Microsoft: Chinese Hackers Compromised U.S. Communications to Allies in Pacific
Microsoft’s cybersecurity has detected a China-backed attack on U.S. communications infrastructure. The attack was targeted primarily in the U.S territory of Guam, a Pacific ocean island that is central to a potential U.S. response to Chinese aggression against Taiwan.
Microsoft published its analysis of the attack on its security blog earlier this week, identifying the culprits as Volt Typhoon, a state-sponsored hacking group in China.
Attempting to unravel Volt Typhoon’s goal, Microsoft stated its belief that the objective was to disrupt U.S. communications to the Pacific region.
“Microsoft assesses with moderate confidence that this Volt Typhoon campaign is pursuing development of capabilities that could disrupt critical communications infrastructure between the United States and Asia region during future crises,” wrote the company.
“The affected organizations span the communications, manufacturing, utility, transportation, construction, maritime, government, information technology, and education sectors. Observed behavior suggests that the threat actor intends to perform espionage and maintain access without being detected for as long as possible.”
In a joint bulletin, agencies for the “Five Eyes” intelligence sharing community of the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand advised companies on how to respond to the attack.
The government of China, meanwhile, denies any involvement. In a statement, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning accused the Five Eyes nations of spreading “disinformation.”
“It’s widely known that the Five Eyes (an intelligence alliance between the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) is the world’s biggest intelligence association and the NSA the world’s biggest hacking group,” said Ning. “It is ironic that the Five Eyes jointly released a report filled with disinformation.”
“This has been a collective disinformation campaign launched by the US through the Five Eyes to serve its geopolitical agenda.”
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.
Most House Democrats, Eight Republicans Help Biden Shield China’s Solar Industry from U.S. Tariffs
Nearly all House Democrats, along with eight House Republicans, helped tank an effort to override President Joe Biden’s veto of a bipartisan plan that would have restored United States tariffs on China-made solar panels.
In June 2022, Biden announced a 24-month tariff moratorium on solar panel imports from Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia. Commerce Department officials suspect that the solar panels are actually made in China but have been routed through the four southeast Asian nations to avoid U.S. tariffs on China-made solar panels.
The suspension of tariffs came even as Biden’s Commerce Department found that BYD Hong Kong rerouted its production through Cambodia, Canadian Solar and Trina through Thailand, and Vina Solar through Vietnam for the sole purpose of avoiding the tariffs.
This week, after Biden vetoed a House and Senate-approved plan to reinstate the tariffs on solar panel imports, 197 House Democrats and eight House Republicans voted to help the administration stave off the tariffs.
The only Republicans to oppose overriding Biden’s veto were the same group that initially joined most Democrats to oppose restoring the tariffs:
- Rep. John Curtis (R-UT)
- Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY)
- Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-NY)
- Rep. Nicholas LaLota (R-NY)
- Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY)
- Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY)
- Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA)
- Rep. Marcus Molinaro (R-NY)
“[Failing to override Biden’s veto] says that we will allow trade cheating, we want cheap stuff at any cost, we don’t really care about forced labor, we don’t care about dirty coal being used to make the panels that take 10 years of use to offset the dirty coal that went into them,” Michael Stumo, the CEO of the Coalition for a Prosperous America told Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO).
“This 24-month moratorium … of those tariffs is not temporary. It’s permanent because they’re building wafer plants there in order to comply and not be found to circumvent [tariffs] later, so we’ll get solar from those countries forever, not just temporarily,” Stumo said.
From 2001 to 2018, U.S. free trade with China eliminated 3.7 million American jobs from the economy — 2.8 million of which were lost in American manufacturing. During that same period, at least 50,000 American manufacturing plants closed down.
Those massive job losses have coincided with a booming U.S.-China trade deficit. In 1985, before China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO), the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled $6 billion. In 2019, the U.S. trade deficit with China totaled more than $345 billion.
While skyrocketing U.S. trade deficits have led to devastation across America’s working- and middle-class communities over the last two decades, tariffs would be a boon for reshoring jobs and boosting wages, studies show. One such study finds that tariffs on nearly all foreign imports would create about ten million American jobs while boosting domestic output.
RELATED: Biden’s Interior Chief Unaware China Controls Minerals Supply Chain Needed for Electric Vehicles
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
China Restarts High-Level U.S. Trade Talks amid Wave of American Company Crackdowns
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo met with her Chinese counterpart Wang Wentao in Washington on Thursday for “candid and substantive discussions on issues relating to the U.S.-China commercial relationship, including the overall environment in both countries for trade and investment and areas for potential cooperation.”
The Commerce Department’s account of the meeting said Raimondo “raised concerns about the recent spate of PRC [People’s Republic of China] actions taken against U.S. companies operating in the PRC.”
This was a reference to the Chinese targeting of a string of foreign companies with restrictions, sanctions, and raids over the past few months. Last week, China announced Micron Technology Inc. failed a nebulous “security audit” and banned the U.S. company’s chips from sensitive computer systems.
Before that, China inexplicably raided consulting firms Bain & Co. and Capvision, plus a firm called the Mintz Group that specializes in due diligence corporate audits. Some analysts saw these raids as retaliation for U.S. actions that angered China, while others thought China was growing nervous about foreign companies gaining access to its economic data.
The far-left New York Times (NYT) newspaper quoted Chinese state media reports that portrayed the Capvision raid as a stern warning for the inquisitive company to keep its nose out of the Chinese Communist Party’s business:
The police told Jiangsu Television, a state broadcaster, that Capvision had frequently contacted “secret-related personnel” in the Chinese Communist Party as well as officials in fields such as defense and science. The authorities accused Capvision of hiring consulting experts “with high remuneration” to “illegally obtain various types of sensitive data,” which they said posed a “major risk and hidden peril to China’s national security.”
