The China Program

The U.S. government commissioned a report of Chinese Information War operations directed at the United States and was shocked at what was found. The unclassified portion of the report showed that China is openly funding research in over fifty Chinese universities, to find ways to develop Cyber War capabilities. Much of this research, at least the portion that is unclassified, is directed at disrupting American Internet and internal computer networks and computer operations in general. The research in the Chinese universities is based on five different national Information War research programs and there is apparently a lot of other work being done by military researchers. Military publications on the subject discuss developing systems that can hit the enemy logistical and command capabilities at the start of hostilities (or even before, if a formal declaration of war is not being used). Also discussed is peacetime collection of information via Internet based espionage. That is already going on, but China officially denies it is doing that sort of thing.