The trove of documents from the Chinese government-affiliated security contractor I-Soon that appeared recently on the U.S.-based company GitHub’s online platform for software engineers offered an unprecedented peek into the world of China’s hackers for hire.

NSA Cybersecurity Director Rob Joyce says the I-Soon disclosures showed “the scope and scale of China’s infrastructure that is enabled by their industry, not only providing infrastructure but actually running operations and stealing data.” National Security Tech Reporter Ryan Lovelace covered Mr. Joyce’s comments during the Trellix Cybersecurity Summit in Washington this week. 

Mr. Lovelace separately offers a deep dive into President Biden’s planned executive order aimed at stopping foreign adversaries such as China and Russia from preying on Americans’ sensitive data for items such as health care and personal finances.

The Pentagon’s Defense Science Board (DSB) is developing new strategic weapons and capabilities that will provide asymmetric advantages for continued U.S. military “operational dominance,” according to a strategy outlined by the board that offers clues to the mostly secret effort.

Board Chairman Eric Evans says a task force on strategic options was converted into a new permanent DSB subcommittee devoted to new weapons and operational capabilities, such as “advanced undersea assets and operational concepts, new uses of space assets, development of new countermeasures for electronic warfare, [and] employment of cyber weapons.”

National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz examines the development, as well as a memorandum on strategic options from Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu that noted dramatic shifts in geopolitics and technology by U.S. adversaries and highlighted problems and vulnerabilities for U.S. military forces.

The Army is cutting 24,000 positions in a restructuring prompted by the changing nature of today’s battlefield, as the service faces its most dire recruiting challenge since the end of the draft more than 50 years ago.

Pentagon Correspondent Mike Glenn digs into a just-released Pentagon study that emphasizes rising threats from China and Russia. Top Army officials say they “will continue to need capabilities” for counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, but “the changing security environment and evolving character of war” finds the service refocusing on conducting “large-scale combat operations against technologically advanced military powers.”

Russia’s war against Ukraine has damaged Moscow’s influence over countries of the former Soviet Union that now are moving to reduce their dependence on the Kremlin, according to British intelligence analysts “While there are variations between countries, Russia’s overall influence [over] its near neighbors has declined,” U.K. military intelligence officials said in their latest publicized assessment of the fighting in Ukraine. 

This Week’s Threat Status Podcast digs into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s state of mind, and examines the status of the Ukraine war through a discussion with Washington Times Special Correspondent Guillaume Ptak, whose dispatches from the front line regularly feature interviews with Ukrainian soldiers and commanders. 

The podcast is wide-ranging. This week’s episode also explores connections between the Somalia-based al-Shabab terrorist network and Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen.

Beijing’s recent announcement that it will no longer respect a de facto maritime boundary with Taiwan was “yet another one-sided decision to alter the status quo” between mainland China and Taiwan, according the island democracy’s top diplomat in the United States. China’s move “could jeopardize aviation safety in the Taiwan Strait,” writes Alexander Tah-Ray Yui, Taipei’s representative in Washington, adding that Taiwan is “grateful to our American friends and like-minded partners who have denounced China’s unilateral changes to the cross-strait status quo.” 

Mr. Yui asserts that “in contrast to China’s hostile and escalatory actions, Taiwan has become known globally as a trustworthy partner and stakeholder in the rules-based international order.” He adds that while “authoritarian countries like China promote revisionism to destabilize the global order,” Taiwan and its partners “remain committed to peace, stability, freedom and democracy.”