The Daily Signal - China Is Trying to Steal Data From US Government and You

Episode Date: August 3, 2020

A cybersecurity battle is raging. In recent weeks, Chinese hackers stole, or attempted to steal, terabytes of data from the U.S. government, businesses, and private individuals. Digital predators gained access to the Twitter accounts of Elon Musk, former President Barack Obama, and other high-profile individuals. And President Donald Trump says he is considering banning the Chinese-made app TikTok over security concerns.  Klon Kitchen, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Technology Policy, joins the podcast to explain the severity of America’s cybersecurity threats, what actions the government should take, and how you can keep your personal information safe from hackers.  Also on today’s show, we read your letters to the editor and share a good news story about a mom who won a little money playing the lottery but decided to give it all to a police officer in Kansas City, Missouri, who recently was shot in the line of duty.  Support Shetara Sims and her daughter here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/helping-the-woman-with-a-heart-of-gold?utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=customer&utm_campaign=p_lico+share-sheet. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, August 3rd. I'm Robert Blewey. And I'm Virginia Allen. Rob, you know, it's so hard to believe that we are already in August. But here we are, and we're kicking off the month with a really timely conversation with Klon Kitchen, director of the Heritage Foundation's Center for Technology Policy. Kitchen explains what information Chinese hackers stole from America regarding a COVID-19 vaccine. And whether or not any of our information is safe on social media platform.

We also share your letters to the editor, and we have a good news story about a mom who won a little money playing the lottery, but decided to give it all to a Kansas City police officer who was recently shot in the line of duty, despite having lost her job during the pandemic. Before we get to today's show, Rob and I want to tell you about an entertaining way to keep up with the news that matters most. The Heritage Foundation's YouTube channel features TV interviews with heritage experts, policy explainers, and videos of Heritage's most recent webinars discussing the economy, COVID-19, and much more. Go ahead and join the more than 150,000 subscribers to the Heritage Foundation's YouTube channel. You can search for the Heritage Foundation on your YouTube app or visit YouTube.com

slash Heritage Foundation. Stay up to date on the news and information that conservatives need to know. Now stay tuned for today's show. Coming up next. We are joined by Clon Kitchen. Director of the Heritage Foundation's Center for Technology Policy. Klon, thanks so much for coming on the show. Yeah, it's my pleasure.

So a couple of weeks ago, the Department of Justice charged two Chinese nationals with trying to steal America's COVID-19 vaccine research and a lot of other information, both from government, businesses, and even individuals. What do we know about how much information that those hackers were actually able to steal? So on that specific case, we don't know a whole whole. lot just because it's part of some sealed DOJ documents as it regards the indictments. But what we know more broadly is that a number of nations, China being one of the most aggressive, are actively going after U.S. research centers, actually U.S. and European and other

research centers, trying to get access to research data associated with vaccine development for the COVID-19. And yeah, it's a real challenge. While we don't think that it's intended to somehow manipulate or make U.S. vaccine development somehow more dangerous, it is likely just focused on them trying to develop their own vaccines. It does slow down the process because time and energy and resources are now being dedicated towards security that might otherwise be dedicated to research. Okay. Okay.

That's interesting to hear that connection. So, you know, I'm no cybersecurity experts. So when I hear those words, hack or terabytes of information stolen, I understand that that's a national security threat. But could you just explain a little bit more broadly what the severity of China's cyber attacks really are as far as being a threat to America? How serious should we be thinking of these? Well, so our national cybersecurity posture is decisively important, right? In the modern age, securing the nation means securing networks. And there is no more aggressive or capable adversary than China.

Now, they're certainly not the only one. Russia, North Korea, Iran, others certainly demonstrate very real capability, all of which has to be protected against. But China is especially sophisticated. They have a very broad effort. They target everything from, you know, intelligence and military defense-related information to all kinds of corporate and economic espionage targets to academic and research institutions. And they have proven themselves to be adept at not only getting that information,

but then leveraging that information and creating their own domestic equivalents of our own companies and technical capabilities, but then also using that information to target, you know, politicians and, you know, individual citizens for, you know, manipulation or blackmail. And how does China's activity online against America and other nations work within its larger strategy? I mean, how important is hacking for China's kind of larger goals regarding the U.S. Maybe? Well, it's a fundamental capability. So it is, it's decisive because it won, is a primary means of gaining access to information that is otherwise withheld from them.

