Key Points
- The Pentagon’s Tech Chief has resigned due to concerns over America’s commitment to cybersecurity.
- He says China is already winning the cyber war, invests more in emerging tech than America.
- U.S. government has “kindergarten level” security in place for many sectors.
According to the website Privacy Affairs, since 2009 more than 30% of Chinese cyber attacks have targeted the U.S., making it the single most desirable target for Chinese hackers. Most recently, Chinese hackers carried out a state-sponsored attack on Microsoft’s Exchange servers.
More than 30,000 organizations were affected – including the federal government.
And it will only get worse over the next two decades unless something drastic is done. But former Pentagon Tech Chief Nicolas Chaillan believes, to a large extent, the war is already lost.
“We have no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years,” Chaillan, who quit the Defense Department in September, told the Financial Times. “Right now, it’s already a done deal; it is already over in my opinion.”
Chaillan is sounding the alarm on what he calls “kindergarten level” cybersecurity in many sectors of the U.S. government and claims he spent most of his time as Chief Tech Officer, “fixing basic cloud things and laptops.”
“Most of all, though, [Chaillan] seems furious that China is pulling ahead in the realms of artificial intelligence, machine learning and cyberattack capability,” Financial Times reports. “In a particularly grim critique, he complained that US tech giants like Google have been hesitant to dive into particularly controversial AI research, whereas Beijing isn’t held back by those pesky ethical debates.”
Estimates show China spends billions of dollars every year on R&D for the applications of AI. According to the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, “China aims to become ‘the world’s primary AI innovation center’ by 2030.”
An aim Chaillan thinks they will deliver on.
“China was set to dominate the future of the world, controlling everything from media narratives to geopolitics,” Reuters says of the Chaillan interview. “Chaillan announced his resignation at the beginning of September, saying military officials were repeatedly put in charge of cyber initiatives for which they lacked experience.”
It’s time the Biden administration took a long, hard look at U.S. cybersecurity and our investments in emerging technologies. Because according to Chaillan, China has a very large head start.
