foreignpolicy--2020-12-21--The Vaccine Has a Serious Side Effect—A Positive One

The Vaccine Has a Serious Side Effect—A Positive One As the epically awful year 2020 limps toward an end , it can be hard to find reasons to hope 2021 will be that much better .
Especially if you ’ re reading this with bleary eyes between Zoom calls , wondering what your kid is pounding on in the hallway .
Yes , the United States will finally get a new president next year .
But given the likelihood that Congress will remain divided , that outgoing President Donald Trump will continue to raise hell from the sidelines , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scorn democracy and ignore Americans ’ well-being , the odds that the Biden administration will manage do enough , fast enough , to address the country ’ s urgent crises seem painfully long .
What about the COVID-19 vaccine and the economic recovery it promises ?
Yes , those are coming—but not anytime soon ( unless you ’ re a front-line health care worker ) .
The United States won ’ t achieve the kind of widespread immunity it needs to start reopening until the late spring or summer—by which point , U.S. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 500,000 .
And in the words of Anthony Fauci , the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases , things won ’ t “ really turn … around ” until the end of next year .
Some industries will take even longer to recover ; travel , for example , is not expected to reach pre-pandemic levels until 2024 .
And yet , obscured by all of this , there is a powerful reason to be hopeful about 2021 , and it comes down to a single number revealed by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That very important figure comes from a survey released by the Kaiser Family Foundation ’ s COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor on Dec. 15 ; it represents the percentage of Americans who now say they will take a vaccine when it becomes available , if it is declared safe by scientists and is available for free .
Why is this such a big deal ?
First , because a vaccine is no good unless most people use it , and the United States won ’ t ever reach the turnaround Fauci describes unless enough Americans—some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his reckoning—actually agree to be vaccinated .
Until very recently , that didn ’ t seem likely .
Now it does .
The Vaccine Monitor ’ s 71 percent represents an eight-point jump from a similar survey it released in October , which itself represented an increase of about 10 percent from polls taken in the late spring and early summer .
Together , these numbers show that growing numbers of Americans are willing to roll up their sleeves and get the shot .
Rising confidence in the vaccine points to a deeper @ @ @ @ @ @ @ turning point : the year when Americans finally embrace science again .
Given how close the new total comes to Fauci ’ s target figure of 75 percent , the study augurs very well for the country ’ s chances of containing the pandemic and starting to rebuild next year .
After creating a vaccine in the first place , getting a wary U.S. public to take it was one of the big hurdles ; now the country seems likely to clear it .
But the good news goes even further .
Rising @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deeper trend that could make 2021 a critical turning point : the year when Americans finally embrace science again , after increasingly abandoning objective truth and rejecting expertise of all kinds .
If that claim sounds overblown , consider a few important facts .
The first is that confidence in the vaccine hasn ’ t just grown but is likely to keep growing .
According to Kaiser Family Foundation pollsters and others , there are four main reasons Americans have expressed reluctance about the vaccine until now .
First , the development was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was so politicized , that many people have been scared about safety .
Second , many were confused by the dishonest , inconsistent , and erratic way that Trump talked about the virus and the vaccine .
Third , many Americans of color—who have caught and died from COVID-19 in grossly disproportionate numbers—share an understandable suspicion of government health programs due , not least , to the dark history of secret experiments conducted on Black , Latino , and Native American subjects ( most infamously during the Tuskegee Syphilis Study ) .
Finally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ still don ’ t believe that COVID-19 is real or is serious enough to warrant doing anything about it .
Since the summer , several big things have changed that will help alleviate these feelings .
For starters , as Monica Schoch-Spana , a medical anthropologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security , told me in an interview , the vaccine is no longer theoretical .
“ We now have honest-to-God data becoming available about its effectiveness and side effects ” —and that data is overwhelmingly positive .
What ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( apart from the White House ) , as well as the pharmaceutical industry and public health experts , has worked in a diligent and transparent way to send the message that , yes , the vaccine development and testing processes were accelerated , but there were no shortcuts taken with regard to safety .
To address concerns about equity , meanwhile , the National Institutes of Health and nonprofit efforts like the CommuniVax coalition are working closely with community organizations to ensure that the vaccine is distributed in a fair way that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ color .
Finally , although Trump still seems intent on sowing confusion—see his refusal to join Vice President Mike Pence on Friday in publicly taking the vaccine—the prospect of a new , science-positive administration taking over on Jan. 20 , 2021 , may reassure many of the Americans who are wary of the current president ’ s approach .
If the rollout continues to go well , the 29 percent of the public now waiting to see how the vaccine performs may decide to take it , too .
So much for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ impact on U.S. society ?
Numerous experts now predict , with reason , that as Americans become more accepting of the COVID-19 vaccine in particular , anxiety about all vaccines—a self-destructive celebrity-driven phenomenon that ’ s fueled outbreaks of the measles and other preventable diseases in recent years—could also wane .
And that would be a huge boon to the health of the country .
As Schoch-Spana put it , “ Everyone needs to look at the current campaign as part of a broader vaccine effort , not a one-off .
If done @ @ @ @ @ @ @ science and government demonstrate their trustworthiness—especially to hard-hit communities—that kind of trust could carry over into the next immunization program and the health sector as a whole.
” If such a carryover effect sounds like wishful speculation , it ’ s not ; in fact , it ’ s already happening .
A nationwide poll taken by the Pew Research Center in April and May showed that since the pandemic started , public trust not just in doctors , but in science in general has risen .
More than 3 in 4 American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ causes climate change , for example ; even about 81 percent of Texans acknowledge that the phenomenon is real .
Given the terrible events we ’ ve all suffered in the last few years , this shift makes sense .
The wildfires , tropical storms , and the pandemic—which is now cutting a lethal swath through even rural states like North Dakota—have made it harder than ever to ignore Mother Nature .
Virtually everyone , from Trump on down , who has denied the science has paid a price for it—just ask Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Chris Christie , who spent several days in an intensive care unit with COVID-19 and whose experience turned him into a mask evangelist .
Meanwhile , many of the regions and countries that have embraced medical expertise , such as New York City and South Korea , have benefited in a very public way .
In the last year , as a result of what admissions officers are calling the Fauci Effect , applications to U.S. medical schools have risen by an unprecedented 18 percent .
It ’ s hard to predict just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ go in the days ahead .
But young Americans are already voting with their feet : In the last year , as a result of what admissions officers are calling the Fauci Effect , applications to U.S. medical schools have risen by an unprecedented 18 percent ( and at Stanford , by 50 percent ) , even as overall university enrollments have dropped .
Geoffrey Young of the Association of American Medical Colleges has compared the phenomenon to the boom in military enlistments that followed the 9/11 attacks , but a better analogy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there in the name of Operation Warp Speed and in the way many of us have taken to referring to the vaccine ’ s crash development as a “ moonshot.
” The best parallel is to the United States ’ actual moonshot in the 1960s .
It ’ s hard to overstate how incredibly excited the Apollo program made Americans , not just about astronomy but about science of all sorts .
As the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson described the phenomenon to me , “ half my generation was inspired .
We saw @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and we wanted to be part of the adventure—which meant becoming fluent in science.
” The data backs him up ; a survey conducted by the journal Nature a few years ago found that of 800 researchers and engineers asked , some 50 percent said their career choices had been affected by the moon missions .
Their choices had a profound effect on the U.S. economy , turning it into the innovation superpower that dominated the world for decades to come .
The U.S. space program also produced breakthroughs that led to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ commercial products , from baby formula to smartphone cameras .
So will the COVID-19 vaccine inspire something similar ?
There are no guarantees .
First , the shift in attitudes has , so far , been largely partisan .
Although Republicans ’ views of both the vaccine and of science have improved somewhat this year , the increase has been much larger among Democrats .
Second , the vaccine has to continue to perform well , with a very low incidence of side effects and a very high rate of success in stopping @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distributed in a way that feels safe and fair to most Americans .
But assuming it is—and there is plenty of reason to think it will be—the impact on the country could be monumental , helping it roll back not just a devastating disease but also the devastating rejection of objectivity and expertise that ’ s done so much damage over the last four years .
As Tyson put it , “ There is no doubt that our journey to the moon inspired an entire next generation and beyond to become scientists and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ why that Apollo moment could not be replicated in other circumstances ” —namely , today— “ where scientists are once again the heroes of the story .
”

As the epically awful year 2020 limps toward an end, it can be hard to find reasons to hope 2021 will be that much better. Especially if you’re reading this with bleary eyes between Zoom calls, wondering what your kid is pounding on in the hallway.
As the epically awful year 2020 limps toward an end, it can be hard to find reasons to hope 2021 will be that much better. Especially if you’re reading this with bleary eyes between Zoom calls, wondering what your kid is pounding on in the hallway.
Yes, the United States will finally get a new president next year. But given the likelihood that Congress will remain divided, that outgoing President Donald Trump will continue to raise hell from the sidelines, and that the Republican Party will continue to scorn democracy and ignore Americans’ well-being, the odds that the Biden administration will manage do enough, fast enough, to address the country’s urgent crises seem painfully long.
What about the COVID-19 vaccine and the economic recovery it promises? Yes, those are coming—but not anytime soon (unless you’re a front-line health care worker). The United States won’t achieve the kind of widespread immunity it needs to start reopening until the late spring or summer—by which point, U.S. deaths from COVID-19 will likely have exceeded 500,000. And in the words of Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, things won’t “really turn … around” until the end of next year. Some industries will take even longer to recover; travel, for example, is not expected to reach pre-pandemic levels until 2024.
