setting off DEFCON-level alarms in Washington. Instead, we’ve mostly gotten silence, shrugs, and vague murmurs. According <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-tech-support-government-cybersecurity-china-doj-treasury">to reports</a>, Microsoft gave foreign nationals access to parts of the software that power critical U.S. military infrastructure.
You read that right. Engineers based in China, working for a U.S. tech behemoth under no formal federal contract, had proximity to the digital equivalent of the Pentagon’s control room.
Even worse? Microsoft allegedly failed to tell the Pentagon about it.
This is no small &#8220;oopsie.&#8221; We’re talking about a company that provides essential software infrastructure to every arm of the U.S. government — military included — quietly hiring engineers from a geopolitical rival with a track record of industrial espionage, cyber warfare, and digital sabotage. If you think China wouldn’t exploit this access, you haven’t been paying attention.
Microsoft has since responded to the report from <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/defense-department-pentagon-microsoft-digital-escort-china">ProPublica</a> that exposed the issue. “In response to concerns raised earlier this week about US-supervised foreign engineers, Microsoft has made changes to our support for US Government customers to assure that no China-based engineering teams are providing technical assistance for DoD Government cloud and related services,” stated Frank Shaw, Microsoft’s chief communications officer.
Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), however, is now asking some <a href="https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/chairman-cotton-to-hegseth-current-dod-agreements-and-practices-fail-to-account-for-threat-of-china">very pointed</a> questions, and rightly so. Why was this program not disclosed? Why were Chinese nationals permitted to work on products used by the Department of Defense? And who, exactly, at Microsoft thought this was a good idea?
<div id="attachment_954433" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-954433" class="size-large wp-image-954433" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2193887719-864x576.jpg" alt="WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 14: U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) questions U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth during his Senate Armed Services confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on January 14, 2025 in Washington, DC. Hegseth, an Army veteran and the former host of “FOX &amp; Friends Weekend” on FOX News will be the first of the incoming Trump administration’s nominees to face questions from Senators. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2193887719-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2193887719-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2193887719-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-2193887719.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images</div>
The problem isn&#8217;t just Microsoft&#8217;s apparent blind spot for national security. The deeper issue is how cavalier we&#8217;ve become with <a href="https://www.spyhunter.com/shm/why-is-endpoint-protection-important/">endpoint protection </a>— that last line of defense between a secure network and total compromise. Whether it&#8217;s a government agency or a private company, relying on outdated firewalls and blind trust in tech titans is like wearing a screen door for armor.
This is the same Microsoft, mind you, that in just the last year alone has racked up a staggering number of <a href="https://www.enigmasoftware.com/cve202553770zerodayvulnerability-removal/">Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs)</a>. These aren’t minor bugs; these are gaping holes in the digital fabric — many of which can be exploited with a single click. One CVE alone allowed hackers to access Outlook inboxes without requiring the user to even open an email. Just receiving it was enough. That’s not an email; that’s a digital landmine.
Add in the explosion of <a href="https://www.spywareremove.com/remove-fake-virus.html">tech support scams</a>, the thousands of reported of <a href="https://www.enigmasoftware.com/verificationfailedemailscam-removal/">phishing schemes</a>, and malware attacks that install silently with a <a href="https://www.cyclonis.com/remove-oneclik-malware/">single mistimed click</a>, and we’ve got ourselves a cyber hygiene crisis. Criminals and state-backed hackers alike have figured out that Americans are highly advanced at building systems, but dangerously naive at guarding them.
Want another cherry on this data breach sundae? Microsoft’s move to hire foreign engineers coincided with its transition to a &#8220;cloud-first&#8221; infrastructure. Translation: the very people with questionable loyalties were potentially helping build and maintain systems that store terabytes of sensitive U.S. government data — offsite, off-premises, and off the radar of traditional defense monitoring.
Here’s a scary thought: if you were a Chinese intelligence officer dreaming of getting into Pentagon systems, would you rather recruit a spy, build a malware strain, or just… get hired by Microsoft?
You can’t blame China for trying. The blame lies with Microsoft for leaving the vault open and pretending it’s a broom closet.
The solution isn’t to boycott Microsoft (though the pressure to modernize and secure their systems needs to be immediate and non-negotiable). The real fix lies in overhauling our government’s relationship with Big Tech. We need rigorous vetting of foreign hires working on national security products. We need independent audits of source code, vulnerability testing, and real-time threat modeling. And we absolutely need to build up our domestic cybersecurity talent pool so that we’re not outsourcing our digital sovereignty to countries with conflicting interests.
Most importantly, endpoint security must become as ubiquitous in government as badge scanners and background checks. Every workstation, laptop, mobile device, and cloud node must be locked down with zero-trust architecture, real-time behavioral analytics, and automatic quarantine capabilities. Anything less is an open invitation to espionage.
This isn’t just a Microsoft problem or a Pentagon problem. It’s an American problem. We’re letting convenience and tech monopolies override prudence and national defense. The same way we wouldn’t allow a Chinese company to handle nuclear launch codes, we shouldn’t let their engineers code the operating systems that support those platforms.
Let’s not forget: the Chinese Communist Party plays a long game. They don’t need to hack into Fort Knox if we’re leaving the digital vault open with a &#8220;Welcome&#8221; sign in Mandarin. And Microsoft, by cozying up to foreign nationals while serving American defense clients, has done exactly that.
President Trump built his first administration on the promise of draining the swamp and putting America First. That promise must now extend to cybersecurity. Our digital borders are every bit as vital as our physical ones. It’s time to hold tech giants accountable and ensure our software backbone isn’t quietly being rewritten by our adversaries.
Because when the dragon’s inside the network, it’s already too late to “build” a firewall.
* * *
Julio Rivera is a business and political strategist, cybersecurity researcher, founder of <a href="https://www.itfunk.org/">ItFunk.Org</a>, and a political commentator and columnist. His writing, which is focused on cybersecurity and politics, is regularly published by many of the largest news organizations in the world.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Microsoft  Zizhu Campus In Shanghai

