CCP Peeps US Wiretaps, Feds Flip on Crypto, & AI Hacks Spike - China's New Cyber Flex

This is your US-China CyberPulse: Defense Updates podcast.

Listeners, it’s Ting here, and if you’re into cyber, China, or hacking headlines, you’ve just decoded the right stream. Let’s skip the fluff and slice straight into the week’s US-China CyberPulse: Defense Updates. If your passwords aren’t sweating, they will be by the end of this—promise.

First up, the ghost of Salt Typhoon still haunts federal cyber hallways. That epic infiltration—Chinese hackers slipping through vulnerabilities in US telecom networks—just won’t die. Dr. Susan Landau from Tufts flagged in Congressional testimony how the decades-old Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, designed to help US cops catch crooks, became a backdoor paradise for adversaries. The result? Chinese attackers not only grabbed messages and calls; they peered into the US government’s wiretap targets list. My hacking heart skipped a beat—imagine the CCP getting the “Who’s Watching Whom” report, not just for their own spies but also for Russia, Iran, North Korea. Landau called it “a Kim Philby type of catastrophe”—so, let’s retire CALEA for something as 2025 as neural malware[From the Crows’ Nest podcast].

Pushed by this debacle, the Four Eyes—US, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand—urged end-to-end encryption, an about-face especially for the FBI, which, until last week, eyed encryption with the suspicion of your grandma viewing blockchain. Ironically, the UK, typically the five in Five Eyes, refused to play along and stuck with their own interception game plan.

Meanwhile, Microsoft ignited a cyber-firestorm dropping China-based support teams for US government cloud services. Spooked by concerns of Beijing eavesdropping on “official use only” but still super sensitive data, Microsoft bowed to relentless pressure. The CIA, former CISA officials, and lawmakers all warned about the dangers of foreign support crews. The cloud arms race got a new rule—US government cloud, US-only hands on deck. This brings Microsoft closer to Amazon, Google, and Oracle, who’ve long stayed away from offshore support for fed infra.

In the war room, the Commission on Cyber Force Generation kicked off, spearheaded by CSIS and chaired by ex-Army Cyber Command boss Ed Cardon and policy vet Josh Stiefel. Their mission? Draw up the blueprint for a dedicated, independent US Cyber Force—because ransomware attacks don’t clock out at 5 PM, and the Pentagon’s cyber readiness is best measured in milliseconds.

AI’s a battlefield too. At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, China’s Premier Li Qiang floated a global AI governance framework, implicitly challenging the US, which rolled out its own national AI strategy focused on less bureaucracy and sharper export controls—especially for chips. Both sides are jockeying to write the rulebook for both trade and tech weaponization. The Biden administration wants airtight, ideologically neutral AI data centers and has even pressed for allies to accept US-developed export standards—an explicit counter to Beijing’s full-court press in institutions like the ITU.

Finally, CrowdStrike’s threat report highlights that AI itself is the juiciest new target—Chinese attackers single-handedly juiced a 136% surge in global cloud hacks, often outsmarting insecure, misconfigured cloud consoles. Attackers aren’t just hacking humans—they’re hacking the machine identities powering everything from smart power grids to your kid’s homework-bot.

So, if you’re counting on last year’s cyber policy, or weak encryption, to keep you safe from the new, evolving China threat—sorry, but you might as well shelter behind a pop-up blocker. This is Ting, thanking you all for tuning in—don’t forget to subscribe for next week’s quantum-secure pulse! This has been a Quiet Please production, for more check out quietplease dot ai.

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