Dmitry Alperovitch
Appearances
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
Time and again, something that's often been repeated, that this is the greatest transfer of wealth in history that's taking place, that is impacting us. And you have this huge sucking noise of all of our intellectual property and trade secrets just moving over to China. And eventually they'll be able to use it to outcompete us.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
And literally both industry and government folks were telling me, oh, don't worry, we have the innovation. As long as they keep stealing, this is literally what someone told me, as long as they keep stealing, they can't innovate. And I was like, what are you smoking? I mean, of course they can.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
Of course, if you short circuit your research and development, if you steal someone's IP and you know what works and crucially what doesn't work, then you can innovate on top of this.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
the tradecraft by and large wasn't that good. And the reason it wasn't that good is because it didn't need to be, because no one was looking for them. They just told you how the industry was so myopic and understanding the threat. So you didn't really need to try hard to succeed. So why would you?
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
It's just not a good return on your investment to expend all this effort being stealthy and caring about being discovered when all you wanted to do is just do a quick hit and run, right? And grab your data and go.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
It wasn't just the IP theft. It was the trade secrets relating to pricing data, customer data, things that they could use to outcompete in the marketplace.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
Thank you.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American History
Thank you.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 1: The Five Poisons
I was looking at the malware with my team. There was a name that stood out. Usually when you're looking at the piece of malware, it's all kind of machine code, kind of binary zero and ones, but occasionally you see a phrase in there that sticks out. And in this case, the word that stood out was Aurora.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 1: The Five Poisons
It must've been a code name for the project that the attackers used when they were building this piece of code. And I instantaneously knew that I had to call this whole operation, not just the malware, but the whole operation Aurora.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 1: The Five Poisons
The reason why I knew immediately we had to call it Aurora, not just because of that one phrase, because there are certainly other phrases in the malware as well, but here my cultural background comes in, but Aurora is the name of the Russian battleship that fired the first shot that was a signal to Lenin in 1917 to start the October Revolution that changed the course of history, obviously turned Russia into communist Russia, and of course triggered the Cold War later on as well.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 1: The Five Poisons
I knew that instantaneously that this event that I was investing in was also a huge deal because here you got for the first time a nation state that was publicly identified as breaking into a private company and a set of private companies. And that was going to be a big deal and a watershed moment. And that's why I called the whole thing Operation Aurora.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 1: The Five Poisons
There are only two types of companies, those that know that they've been hacked and those that don't yet know. And this is a phrase that I actually got a lot of criticism for when I first announced it in 2011, because I was seeing all these hacks that were taking place and people thought that was exaggerating, that this was overhyping a thing.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 1: The Five Poisons
Maybe if I can step back, the pivotal moment really was when I get a call from this little company called Google, Heather Atkins, that still is their Google-run security team,
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 1: The Five Poisons
As long as they keep stealing, they can't innovate. And I was like, what are you smoking?
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 5: A Cyber Detente
They didn't want any hitches. They didn't want any embarrassments.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 5: A Cyber Detente
And the Chinese absolutely panicked over that. And literally within 48 hours, a huge delegation of Chinese officials, senior officials, flies in to negotiate with the U.S. and really ask, please, please don't do anything while Xi is here. We can't embarrass him. What can we promise you to avoid that?
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 5: A Cyber Detente
They proposed this idea of how about we do a moratorium sort of deal where we both decide not to engage in economic espionage. Of course, that was an easy gift for the U.S. because the U.S. had a standing policy to not do it to begin with. But the Chinese obviously wanted to kind of save face and claim that both countries are disarming themselves in a way.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 5: A Cyber Detente
And I was told by participants in the room that were negotiating this in a Marriott hotel in Washington, D.C., because they couldn't actually get into the White House. It was so late that their negotiations were going for so long. And they were in shock. They like went out of the room and they're like, did we just hear them say that?
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 5: A Cyber Detente
The Chinese were so concerned that Xi was going to end up with egg on his face that they put this forward of how about we do a moratorium? And, you know, the people that were in the room were just like trying to hide their excitement that they could not believe that they could get something like this done. There was obviously a lot of skepticism about whether they would honor it.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 5: A Cyber Detente
But just the idea that they would commit to something like that publicly was a really big deal.
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Ep 5: A Cyber Detente
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.