Why Microsoft Must Be Held Responsible For Its Pentagon Security Breach

Big Tech

Espionage

Microsoft

Pentagon

Tom Cotton

The footage was striking: plumes of smoke rising over Iran’s nuclear facilities, the culmination of years of brinkmanship and intelligence coups. With one sweeping air campaign, the United States <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/media-fail-iranian-foreign-minister-admits-fordow-was-seriously-and-heavily-damaged?author=Hank+Berrien&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Media+Fail%3A+Iranian+Foreign+Minister+Admits+Fordow+Was+%E2%80%98Seriously+And+Heavily+Damaged%E2%80%99">sent a message</a>: the Islamic Republic will not be permitted to cross the nuclear threshold.
Yet as the dust settles, it would be a profound mistake to assume the threat has been neutralized. If anything, Iran’s nuclear humiliation may accelerate a transition that has been quietly underway for years — from ambitions of atomic deterrence to mastery of digital disruption.
Even as diplomats trumpet the ceasefire, cybersecurity professionals are aware of the dangers that still exist. In 2025, a nation doesn’t need fissile material to cripple its adversaries, it only needs a cadre of skilled operators, a menu of stolen exploits, and a willingness to play dirty in the world’s most critical networks.
Iran’s embrace of cyber operations is hardly a new development. In a 2012 cyberattack U.S. intelligence<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/business/global/cyberattack-on-saudi-oil-firm-disquiets-us.html"> attributed</a> to Iran, the <a href="https://www.cfr.org/cyber-operations/compromise-saudi-aramco-and-rasgas">Shamoon virus</a> wiped tens of thousands of computers inside Saudi Aramco, a major Saudi Arabian oil company, reducing corporate IT to smoking rubble — digitally speaking. Since then, Tehran’s capabilities have matured steadily.
Today, Iran’s cyber forces are well-trained and highly motivated. And given the loss of their nuclear infrastructure, they now possess ample incentive to reassert influence through other means. Cyber warfare is attractive precisely because it offers an asymmetrical advantage: the power to disrupt, humiliate, and retaliate without risking a direct military clash.
Recall how Russia, which has historically <a href="https://cybersecuritynews.com/researchers-uncovered-on-how-russia-leverages-private-companies/amp/">dominated the cybersphere</a>, has waged its campaign in Ukraine. Moscow hasn’t relied solely on tanks and artillery. It has unleashed waves of digital attacks against Ukraine’s power grids, satellite networks, and banking systems. Behind these campaigns, notorious criminal groups — like <a href="https://www.enigmasoftware.com/contiransomware-removal/">Conti</a> and <a href="https://www.enigmasoftware.com/blackbastaransomware-removal/">BlackBasta</a> — have operated with state blessing, extorting ransoms and leaking sensitive data.
This blurred line between espionage, sabotage, and organized crime has become a model for authoritarian states under pressure. Iran, facing international isolation and domestic discontent, has every reason to follow it.
The average person might imagine cyber warfare as a distant, abstract threat — some arcane business best left to <a href="https://www.rivitmedia.com/topics/it-cybersecurity-best-practices/">IT departments</a>. That illusion is exactly what adversaries count on.
Consider Zero-Day vulnerabilities: flaws in software that even the developers don’t yet know exist. These hidden back doors can be sold on dark markets for astronomical sums. And once a hostile operator has them, no firewall or antivirus can offer much protection.
Or take Remote Access Trojans, like <a href="https://www.spywareremove.com/removechaosrat.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chaos RAT</a> — a malicious tool that can lodge itself in a network and sit there, undetected, for months. The malware can exfiltrate sensitive data, delete backups, or simply wait for a signal to unleash chaos.
Iran’s cyber units have both the motive and the skill to deploy such capabilities against Western targets — especially at a moment when the regime needs to prove it can still inflict pain.
