China’s spy network

We are at war online – and we are losing

Almost exactly two years ago, an American army officer found a memory stick in a car park in the Middle East and, out of curiosity, inserted it into his military laptop. It seemed to be empty, but there are a million ways of disguising a Trojan computer virus. Instantly, a malicious software code uploaded onto the US Central Command military computer network and embedded itself in the system. And there it lay undetected for weeks, able to send back all manner of classified information. In the words of the deputy US defence secretary, William J. Lynn III, it was ‘poised to deliver operational plans into the hands of an unknown adversary’. That unknown adversary was almost certainly China.

Until recently both Britain and America flattered themselves to think that their digital secrets were safe behind fearsome layers of protection. The WikiLeaks fiasco has shown this to be laughably untrue.