How China’s Cyber Threat Looms Over America

WSJ Tech News Briefing

The Wall Street Journal

News, Tech News

4.6 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 8 January 2025

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Chinese hackers have vastly increased their efforts in recent years, burrowing into systems at ports, pipelines, water facilities and elsewhere. WSJ reporter Dustin Volz joins host James Rundle to talk about what this means for national security, and how companies such as major telecom providers were hacked in the first place. Sign up for the WSJ's free Technology newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:33.8	Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Wednesday, January the 8th. I'm James Rundle for the Wall Street Journal.
0:40.1	Chinese hackers have been a menace in cyberspace for years, targeting the US government and the private sector, as well as presidential campaigns.
0:47.7	But revelations about how deeply its hackers have penetrated US critical infrastructure have worried senior intelligence officials.
0:54.5	We'll hear from our reporter Dustin Volz about how Chinese digital spies
0:58.2	have infiltrated some of the most vital organizations in the US,
1:02.1	positioning themselves to cause havoc if the conflict breaks out.
1:08.3	Two massive hacking operations named Salt Typhoon and Volt Typhoon by researchers have spooked
1:14.2	intelligence officials. Chinese hackers have broken into systems across ports, pipelines,
1:19.9	water treatment systems and airports across the US in recent years, and done nothing. That's
1:25.4	according to senior US officials who say China is preparing to unleash
1:29.1	chaos if America were to intervene in a future conflict, likely over Taiwan. Separately,
1:35.1	Chinese spies also infiltrated the networks of major telecoms providers, enabling them to spy on
1:40.2	text messages and phone calls from government officials, political figures and others.
1:44.9	The WSJ interviewed dozens of national security, law enforcement and private sector officials
1:49.4	about these attacks. Our reporter Dustin Volz joins us to discuss how serious China's
1:54.4	intrusions are and what Washington is doing about it.
1:57.5	Dustin, China has been in the headlines a lot in the past year for cyber activity.
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