To understand the scale of the risk, look no further than China’s Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups, like <a href="https://www.cyclonis.com/remove-silver-fox-apt/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Silver Fox</a>. These teams excel at patient infiltration — building footholds in networks over years.
While Iran does not yet possess the same breadth of resources or global reach as Beijing, the playbook is there for the taking. Iranian operators have already borrowed tools and techniques from Russian and Chinese counterparts. They can acquire Zero-Days from the same vendors. They can lease infrastructure from the same criminal marketplaces.
In this sense, the global cyber threat landscape resembles a dark ecosystem: a place where alliances are fluid, tradecraft is shared, and almost anything is for sale.
Much has been made of the recent ceasefire between Israel and Iran. Certainly, it has brought a measure of short-term calm. But it’s worth stating the obvious: no ceasefire agreement binds a nation’s hackers.
Cyber operations are deniable by design. Tehran can escalate these attacks while maintaining plausible deniability. If a power grid goes down or a hospital network is encrypted, Iranian officials will simply shrug and claim ignorance — or suggest that Western companies should improve their “cyber hygiene.”
Indeed, it’s likely that in the coming months, Iran will test the boundaries of what it can accomplish in cyberspace without provoking another round of airstrikes. And unless Western governments are prepared, these tests may prove costly.
The United States remains unmatched in conventional military capability. But cyber defense has never been America’s comparative advantage. While agencies like the <a href="https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/news">Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)</a> have made enormous progress, much of the nation’s critical infrastructure — power stations, water systems, hospitals — remains vulnerable.
Decades of underinvestment, legacy software, and fragmented security practices have created an expansive attack surface. A determined adversary doesn’t need to destroy a city to sow panic. It just needs to flip a switch in the right control system — or quietly siphon data for blackmail and extortion.
This paradox — dominance in kinetic warfare, vulnerability in cyber — demands a strategic recalibration. As Iran pivots further into digital conflict, the costs of ignoring this imbalance will only grow.
America cannot afford to treat cybersecurity as an afterthought, an IT budget line item tucked behind more visible defense priorities. It must become a central pillar of national security strategy.
That means investing in modern detection systems powered by artificial intelligence. It means developing real deterrence — making clear that cyber aggression will incur meaningful consequences. And it means supporting public-private partnerships to protect industries that have become part of the national nervous system.
Iran’s nuclear setback is undeniably significant but no bomb can erase the knowledge Tehran has acquired about hacking adversaries. No missile strike can neutralize an ideology that prizes asymmetrical warfare.
The coming months will test the West’s capacity for vigilance. Iran’s leaders face enormous pressure to prove they remain formidable. And while their nuclear ambitions are now smoldering ruins, their cyber capabilities remain intact — and perhaps emboldened.
Policymakers should remember: the decisive battles of the 21st century may not begin with the roar of jets over a desert. They may start in the silent corridors of a server farm, where an invisible adversary is already laying traps.
In that theater, the rules are different — and the consequences no less severe.
* * *
Julio Rivera is a business and political strategist, cybersecurity researcher, founder of <a href="https://www.itfunk.org/">ItFunk.Org</a>, and a political commentator and columnist. His writing, which is focused on cybersecurity and politics, is regularly published by many of the largest news organizations in the world.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Interior of big modern server room. 3d rendering illustration

