Jonah Goldberg is the latest pundit who wonders why Americans seem to be paying little attention to recent news that could be characterized as a “Cyber Pearl Harbor.” He explains in a column posted at National Review Online.
What if a team of Chinese agents had broken into the Pentagon or — less box office but just as bad — the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and carted out classified documents?
The next day, the newspapers and morning TV shows would show pictures of the broken locks and rummaged filing cabinets. And if we caught the Chinese spies in the act, perp-walking them for the world to see? Boy howdy.
My hunch is that the airwaves would be full of people talking about how “this was an act of war.” And I have no doubt that if the situation were reversed and we had sent our team to Beijing, the Chinese would definitely see it as an act of war.
Meanwhile, in real life, it was revealed last week that the Chinese stole millions of personnel files and mountains of background-check information from the U.S. government. I suppose I should say the Chinese “allegedly” stole the information, but many lawmakers, government officials, anonymous intelligence sources, and industry experts are convinced that the Chinese did it. Besides, we normally use “allegedly” in such cases because we don’t want to prejudice a jury — and this case is never, ever going to court.
The damage is hard to exaggerate. Former NSA counterintelligence officer John Schindler calls it a “disaster” in a column headlined “China’s hack just wrecked American espionage.” Joel Brenner, America’s top counterintelligence official from 2006 to 2009, says the stolen data amounts to the “crown jewels” of American intelligence. “This tells the Chinese the identities of almost everybody who has got a United States security clearance,” he told the Associated Press.
