Dave DeWalt
Appearances
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 4: Naming and Shaming
That time period was the most dangerous in America's history, I think, as we really got a superpower elevated probably 50 years of IT advancement in a five-year period because developing all that on your own would never have happened. And in my opinion, America's companies would have dominated China had they not been able to build their own Chinese companies with the IP they stole.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 4: Naming and Shaming
This was stuff we hadn't seen before. The epiphanies of a major government stealing from American companies, directly government on business, and then government on security companies to business was something we had never seen. And so that was a wake up call for all of us to go, wow, okay, this is This is beyond government on government espionage and activities.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 4: Naming and Shaming
But when you start seeing little companies almost measured by a press release coming out as a Series A investment getting hacked by the Chinese, you knew you're in a whole new era. And that's the era I grew up in.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 4: Naming and Shaming
I spoke at an airline transportation summit and I showed 150 breaches on how China built its next generation jet. So they stole everything. all the parts to the jet from the airframe to the avionics to essentially and it was I want to call it the C919.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 4: Naming and Shaming
But I showed the entire airframe and avionics and every confirmed breach that showed how they had a strategy to build the entire aircraft from the breaches of American companies. Now, it took them a while to get it off the ground because, you know, it's not easy just to steal it and build it. There's a lot of engineering process that goes with it. But eventually they did.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 4: Naming and Shaming
And now they have their own capabilities to build their own aircraft, commercial airliners that all came from breaches of the U.S.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 4: Naming and Shaming
When you look at solar industry, there were so many attacks on the solar where they'd flood solar panels back into the U.S. down to the exact bolt with the same serial number of the solar panels that were stolen. I mean, we could match it to the Chinese maker with the exact same characteristics with the same serial number that was stolen from a U.S. provider. And we have a lot of cases of this.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 4: Naming and Shaming
I'm not sure how many I'm able to share down to the company names. But I mean, we saw restaurants that were opening in China with the exact recipes of the food that was served. Like we saw good luxury goods makers who had their products stolen down to the handbag process of manufacturing.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 4: Naming and Shaming
If you go back to 2008 window, there's a number of town stories like that whose entire businesses and towns were wiped out by Chinese product that flooded the market less than one year of the espionage attack.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 4: Naming and Shaming
Some of the lives that were affected and the people that were affected are pretty dramatic because entire factories and towns were built around the manufacturing of American good that suddenly was sold for a fraction of the price below cost to defeat the American by its own product down to its serial number.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 4: Naming and Shaming
When you start to look at it through the lives of people like that who lost their jobs, had to go on Social Security, or had to migrate out of the cities because of the Chinese espionage, it's a real factor.