From Missiles To Malware: Iran’s Potential Pivot To Digital Warfare

Computer

Iran

President Trump

Technology

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk responded after X, the social media platform he owns, faced multiple outages around the world on Monday.
Outage-tracking website DownDetector.com tracked outages beginning just before 5 a.m. ET and lasting until past noon. At 5 a.m. ET, the total number of outage reports was more than 20,000. Another spike in reports occurred around 9 a.m. ET, and reached nearly 40,000. A third prolonged spike in outage reports took place just over an hour later, peaking at just under 30,000 reports and sustaining that number for nearly two hours.
&#8220;First, protests against DOGE. Then, Tesla stores were attacked. Now, X is down. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that this downtime is the result of an attack on X,&#8221; DOGE Designer posted.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
First, protests against DOGE.
Then, Tesla stores were attacked.
Now, 𝕏 is down.
I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that this downtime is the result of an attack on 𝕏.
&mdash; DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) <a href="https://twitter.com/cb_doge/status/1899141555073769762?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 10, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Musk responded, saying that he agreed and planned to investigate.
&#8220;There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X. We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved. Tracing,&#8221; he posted.
According to <a href="https://variety.com/2025/digital/global/x-down-for-thousands-of-users-outage-elon-musk-1236333025/">Variety</a>, the reports of outages were not localized to the United States — and users as far away as Europe had reported issues using the site. The initial reports, which spiked around 5 a.m. ET, included just over 10,000 reports from the United Kingdom.
The issues extended to both the mobile app and the web browser version of the site, with just over half of all users reporting that the app was down and just over one-third reporting issues with the browser version.
Users attempting to load the site saw a variety of different issues, from Cloudflare errors to messages that read, &#8220;Posts aren&#8217;t loading right now. Please try again.&#8221;
By 1 p.m. ET, reports of outages on the DownDetector site had dropped off precipitously.
The last widespread X outage occurred in August of 2024.

