To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Coming Soon - To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Tue, 04 Mar 2025
American companies, whole towns, have been eviscerated by Chinese cyberattacks. But their stories remain untold, even as the stakes get higher and the targets more reckless. To Catch a Thief is a first-of-its-kind, documentary look at China’s rise to cyber supremacy. This podcast charts the evolution of China’s state-sponsored hackers, from their beginnings as “the most polite, mediocre hackers in cyberspace” to the “apex predator” that now haunts America’s critical infrastructure. Host Nicole Perlroth, bestselling author and former lead cybersecurity and digital espionage reporter for The New York Times, interviews those who were victimized, and instrumental in tracking, Chinese cyberattacks as the threat morphed from trade secret theft, to blanket surveillance, to pre-positioning in America’s critical infrastructure. For what purpose? To Catch a Thief interrogates the motives behind it all.
Chapter 1: What is the greatest transfer of wealth in history?
I think it's the greatest transfer of wealth in history.
Chapter 2: How do Chinese hackers execute their cyberattacks?
So they call it advanced persistent threat. They didn't take by file. They just took the whole directory.
Over the past two decades, the greatest heist in history has played out on American soil, or rather, in America's digital realm.
I used to call it the tank through the cornfield. You know, it was just mowing down files and taking as much as they could.
Chapter 3: What makes China the 'apex predator' in cyberspace?
But this wasn't the Robert Redford, George Clooney crowd, or even anonymous 20-somethings cloaked in hoodies. The burglar behind this heist was bigger than you'd ever think.
There are two kinds of big companies in the United States, those who've been hacked by the Chinese and those who don't yet know they've been hacked by the Chinese.
Chapter 4: How have major companies been impacted by Chinese cyberattacks?
The Chinese Communist Party has been behind some of the 21st century's most attention-grabbing breaches. They've targeted our news sources. The New York Times reporting on a cyber attack on its own computers. Our tech giants.
Google traced the sabotage back to China.
And our most treasured trade secrets.
They're targeting research on everything from military equipment to wind turbines to rice and corn seeds.
China's state-sponsored hackers have stolen trillions of dollars worth of research and development. And now, their focus has shifted.
They said publicly that the reason for these hacks was in order to disable our critical infrastructure. You don't hack infrastructure for fun. It's reconnaissance.
China has built and exported a surveillance state made off with countless blueprints and now infiltrated our most critical infrastructure. For anyone watching, this wasn't a surprise. It was a decades-long strategy.
Russia is much like a hurricane. They're aggressive and come at us hard and fast. But China is climate change.
China's multi-pronged assault on our national and economic security make it the defining threat of our generation.
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