China Publishes Paper on Hypothetical Attack on America

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Academic Paper in China Sets Off Alarms in U.S.

It came as a surprise this month to Wang Jianwei, a graduate engineering student in Liaoning, China, that he had been described as a potential cyberwarrior before the United States Congress.


Ken Cedeno for The New York Times
Larry M. Wortzel, a military strategist, recently drew attention to the paper.
Larry M. Wortzel, a military strategist and China specialist, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 10 that it should be concerned because “Chinese researchers at the Institute of Systems Engineering of Dalian University of Technology published a paper on how to attack a small U.S. power grid sub-network in a way that would cause a cascading failure of the entire U.S.”

When reached by telephone, Mr. Wang said he and his professor had indeed published “Cascade-Based Attack Vulnerability on the U.S. Power Grid” in an international journal called Safety Science last spring. But Mr. Wang said he had simply been trying to find ways to enhance the stability of power grids by exploring potential vulnerabilities.

“We usually say ‘attack’ so you can see what would happen,” he said. “My emphasis is on how you can protect this. My goal is to find a solution to make the network safer and better protected.” And independent American scientists who read his paper said it was true: Mr. Wang’s work was a conventional technical exercise that in no way could be used to take down a power grid.

The difference between Mr. Wang’s explanation and Mr. Wortzel’s conclusion is of more than academic interest. It shows that in an atmosphere already charged with hostility between the United States and China over cybersecurity issues, including large-scale attacks on computer networks, even a misunderstanding has the potential to escalate tension and set off an overreaction.

“Already people are interpreting this as demonstrating some kind of interest that China would have in disrupting the U.S. power grid,” said Nart Villeneuve, a researcher with the SecDev Group, an Ottawa-based cybersecurity research and consulting group. “Once you start interpreting every move that a country makes as hostile, it builds paranoia into the system.”

Mr. Wortzel’s presentation at the House hearing got a particularly strong reaction from Representative Ed Royce, Republican of California, who called the flagging of the Wang paper “one thing I think jumps out to all of these Californians here today, or should.”

He was alluding to concerns that arose in 2001 when The Los Angeles Times reported that intrusions into the network that controlled the electrical grid were traced to someone in Guangdong Province, China. Later reports of other attacks often included allegations that the break-ins were orchestrated by the Chinese, although no proof has been produced.

In an interview last week about the Wang paper and his testimony, Mr. Wortzel said that the intention of these particular researchers almost did not matter.

“My point is that now that vulnerability is out there all over China for anybody to take advantage of,” he said.

But specialists in the field of network science, which explores the stability of networks like power grids and the Internet, said that was not the case.

“Neither the authors of this article, nor any other prior article, has had information on the identity of the power grid components represented as nodes of the network,” Reka Albert, a University of Pennsylvania physicist who has conducted similar studies, said in an e-mail interview. “Thus no practical scenarios of an attack on the real power grid can be derived from such work.”

The issue of Mr. Wang’s paper aside, experts in computer security say there are genuine reasons for American officials to be wary of China, and they generally tend to dismiss disclaimers by China that it has neither the expertise nor the intention to carry out the kind of attacks that bombard American government and computer systems by the thousands every week.

The trouble is that it is so easy to mask the true source of a computer network attack that any retaliation is fraught with uncertainty. This is why a war of words, like the high-pitched one going on these past months between the United States and China, holds special peril, said John Arquilla, director of the Information Operations Center at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.

“What we know from network science is that dense communications across many different links and many different kinds of links can have effects that are highly unpredictable,” Mr. Arquilla said. Cyberwarfare is in some ways “analogous to the way people think about biological weapons — that once you set loose such a weapon it may be very hard to control where it goes,” he added.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/world/asia/21grid.html?ref=world

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These kinds of news articles makes me feel even more hostile to a country that is supposedly supposed to be working with us to overcome global warming and the global financial crisis. Im pretty offended by this and view it as a direct threat against our country. This and the numerous hacking attempts into our digital information in cyberspace, the most recent involving Google last month. Why China would even let a paper like this baffles me and like I said, the only way I can see this is as an open threat against the US.

The only good thing that would come out of this is that our men and women working in national defense would (or should) doublecheck to make sure the pinpointed weak spots in our country are covered.
 
Interesting article, chockstock.

But rather than get all excited and upset by the fact that China has the audacity to actually make theoretical plans to attack us in ways that would hurt us, you should be saying "so what?".

Yeah, it can kind of get you angry and frustrated with China's actions. We're supposed to be working for common solutions on a lot of things. But remember, we view them as potential enemies, just like they view us as the same. And if you think we haven't already studied them to the Nth degree, trying to discover THEIR weaknesses in order to possibly exploit them in a confrontation? Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but we are just as guilty as them when it comes to "knowing thy enemy" (perhaps not as brazen about it as to actually publish our plans in a science article. Geesh!). It's just the smart thing to do, and assuming your enemy is dumber than you usually just leads to a nasty shock when you discover the foolishness of your arrogance.

BTW, China knows we plan for possible attacks against THEM as well.

