China’s Secret Secret Stealing

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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People who believe in conspiracies are nuts in need of powerful anti-psychotic drugs. That is until their theories prove true. They then morph into prophets and sages.

Agoraphobic men wearing aluminum foil hats to keep out messages from Mars have believed that China has been hacking to US military computers and IT systems at large US companies. There are secrets in those electronic boxes, and the Chinese want them.

Late news is that a full general in the US military has caught the Chinese red-handed, or so be believes. According to The Wall Street Journal "The top U.S. commander in charge of cyberspace said that American military networks are coming under increasing attack from hackers seeking to steal classified information, and that many of the incidents appear linked to China." We were told the Cold War ended when the Berlin Wall came down.

It is a wonder that anyone is surprised. Spies and other agents from foreign governments have been stealing secrets from the US for decades. The Russians did not come by the atomic bomb by being good scientists.

If the Chinese have a systematic program for getting military information and planting viruses in computers, it is probable that they have similar designs on sensitive information from the US private sector. High tech and software design secrets would have a special value to a country which has to get almost all of its important technology from outside its borders. Data from military contractors would also be especially useful.

No one talks about the Chinese plans. That is a shame since some kind of electronic espionage has probably been going on for years.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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