SAN FRANCISCO: US officials confronted the Chinese government in Beijing last month about a sweeping cyber espionage campaign through which Chinese hackers have broken into dozens of American critical infrastructure organizations, a senior US cyber official said.
Under the campaign named Volt Typhoon, American officials say China aims to leverage the access it has gained into US organizations in the event of a war or conflict – a nod to escalating US-China tensions over Taiwan. The Chinese have previously dismissed such allegations as groundless.
“We have had direct conversations with the Chinese about it,” Nathaniel Fick, US ambassador at large for cyberspace and digital policy, told Reuters in an interview at the RSA Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday (May 7).
“We raised it directly with the Chinese government at very senior levels and made clear that this kind of behavior is dangerous, escalatory, and it’s not acceptable,” Fick said. He said he spoke to the Chinese officials with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was in China from April 24 to 26.
Asked how the Chinese responded, Fick said: “Same way they have to previous attributions … They have said before that it’s a ploy by various US agencies to get more budget dollars.”