And yet, obscured by all of this, there is a powerful reason to be hopeful about 2021, and it comes down to a single number revealed by a new study: 71 percent.
That very important figure comes from a survey released by the Kaiser Family Foundation’s COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor on Dec. 15; it represents the percentage of Americans who now say they will take a vaccine when it becomes available, if it is declared safe by scientists and is available for free.
Why is this such a big deal? First, because a vaccine is no good unless most people use it, and the United States won’t ever reach the turnaround Fauci describes unless enough Americans—some 75 percent to 85 percent, by his reckoning—actually agree to be vaccinated. Until very recently, that didn’t seem likely.
Rising confidence in the vaccine points to a deeper trend that could make 2021 a critical turning point: the year when Americans finally embrace science again.
Now it does. The Vaccine Monitor’s 71 percent represents an eight-point jump from a similar survey it released in October, which itself represented an increase of about 10 percent from polls taken in the late spring and early summer. Together, these numbers show that growing numbers of Americans are willing to roll up their sleeves and get the shot.
Given how close the new total comes to Fauci’s target figure of 75 percent, the study augurs very well for the country’s chances of containing the pandemic and starting to rebuild next year. After creating a vaccine in the first place, getting a wary U.S. public to take it was one of the big hurdles; now the country seems likely to clear it.
But the good news goes even further. Rising confidence in the vaccine points to a deeper trend that could make 2021 a critical turning point: the year when Americans finally embrace science again, after increasingly abandoning objective truth and rejecting expertise of all kinds.
If that claim sounds overblown, consider a few important facts. The first is that confidence in the vaccine hasn’t just grown but is likely to keep growing. According to Kaiser Family Foundation pollsters and others, there are four main reasons Americans have expressed reluctance about the vaccine until now. First, the development was so fast, and the testing process was so politicized, that many people have been scared about safety. Second, many were confused by the dishonest, inconsistent, and erratic way that Trump talked about the virus and the vaccine. Third, many Americans of color—who have caught and died from COVID-19 in grossly disproportionate numbers—share an understandable suspicion of government health programs due, not least, to the dark history of secret experiments conducted on Black, Latino, and Native American subjects (most infamously during the Tuskegee Syphilis Study). Finally, a minority of mostly rural Americans still don’t believe that COVID-19 is real or is serious enough to warrant doing anything about it.
Since the summer, several big things have changed that will help alleviate these feelings. For starters, as Monica Schoch-Spana, a medical anthropologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told me in an interview, the vaccine is no longer theoretical. “We now have honest-to-God data becoming available about its effectiveness and side effects”—and that data is overwhelmingly positive. What’s more, she added, the government (apart from the White House), as well as the pharmaceutical industry and public health experts, has worked in a diligent and transparent way to send the message that, yes, the vaccine development and testing processes were accelerated, but there were no shortcuts taken with regard to safety. To address concerns about equity, meanwhile, the National Institutes of Health and nonprofit efforts like the CommuniVax coalition are working closely with community organizations to ensure that the vaccine is distributed in a fair way that specifically addresses the concerns of Americans of color. Finally, although Trump still seems intent on sowing confusion—see his refusal to join Vice President Mike Pence on Friday in publicly taking the vaccine—the prospect of a new, science-positive administration taking over on Jan. 20, 2021, may reassure many of the Americans who are wary of the current president’s approach. If the rollout continues to go well, the 29 percent of the public now waiting to see how the vaccine performs may decide to take it, too.
So much for the vaccine itself; what about the broader impact on U.S. society? Numerous experts now predict, with reason, that as Americans become more accepting of the COVID-19 vaccine in particular, anxiety about all vaccines—a self-destructive celebrity-driven phenomenon that’s fueled outbreaks of the measles and other preventable diseases in recent years—could also wane. And that would be a huge boon to the health of the country. As Schoch-Spana put it, “Everyone needs to look at the current campaign as part of a broader vaccine effort, not a one-off. If done well, if institutions of medicine and science and government demonstrate their trustworthiness—especially to hard-hit communities—that kind of trust could carry over into the next immunization program and the health sector as a whole.”
If such a carryover effect sounds like wishful speculation, it’s not; in fact, it’s already happening. A nationwide poll taken by the Pew Research Center in April and May showed that since the pandemic started, public trust not just in doctors, but in science in general has risen. More than 3 in 4 American adults and teenagers now believe human activity causes climate change, for example; even about 81 percent of Texans acknowledge that the phenomenon is real.
Given the terrible events we’ve all suffered in the last few years, this shift makes sense. The wildfires, tropical storms, and the pandemic—which is now cutting a lethal swath through even rural states like North Dakota—have made it harder than ever to ignore Mother Nature. Virtually everyone, from Trump on down, who has denied the science has paid a price for it—just ask Trump ally and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who spent several days in an intensive care unit with COVID-19 and whose experience turned him into a mask evangelist. Meanwhile, many of the regions and countries that have embraced medical expertise, such as New York City and South Korea, have benefited in a very public way.
In the last year, as a result of what admissions officers are calling the Fauci Effect, applications to U.S. medical schools have risen by an unprecedented 18 percent.
It’s hard to predict just how far this return to science will go in the days ahead. But young Americans are already voting with their feet: In the last year, as a result of what admissions officers are calling the Fauci Effect, applications to U.S. medical schools have risen by an unprecedented 18 percent (and at Stanford, by 50 percent), even as overall university enrollments have dropped.
Geoffrey Young of the Association of American Medical Colleges has compared the phenomenon to the boom in military enlistments that followed the 9/11 attacks, but a better analogy can be drawn. It’s there in the name of Operation Warp Speed and in the way many of us have taken to referring to the vaccine’s crash development as a “moonshot.” The best parallel is to the United States’ actual moonshot in the 1960s.
It’s hard to overstate how incredibly excited the Apollo program made Americans, not just about astronomy but about science of all sorts. As the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson described the phenomenon to me, “half my generation was inspired. We saw those rockets, and those astronauts, and we wanted to be part of the adventure—which meant becoming fluent in science.” The data backs him up; a survey conducted by the journal Nature a few years ago found that of 800 researchers and engineers asked, some 50 percent said their career choices had been affected by the moon missions.
Their choices had a profound effect on the U.S. economy, turning it into the innovation superpower that dominated the world for decades to come. The U.S. space program also produced breakthroughs that led to the production and marketing of huge array of commercial products, from baby formula to smartphone cameras.
So will the COVID-19 vaccine inspire something similar? There are no guarantees. First, the shift in attitudes has, so far, been largely partisan. Although Republicans’ views of both the vaccine and of science have improved somewhat this year, the increase has been much larger among Democrats.
Second, the vaccine has to continue to perform well, with a very low incidence of side effects and a very high rate of success in stopping the disease. And it must be distributed in a way that feels safe and fair to most Americans.
But assuming it is—and there is plenty of reason to think it will be—the impact on the country could be monumental, helping it roll back not just a devastating disease but also the devastating rejection of objectivity and expertise that’s done so much damage over the last four years. As Tyson put it, “There is no doubt that our journey to the moon inspired an entire next generation and beyond to become scientists and engineers. And there is no reason why that Apollo moment could not be replicated in other circumstances”—namely, today—“where scientists are once again the heroes of the story.”


foreignpolicy--2020-12-22--If Biden Wants Israeli-Palestinian Peace, He Must Break With the Past

If Biden Wants Israeli-Palestinian Peace , He Must Break With the Past This article is part of The Biden Transition , Foreign Policy ’ s ongoing coverage of how U.S. President-elect Joe Biden builds a new White House administration—and what the new team ’ s policies might be .
In 1967 , Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan epitomized Israeli triumphalism in the aftermath of the Six-Day War when he told Nahum Goldmann , the veteran American Zionist leader : “ Our American friends offer us money , arms and advice .
We take the money , we take the arms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The statement reflected the widely held belief that Israel could take U.S. support for granted .
“ What would happen if ever America were to tell you : you can have the aid only if you also take the advice ?
” Goldmann asked him .
Dayan , with resignation , answered : “ Then we would have to take the advice , too.
” Here , in a nutshell , is the basic flaw in the U.S. approach to Middle East peacemaking since 1967 : the unconditional nature of its economic , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The United States has posed as an honest broker , but in practice it has acted more as Israel ’ s lawyer .
This has made its policy for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict incoherent , contradictory , and self-defeating .
Since 1967 , Washington has arrogated to itself a monopoly over the diplomacy surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict , marginalizing the United Nations , the European Union , the Arab League , and the Kremlin .
It ultimately failed , however , because it was unable or unwilling to use its massive leverage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Israel is the United States ’ most difficult client because it is not just a foreign-policy issue , but also an issue in domestic politics .
U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has been a strong supporter of Israel throughout his long political career .
He has a consistent pro-Israel voting record in the Senate .
Israel is “ the best $ 3 billion investment we make , ” he declared in the Senate back in 1986 .
“ Were there not an Israel , ” he added , “ the United States of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to protect our interests in the region.
” Not only is Biden an ardent Zionist , he thinks that conditioning military aid to Israel is a “ gigantic mistake ” and “ absolutely outrageous.
” During his eight years as U.S. vice president , Biden did much to burnish his already shining Zionist credentials .
Then President Barack Obama himself saw Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian territory as a violation of international law and an obstacle to peace .
He tried to secure a settlement freeze to give diplomacy a chance .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then Secretary of State John Kerry , were sabotaged by Benjamin Netanyahu , Israel ’ s right-wing prime minister .
