Recently China has a growing chorus of accusations against it. China has been called many different things overs its thousands of years of history. Lord Voldemort probably hasn’t been one of them, until now. After all, the evil antagonist from the Harry Potter novels is considerably younger.
China is ‘the foe who must not be named,’ quipped the Wall Street Journal last weekend, referring to the aforementioned Dark Lord. Retired US Lieutenant Colonel Timothy Thomas says Uncle Sam is tiptoeing around the issue of Chinese state-sponsored hacking against US government and commercial institutions. Not to mention leaving America vulnerable where it hurts in the 21st century: cyberspace.
Who’s the inspiration for the Chinese war strategy? Bill Gates? Mark Zuckerburg? Of course not. It’s Sun Tzu! He wrote the Art of War 2,500 years ago. ‘The essence of China’s thinking about cyber warfare is the concept of shi,’ says the Liuetanant Colonel Thomas, ‘the strategically advantageous posture before a battle.’
That means finding vulnerabilities. In this case, China using computer network reconnaissance and tactics like ‘spearphishing’. Mind you, we hardly think the US is innocent in all of this.
The beating heart of advances in cyber warfare is the same as the one that runs Facebook and Twitter: algorithms. Our new technology analyst Sam Volkering says,
‘The algorithm is the lifeblood of today’s internet and technological advancement.’
The takeaway is that, whether you’re spying on a nation state or updating your Facebook status, it’s because of the algorithm that any of this is possible.
To think a $262 billion company (Google) started from one simple algorithm that finds information in webpages is mind blowing. Successful online businesses work because of good old mathematics. And there’s money to be made in companies that put it to good use. Stay tuned for updates from Sam on this.
Callum Newman
Editor, Money Weekend
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