OK, this is not an official "display story," but one that just won’t go away, and perhaps touches every one of us in the display industry.

Steve Sechrist
Senior Analyst and Editor
Projection Monthly

Last month a story broke with the headline: Chinese Espionage Cited as Top Risk to U.S. Technology Industry (Information Week 11/19/07). This story detailed a report from our USCC (U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission) that left little room for doubt: "Chinese espionage activities in the United States are so extensive that they comprise the single greatest risk to the security of American technologies." Espionage, the report suggests, saves China the time and cost of researching and developing advanced technologies.

Now, just imagine you’re the leader of the world’s largest nation with 1.3 billion people, and a full 45% still working in agriculture (that’s 585 million people or 283 million more than the entire US population). You’re going to do everything in your power (short of war) to jump start the nation and move it into the digital age.

The problem is, this is not benign. Yes, corporate espionage (stealing for the sake of R&D etc.) is bad; in the US alone, to the tune of more than $45 billion in damages a year, according to the report. But beyond this, persistent news stories suggest that there is more going on here than the gathering of intelligence for China by the 3000+ China based companies in the US-and that’s the involvement of the PLA (short for Peoples Liberation Army.)

Here’s how Information Week said it: Organized attacks on U.S. networks have been widely reported since 2005, following a coordinated assault that appears to have started in 2003, dubbed "Titan Rain." American security experts blame the campaign on hackers backed by the Chinese military. Further, "Titan Rain" is not limited to the US. In September, The Guardian, in the UK, reported that Chinese hackers, believed to be the PLA, targeted Whitehall, the residence of the UK Foreign Office.

German news magazine Der Spiegel calls them Die Gelben Spione (The Yellow Spies) in a recent article. "The ‘yellow spies’ concentrate on gathering intelligence on Germany’s state-of-the-art science, technologies, and industries. Disguised as diplomats or journalists, many of them collect political, economic, and military secrets."

But once you involve the military, things get really scary, real fast. Information Week reported: "The Commission also expressed concern about China’s increasingly capable military and its ability to destroy satellites and to wage cyber attacks against U.S. computer networks." And in May-07, in a background DOD report on the issue, China is making a significant push out of the traditional warfare areas — land, air, and sea — to a more "modern battlefield" of space and cyberspace.

The PLA is investing in computer network operations such as network attacks, network defenses, and network exploitation, according to the report. "The PLA sees [computer network operations] as critical to achieving ‘electromagnetic dominance’ early in a conflict," adding that China is focused on developing the ability to disrupt battlefield information systems. (China To Use Computer Viruses As Cyberwarfare First Strike from 05-29-07 Information Week).

Not only is China the most populace nation, the government controls-well everything, the IT, telecommunications, shipping, civil aviation, steel industries, media and information distribution-the works. On top of that, there is not a corporate partnership made with a Chinese company, that the government does not have some level of control, or at the very least-visibility. And just as a reminder of who we are dealing with, here’s a snippet out of the CIA fact book on China:

"After World War II, the Communists under MAO Zedong established an autocratic socialist system that, while ensuring China’s sovereignty, imposed strict controls over everyday life and cost the lives of tens of millions of people."

"After 1978, his successor DENG Xiaoping and other leaders focused on market-oriented economic development and, by 2000, output had quadrupled. For much of the population, living standards have improved dramatically and the room for personal choice has expanded, yet political controls remain tight. (www.cia.gov)."

That’s the bottom line, a command driven government with tight political controls, that can sacrifice the lives of "tens of millions of its own people" to insure its survival, may not stop short of cyber-war to help insure its rule over others. -SS

Reply to the author