Despite his sterling record of support for Israel and pride in his personal friendship with Netanyahu , Biden was not spared Israel ’ s standard operating procedure of biting the hand that feeds it .
In 2010 , just as Biden arrived in Israel , he was greeted with the announcement that the cabinet had approved a new batch of illegal settlements in the West Bank .
Biden meekly put up with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in their belief that they could continue to repay U.S. generosity with ingratitude and contempt .
In its last year in office , the Obama administration granted Israel a military aid package worth a minimum of $ 38 billion over 10 years .
This was the biggest military aid package in history .
In keeping with Biden ’ s precepts , no conditions were attached to the aid .
On one issue , however , in the twilight of their administration , Obama overruled his vice president : a U.N. Security Council resolution @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The resolution was in line with U.S. foreign policy .
Biden wanted to wield the U.S. veto to defeat the resolution .
Obama chose to abstain and , with 14 votes in favor , the landmark Resolution 2334 was adopted .
On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict , however , Trump was entirely consistent—in his partiality towards Israel .
His foreign policy was virtually indistinguishable from the agenda of the Israeli right : recognizing Israel ’ s sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights ; moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the United States ’ main channel of communication with the Palestinian Authority ; cutting all U.S. funding from the U.N. agency that looks after Palestinian refugees ; withdrawing crucial U.S. aid to the Palestinians ; and closing down the office of the Palestine Liberation Organization ( PLO ) in Washington .
Trump ’ s polarizing partisanship culminated in a plan for the future of Israel and the occupied territories , a plan he loudly trumpeted as the “ deal of the century.
” In substance it was not a peace plan at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Israel at the expense of the Palestinians .
It invited Israel to formally annex around 30 percent of the West Bank , including the illegal settlement blocs and the Jordan Valley , the breadbasket of the Palestinian population .
Predictably , the Palestinian Authority rejected the plan and refused to even discuss it .
Netanyahu welcomed the plan but took no action to implement it because he saw no advantage in formal annexation of parts of the West Bank .
He is content with the status quo , which gives Israel a free @ @ @ @ @ @ @ triggering international sanctions .
It can be safely predicted that Biden will only engage in damage limitation rather than the wholesale reversal of Trump ’ s poisonous legacy .
The president-elect promised immediate steps to restore the desperately needed economic and humanitarian aid to the Palestinians .
He undertook to reopen the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem but pledged not move the U.S. Embassy back to Tel Aviv .
He is opposed to settlement expansion and to formal Israeli annexation of any part of the West Bank , but he still refuses to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ human rights record or adherence to international law .
And he is firmly wedded to the pre-Trump policy of favoring a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict .
In short , Biden is likely to revert to the traditional Democratic Party line of putting forward the United States as a so-called honest broker to help the two parties to reach a negotiated settlement .
In practical terms , this means reviving what used to be called the “ peace process ” until Netanyahu derailed it in 2014 , when it ceased to serve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ process was always a charade—all process and no peace .
It brought the Palestinians no nearer to attaining their goal of independence and statehood in the 27 years that have elapsed since the first Oslo Accord was signed on the White House lawn and clinched with the hesitant handshake between then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and then PLO leader Yasser Arafat .
What the peace process did do was to give Israel the cover it needed to continue to pursue an aggressive colonial project across the Green Line—the pre-1967 international border .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he must first acknowledge that the unconditional U.S. commitment to Israel with which he has been so closely associated has totally failed to achieve its stated aim of a two-state solution .
Today it has become fashionable to say that the two-state solution is dead .
The sheer size of the settlements on the West Bank , home to more than 650,000 Jews , rules out the possibility of a viable , territorially contiguous Palestinian state .
Consequently , there is growing support on the Palestinian side , though not on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the idea of one democratic state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea with equal rights for all its citizens .
Biden would never adopt such a radical idea .
If he adheres to the old idea of two states , he should at least take on board the changes that have taken place in Israel and the region in the past two or three decades .
Israel has been moving steadily to the right , with alarming manifestations of jingoism and racism and an ever more strident stress on the Jewish @ @ @ @ @ @ @ identity .
The July 2018 nation-state law effectively makes Israel an apartheid state by asserting that the Jews have a “ unique ” right to national self-determination in the area under its rule .
In addition to recognizing the illiberal and anti-democratic trends in Israeli politics , Biden would need to develop a genuine strategic dialogue with the Palestinians by dissociating himself from the policies of his predecessor , by acknowledging that the Palestinians have legitimate national rights and that they command overwhelming popular support across the entire Arab and Muslim world .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ also need to be taken into account .
The principal change is that the Persian Gulf states no longer see Israel as an enemy and a threat but as a strategic ally in their conflict with Iran .
A related change is the marked decline in the commitment of the Gulf states to the cause of an independent Palestinian state .
In the second half of 2020 , four Arab states normalized their relations with Israel within the framework of the Abraham Accords : the United Arab Emirates , Bahrain , Sudan , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ peace agreement with any Arab state is welcome , especially if it comes cost-free , like the past four .
But the big prize is Saudi Arabia .
Unlike the smaller Gulf states , Saudi Arabia has much to lose from an open betrayal of the Palestinians .
It risks a backlash at home and in parts of the Islamic world .
So far the kingdom has resisted U.S. pressure to give official expression to its covert intelligence and security cooperation with Israel .
It stands by its commitment to the Palestinians and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Israel peace and normalization with all 22 members of the Arab League as the reward for withdrawing from all occupied Arab land and agreeing to an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with a capital city in East Jerusalem .
It also calls for a “ just settlement ” of the Palestinian refugee problem based on U.N .
Resolution 194 .
This was the real deal of the century .
The Palestinian Authority under Arafat immediately embraced the initiative ; the Israeli government under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” The Arab League reendorsed the Arab Peace Initiative at its 2007 and 2017 summit conferences .
But in 2018 , Netanyahu rejected it as a basis for future negotiations with the Palestinians , and no U.S. government has ever put pressure on Israel to accept it .
If Biden wants to have a real impact , his best bet is to revive the Arab Peace Initiative and use it as the basis for U.S.-led Israeli-Palestinian negotiations .
This would entail penalties for Israeli intransigence .
On the other hand , it would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aboard the peace train .
A bold U.S. lead would enjoy broad international support , including the Arab world , the Islamic world , the European Union , and most members of the United Nations .
Last but not least , it would enjoy the support of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and of the majority of American Jews .
Young American Jews in particular are disenchanted with Israel for its colonialism , systematic abuse of Palestinian human rights , and habitual violations of international law .
Only a minority of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policy , represented by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee , of blind support for Israel .
If Biden chooses to assume the mantle of a peacemaker , he would first have to free U.S. foreign policy from the dead hand of the Israeli government and its acolytes in the United States and have the political courage to follow Goldmann ’ s suggestion : to make U.S. aid conditional on heeding U.S. advice .
Like any other politician , the president-elect is free to repeat the mistakes of the past .
But it @ @ @ @ @ @ @

In 1967, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan epitomized Israeli triumphalism in the aftermath of the Six-Day War when he told Nahum Goldmann, the veteran American Zionist leader: “Our American friends offer us money, arms and advice. We take the money, we take the arms, and we decline the advice.” The statement reflected the widely held belief that Israel could take U.S. support for granted.
In 1967, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan epitomized Israeli triumphalism in the aftermath of the Six-Day War when he told Nahum Goldmann, the veteran American Zionist leader: “Our American friends offer us money, arms and advice. We take the money, we take the arms, and we decline the advice.” The statement reflected the widely held belief that Israel could take U.S. support for granted.
“What would happen if ever America were to tell you: you can have the aid only if you also take the advice?” Goldmann asked him. Dayan, with resignation, answered: “Then we would have to take the advice, too.”
Here, in a nutshell, is the basic flaw in the U.S. approach to Middle East peacemaking since 1967: the unconditional nature of its economic, military, and diplomatic support for Israel. The United States has posed as an honest broker, but in practice it has acted more as Israel’s lawyer. This has made its policy for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict incoherent, contradictory, and self-defeating.
Since 1967, Washington has arrogated to itself a monopoly over the diplomacy surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, marginalizing the United Nations, the European Union, the Arab League, and the Kremlin. It ultimately failed, however, because it was unable or unwilling to use its massive leverage to push Israel into a final-status agreement. Israel is the United States’ most difficult client because it is not just a foreign-policy issue, but also an issue in domestic politics.
U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has been a strong supporter of Israel throughout his long political career. He has a consistent pro-Israel voting record in the Senate. Israel is “the best $3 billion investment we make,” he declared in the Senate back in 1986. “Were there not an Israel,” he added, “the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect our interests in the region.” Not only is Biden an ardent Zionist, he thinks that conditioning military aid to Israel is a “gigantic mistake” and “absolutely outrageous.”
During his eight years as U.S. vice president, Biden did much to burnish his already shining Zionist credentials. Then President Barack Obama himself saw Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian territory as a violation of international law and an obstacle to peace. He tried to secure a settlement freeze to give diplomacy a chance. But all his efforts, and those of then Secretary of State John Kerry, were sabotaged by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s right-wing prime minister.
Despite his sterling record of support for Israel and pride in his personal friendship with Netanyahu, Biden was not spared Israel’s standard operating procedure of biting the hand that feeds it. In 2010, just as Biden arrived in Israel, he was greeted with the announcement that the cabinet had approved a new batch of illegal settlements in the West Bank. Biden meekly put up with the calculated insult, thereby confirming the Israelis in their belief that they could continue to repay U.S. generosity with ingratitude and contempt.