If they didn't have cyber means, then they would have to figure out some type of physical way of gaining access to this information or having it brought to them by some type of human spy or something like that. But with a cyber capability, that gives them essentially global access to all this information.

Two, it provides a level of deniability it is often very difficult to do attribution on cyber activity. And even when you can do it because of particular sources and methods, we're not always quick to publicly ascribe blame because that could ultimately expose our own kind of capabilities. So it's a really attractive capability with relatively low risk. So President Trump has taken actions against China in recent weeks from, you know, increasing sanctions in various ways to closing the Chinese. consulate in Houston, Texas. Do you think there are other actions that he should be taking

against China or the administration should be taking against China right now? Well, over just the last two weeks or so, we've seen actually a pretty systematic effort against China using some of the things that you identified in terms of sanctioning, the indictments that we were talking about earlier. There's some impending decisions on the TikTok social media app, which is owned by a Chinese company, BiteDance. We've seen actions on Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications company, where we have, the United States, has convinced some of the world's leading microchip suppliers not to provide that company with microchips because they operate on behalf of the Chinese state.

And so there's a whole host of actions that I would like to see, I'd like to see that screw continue to get turned. Because the goal isn't just to be mean or punish China. The goal is actually to compel them to assume a different posture, a posture that is more proactive and fruitful in engaging with the West so that we can both engage with one another way where we thrive and where we're not kind of face-to-face and stealing things. So you mentioned TikTok. It's a very popular app, especially among young people. And Trump has actually said that he might consider banning that app in America because of security. What are your thoughts in this?

I mean, should the app actually be banned? Yeah, so the security concerns are essentially undeniable, and that's the case because China has laws, cybersecurity laws and national security laws, that require any Chinese company, even one operating here in the United States, to make available to the Chinese government any and all data that they collect. So any information that that, that,

that TikTok collects on U.S. users under Chinese law must be made available to the Chinese Communist Party. That's a big problem. And it's a problem that actually extends well beyond TikTok to essentially every Chinese company. And we're really struggling with that. I suspect that here in the next few days, we are likely to get announcement of some type of action against TikTok. that action could be some type of a ruling from the committee on foreign investment in the United States, sometimes called Sipheus, or the White House may choose to put TikTok on the entities list, as it did with Huawei and ZTE. So I don't use TikTok, but I have a lot of friends that do, family members that do,

should for listeners who have it, or maybe their kids have it, should they get off? I mean, is it, you know, a really that much of a, you know, dangerous? or a thread if you're just kind of posting funny, silly videos? Well, I mean, I would certainly get off, and I would certainly encourage others to get off. But, I mean, the concern isn't that the Chinese government is going to get your silly dance videos, right? Nobody's really worried about that. It's the reams and reams and reams of other data that the app collects. So TikTok collects what we call it telemetry data.

It collects your GPS position. It collects your contacts. It collects your online viewing habits. So it knows who your family is. It knows where you live and knows where you've been. It knows where you're likely going. It has the content of the videos itself, which means that they can do voice analysis

and video facial recognition and all kinds of other stuff. And all of that information is getting dumped into large data pools back in China and then commingled with other data that they're stealing. and used for, you know, who knows what. I mean, I can speculate on a whole host of ways that can be used that Americans wouldn't like. But the point is, is that by law, that's happening. And right now, U.S. users are voluntarily providing

all of that information to TikTok. Wow. Gosh, that's pretty scary, Klon. All right, so I want to switch yours for a second away from China and talk about Twitter. So just a few weeks ago, Twitter had a massive. major security breach in which a hacker or hackers were able to control a number of really high profile accounts, including that of Elon Musk, Joe Biden, President Trump, a host of others. And the hacker posted a tweet saying sort of something along the lines of, hey, I'm feeling generous.

