At least eight U.S. telecom providers have been hacked by the Chinese, White House officials revealed last week.
ATT and Verizon, Nos. 1 and 2 among telecom service providers in the U.S., are among the companies compromised by the Chinese, CNN reported.
The scheme has been in the making possibly for as long as two years and has affected dozens of countries according to media reports.
U.S. officials believe no classified communications have been compromised to date, but the hacking continues.
Some, not all, Chinese hackers have been rooted out, Anne Neuberger, President Joe Biden’s top cyber advisor, said in a conference call with reporters.
Companies that have worked closely with U.S. cyber experts are farther along than others, she said.
The very nature of the spy game is to keep your own information private, and Jake Denton, a research associate for The Heritage Foundation’s Tech Policy Center, believes Americans are being kept in the dark.
“The more I talk to folks about this, the little the public seems to know,” Denton said on American Family Radio Wednesday.
What is known is that basic iPhone and Android texting platforms are subject to Chinese surveillance, he said.
The FBI last week said Americans should use only encrypted forms of communication.
“We don’t really know how long they’ve been inside our telecommunications systems either,” Denton told show host Jenna Ellis.
As Biden heads out the door, this is one of the “more significant national security scandals of our lifetimes,” Denton said.
China 'toe-to-toe' with U.S.
And there’s no immediate fix in sight.
“It seems like this could be our future for the immediate future, at least,” Denton said.
It’s also far from the only China problem that Donald Trump will inherit on Jan. 20.
China’s military and economy make it a rival unlike any most in the U.S. have experienced, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) said on Washington Watch Wednesday.
“You think about the Soviet Union, how powerful they were. They never had an economy ever to rival ours. I mean, sort of close in the 50s. After that, we blew them away economically. China is already with us toe-to-toe economically. Their military is larger than ours is,” Hawley told show host Tony Perkins.
Instead of rethinking the U.S.-China relationship after COVID-19, a pandemic that a U.S. House report last week concluded began with a virus produced in a Chinese lab in Wuhan, the Biden administration has gone in the other direction, Hawley said.
One of China’s greatest assets in its relationship with the U.S. is Democrats’ Green New Deal.
“It’s just a code for massive giveaways to China,” Hawley said. “Solar panels, where are they made overwhelmingly? China. Wind turbines? China.”
To make matters worse, these items are made in China by slave labor, “the Uyghurs, who are an enslaved religious minority. We are literally financing that. It’s insane,” Hawley said.
The Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic group with a rich cultural heritage residing primarily, in the modern day, in Xinjiang China. They speak their own language. Most are Sunni Muslims.
“I think we ought to say to these foreign manufacturers that are based in other countries, whether it's China or anywhere else, if you want to have access to our market, you've got to make a certain percentage of your goods in the United States of America with American labor,” Hawley said.
But access to global markets leads to corporate riches. The dollar sign is often nearby when policy decisions are made.
“Just look at the NBA. You remember LeBron James just a few years ago advocating for what was happening in Hong Kong, dramatic crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong, and LeBron James is out there defending the Chinese government. Why? Well, it's all about the money. They need the access to the Chinese market,” Hawley said.
So, could there be a connection between a spy balloon that drifts across much of the Continental U.S. and the hacking of telecom companies that the U.S. seemingly cannot eradicate?
What should Trump do?
Trump’s first step should be to demand more from his cyber staff, Denton said.
“Really, for the Biden administration, it's been a post to launch their careers as commentators. You look at Anne Nurberger, she's been in the Gulf doing speaking engagements in Arab countries while this is all going on, and she's supposedly President Biden's top cyber advisor. Why isn't she at the White House? Why isn't she actually coordinating with government agencies to rectify this?” Denton asks.
Cyber achievement have been shockingly slim under Biden, Denton said.
“We have CISA now, the Cyber Security Agency, and they really haven't gotten a single win under their belt other than censoring the American people," he complained. "We really just have not taken cyber security seriously, and this is what happens when you do that. We leave a giant target on our backs, and we just put people in power who want to build a brand for themselves.”