In its last year in office, the Obama administration granted Israel a military aid package worth a minimum of $38 billion over 10 years. This was the biggest military aid package in history. In keeping with Biden’s precepts, no conditions were attached to the aid.
On one issue, however, in the twilight of their administration, Obama overruled his vice president: a U.N. Security Council resolution which fiercely condemned Israeli settlement expansion. The resolution was in line with U.S. foreign policy. Biden wanted to wield the U.S. veto to defeat the resolution. Obama chose to abstain and, with 14 votes in favor, the landmark Resolution 2334 was adopted.
When Biden enters the White House on Jan. 20, Israel and Palestine will be very low on his list of priorities. At some point, however, this issue will have to be addressed, if only because of its centrality in Middle East politics. His first task will be to confront the toxic legacy of Donald Trump, the most fanatically pro-Israel president in U.S. history. Toward the Middle East as a whole, Trump did not have a coherent foreign policy as much as a series of impulsive and ill-considered moves, many of which breached international legality.
On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, however, Trump was entirely consistent—in his partiality towards Israel. His foreign policy was virtually indistinguishable from the agenda of the Israeli right: recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights; moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; abolishing the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem, the United States’ main channel of communication with the Palestinian Authority; cutting all U.S. funding from the U.N. agency that looks after Palestinian refugees; withdrawing crucial U.S. aid to the Palestinians; and closing down the office of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Washington.
Trump’s polarizing partisanship culminated in a plan for the future of Israel and the occupied territories, a plan he loudly trumpeted as the “deal of the century.” In substance it was not a peace plan at all but a free pass for expanding Israel at the expense of the Palestinians. It invited Israel to formally annex around 30 percent of the West Bank, including the illegal settlement blocs and the Jordan Valley, the breadbasket of the Palestinian population.
Predictably, the Palestinian Authority rejected the plan and refused to even discuss it. Netanyahu welcomed the plan but took no action to implement it because he saw no advantage in formal annexation of parts of the West Bank. He is content with the status quo, which gives Israel a free hand to continue its creeping annexation without triggering international sanctions.
It can be safely predicted that Biden will only engage in damage limitation rather than the wholesale reversal of Trump’s poisonous legacy. The president-elect promised immediate steps to restore the desperately needed economic and humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. He undertook to reopen the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem but pledged not move the U.S. Embassy back to Tel Aviv. He is opposed to settlement expansion and to formal Israeli annexation of any part of the West Bank, but he still refuses to tie U.S. aid to Israel’s human rights record or adherence to international law. And he is firmly wedded to the pre-Trump policy of favoring a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In short, Biden is likely to revert to the traditional Democratic Party line of putting forward the United States as a so-called honest broker to help the two parties to reach a negotiated settlement. In practical terms, this means reviving what used to be called the “peace process” until Netanyahu derailed it in 2014, when it ceased to serve his own purpose.
But the peace process was always a charade—all process and no peace. It brought the Palestinians no nearer to attaining their goal of independence and statehood in the 27 years that have elapsed since the first Oslo Accord was signed on the White House lawn and clinched with the hesitant handshake between then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and then PLO leader Yasser Arafat. What the peace process did do was to give Israel the cover it needed to continue to pursue an aggressive colonial project across the Green Line—the pre-1967 international border.
If Biden wants a real lasting peace, he must first acknowledge that the unconditional U.S. commitment to Israel with which he has been so closely associated has totally failed to achieve its stated aim of a two-state solution. Today it has become fashionable to say that the two-state solution is dead. The sheer size of the settlements on the West Bank, home to more than 650,000 Jews, rules out the possibility of a viable, territorially contiguous Palestinian state. Consequently, there is growing support on the Palestinian side, though not on the part of the Palestinian Authority, for the idea of one democratic state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea with equal rights for all its citizens.
Biden would never adopt such a radical idea. If he adheres to the old idea of two states, he should at least take on board the changes that have taken place in Israel and the region in the past two or three decades. Israel has been moving steadily to the right, with alarming manifestations of jingoism and racism and an ever more strident stress on the Jewish rather than the democratic aspect of its identity. The July 2018 nation-state law effectively makes Israel an apartheid state by asserting that the Jews have a “unique” right to national self-determination in the area under its rule.
In addition to recognizing the illiberal and anti-democratic trends in Israeli politics, Biden would need to develop a genuine strategic dialogue with the Palestinians by dissociating himself from the policies of his predecessor, by acknowledging that the Palestinians have legitimate national rights and that they command overwhelming popular support across the entire Arab and Muslim world.
Changes in the regional balance of power also need to be taken into account. The principal change is that the Persian Gulf states no longer see Israel as an enemy and a threat but as a strategic ally in their conflict with Iran. A related change is the marked decline in the commitment of the Gulf states to the cause of an independent Palestinian state. In the second half of 2020, four Arab states normalized their relations with Israel within the framework of the Abraham Accords: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco.
For Israel, a peace agreement with any Arab state is welcome, especially if it comes cost-free, like the past four. But the big prize is Saudi Arabia. Unlike the smaller Gulf states, Saudi Arabia has much to lose from an open betrayal of the Palestinians. It risks a backlash at home and in parts of the Islamic world. So far the kingdom has resisted U.S. pressure to give official expression to its covert intelligence and security cooperation with Israel.
It stands by its commitment to the Palestinians and to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative—which offered Israel peace and normalization with all 22 members of the Arab League as the reward for withdrawing from all occupied Arab land and agreeing to an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with a capital city in East Jerusalem. It also calls for a “just settlement” of the Palestinian refugee problem based on U.N. Resolution 194.
This was the real deal of the century. The Palestinian Authority under Arafat immediately embraced the initiative; the Israeli government under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon rejected the initiative as a “non-starter.” The Arab League reendorsed the Arab Peace Initiative at its 2007 and 2017 summit conferences. But in 2018, Netanyahu rejected it as a basis for future negotiations with the Palestinians, and no U.S. government has ever put pressure on Israel to accept it.
If Biden wants to have a real impact, his best bet is to revive the Arab Peace Initiative and use it as the basis for U.S.-led Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. This would entail penalties for Israeli intransigence. On the other hand, it would encourage and empower Saudi Arabia to clamber aboard the peace train. A bold U.S. lead would enjoy broad international support, including the Arab world, the Islamic world, the European Union, and most members of the United Nations.
Last but not least, it would enjoy the support of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and of the majority of American Jews. Young American Jews in particular are disenchanted with Israel for its colonialism, systematic abuse of Palestinian human rights, and habitual violations of international law. Only a minority of American Jews still subscribe to the traditional policy, represented by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, of blind support for Israel.
If Biden chooses to assume the mantle of a peacemaker, he would first have to free U.S. foreign policy from the dead hand of the Israeli government and its acolytes in the United States and have the political courage to follow Goldmann’s suggestion: to make U.S. aid conditional on heeding U.S. advice. Like any other politician, the president-elect is free to repeat the mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.


foreignpolicy--2020-12-22--NATO, We Want to Go to War With You

NATO, We Want to Go to War With You

NATO , We Want to Go to War With You In recent years , NATO has begun to incorporate some innovative new cyberwarfare games and exercises into its annual wargames .
But there is something missing .
If NATO wants to see what nation-state hacking is like in the chaotic multiactor online world , it needs to practice fending off some actual hackers .
In mid-November 2020 , NATO conducted its 13th annual cybergames in Estonia , with about 1,000 participants and observers from 33 states .
Through the five-day exercise , NATO simulated an attack against the fictional nation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a cyberattack on a NATO member state ’ s critical infrastructure .
NATO specifically allowed and requested participating nations to practice working together in cyberspace and , for the first time , ran the entire simulation virtually due to the pandemic .
This was a wonderful opportunity that NATO mostly seized .
Moving the games online meant that every connection , every network , every target machine could be tested and at realistic and differing levels of vulnerability .
But in some key ways , the scenario played through by the various countries @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state of the world during the pandemic .
The most recent U.S. Treasury and Commerce Department hacks and the still developing U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration hack show how in the cyber-realm , everything , including civilians and weapons of mass destruction , is a target .
The reality of the online world is much more chaotic than the NATO simulations presume .
There are independent actors , cyber-criminals , white hats , respected security firms , broken infrastructures , country-sized firewalls , a massive and messy differential in power between the largest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chaos of artificially intelligent tools that can automate overwhelming attacks based on leaked personal data .
Unfortunately , NATO does not include nonstate actors in the annual cybergames .
This creates three problems .
First , there is no guarantee that an attack will come from uniformed soldiers of a hostile country .
Bad actors will use whatever low-cost hacks they can find , make , buy , or steal .
Second—and crucially—defending cyberspace requires people who think differently .
Even the U.S. government has reached out to hackers to staff up agencies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Agency , realizing that traditional information technology education does not produce innovative offensive security researchers .
Limiting contributions to active military and public sector employees will result in a certain amount of groupthink .
It is critical for NATO to include nonstate actors , independent researchers , and respected industry experts ( who aren ’ t solely military contractors trying to pump up weapons sales by sponsoring these wargames ) .
Third , we in the cybersecurity community have been aware that civilian medical facilities and research stations have not only been fair @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bad actors for half a decade .
After we saw vaccine research stations targeted by North Korea and others at the beginning of the pandemic , we in the industry and the cybersecurity community predicted repeatedly that vaccine production would be targeted by nation-states , and we are now seeing evidence in recently reported successful espionage attacks on Pfizer and BioNTech facilities that we were correct .
NATO should include in their cybergames the kinds of urgent current events we are already seeing play out in the news .