If you send money to this Bitcoin account, I'll send you back double whatever you send. Well, you know, a handful of people fell for this. But in retrospect, this was a pretty small scam compared to what it could have been. So I guess this kind of ultimately raises the question of can we trust Twitter or I guess any other social media platform with our information? Yeah. So the interesting thing about the hack on Twitter here recently was, you're right, this was a little bit like stealing a Ferrari to listen to the radio. The fact that they tried to pull a Bitcoin scam, I think they ended up collecting about $185,000. But what they were able to do in terms of gaining access to what's called verified accounts,

these are accounts that Twitter, you know, they have the little blue check. And they do that, Twitter does that so that users can essentially know that, hey, this is the verified account. So when it says that this is the Twitter account of Donald J. Trump, it's D.T. Twitter account for Donald J. Trump, by kind of doing what they've done, they've undermined that whole verification model. This was a big deal, and we're going to keep hearing more about this particular hack as more information comes out. But one of the net outcomes of this is that as we enter the 2020 election cycle in earnest, it just further undermines the legitimacy and reliability of online information. At the point where verified accounts on Twitter, you know,

can no longer be trusted as being from the people they purport to be from. It's just another kick in trustworthy news are online. And that's going to be a problem for us. So in other words, you're saying that we could see, you know, we could see the election in November potentially impacted by things like Twitter hacks, by people, you know, putting up information that might be inaccurate or saying, you know, this person is, is polling well or this one isn't and affecting the way that people vote? Well, so what I'm saying is there's going to be a lot of that kind of activity, undoubtedly. The barriers to entry are so low that foreign actors and other malicious actors, it's just

too attractive a target and too low a cost for them not to do it. And so there's going to be a lot of foreign influence activity online, and there already is. The impact that has on people's actual voting remains to be seen. Typically, people are pretty locked in, and they orient themselves on news that kind of supports that going in position. And there's not a whole lot of information that supports radical changes in people's viewpoints, but they can still be misled, and that's a problem. We saw that in 2016. Yeah.

Well, you mentioned 2016 in the 2016 election. It was affected by emails, both hacked and leaked. So far, you know, we haven't seen that for 2020, but do you think that security is better than it used to be and, you know, that we won't see that kind of email hacking again? Or do you think that there's a chance that, you know, with this election we might see kind of those same tactics taken? So I think two things.

One, security is better. And two, there's no doubt in my mind that we're going to see the same type of activity. I think at the end of this election, regardless of who wins, both candidates are going to have enough of a reason to claim some type of legitimate interference that it's going to make the outcome

very messy. and the voting outcome isn't decisively one way, and it's really close, it's going to be even harder. But even if it is decisive one way, there will still be enough activity, bad guy activity online to where people are going to have legitimate claims of manipulation. And that's just, that's why we've been saying for four years that this has to be addressed, and it has to be changed. And is it being aggressively addressed and changed? In some quarters, yes.

But at the end of the day, I think we have to recognize that we have not fundamentally changed the calculus of nations like Russia and China. And what we have seen just from a pure metric standpoint is an increase in activity along these lines from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and even some individual hacking syndicates. So there's been a lot of effort. There's no doubt about it. whether that effort is sufficient, I think, is still very much in question. So how do we, as American citizens, go about protecting our information online? Yeah, there are some very basic things that an individual can do. And in fact, James DePain and I have just kicked out a recent paper on basic cybersecurity,

where we discussed this. And that can be found on the Heritage website. But, you know, the simple things are, one, be careful what you say and do online. You know, just remember that when you post a Facebook, that picture of your family vacation, you've just told all of the people who can see your profile that you're away from your home and out of town, and, you know, somebody could drop by and visit if they want. Be careful if you're dropping your kids and your grandkids' names, you know, their birthdays and things like that. You know, that type of information can be accumulated and all kinds of insights can be drawn from it.

Two, especially in light of the Twitter hack, turn on what's called two-factor authentication or two-fa. It's where you have to provide a second method of verifying that you are, in fact, the person is trying to log into your account. That's a great way to kind of push bad guys a little further out and not make it easy for them. And then finally, another easy thing to do is start using a password manager. There's a host of those out there.

Essentially what it is is you only have to remember one password. And then the password manager manages everything else. It's a great way to have strong passwords without having to have a super memory. And those are often free or very cheap. And I would recommend everybody adopt those practices. So what are the cybersecurity issues that you're kind of looking at, that you're tracking and following right now that you recommend listeners also keep their eye on moving forward? Well, so one of the awesome and challenging things about,

about what we're doing at the Center for Technology Policy Heritage is it's pretty audacious. We're trying to look at tech policy comprehensively and from an interdisciplinary perspective. So we're looking at everything from, of course, tech competition with China, which involves everything from, you know, market dynamics to cybersecurity and foreign policy and even human rights. But we're also looking at, you know, earlier this week, we had the tech CEOs before Congress talking about antitrust. And we're looking at those issues. We're also looking at facial recognition technologies and the government's use of those capabilities and what legal constraints might be necessary for that type of activity. So all of those things are things that are really important to individual

