What Lies behind Chinese Cyber Warfare

Over the past several years China has been developing operational capabilities in the eld of cyberspace warfare. A cyber attack may be de ned as the unauthorized penetration of computer and communications systems belonging to individuals or organizations for the purpose of espionage and information theft, in order thereby to damage or disrupt the functioning of these systems or to damage other systems dependent on them, even to a point of causing actual physical damage. Despite denials by the Chinese government, researchers posit that China is behind a string of cyber attacks against the United States,Japan, France, Australia, and other Western nations. This essay argues that an analysis of the publicly available information about the more recent attacks makes it possible to establish that China does in fact stand behind these attacks and also makes it possible to identify the link between China’s cyberspace warfare strategy and its choice of targets. The analysis includes an examination of the companies attacked to identify possible motives for the attacks. The motives for these attacks are presumably to steal capabilities and conduct industrial espionage against nations and commercial competitors. Attacking companies and organizations in the nancial and even political sectors allows access to valuable intelligence in these elds. By contrast, the intelligence value for immediate use in attacking companies providing critical infrastructures and communications services is usually relatively low. Rather, gaining access, if only to some providers of communications and internet services in the West and the United States, is liable to give attackers the ability to damage these services.