In the past , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its cyber-exercises failed to account for real-world attackers .
In October 2018 , 50,000 soldiers , sailors , and pilots from 31 countries simulated war off the coast of Norway .
NATO ’ s Operation Trident Juncture did not include cyberattacks in the wargames at all—until real-world Russia actually began jamming the real GPS systems of the conventional weapons being tested on the battlefield as part of the simulated conflict .
Everyone planning the games had previously agreed on the polite and necessary fiction that the computers embedded in their vehicles and weapons—and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , targeting , and health—were not permissible targets in this engagement .
Russia ’ s behavior highlighted the absurdity of NATO excluding the cyberdomain from conflict simulations .
Even after this real-world mid-scenario attack , NATO has still not incorporated the randomness of actual cyberspace in its simulations .
Recent attacks on vaccine production facilities show how failing to model cyberthreats appropriately will come back to bite you , and we predict that medical facilities will be a popular target for cyberattackers in the future .
Therefore military and government cyberdefense forces should @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to help predict attacker tactics .
The organizers of future wargames need to recognize that having independent experts see and participate in wargames means the ability to model opponents other than nation-states , test the scenario and the network under use from a fresh perspective , and ultimately make for a stronger training outcome .
Cyberwar is new , and soldiers who have been conditioned to see only clearly delineated battlefields will enjoy the challenge of needing to think orthogonally , strangely , and innovatively .
It is important to build NATO ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and conduct cyberwar because these simulations often lead to a de-escalation of conflict after capabilities become known to the players ( and their potential opponents ) .
The same quality that makes cyberwarfare so rapid and difficult to detect—its relative cheapness in terms of cost and time—also makes it much easier to simulate than naval warfare , for instance .
The international information security community is filled with smart people who are not in a military structure , many of whom would be excited to pose as independent actors in any upcoming wargames @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the game and the skills of the soldiers building and training on these networks .
Hackers and cyberwar experts would demonstrate how industrial control systems such as power supply for refrigeration and temperature monitoring in vaccine production facilities are critical infrastructure ; they ’ re easy targets and should be among NATO ’ s priorities at the moment .
Diversity of thought leads to better solutions .
We in the information security community strongly support the involvement of acknowledged nonmilitary experts in the development and testing of future cyberwar scenarios .
We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of whom see sharing their skills as public service , would view participation in these cybergames as a challenge and an honor .

In recent years, NATO has begun to incorporate some innovative new cyberwarfare games and exercises into its annual wargames. But there is something missing. If NATO wants to see what nation-state hacking is like in the chaotic multiactor online world, it needs to practice fending off some actual hackers.
In recent years, NATO has begun to incorporate some innovative new cyberwarfare games and exercises into its annual wargames. But there is something missing. If NATO wants to see what nation-state hacking is like in the chaotic multiactor online world, it needs to practice fending off some actual hackers.
In mid-November 2020, NATO conducted its 13th annual cybergames in Estonia, with about 1,000 participants and observers from 33 states. Through the five-day exercise, NATO simulated an attack against the fictional nation of Andvaria as well as defending against a cyberattack on a NATO member state’s critical infrastructure. NATO specifically allowed and requested participating nations to practice working together in cyberspace and, for the first time, ran the entire simulation virtually due to the pandemic.
This was a wonderful opportunity that NATO mostly seized. Moving the games online meant that every connection, every network, every target machine could be tested and at realistic and differing levels of vulnerability. But in some key ways, the scenario played through by the various countries’ militaries did not reflect the actual state of the world during the pandemic. The most recent U.S. Treasury and Commerce Department hacks and the still developing U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration hack show how in the cyber-realm, everything, including civilians and weapons of mass destruction, is a target.
Wargames have been used for centuries as a way to train and improve on military strategy. NATO tried to replicate the online nation-state world by engaging with military and national security institutions using tried-and-true wargame planning. However, retrofitting the two traditional wargaming models—either assuming perfect knowledge of the enemy or re-creating 200-year-old Napoleonic and Prussian campaigns—into cyberspace simulations just does not work. In the cyberdomain, the fog of war can be exponentially greater, cyber-capabilities can be more completely hidden, and the enemy is using brand-new tactics.
The reality of the online world is much more chaotic than the NATO simulations presume. There are independent actors, cyber-criminals, white hats, respected security firms, broken infrastructures, country-sized firewalls, a massive and messy differential in power between the largest and smallest actors, and all the chaos of artificially intelligent tools that can automate overwhelming attacks based on leaked personal data.
Unfortunately, NATO does not include nonstate actors in the annual cybergames. This creates three problems. First, there is no guarantee that an attack will come from uniformed soldiers of a hostile country. Bad actors will use whatever low-cost hacks they can find, make, buy, or steal.
Second—and crucially—defending cyberspace requires people who think differently. Even the U.S. government has reached out to hackers to staff up agencies such as the FBI and National Security Agency, realizing that traditional information technology education does not produce innovative offensive security researchers. Limiting contributions to active military and public sector employees will result in a certain amount of groupthink. It is critical for NATO to include nonstate actors, independent researchers, and respected industry experts (who aren’t solely military contractors trying to pump up weapons sales by sponsoring these wargames).
Third, we in the cybersecurity community have been aware that civilian medical facilities and research stations have not only been fair game but the primary targets of international bad actors for half a decade. After we saw vaccine research stations targeted by North Korea and others at the beginning of the pandemic, we in the industry and the cybersecurity community predicted repeatedly that vaccine production would be targeted by nation-states, and we are now seeing evidence in recently reported successful espionage attacks on Pfizer and BioNTech facilities that we were correct. NATO should include in their cybergames the kinds of urgent current events we are already seeing play out in the news.
In the past, NATO has been caught off guard when its cyber-exercises failed to account for real-world attackers. In October 2018, 50,000 soldiers, sailors, and pilots from 31 countries simulated war off the coast of Norway. NATO’s Operation Trident Juncture did not include cyberattacks in the wargames at all—until real-world Russia actually began jamming the real GPS systems of the conventional weapons being tested on the battlefield as part of the simulated conflict. Everyone planning the games had previously agreed on the polite and necessary fiction that the computers embedded in their vehicles and weapons—and managing their air, water, fuel, targeting, and health—were not permissible targets in this engagement. Russia’s behavior highlighted the absurdity of NATO excluding the cyberdomain from conflict simulations. Even after this real-world mid-scenario attack, NATO has still not incorporated the randomness of actual cyberspace in its simulations.
Recent attacks on vaccine production facilities show how failing to model cyberthreats appropriately will come back to bite you, and we predict that medical facilities will be a popular target for cyberattackers in the future. Therefore military and government cyberdefense forces should use hackers’ skills and noninstitutional creativity to help predict attacker tactics.
The organizers of future wargames need to recognize that having independent experts see and participate in wargames means the ability to model opponents other than nation-states, test the scenario and the network under use from a fresh perspective, and ultimately make for a stronger training outcome. Cyberwar is new, and soldiers who have been conditioned to see only clearly delineated battlefields will enjoy the challenge of needing to think orthogonally, strangely, and innovatively.
It is important to build NATO’s ability to monitor, manage, and conduct cyberwar because these simulations often lead to a de-escalation of conflict after capabilities become known to the players (and their potential opponents). The same quality that makes cyberwarfare so rapid and difficult to detect—its relative cheapness in terms of cost and time—also makes it much easier to simulate than naval warfare, for instance.
The international information security community is filled with smart people who are not in a military structure, many of whom would be excited to pose as independent actors in any upcoming wargames. Including them would increase the reality of the game and the skills of the soldiers building and training on these networks. Hackers and cyberwar experts would demonstrate how industrial control systems such as power supply for refrigeration and temperature monitoring in vaccine production facilities are critical infrastructure; they’re easy targets and should be among NATO’s priorities at the moment.
Diversity of thought leads to better solutions. We in the information security community strongly support the involvement of acknowledged nonmilitary experts in the development and testing of future cyberwar scenarios. We are confident that independent experts, many of whom see sharing their skills as public service, would view participation in these cybergames as a challenge and an honor.


foreignpolicy--2020-12-22--Beijing Ransacked Data as U.S. Sources Went Dark in China

It was a radically mistaken assessment .
But even inside the U.S. government , knowledge of China—and its intensions—was at a low point .
During the 2000s , U.S. intelligence had operated with relative confidence against Beijing .
But during China ’ s biggest political transition in decades , American officials were looking through an increasingly opaque glass .
The twin disasters of the Office of Personnel Management ( OPM ) hack , which had helped the Chinese to identify undercover U.S. intelligence officials , and the obliteration of the CIA ’ s network of Chinese assets significantly “ affected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the United States understood about events in that country , according to a former U.S. national security official .
There was a noticeable decrease in high-quality intelligence reporting percolating up to senior policymakers , this source recalled .
“ Things weren ’ t the same.
” And as U.S. officials struggled to try and grasp what was happening on the other side of the Pacific , China was doubling down on a hacking spree that would see unprecedented amounts of data stolen and fed into an increasingly sophisticated intelligence apparatus .
At the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ craft new China policies debated Xi ’ s character and intentions , a senior Obama-era official said .
Administration officials were split in their views on Xi .
There was a “ set of analysis ” that led some to argue that Xi was a possible reformer : a product of the Chinese Communist Party ( CCP ) , yes , but a leader capable of ameliorating some of the excesses of the Chinese system , this former official recalled .
Others , however , argued that Xi was a “ neo-Maoist ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The difference in views was “ very stark , ” this person recalled .