Welcome to the 21st reality; either we feel it is worth it to get into a whole new Cold War with them, or we decide it's just not worth it. There ARE some strategic issues I believe we'd actually go toe-to-toe with them over, but they haven't reached the levels yet that would require us to make the Pacific Rim America's new "Armed Fortress" like we did in Europe for 40+ years.
 
I too wonder why the Chinese allow articles like that to get out. Anti-Chinese sentiment is starting to permeate around the Country as we dip more into resession and watch our core businesses ship over to China. Maybe there is ulterior motive afoot?

BTW, China is not working with us on a Global Warming solution, they want us to commit to things like cap and tax or the Kyoto treaty which will destroy our economy while they go unfettered as the worlds largest polluter. They are also helping the US Financial crisis by flooding our market with cheap crap while they cap their yen suppressing the dollar.
 
I too wonder why the Chinese allow articles like that to get out. Anti-Chinese sentiment is starting to permeate around the Country as we dip more into resession and watch our core businesses ship over to China. Maybe there is ulterior motive afoot?

This is the real news and question...it's been known for sometime that China doesn't like us even though we trade with them, and, as has been said, nations in any kind of tension with each other for anything set up hypothetical plans of attack on both sides. This is just a fact of warfare and strategy.
 
This is the real news and question...it's been known for sometime that China doesn't like us even though we trade with them, and, as has been said, nations in any kind of tension with each other for anything set up hypothetical plans of attack on both sides. This is just a fact of warfare and strategy.

I realize China doesn't like us and they know we don't trust them but, to rattle the cage this blatantly doesn't make sense....on the surface. I'm sure there's more to it.
 
Read "One Second After" for a take on a variant of this idea....
 
Interesting article, chockstock.

But rather than get all excited and upset by the fact that China has the audacity to actually make theoretical plans to attack us in ways that would hurt us, you should be saying "so what?".

Yeah, it can kind of get you angry and frustrated with China's actions. We're supposed to be working for common solutions on a lot of things. But remember, we view them as potential enemies, just like they view us as the same. And if you think we haven't already studied them to the Nth degree, trying to discover THEIR weaknesses in order to possibly exploit them in a confrontation? Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but we are just as guilty as them when it comes to "knowing thy enemy" (perhaps not as brazen about it as to actually publish our plans in a science article. Geesh!). It's just the smart thing to do, and assuming your enemy is dumber than you usually just leads to a nasty shock when you discover the foolishness of your arrogance.

BTW, China knows we plan for possible attacks against THEM as well.

Welcome to the 21st reality; either we feel it is worth it to get into a whole new Cold War with them, or we decide it's just not worth it. There ARE some strategic issues I believe we'd actually go toe-to-toe with them over, but they haven't reached the levels yet that would require us to make the Pacific Rim America's new "Armed Fortress" like we did in Europe for 40+ years.

I admire your level-headedness in the face of something of chief concern to American national security. If thats what the academies train young men and women to do, I'm more than grateful and happy to be extended an opportunity to attend an SA!

I agree and understand why any rival states or enemy states would carefully scrutinize each other. What simply got under my skin was the fact that China would have the audacity to allow something like this to publish. Like you said, we can definitely bet America studies China as closely as they do us, but I don't recall whenever the US disclosed information like this that is clearly meant to agitate and annoy the other.

Point being, China's act is poisonous to our "frenemy" relationship we have with them. As I mentioned before, when the planet faces problems of epic proportions, this is clearly the wrong direction to be taking as one of the twin engines of the world.
 
Rather than get all worked up over an academic paper, for sure ask what counter measures are being implemented to preclude such an attack. But we also need to address the 1000's of miles of unprotected electrical lines that spiderweb across this country - that are vulnerable to any idiot with access to dynamite.

Risk is probability times consequence.
 
USNA has a Chinese Major and I think they may recognize the future problem.
 
I don't recall whenever the US disclosed information like this that is clearly meant to agitate and annoy the other.

Your right, we don't post theoretical articles about how to fight them. We DO however sell a LOT of military hardware to Taiwan.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6100C720100201

You'd have to wonder, what we would think if they declared Puerto Rico (pretty much our undeclared 51st state) under their protection and started selling them massive amounts of firepower? It's not exactly that, but that is how they view it.

Point being, China's act is poisonous to our "frenemy" relationship we have with them. As I mentioned before, when the planet faces problems of epic proportions, this is clearly the wrong direction to be taking as one of the twin engines of the world.

Old saying: it takes two to tango. We've being dancing back and forth with them for a while now. You don't really think we keep all those forces in Korea and Japan tp protect Korea, do you?

Not that I agree or support China in its actions. But I do understand that EVERYTHING we do on the international stage has intentions and consequences. Something you will learn as you progress as a leader and officer. The unfortunate thing about being a military officer is we don't MAKE those international policies or decisions. We are there to deal with the consequences.

Reminds me of another old saying: "Ours is not to reason why. Ours is just to do and die..."

But it doesn't stop you from giving those who make the decisions honest and sound advise about those decisions BEFORE you have to deal with the consequences. Some of you may actually have the opportunity to do that in your career. THAT is why you always need to see and study all sides of an issue....
 
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