Elon Musk

X Rocked By Major Outages, Elon Musk Says ‘Massive Cyberattack’ To Blame

X Rocked By Major Outages, Elon Musk Responds

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

DOGE

Social Media

At a recent meeting of the House Committee on Homeland Security, evidence was presented of how China is posing a grave cybersecurity threat to the United States.
“Over the last year, the U.S. government has discovered a number of PRC [People&#8217;s Republic of China] state-sponsored threat actors deeply embedded in and across the nation’s critical networks: Volt Typhoon, Salt Typhoon, Flax Typhoon, and most recently Silk Typhoon, have compromised our critical infrastructure, hacked sensitive communications, breached federal workstations &#8230;” Chairman Mark E. Green (R-TN) stated.
“The U.S. authoring agencies have confirmed that Volt Typhoon has compromised the IT environments of multiple critical infrastructure organizations—primarily in <a href="https://www.cisa.gov/topics/critical-infrastructure-security-and-resilience/critical-infrastructure-sectors/communications-sector">Communications</a>, <a href="https://www.cisa.gov/topics/critical-infrastructure-security-and-resilience/critical-infrastructure-sectors/energy-sector">Energy</a>, <a href="https://www.cisa.gov/topics/critical-infrastructure-security-and-resilience/critical-infrastructure-sectors/transportation-systems-sector">Transportation Systems</a>, and <a href="https://www.cisa.gov/topics/critical-infrastructure-security-and-resilience/critical-infrastructure-sectors/water-and-wastewater-sector">Water and Wastewater Systems</a> Sectors—in the continental and non-continental United States and its territories, including Guam,” the Cybersecurity &amp; Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) <a href="https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories/aa24-038a" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> in February 2024.
“Microsoft has identified a nation-state activity group tracked as Flax Typhoon, based in China, that is targeting dozens of organizations in Taiwan with the likely intention of performing espionage,” Microsoft <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2023/08/24/flax-typhoon-using-legitimate-software-to-quietly-access-taiwanese-organizations/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">noted</a> in August 2023.
“Salt Typhoon refers to a sophisticated cyber espionage operation orchestrated by a Chinese Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) group, commonly known as Earth Estries, Ghost Emperor, or UNC2286,” <a href="https://www.armis.com/blog/breaking-down-salt-typhoon/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Armis</a> <a href="https://www.armis.com/blog/breaking-down-salt-typhoon/">reported</a>. “This state-sponsored actor has been linked to high-profile breaches targeting critical U.S. infrastructure, including major telecommunications providers such as Verizon, AT&amp;T, T-Mobile, and Lumen Technologies.”
“China has engaged in &#8230; maturation in how they conduct these operations,” Adam Meyers, senior vice president of Counter Adversary Operations at CrowdStrike, testified at the House committee hearing. “Today, they&#8217;re using exploits that target external facing devices that are connected directly to the internet that effectively bridge enterprises to the internet. These devices are often unmanaged. In many cases, they may be legacy or have proprietary capabilities &#8211; that means that they don&#8217;t run modern security tools &#8230; like a router or a VPN concentrator. Things that are meant to connect the enterprise to the network or allow remote users to authenticate in.”
“The nodes, so to speak, between silos,” Green suggested.
“Yes, sir, and these are highly prioritized and highly valuable targets with these threat actors,” Meyers replied. “They&#8217;ve nationalized their vulnerability research program in 2018. For example, they changed the national security law in China, and all vulnerability research has to be submitted through the Chinese government. Whereas, here in the United States, we follow something we call responsible disclosure, where if I find a vulnerability in a product, I notify that product vendor in order to try to get it fixed. They&#8217;re effectively nationalizing that resource so they can use that for exploits against American technology and American companies. Once they gain that access, they attempt to remain stealthy and either conduct espionage in order to inform political and military decision-making, or in the case of ‘Vanguard Panda,’ also known as ‘Volt Typhoon,’ the prepositioning that we’ve discussed here, which would be potentially useful to bring down some of these networks that Mr. Montgomery mentioned in time of conflict.”
Retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, senior director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, pointed out, “This operational preparation of the battlefield, it is a war-making action, and we have to take it much more seriously. I think the idea that they&#8217;ve pre-positioned malware or that they have capabilities that lie in wait that can come out at the right time, as we&#8217;re making a decision to respond to a crisis in Taiwan or crisis in the Baltic States. TRANSCOM operates on these unclassified networks with civilian systems. This is why I think former Representative [Now National Security Advisor] Waltz is right, in the sense that we have to go on the offensive. We now have to actually publicly execute operations against Chinese cyber infrastructure to say: ‘We know you did this; we know you use this infrastructure to do this, and we&#8217;re going to remove that infrastructure from your capability.’ &#8230; Otherwise, the Chinese are going to keep doing what they&#8217;re doing.”
“These incidents are not over,” Meyers continued. “‘Salt Typhoon’ is an ongoing activity by an adversary, as is ‘Volt Typhoon,’ or what we call ‘Vanguard Panda.’ So this is something we need to continuously engage; we need to continuously identify, root them out, and put a stop to them––cut off their access.”
<iframe loading="lazy" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ePzMWOIeqIk?si=dkqs1Ae1QEG4eU2z" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>