Other officials who served under U.S. President Barack Obama recall more consensus regarding the new Chinese president .
“ There was never any romanticism about Xi , ” said the former national security official .
But ultimately , this source said , “ no one was able to foresee the kind of leader he was to become.
” And , as the Xi-led purges soon revealed , “ the Communist Party leadership didn ’ t see it either @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the CIA , senior officials were also divided about Xi ’ s rise , if perhaps more skeptical than at the White House , a former senior CIA official recalled .
“ There was some wishful thinking that Xi would come in and promote some kind of continued reform , ” this source said .
“ But the vast majority [ within the agency ] thought the party was moving toward the strongman model , [ the idea ] that China should stand up and become more aggressive in its viewpoint .
Within @ @ @ @ @ @ @ debate at the time.
” But “ what CIA was hearing from sources pointed to a re-centralization for the party to maintain power , ” this person recalled .
“ There was concern in Washington about what Xi was going to pursue , both in terms of domestic liberties , but also his approach to America , ” said Gail Helt , a former CIA China analyst .
“ The Chinese Communist Party is corrupt , to put it mildly , but there were initial indicators that he was going to clean up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ glimmer of hope .
Then it was clear that he was going to purge and create a personality cult.
” Some of the gaps in intelligence were because U.S. officials had grown more cautious .
There was “ reluctance or concern or anxiety about putting our officers in the field given that our protective shield had been punctured [ by the OPM breach ] , ” recalled the former national security official .
“ We didn ’ t fully know what they knew about us.
” Subsequently , “ dozens of postings ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ China were canceled , according to The Perfect Weapon , a 2018 book by David Sanger .
“ CIA , for many years , was not willing to do forward facing ops in China , ” because its confidence was so shaken by the asset roll-up and other breaches , said a former senior intelligence analyst .
China was also hardening its digital defenses against U.S. spying during 2012-2014 , the former analyst said .
It was “ a gradual change over a year or two , as Chinese leaders started incorporating insights @ @ @ @ @ @ @ internet space.
” Intelligence collection by U.S. cyberspies suffered as a result .
China ’ s tightening domestic-focused digital surveillance dragnet—like its increasing use of biometrics and closed-circuit TV—also made U.S. intelligence gathering there more difficult , former officials say .
Prior leaks had accentuated the difficulty of even routine communications by U.S. officials with their Chinese counterparts .
The release of a massive tranche of U.S. diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks in 2010 and 2011 left some Chinese officials , whose relatively frank discussions with their American counterparts were documented in the cables @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Two Chinese government or state media sources named in the cables , for instance , had their careers stymied after the leak . )
In the past , this type of relatively open diplomatic intercourse had played an important role in helping U.S. officials form a picture of China .
“ Chinese officials became much more reluctant to talk after [ the WikiLeaks cables ] , because they didn ’ t believe we could keep it a secret , ” recalled a current State Department official with extensive experience in China .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and cyberspying capabilities against China , Chinese officials were becoming much more reluctant to talk on many channels .
This wasn ’ t just out of the knowledge , revealed by the Edward Snowden leaks and other disclosures , that the United States might be intercepting communications ; it was also out of fears that they were under surveillance by China ’ s own security services , according to a former Defense Intelligence Agency official .
In the aftermath of the Bo Xilai affair in 2012—the first of Xi ’ s purges of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government officials and army officers—Chinese officials became even more devoted to face-to-face meetings for any sensitive matter .
“ Disclosure of state secrets , ” intentional or otherwise , was one of the most common charges brought against Xi ’ s targets .
As Xi began a comprehensive purge of the party and restructuring of the state , the answers about his character and intentions became clearer—at least to some members of the Obama administration .
“ The debates over what kind of leader Xi was going to be , that got settled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” the Obama-era official recalled .
“ Some did not see that as quickly.
” For this official , the meeting between Xi and Obama in 2013 in Southern California was an immediate revelation .
It “ wasn ’ t even an open question anymore ” that Xi would rule with increasing authoritarianism , this person said .
Over the next few years , Xi ’ s hard-line policies would extend into almost every area of Chinese life , from the estimated 1 million Uighurs subjected to detention , surveillance , and torture @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on freedom of speech ; to supposed anti-corruption purges that swept up hundreds of thousands of Chinese officials .
But the U.S. administration often remained reluctant to act , said the Obama-era official .
U.S. intelligence and national security officials , in particular , were becoming increasingly incensed by China ’ s actions .
The Obama administration began to take more aggressive steps against Chinese cyberspying , indicting five Chinese military hackers in 2014 for a massive espionage campaign targeting U.S. companies—the first-ever public U.S. indictment of nation-state hackers—and threatening Beijing with sanctions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ still believed there were key , if narrowing , areas to carve out mutual cooperation with their Chinese counterparts .
One focus was on easing the visa process .
In 2014 , on a visit to Beijing , Obama announced that the United States and China had reached a reciprocal agreement to extend visas from their current one-year span to 10 years for business and tourist visas , and five years for student visas—a major potential boost for tourism and educational exchanges .
Some U.S. intelligence officials were aghast .
On the Chinese @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ an MSS-led endeavor , ” said a current senior U.S. intelligence official , referring to the Ministry of State Security , China ’ s main civilian intelligence organization .
“ It was an intelligence-based process , where they wanted to get to a place where they could have a 10-year visa to the U.S. , instant access in and out of the country without the U.S. government knowing.
” There were “ hundreds of meetings at the White House ” on this issue , the official recalled .
“ Obama was hellbent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the administration , as much as we argued with it , didn ’ t see the big deal .
They saw it as a promulgation for trade and academia—all things that are true , but the entire [ intelligence community ] and FBI said , ‘ Whoa whoa whoa , they ’ re going to increase their already excessive nontraditional collection activities.
’ ” A second area of attempted cooperation was in cyberspace .
In September 2015 , in another flourish of public diplomacy—this time coinciding with Xi ’ s first state visit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new bilateral accord forbidding the hacking-enabled theft of trade secrets by either country .
The agreement set up a formal bilateral mechanism for dialogue , led by senior officials from both countries , wherein one side could lodge complaints against the other for purported violations .
Even these discussions , however , were riven by conflicting or contradictory perspectives among senior U.S. officials regarding China ’ s actions—and the United States ’ own interests .
Internally , Obama officials had debated the proper scope of the negotiations and the administration ’ s red @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in terms of taking our foot off their neck , ” recalled the former national security official .
Some within the administration had dreamed of a bigger deal .
For instance , four former officials say , during the run-up to the 2015 agreement , senior Obama-era officials floated the idea of expanding the potential accord to include cyberespionage directed at personal information , like the data found in the Marriott and Anthem breaches .
U.S. intelligence agencies balked .
They “ were adamant that discussing theft of personally identifiable information was not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ former national security official .
“ We had spent the last months being really pissed at the Chinese for stealing our shit .
I realized we weren ’ t as exercised within the intelligence community as I thought.
” The response by the intelligence community was “ emphatic and unambiguous ” : Other types of hacking must be excluded from the deal .
Some of the pushback was because intelligence officials simply did not believe China would abide by the accord .
“ We thought it was policymaker masturbation , ” said former @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ because there ’ s not a penalty for noncompliance .
We took a very cynical view.
” ( By 2018 , U.S. officials would publicly state that China was in widespread violation of the deal . )
But much of the resistance from within the intelligence bureaucracy was because U.S. cyberspies also engage in widespread hacking of personal data abroad .
“ At one level it ’ s how the game is played , ” said Michael Daniel , the Obama administration ’ s cybersecurity czar .
“ It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ former senior intelligence analyst , “ the reason we didn ’ t come out swinging on OPM was we didn ’ t want to set this precedent that you can ’ t use cyberoperations ” —that is , hacking— “ to get personally identifiable information out of a country ’ s citizens.
” Intelligence officials would not assent to an agreement they wouldn ’ t keep themselves .
What they already knew was disturbing enough .
By the mid-2010s , U.S. intelligence agencies had secretly burrowed into online networks controlled by the Ministry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. companies and U.S. government entities was being stored , according to three former officials .
In some cases , U.S. intelligence operatives watched as “ bits and pieces [ of this data ] were being used over time , ” said a former intelligence official .
But the information itself was fragmentary , and the United States ’ access was uneven , former officials said , so it was unclear to U.S. officials from where , exactly , this information derived—until larger hacks like those of OPM and Marriott were discovered .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ have been able to determine the genesis of data on networks controlled by Chinese hackers that were being secretly surveilled by U.S. spies—and have quietly alerted companies to the breaches , thereby preventing much larger hacks of sensitive personal information from occurring , according to the former senior intelligence analyst . )
U.S. cyberspies were already keenly focused on Chinese data storage and processing capabilities .
Within U.S. spy agencies , there was “ a lot of interest in [ Chinese ] data centers , the technology and the hardware going into facilities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said the same former official .
“ If Alibaba is running a cloud , and they have data centers inside China , well , we ’ ve been targeting those for a long time , ” recalled the former intelligence official .
But there were still gaps in the U.S. spy agencies ’ knowledge .
At the tail end of the Obama administration , officials tasked the intelligence agencies to “ elevate the Chinese counterintelligence threat in relation to other national collection priorities , ” recalled a former senior National Security Council official @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to devote more intensive resources , in “ all sorts of collection , ” to spying on China .
The push was “ driven in large part by their growing cyber-capabilities , and their growing aggressive counterintelligence activities , ” this source said .
This wider effort , recalled by three former officials , was born of the consensus that—even amid Russia ’ s 2016 election interference campaign—China , not Russia , had emerged as the biggest long-term counterintelligence threat to the United States .
