Foreign Economic Espionage in Cyberspace

Cyber espionage is a growing threat likely to aid in overtaking the conventional methods of war due to its low cost and high opportunity to cause damage. Some of the most malicious attacks that exemplify this shift in war strategy were the hack on the Office of Personnel Management in 2013 and 2014 by the Chinese, the BlackEnergy and NotPetya attacks by Sandworm in Russia on Ukraine in 2015-2017, and obviously Stuxnet in 2010 created by the US and Israel to target Iran. Protecting our nation's data is becoming more and more important although it is a seemingly harder and harder task. Russia leads the world in persistence and severity of attacks but China is a close second, innovating technology for data collection and corruption. This is only expected to be expedited with their growing military, political, and economic power and heightened animosity towards the US. Here I have linked a paper I posted on LinkedIn that discusses the future of the United States and China from a cybersecurity standpoint. The United States Government, specifically Secretary of State Pompeo, has been implementing a program called the Clean Network that disallows Chinese produced technology pieces, specifically by Huawei, to be used in the United States. This is said to protect national security and deter Chinese involvement in American telecommunication.

In another election year, it will also be interesting to monitor illegal Russian participation with reports that it has already interfered.