The CCTV report said the inquiry resulted in the arrest of at least one employee of a state-owned company who was sentenced to six years in prison for providing “state secrets and intelligence” to Capvision’s foreign clients.
The Financial Times (FT) speculated in April that China might be testing the waters for taking the assets and employees of foreign companies hostage, for use as leverage in tense negotiations. The Chinese government was able to rescue Huawei CEO and top Communist Party member Meng Wanzhou from arrest in Canada in 2021 by taking Canadians hostage.
Coverage of the Raimondo-Wang meeting in China’s state-run Global Times made no mention of the U.S. Commerce Secretary’s concerns, instead quoting the Biden White House’s assurances that China’s ban on Micron chips “won’t torpedo larger efforts to get U.S.-China relations into a better position.”
The Global Times barely mentioned Raimondo at all, vaguely describing her as eager to mend fences with China – a goal the Chinese paper said the Biden administration would have to work harder to achieve.
The Chinese Communist editors had a few ideas for concessions Biden could offer, such as dropping America’s “hysterical mindset” against China and dropping investigations into China’s abuse of the Uyghur Muslims.
The Global Times suggested recent personnel changes at the State Department, such as the retirement of Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, could mean members of the Biden administration are bailing out over disagreements on China policy – supposedly because they realize the futility of trying to “contain” mighty China, or impose Western ideas of human rights upon it.
CUT AND PASTE YOUTUBE LINKS
VIDEO
RON SAYS HELL NO TO BIDEN'S RED CHINA OCCUPATION!
Ron DeSantis: The FBI and DOJ have been weaponized against Americans
A flooded labor market from mass immigration has had a
devastating impact on working- and middle-class Americans,
while redistributing billions in wealth to the top one percent of
earners and big business. While creating an economy that tilts
in favor of employers, the mass immigration economic model has helped keep wages stagnant for decades. JOHN BINDER
'Great American Comeback': DeSantis Launches Presidential Bid, Pledges To Restore 'Sanity to Our Society'
Florida governor enters race as top Trump rival
Florida governor Ron DeSantis formally launched his presidential bid Wednesday night, with the Republican pledging to restore "sanity to our society" and lead a "great American comeback."
DeSantis's message came in part through a one-minute launch video, during which the Florida governor hammered President Joe Biden for mishandling the southern border, crime, and the economy. That video's release preceded a virtual conversation between DeSantis and billionaire Twitter CEO Elon Musk, though technical issues plagued the conversation's start. Once the roughly hour-long discussion got under way, DeSantis highlighted his legislative accomplishments in Florida as a blueprint to replicate nationwide, and defended himself on hot-button issues such as his battle with Disney.
DeSantis enters the race as former president Donald Trump's most formidable primary challenger. He is the only Republican presidential hopeful besides Trump who has routinely polled in the double-digits, a position that has brought attacks from both Trump and his allies—who have already spent millions on negative advertising against him and begun trashing his wife, Casey—and other GOP primary candidates such as former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, who says he has no charm.
While DeSantis largely refrained from responding to those attacks—the Florida governor in November calledthe intra-party criticism "just noise" and months later said he's "just not following it"—he used his formal announcement to say publicly some of what he has told allies privately over the past few months. DeSantis during his conversation with Musk called to "end the culture of losing that has infected the Republican Party in recent years," a line that came roughly one week after DeSantis told donors that Trump would not be able to win the general election come 2024.
DeSantis's decision to launch his campaign through an unorthodox online conversation with Musk, who has become a popular figure on the right, reflects the Republican's media strategy. The Florida governor has spurned legacy media outlets in favor of conservative alternatives, though it was unclear whether he would continue to do so as a presidential candidate. Wednesday evening's announcement, however, is followed by an interview on Fox News and a press call that appears to be limited to conservative media outlets, an indication DeSantis has no plans to change course.
After roughly 20 minutes of unreliable audio on Wednesday night, Musk ended the discussion, which he held through Twitter's live audio platform, before restarting it around 6:30 p.m. "It seems we broke the internet with so much excitement," DeSantis's campaign tweeted.
The Florida governor emerged as a GOP star during his first term in office by rejecting COVID-era lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and school mask requirements, policies the Republican said made Florida the "freest state" in America. He cruised to reelection last November, defeating his Democratic opponent, Charlie Crist, by a whopping 19 points—the largest margin of victory for any Florida governor in four decades in a year in which Republicans nationwide underperformed expectations.
"My view was I had to look out for the people I represented, for protecting their jobs over trying to safeguard my political hide," DeSantis said Wednesday night. "There was an official narrative about lockdowns, about closing schools, about forced masking, about all these different things that we had to navigate during COVID."
Beyond his COVID policies, DeSantis has shown an eagerness to wade into—and often popularize—cultural fights.
Last year, for example, the Republican signed legislation that prohibited public schools from providing "classroom instruction" on "sexual orientation or gender identity" from kindergarten through third grade. While mainstream media outlets and national Democrats quickly lambasted what they called the "Don't Say Gay" bill as "hateful" and "ugly," everyday voters disagreed. Americans who were presented with the legislation's actual language backed it by a two-to-one margin, according to a 2022 Public Opinion Strategies poll. Nearly 80 percent of U.S. adults, meanwhile, believe it's "inappropriate" for teachers to discuss "trans identity" with students in kindergarten to third grade, a May Washington Post poll found.
"Our mantra in Florida is that the purpose of the schools is education, not indoctrination," DeSantis said during his conversation with Musk.
In addition to his Fox News interview and press call, DeSantis will hold a tele-townhall with a national slate of voters before meeting in the coming days with top campaign donors at a Miami retreat. After the Memorial Day holiday, the Florida governor plans to hold events across several early primary states, according to NBC News.
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