By the end of the Obama administration , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it was clear that in China ’ s “ technical collection , in their very aggressive recruitment of U.S. operatives , [ it had ] outstripped Russia.
” Fundamentally , Beijing ’ s spy services simply operated on a much larger scale than Moscow ’ s—and Washington ’ s .
“ One of the things where China has the advantage over pretty much everyone in this space is : If you have a nearly inexhaustible supply of human capital , then maybe you can just grab as much [ data ] as you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a former deputy director of the NSA ’ s Threat Operations Center .
“ So it ’ s a different model on their side.
” Russia ’ s successes in 2016 forced senior Obama-era national security officials to discuss the country ’ s wider vulnerabilities , former officials said .
The concern was , according to the former senior NSC official , “ Will the Chinese weaponize this data they ’ ve accumulated over the years ?
” “ If they do , it has far-reaching consequences , and could be far @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Because they have vastly larger quantities of data than Russia does , ” the former official said .
Still , some China hawks remained frustrated over what they perceived of as a lack of focus on Beijing , and especially its industrial policies .
“ I was fighting people to get this done , more collection on China , ” said Robert Spalding , who served as the top China strategist for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the late Obama administration .
At Spalding ’ s request , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with a suite of top intelligence officials , as well as representatives from the Commerce , Treasury , and State departments around these issues .
“ The [ intelligence community ] refused to engage , ” said Spalding , who subsequently served on the National Security Council during the Trump administration .
But other former national security officials , who emphasize the time lag between high-level strategic reprioritizing of different intelligence targets and on-the-ground results , say there was an intensified focus on China around this time—including on developing greater insight into the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Chinese companies .
By 2016 , senior U.S. national security officials had “ tasked the [ intelligence community ] to develop answers , setting the wheels in motion ” on “ the sharing between private [ Chinese ] companies and the MSS , ” one former national security official recalled .
We “ were looking at the forensic trail , ” they said .
The Obama administration ’ s increased scrutiny of the Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE helped catalyze this process , this source said : “ Part of the material that was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trail to Huawei ’ s practices in Iran and elsewhere .
But the picture was still being colored in.
” After President Donald Trump took office in early 2017 , this increasingly well-developed picture would spur U.S. intelligence officials , and senior Trump administration officials , to zero in on the symbiotic relationship between China ’ s security apparatus and its private sector leviathans .
Editor ’ s Note : This is the second in a three-part series .
The first part covers how the data wars began between the two nations after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The third part , to be published on Dec. 23 , covers the Donald Trump era and the growing cooperation between Chinese intelligence and tech giants .

In early 2013, as Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping prepared to assume the Chinese presidency, very few people in the West had any idea what kind of leader he was. In January of that year, the New York Times’ Nick Kristof, an experienced China correspondent, wrote that Xi “will spearhead a resurgence of economic reform, and probably some political easing as well.”
In early 2013, as Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping prepared to assume the Chinese presidency, very few people in the West had any idea what kind of leader he was. In January of that year, the New York Times’ Nick Kristof, an experienced China correspondent, wrote that Xi “will spearhead a resurgence of economic reform, and probably some political easing as well.”
This series, based on interviews with over three dozen current and former U.S. intelligence and national security officials, tells the story of China’s assault on U.S. personal data over the last decade—and its consequences. Part 1: China Used Stolen Data to Expose CIA Operatives in Africa and Europe
After China discovered extensive U.S. networks inside its own government, it struck back with a series of hacks that allowed it to expose CIA operatives in Africa and Europe—while upping domestic security at home to protect against further U.S. infiltration. Part 3: As Trump’s Trade War Raged, Chinese Spy Agencies Enlisted Private Firms
It was a radically mistaken assessment. But even inside the U.S. government, knowledge of China—and its intensions—was at a low point. During the 2000s, U.S. intelligence had operated with relative confidence against Beijing. But during China’s biggest political transition in decades, American officials were looking through an increasingly opaque glass.
The twin disasters of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) hack, which had helped the Chinese to identify undercover U.S. intelligence officials, and the obliteration of the CIA’s network of Chinese assets significantly “affected the quality of insight” into what the United States understood about events in that country, according to a former U.S. national security official. There was a noticeable decrease in high-quality intelligence reporting percolating up to senior policymakers, this source recalled. “Things weren’t the same.”
And as U.S. officials struggled to try and grasp what was happening on the other side of the Pacific, China was doubling down on a hacking spree that would see unprecedented amounts of data stolen and fed into an increasingly sophisticated intelligence apparatus.
At the time, White House officials trying to craft new China policies debated Xi’s character and intentions, a senior Obama-era official said. Administration officials were split in their views on Xi. There was a “set of analysis” that led some to argue that Xi was a possible reformer: a product of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), yes, but a leader capable of ameliorating some of the excesses of the Chinese system, this former official recalled. Others, however, argued that Xi was a “neo-Maoist”: that is, a dangerous hard-liner. The difference in views was “very stark,” this person recalled.
Other officials who served under U.S. President Barack Obama recall more consensus regarding the new Chinese president. “There was never any romanticism about Xi,” said the former national security official. But ultimately, this source said, “no one was able to foresee the kind of leader he was to become.” And, as the Xi-led purges soon revealed, “the Communist Party leadership didn’t see it either,” this official recalled.
Inside the CIA, senior officials were also divided about Xi’s rise, if perhaps more skeptical than at the White House, a former senior CIA official recalled. “There was some wishful thinking that Xi would come in and promote some kind of continued reform,” this source said. “But the vast majority [within the agency] thought the party was moving toward the strongman model, [the idea] that China should stand up and become more aggressive in its viewpoint. Within elite party corners that was a big debate at the time.” But “what CIA was hearing from sources pointed to a re-centralization for the party to maintain power,” this person recalled.
“There was concern in Washington about what Xi was going to pursue, both in terms of domestic liberties, but also his approach to America,” said Gail Helt, a former CIA China analyst. “The Chinese Communist Party is corrupt, to put it mildly, but there were initial indicators that he was going to clean up that corruption, there was a little glimmer of hope. Then it was clear that he was going to purge and create a personality cult.”
Some of the gaps in intelligence were because U.S. officials had grown more cautious. There was “reluctance or concern or anxiety about putting our officers in the field given that our protective shield had been punctured [by the OPM breach],” recalled the former national security official. “We didn’t fully know what they knew about us.” Subsequently, “dozens of postings” for CIA officers scheduled for assignments in China were canceled, according to The Perfect Weapon, a 2018 book by David Sanger. “CIA, for many years, was not willing to do forward facing ops in China,” because its confidence was so shaken by the asset roll-up and other breaches, said a former senior intelligence analyst.
PRIOR LEAKS HAD ACCENTUATED THE DIFFICULTY OF EVEN ROUTINE COMMUNICATIONS BY U.S. OFFICIALS WITH THEIR CHINESE COUNTERPARTS.
China was also hardening its digital defenses against U.S. spying during 2012-2014, the former analyst said. It was “a gradual change over a year or two, as Chinese leaders started incorporating insights into increasing their control over their own internet space.” Intelligence collection by U.S. cyberspies suffered as a result. China’s tightening domestic-focused digital surveillance dragnet—like its increasing use of biometrics and closed-circuit TV—also made U.S. intelligence gathering there more difficult, former officials say.
Prior leaks had accentuated the difficulty of even routine communications by U.S. officials with their Chinese counterparts. The release of a massive tranche of U.S. diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks in 2010 and 2011 left some Chinese officials, whose relatively frank discussions with their American counterparts were documented in the cables, dangerously exposed at home. (Two Chinese government or state media sources named in the cables, for instance, had their careers stymied after the leak.) In the past, this type of relatively open diplomatic intercourse had played an important role in helping U.S. officials form a picture of China. “Chinese officials became much more reluctant to talk after [the WikiLeaks cables], because they didn’t believe we could keep it a secret,” recalled a current State Department official with extensive experience in China.
A screen shows the sentencing of Bo Xilai in Beijing on Sept. 2, 2013. The former Chinese politician was sentenced to life imprisonment for bribery, embezzlement, and abuse of power.
And while the United States maintained significant eavesdropping and cyberspying capabilities against China, Chinese officials were becoming much more reluctant to talk on many channels. This wasn’t just out of the knowledge, revealed by the Edward Snowden leaks and other disclosures, that the United States might be intercepting communications; it was also out of fears that they were under surveillance by China’s own security services, according to a former Defense Intelligence Agency official. In the aftermath of the Bo Xilai affair in 2012—the first of Xi’s purges of the party, which felled both top-level government officials and army officers—Chinese officials became even more devoted to face-to-face meetings for any sensitive matter. “Disclosure of state secrets,” intentional or otherwise, was one of the most common charges brought against Xi’s targets.
As Xi began a comprehensive purge of the party and restructuring of the state, the answers about his character and intentions became clearer—at least to some members of the Obama administration. “The debates over what kind of leader Xi was going to be, that got settled pretty early for some of us,” the Obama-era official recalled. “Some did not see that as quickly.”
For this official, the meeting between Xi and Obama in 2013 in Southern California was an immediate revelation. It “wasn’t even an open question anymore” that Xi would rule with increasing authoritarianism, this person said. Over the next few years, Xi’s hard-line policies would extend into almost every area of Chinese life, from the estimated 1 million Uighurs subjected to detention, surveillance, and torture in Xinjiang; to a mass clampdown on freedom of speech; to supposed anti-corruption purges that swept up hundreds of thousands of Chinese officials. But the U.S. administration often remained reluctant to act, said the Obama-era official.
