NATSEC-TECH THURSDAY — January 16, 2025: Every Thursday’s edition of Threat Status highlights the intersection between national security and advanced technology, from AI to cyber threats and the battle for global data dominance.
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President Biden has issued an 11th hour executive order to bolster U.S. cyber defenses. It’s unclear whether the incoming Trump administration will embrace it.
… California-based Anduril Industries is preparing to build a massive advanced-manufacturing facility in central Ohio.
… The U.S. Navy’s surface fleet has fired 120 SM-2 missiles, 80 SM-6 missiles, 160 rounds from destroyers and cruisers’ 5-inch main guns, as well as a combined 20 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSM) and SM-3 missiles while battling Iran-backed Houthis since last year.
… President-elect Donald Trump claims credit for the Israel-Hamas ceasefire. Mr. Biden says his and Mr. Trump’s teams worked “as one.”
… But is there even a deal? Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delayed an Israeli vote on the first phase of the accord Thursday, and Hamas’ new leader is touting the agreement as a defeat for Israel while hailing the militant group’s Oct. 7, 2023, deadly rampage across southern Israel.
… The Biden administration’s last-minute push to regulate artificial intelligence has sparked tech industry outrage. Oracle Executive Vice President Ken Glueck has claimed the rule could “go down as one of the most destructive to ever hit the U.S. technology industry.”
… The U.S., Japan, and South Korea have issued a new warning about North Korean cyberattackers targeting the blockchain for cryptocurrency theft.
… The DEA is quietly overhauling its controversial Transportation Interdiction Program, and Secret Service drones will arrive over Washington ahead of Mr. Trump’s inauguration.
Mr. Biden issued an executive order Thursday to strengthen government tools for countering foreign hacking groups that target U.S. internet and telecommunication systems — specifically opening the way for increased sanctions on hostile powers who back the cyberattacks.
The order, which comes after several recent hacking incidents linked to China, Iran, Russia and North Korea, also calls for new minimum cybersecurity standards for government technology contractors. Additionally, it requires federal agencies to improve cybersecurity against threats posed by powerful quantum computers, which cyber experts say could be used to easily break into many systems.
Industry sources tell Threat Status increased minimum cybersecurity standards can be financially burdensome for emerging contract firms in the most advanced research and development realms — particularly if new standards are imposed suddenly without including clear funding pathways. Mr. Trump could rescind the move after his inauguration next week, although Deputy National Security Adviser Anne Neuberger says Mr. Biden’s order should have bipartisan support.
American social media users fearing a potential TikTok shutdown are bolting to another Chinese social media app, Xiaohongshu. The platform, whose name means “Little Red Book” in English, became the top downloaded app this week in Apple’s App Store.
Lemon8, which like TikTok is owned by China-based ByteDance, appeared as second in Apple’s top free apps downloaded section on Tuesday, trailing only Xiaohongshu, colloquially referred to by TikTok users as RedNote. The #tiktokrefugee topic notched more than 160,000 posts on Xiaohongshu, indicating internet audiences are eager to work around U.S. government-imposed restrictions and digital blockades.
“Aaand now all the “TikTok refugees” are flocking to RedNote — another [Chinese] brain rot social media platform,” Rep. Daniel Crenshaw, Texas Republican, said on X. “By the way: ‘RedNote’ refers to Mao’s Little Red Book, which was literal propaganda distributed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.”
The TikTok refugees are not going quietly to their new digital dens. Droves of TikTok fans moving to Rednote are giving it stellar ratings on Apple’s App Store, alongside reviews trashing Meta’s rival platforms.
China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is waging, and regards, information warfare “as a domain of war unto itself, equal to the physical domains of air, land, sea and space,” according to a new report by the China Aerospace Studies Institute, a U.S. Air Force think tank.
“For the PLA, superiority in the information domain is necessary to seize and maintain battlefield initiative, and information dominance has become a prerequisite to being able to achieve decisive effects in any of the physical domains,” the report said, adding that U.S. military planners and theorists must appreciate the role of information in PLA warfighting to understand how China wages war in the information arena.
The PLA is described in the report as “the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party,” aggressively using information and propaganda to pursue its goals. A key party tool is the Propaganda Department, often mistranslated as the “Publicity Department.” The agency is dedicated to controlling the narrative, framing history and shaping people’s minds.
National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz writes that China has declared its strategic goal is “national rejuvenation” — a goal the Pentagon widely views as China seeking to usurp the U.S. role as the leading global superpower.
Mr. Trump’s CIA nominee John Ratcliffe says the spy agency can do more to cause headaches for other nations as the U.S. scrambles to beat China in the great-power technology race and lessen its dependence on foreign suppliers of semiconductors.
“The CIA must do things to disrupt how our adversaries are dealing with their supply chain issues,” Mr. Ratcliffe told senators during his confirmation hearing Wednesday. He did not specify the type of operations he had in mind, but emphasized that the CIA’s main collection and analysis effort must be focused on the Chinese Communist Party.
Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark R. Warner, the outgoing intelligence committee chairman, told Mr. Ratcliffe during the hearing that the CIA needs to collect better intelligence on foreign adversaries’ technology. In response, Mr. Ratcliffe identified quantum computing as a particular area of concern.
“If China gets to quantum computing before we do, that causes a real problem,” he said. “We’ve got to win the war, the race on technology, stay ahead of the technology curve.”
The foundations for the current geopolitical disorder — especially the hot wars in Europe and the Middle East and the cold peace with China — are many, rooted in foreign capitals, international markets and domestic political choices, writes John Sitilides.
Even as Mr. Trump “bolsters his options, and those of our negotiating partners in allied and adversarial capitals, with incentives, he will find those options constrained by hard truths and tough choices,” writes Mr. Sitilides, a geopolitical strategist at Trilogy Advisors and senior fellow for national security at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
“Serious global commercial, technological and military competition with China tops the list,” he writes. “Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping has embarked on a ‘China Shock 2’ worldwide export strategy to resolve excess industrial capacity, massively distorting trade balances and defying the World Trade Organization with near impunity as it has for more than two decades.”
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