Hooked! #9: Leaks, jokes, and the increasingly complex Chinese surveillance ecosystem

Hello!

It’s been a disconcertingly warm November here in the Netherlands – incontrovertible numbers aside, there are omens: my balcony tomatoes are still going strong, there are sheep grazing on my municipality’s would-be outdoor skating rink, and migratory swans have reportedly reversed course and are heading back north. The climate has changed; the globe has warmed. While climate anxiety and climate doomerism abound, one recurring counterpoint keeps popping up: China can decarbonise the world; China is becoming a world leader in green energy; China is helping power the world’s green transition. Given that the US appears to have abandoned any efforts in that direction, I hope they’re right.

[Editor’s note: this morning, less than a week after this was drafted, it’s snowing. Thank you, China, for reversing global warming.]

Saving us all from the consequences of our own actions is not the only thing attributed to China this month. Just days after Xi Jinping laughed off South Korean president Lee Jae Myung’s joke about being spied on through the Xiaomi phones Xi had gifted him, Anthropic alleged that the Chinese state was responsible for the ‘first reported AI-orchestrated cyber-espionage campaign’.

Sceptics, however, were quick to point out that the report itself noted that AI campaigns were hindered by AI hallucinations and called out ‘hype’ from AI companies aiming to present their tools as uniquely powerful and cybersecurity companies eager to sell defensive products.

More intriguing evidence of China’s cyber espionage capabilities came not from publicity-seeking AI headlines, but rather from new analysis of leaks from state-connected cybersecurity companies.

Some leaked documents from Beijing-based cybersecurity company KnownSec were briefly posted on GitHub earlier this month – a preview before the full set was sold, it seems. While the documents provided some valuable detail about cyber forensics tools KnownSec provides for law enforcement and their information gathering capacities, the documents seem to originate in an older leak – nothing groundbreaking.

In contrast, DomainTools Investigations’ (DTI) three-part series on the Geedge Networks leak from earlier this year contains a lot of highly technical detail. Overall, DTI claims the leak is ‘one of the most consequential exposures in the history of digital authoritarianism’ and ‘has rendered much of China’s detection arsenal obsolete.’ Their in-depth examination of the Great Firewall was interesting – I didn’t know much about the widely distributed structure of the ‘wall’ or the practical details of how, for example, politically sensitive terms were suppressed, and I found the behavioural prediction systems particularly chilling. (I gather some people find that exciting.)

The report ends on an optimistic note, saying ‘Far from extinguishing dissent, the system creates a feedback loop of repression and resistance, embedding digital counterculture as a permanent feature of Chinese society,’ and that increased repression risks strong responses from international actors and democratic states.

Again, I hope they’re right, though recent events in the Netherlands make me wonder about European governments’ willingness to put economic ties on the line. On the other hand, Germany is reportedly considering using state funds to replace Huawei equipment in Deutsche Telekom infrastructure – nothing to do with the Uighurs or anything, they just don’t want to be spied on.

Looking to China’s regional relationships, DTI wrote that the adoption of such tools by countries like Russia, Iran, and Vietnam (not to mention Geedge customers like Kazakhstan) ‘suggest the emergence of a “cyber sovereignty coalition”’ based on ‘the notion that national borders should extend into cyberspace, with governments controlling what citizens can access, publish, and share’.

In light of this rising Chinese ‘technosphere’, Binding Hook has published a few pieces this month on how other Asian states are dealing with China’s technological ascendency in their own ways.

First, Gatra Priyandita and Arindrajit Basu explored the cultural and technical background for Indonesia and India’s reticent approaches to attributing cyberattacks, including those from China. (Read their accompanying look at Indonesian and Indian cyber strategy and cyber diplomacy too.)

Second, Abhishek Sharma examined the challenges Japan has faced in trying to shift from a passive cyber defence strategy to an active one in the face of cyber threats from Russia, North Korea, and China.

Finally, Valentin Weber’s article from Tuesday looks at how China’s responses to attribution are changing – and how the West and its Asian allies should keep pace.

That’s it for this month!

Stay warm out there?

Katharine Khamhaengwong

Binding Hook Editor

Read more Binding Hook on China in our recent series from commissioning editor Kat Fytatzi on what Europe could learn from China’s technological revolution:

Ausma Bernot’s piece on how China’s policing modernisation could offer lessons for Europe provides another perspective in the sovereignty debate.
Rogier Creemers discusses the curious case of Chinese innovation and how the success of the ‘Made in China’ program proved old canards about the stifling nature of Communism or Confucianism wrong.
Vincent Brussee argues that China’s strict but narrowly targeted approach to governing AI has allowed for a generative AI boom that isn’t just technological, but regulatory.
John Lee explores what China’s chip strategy gets right: namely, ecosystem thinking and adaptability.