USA and China flag

House Committee On Homeland Security Warns Of Chinese Espionage Threat

The Treasury Department revealed on Monday that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/china" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chinese</a> hackers had breached its systems in a “major cyber security incident.” 
In a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25472754-12/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">letter</a> to the Senate Banking Committee from Assistant Secretary for Management Aditi Hardikar, the department revealed that hackers accessed unclassified documents and employee workstations. The department believed a Chinese intelligence agency was behind the breach. 
“Treasury takes very seriously all threats against our systems, and the data it holds,” the department <a href="https://apnews.com/article/china-hacking-treasury-department-8942106afabeac96010057e05c67c9d5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a statement. “Over the last four years, Treasury has significantly bolstered its cyber defense, and we will continue to work with both private and public sector partners to protect our financial system from threat actors.”
Hardikar said the department did not believe China still had access to its systems.
Hardikar added that the department was first notified of the breach on December 8 by third-party software service provider BeyondTrust that “a threat actor had gained access to a key used by the vendor to secure a cloud based service used to remotely provide technical support for Treasury Departmental Offices (DO) end users.”
This allowed the hackers to override security and gain access to Treasury Department employee workstations and the unclassified documents stored on them. 
The department has since been working with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the FBI, and the Intelligence Community to probe the full extent of the breach. 
“Based on available indicators, the incident has been attributed to a China state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actor,” Hardikar wrote. “In accordance with Treasury policy, intrusions attributable to an APT are considered a major cybersecurity incident.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning denied the allegations. 
“We have repeatedly stated our position on such groundless accusations that lack evidence,” said Ning, an official of the Chinese Communist Party. “China consistently opposes all forms of hacking, and we are even more opposed to the dissemination of false information against China for political purposes.”
China has previously been accused of being behind major hacking operations targeting Americans, including <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/china-based-hackers-accessed-60k-u-s-state-dept-emails-in-microsoft-breach-senate-staffer-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">one operation</a> that stole the emails of State Department employees and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/china-hacks-u-s-telecom-companies-in-major-espionage-coup-against-u-s" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hacking major</a> American telecommunications companies earlier this year.

Hacker cyber attack

Chinese Hackers Breach Treasury Dept In ‘Major Cyber Security Incident’

Biden Administration

Treasury Department

The U.S. maritime industry is “dangerously” reliant on <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/china" target="_blank" rel="noopener">China</a> potentially opening the door for the Chinese Communist Party to gain access to critical American infrastructure, according to a new report from House Republicans.
In a <a href="https://homeland.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Joint-Homeland-China-Select-Port-Security-Report.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a> released Thursday, House Republicans on the Committee on Homeland Security and Select Committee on the CCP said that the use of Chinese manufactured equipment and technology at American ports jeopardized national security. The report specifically focused on Chinese-government owned ZPMC, a major manufacturer of cranes used at ports across the country.
“The evidence gathered during our joint investigation indicates that ZPMC could, if desired, serve as a Trojan horse capable of helping the CCP and the PRC military exploit and manipulate U.S. maritime equipment and technology at their request,” the committee said in a statement. “This vulnerability in our critical infrastructure has the potential to affect Americans from coast to coast.”
The report accuses ZPMC of leveraging cheap labor and subsidized steel to sell cranes around the world at non-competitive prices, flooding the world market. The lawmakers found that around 80% of ship to shore cranes used at ports in the U.S. come from ZPMC.
According to the lawmakers, ZPMC is owned by the China Communications Construction Group, which has had “significant involvement in militarizing the South China Sea.”
The lawmakers said that this reliance was a cybersecurity risk because ZPMC or one of its contractors had installed cellular modems on cranes at ports in the U.S.
“ZPMC has repeatedly requested remote access to its STS cranes operating at various U.S. ports, with a particular focus on those located on the West Coast,” the report said. “If granted, this access could potentially be extended to other PRC government entities, posing a significant risk due to the PRC’s national security laws that mandate cooperation with state intelligence agencies.”
<a href="https://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amiracist.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1726247658431000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1KkYcfDElWxvwc2EAw9bNZ">Am I Racist? ONLY In Theaters Tomorrow—Get Your Tickets Now!</a>
Few alternatives exist because there are no U.S.-based companies that make similar cranes, the report found.
Other vulnerabilities in the American maritime industry include the fact that portions of the ports of Long Beach, Seattle, Los Angeles, Houston, and Miami are controlled by the China Merchants Group and COSCO Shipping, two state-owned companies.
The lawmakers included several recommendations in their 50-page report on what actions the U.S. should take to bolster its maritime security. These included having the Coast Guard issue guidance telling ports to disassemble any connection between ZPMC cranes to cellular modems.
They also recommended that the Commerce Department analyze U.S. capacity to increase manufacturing of crane technology and increasing security at U.S. ports.

Newspaper Reports Congressional Inquiry Found Suspicious Communications Equipment On Chinese-Made Cranes At U.S. Ports

Lawmakers Warn Of ‘Trojan Horse’ Threat From China To American Ports

Department of Homeland Security

Global Politics

Shipping

Menu