citizens. They're really important in the policy space and they are taking a great deal of our attention at the CTP. Clon, thank you so much for our time today. We really appreciate you coming on. My pleasure. If you're tired of high taxes, fewer health care choices, and bigger and bigger government, it's time to partner with the most impactful conservative organization in America. We're the Heritage Foundation, and we're committed to solving the issues America faces. Together, we'll fight back against the rising tide of homegrown socialism, and we'll fight for conservative solutions that are making families more free and more prosperous.

But we can't do it without you. Please join us at heritage.org. Thanks for sending us your letters to the editor. Each Monday, we feature our favorites on this show. Virginia, who do you have first? In response to last week's problematic women podcast interview with Abigail Schreier on the transgender movement's effect on teenage girls, Sam writes, this is a tactic that Marxists and communists have used for years

destroy the family core by going to the source, the children. Our education has been infiltrated, and this didn't happen in a day. Wake up, America. And in response to our recent interview with Larry Elder, the producer of Uncle Tom, Stephen Rubin writes, Today, after listening to your interview with Mr. Elder, I felt finally that there is a world out there that feels as I do. The interview was incredible. I was extremely impressed with both of you.

Thank you for taking the time to share Mr. Elder's story with me and us. I now feel like I have tons of information, factual information, which will allow me to stand straighter and prouder than ever before. I hope and pray that both of you continue to be voices for the logical, learned, and studied Americans who truly believe that it is time to publicly expose the truth. Well, thank you, Stephen. We appreciate your note. Your letter could be featured on next week's show. So send us an email at Letters at DailySignal.com. conservative women conservative feminist it's true we do exist i'm virginia allen and every thursday morning on problematic women loren evans and i sort through the news to bring you stories and interviews

that are a particular interest to conservative leaning or problematic women that is women whose views and opinions are often excluded or mocked by those on the so-called feminist left we talk about everything from pop culture to policy and politics. Search for problematic women wherever you get your podcast. Virginia, you have a good news story to share with us today. Over to you. Thanks so much, Rob. We've probably all dreamed about winning the lottery, even just a little bit of money. Shatar Sim lost her job during the pandemic. She was down to $7 in her bank account, and she bought a scratch-off ticket in hopes of winning a little bit of money. which she did, $100 to be exact.

But Sim's 12-year-old daughter, Rekiah Edmondson, suggested to her mom that they should not keep the money for themselves, but donate it to a local Kansas City police officer who was recently shot in the line of duty. Sim agreed right away and anonymously called the police department and donated the money. But the Kansas City Department was determined to find and thank Sim and her daughter for their generosity, which they did, but they didn't just stop there. The police department set up a go-fund need campaign for the mother, which has raised more than $150,000. Rekiah and her mom joined Fox News about a week ago to explain why they so readily donated to the injured officer

despite their own financial need. Because I knew if my mom wasn't working and we didn't have like enough money to drive around, I knew that his family wouldn't because he's not working right now. Sim told Fox, I know the police have been there for me, but that was such a selfless act for my daughter, and I didn't want to change that. I wanted her to continue to be as she is. In an interview with KMBC News, Sim explained that Rekiah's older sister was killed in Kansas City in 2012. The police and detectives were such an incredible support to their whole family. The detectives were really there for us. They were there for us more than anyone I can imagine. They did things they did not have to do, Sim said. Wow, this is just incredible. It's amazing to see

not only the generosity that was freely given, but it was really given out of a place of need. That certainly challenges me. And, you know, Rob, I think that is truly what community looks like. It sure is, Virginia. And I'm so glad that you highlighted that. We need a strong civil society in our country, particularly in challenging times like this. And I think too often we look to Washington or we look to government for all of the answers when in many cases, they're right next door or right in your own communities.

So thank you for bringing us that story. It is truly inspiring. And for anyone who wants to donate to Sim and her daughter, Rikaya, We'll be sure to leave that link to the GoFundMe page in today's show notes. That's great. Well, thanks for sharing, Virginia. And we're going to leave it there for today. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on the Rurkishay Audio Network.

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Foundation. It is executive produced by Rob Blewey and Virginia Allen. Sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. For more information, visit DailySignal.com.