In October of 2008,

The International Monetary Fund took a blind hit from Chinese state-sponsored hackers in a military tactic known as 'Strategic Information Warfare'.

At the time of the attack that lasted for approximately one week, the IMF had a network link into the World Bank, the World's largest anti-poverty agency.

Spy-ware was detected on the entire network, "but absolutely no evidence that any sensitive information or systems were breached".

(Note: The definition of systems being infiltrated means that systems were breached, and having spy-ware detected across your entire network means that the probability is very high that sensitive information was stolen and possibly more was sent out through several back-door's while the spy-ware was diligently being removed across the entire network.)

But what could be the point?

Nick Day, a former British Intelligence Officer who runs Diligence, a private investigative firm, insists that "...what the Chinese are looking to do is to get influence over a number of third world countries where there are assets in particular, where there are minerals , oil, etc. - where there is wealth that would be strategically useful.  And if the IMF is not going to bail them out, or is going to bail them out at a rate which is fairly punitive, then the Chinese can go into those countries and say, "Don't go to the IMF.  Come to us.  We'll bail you out and we want exclusive deals over the next 20 years to all of your mining concessions in your country, access to mineral wealth, access to oil - all the raw materials that China is going to need to keep carrying its economy forward."

(Side note: the above is a great example of a preemptive motive one could use to delineate between the young hacker vs. the nation-sponsored political attacker.)

September 2009

China secures dominance of over 97 percent of the production of rare earth minerals.

(Note: these minerals cannot be reproduced artificially.)

These minerals are used by the U.S. in every electronic device - cell phones, computer hard drives, guided missiles - and will impact critical military uses, such as defense systems,  precision-guided munitions, lasers, communications systems, radar systems, avionics, night vision equipment, satellites and more, according to the Government Accountability Office.

China, of course, decreases output and increases export taxes on all rare earth material to a range of 15 to 25 percent.

September 2009 thru January 2010

China is cheating on trade agreements, aggressively pursuing military capabilities and aggressively conducting cyber-attacks.

The U.S. economy is still bleak at best.  China continues to support the U.S. dollar.

January 2010

The White House National Security Council directed U.S. spy agencies to lower the priority placed on intelligence collection for China from Priority-1 to Priority-2, "amid opposition...from senior intelligence leaders who feared [rightly so] it would hamper efforts to obtain secrets about Beijing's military and its cyber-attacks".

Now let's put these four pieces of information together:

1. October 2008

The IMF and the World Bank were infiltrated by a severe cyber-attack, gaining China valuable insight into the countries we were and were not funding.

2. November 2008 thru 20??

China takes this information and gains major influence over third world countries in exchange for exclusive deals over the next 20 years to all mining concessions in those countries, including mineral wealth and raw materials they need.

3. September 2009

China controls dominance over 97 percent of our rare earth minerals that has long-reaching implications for the U.S. Department of Defense.

4. January 2010

Despite China's persistent and aggressive cyber-attacks against the U.S., the Obama administration directs the U.S. spy agencies to lower the priority against China in order to "assuage Chinese concerns" that intelligence agencies are "exaggerating" threats from Beijing.

So, while we continue to loosen up our grip on gathering our own information, China continues to conduct more aggressive attacks - thus furthering their long-term agenda(s).  

In this particular instance, (pardon me if I've missed a few steps) - while we pay back our debt to China, pay taxes on much needed minerals (when they allow us to have them) - taxes that help refill their depleted cash flow from lending out to third world countries, we now have given them insight as to an approximation of what supplies we have left, our building operation efforts, and have allowed them to stifle our innovation efforts and limit our supplies - while they have, through long-term - (though not very long-term) Information Warfare tactics, stolen our current and near-future weaponry plans.

Not a bad plan.

Unfortunately, because the current Military efforts and strategies continue to get smacked down by the Obama administration or Policy makers and/or internally wrestled within the government organizations themselves as to who will stand up the U.S. CyberPower unit and conquer the deterrence debate, these state-sponsored InfoWar tactics are going to persist and quite possibly cripple U.S. control as China continues to take a long-term, broad-based approach to National Security.