Meanwhile, the hacks continued. Beijing’s spies were ransacking Americans’ data at an almost Olympian scale. In addition to masterminding the OPM breach, hackers linked to Chinese intelligence would filch private information from over 383 million individuals, including passport and credit card data, in a massive 2014 compromise of the hotel giant Marriott; pilfer personal information from over 78 million Americans in a 2014 breach of Anthem, the major health insurance provider; breach the networks of American Airlines, United Airlines, and Sabre, a top travel reservation provider (and key target for China’s travel intelligence program); and burrow into computer systems belonging to the U.S. Department of the Navy, stealing sensitive data linked to over 100,000 naval personnel, among other penetrations of the U.S. private and public sectors. The Chinese “were always a Hoover, sucking up mountains of data beyond anything else in the world,” recalled a former senior National Security Agency official.
U.S. intelligence and national security officials, in particular, were becoming increasingly incensed by China’s actions. The Obama administration began to take more aggressive steps against Chinese cyberspying, indicting five Chinese military hackers in 2014 for a massive espionage campaign targeting U.S. companies—the first-ever public U.S. indictment of nation-state hackers—and threatening Beijing with sanctions. But senior U.S. officials under Obama still believed there were key, if narrowing, areas to carve out mutual cooperation with their Chinese counterparts.
One focus was on easing the visa process. In 2014, on a visit to Beijing, Obama announced that the United States and China had reached a reciprocal agreement to extend visas from their current one-year span to 10 years for business and tourist visas, and five years for student visas—a major potential boost for tourism and educational exchanges.
Some U.S. intelligence officials were aghast. On the Chinese side, the visa extension gambit was “an MSS-led endeavor,” said a current senior U.S. intelligence official, referring to the Ministry of State Security, China’s main civilian intelligence organization. “It was an intelligence-based process, where they wanted to get to a place where they could have a 10-year visa to the U.S., instant access in and out of the country without the U.S. government knowing.” There were “hundreds of meetings at the White House” on this issue, the official recalled. “Obama was hellbent on getting some negotiated pact. And the administration, as much as we argued with it, didn’t see the big deal. They saw it as a promulgation for trade and academia—all things that are true, but the entire [intelligence community] and FBI said, ‘Whoa whoa whoa, they’re going to increase their already excessive nontraditional collection activities.’”
The Scope of Key U.S. Data Breaches Tied to China
A second area of attempted cooperation was in cyberspace. In September 2015, in another flourish of public diplomacy—this time coinciding with Xi’s first state visit to Washington—Obama and Xi announced a major new bilateral accord forbidding the hacking-enabled theft of trade secrets by either country. The agreement set up a formal bilateral mechanism for dialogue, led by senior officials from both countries, wherein one side could lodge complaints against the other for purported violations.
Even these discussions, however, were riven by conflicting or contradictory perspectives among senior U.S. officials regarding China’s actions—and the United States’ own interests. Internally, Obama officials had debated the proper scope of the negotiations and the administration’s red lines—“what we would insist on in terms of taking our foot off their neck,” recalled the former national security official.
Some within the administration had dreamed of a bigger deal. For instance, four former officials say, during the run-up to the 2015 agreement, senior Obama-era officials floated the idea of expanding the potential accord to include cyberespionage directed at personal information, like the data found in the Marriott and Anthem breaches.
BUT MUCH OF THE RESISTANCE FROM WITHIN THE INTELLIGENCE BUREAUCRACY WAS BECAUSE U.S. CYBERSPIES ALSO ENGAGE IN WIDESPREAD HACKING OF PERSONAL DATA ABROAD.
U.S. intelligence agencies balked. They “were adamant that discussing theft of personally identifiable information was not on the table,” recalled the former national security official. “We had spent the last months being really pissed at the Chinese for stealing our shit. I realized we weren’t as exercised within the intelligence community as I thought.” The response by the intelligence community was “emphatic and unambiguous”: Other types of hacking must be excluded from the deal. Some of the pushback was because intelligence officials simply did not believe China would abide by the accord. “We thought it was policymaker masturbation,” said former Defense Intelligence Agency Deputy Director Douglas Wise, “because there’s not a penalty for noncompliance. We took a very cynical view.” (By 2018, U.S. officials would publicly state that China was in widespread violation of the deal.)
But much of the resistance from within the intelligence bureaucracy was because U.S. cyberspies also engage in widespread hacking of personal data abroad. “At one level it’s how the game is played,” said Michael Daniel, the Obama administration’s cybersecurity czar. “It’s called espionage.” Indeed, said the former senior intelligence analyst, “the reason we didn’t come out swinging on OPM was we didn’t want to set this precedent that you can’t use cyberoperations”—that is, hacking—“to get personally identifiable information out of a country’s citizens.” Intelligence officials would not assent to an agreement they wouldn’t keep themselves.
U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping attend a State Arrival ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 25, 2015.
Fundamentally, at the time, U.S. officials wanted a lot more insight into the inner workings of the Chinese government.
What they already knew was disturbing enough. By the mid-2010s, U.S. intelligence agencies had secretly burrowed into online networks controlled by the Ministry of State Security—networks where data from hacked U.S. companies and U.S. government entities was being stored, according to three former officials. In some cases, U.S. intelligence operatives watched as “bits and pieces [of this data] were being used over time,” said a former intelligence official. But the information itself was fragmentary, and the United States’ access was uneven, former officials said, so it was unclear to U.S. officials from where, exactly, this information derived—until larger hacks like those of OPM and Marriott were discovered. (Occasionally, however, U.S. officials have been able to determine the genesis of data on networks controlled by Chinese hackers that were being secretly surveilled by U.S. spies—and have quietly alerted companies to the breaches, thereby preventing much larger hacks of sensitive personal information from occurring, according to the former senior intelligence analyst.)
U.S. cyberspies were already keenly focused on Chinese data storage and processing capabilities. Within U.S. spy agencies, there was “a lot of interest in [Chinese] data centers, the technology and the hardware going into facilities that are intelligence- or military-linked,” said the same former official. “If Alibaba is running a cloud, and they have data centers inside China, well, we’ve been targeting those for a long time,” recalled the former intelligence official.
But there were still gaps in the U.S. spy agencies’ knowledge. At the tail end of the Obama administration, officials tasked the intelligence agencies to “elevate the Chinese counterintelligence threat in relation to other national collection priorities,” recalled a former senior National Security Council official with knowledge of intelligence issues—that is, to devote more intensive resources, in “all sorts of collection,” to spying on China. The push was “driven in large part by their growing cyber-capabilities, and their growing aggressive counterintelligence activities,” this source said.
This wider effort, recalled by three former officials, was born of the consensus that—even amid Russia’s 2016 election interference campaign—China, not Russia, had emerged as the biggest long-term counterintelligence threat to the United States. By the end of the Obama administration, the former senior NSC official recalled, it was clear that in China’s “technical collection, in their very aggressive recruitment of U.S. operatives, [it had] outstripped Russia.”
FUNDAMENTALLY, BEIJING’S SPY SERVICES SIMPLY OPERATED ON A MUCH LARGER SCALE THAN MOSCOW’S—AND WASHINGTON’S.
Fundamentally, Beijing’s spy services simply operated on a much larger scale than Moscow’s—and Washington’s. “One of the things where China has the advantage over pretty much everyone in this space is: If you have a nearly inexhaustible supply of human capital, then maybe you can just grab as much [data] as you can grab,” said Steve Ryan, a former deputy director of the NSA’s Threat Operations Center. “So it’s a different model on their side.”
Russia’s successes in 2016 forced senior Obama-era national security officials to discuss the country’s wider vulnerabilities, former officials said. The concern was, according to the former senior NSC official, “Will the Chinese weaponize this data they’ve accumulated over the years?”
“If they do, it has far-reaching consequences, and could be far more damaging than what Russians have done. Because they have vastly larger quantities of data than Russia does,” the former official said.
Still, some China hawks remained frustrated over what they perceived of as a lack of focus on Beijing, and especially its industrial policies. “I was fighting people to get this done, more collection on China,” said Robert Spalding, who served as the top China strategist for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the late Obama administration. At Spalding’s request, in 2015 the Joint Chiefs organized meetings with a suite of top intelligence officials, as well as representatives from the Commerce, Treasury, and State departments around these issues. “The [intelligence community] refused to engage,” said Spalding, who subsequently served on the National Security Council during the Trump administration.
But other former national security officials, who emphasize the time lag between high-level strategic reprioritizing of different intelligence targets and on-the-ground results, say there was an intensified focus on China around this time—including on developing greater insight into the relationship between Chinese intelligence agencies and private Chinese companies. By 2016, senior U.S. national security officials had “tasked the [intelligence community] to develop answers, setting the wheels in motion” on “the sharing between private [Chinese] companies and the MSS,” one former national security official recalled. We “were looking at the forensic trail,” they said.
The Obama administration’s increased scrutiny of the Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE helped catalyze this process, this source said: “Part of the material that was obtained within that investigation provided a breadcrumb trail to Huawei’s practices in Iran and elsewhere. But the picture was still being colored in.”
After President Donald Trump took office in early 2017, this increasingly well-developed picture would spur U.S. intelligence officials, and senior Trump administration officials, to zero in on the symbiotic relationship between China’s security apparatus and its private sector leviathans.
Editor’s Note: This is the second in a three-part series. The first part covers how the data wars began between the two nations after CIA networks were uncovered in China. The third part covers the Donald Trump era and the growing cooperation between Chinese intelligence and tech giants.