China's Cyber Siege: Hacking the Grid, Taunting in Mandarin, and Prepping for Taiwan Showdown

This is your Dragon's Code: America Under Cyber Siege podcast.

I’m Ting, your friendly and mildly caffeinated guide to all things China, cyber, and chaotic—think of me as the firewall between you and digital doom. Forget the boring intros. Let’s drop right into the breach—because Dragon’s Code: America Under Cyber Siege was *extra* spicy this week.

Last Monday, security analysts at Google’s Threat Intelligence Group couldn’t believe their dashboard. They saw unmistakable fingerprints of Salt Typhoon—a code name used by the FBI for a notorious Chinese-linked hacking collective—worming its way through the US electric grid and water supply, and even poking the emergency alert infrastructure. Rich Andres from the National War College flagged for FOX 5 DC that Chinese-backed actors were in over 80 countries’ systems, but their *deepest* hooks seemed aimed at US critical infrastructure: power, water, comms, and, yes, the godlike network behind everyone’s favorite midnight meme delivery portal—telecoms.

These guys weren’t just blasting ransomware or pulling off smash-and-grabs, either. This crew used supply chain infiltration, targeting software updates to inject their malware so it wouldn’t even blip traditional defenses. Remember the SolarWinds thing a few years ago? Picture that on caffeine, doing calculus, and moonwalking through encrypted channels.

Attribution is always the million-bitcoin question in cyber, but this time, it wasn’t just code similarities or shared infrastructure—the attackers misused diplomatic IP blocks assigned to Chinese agencies, plus some clever taunting in Mandarin embedded in the code comments. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said, “Yup, it’s them again—probably PLA-affiliated.” Meanwhile, China’s government denied everything, then launched probes into US semiconductor companies like Texas Instruments for “anti-dumping,” essentially cyber-diplomacy in a trench coat.

Did we panic? Not quite. Google’s new “disruption unit”—poised to actively take down live hostile operations—went into overdrive. The government dusted off never-before-used sections of the Scam Farms Marque and Reprisal Authorization Act, which, for you cyber-history buffs, reimagines ye olde letters of marque for hacking back at foreign adversaries. Picture private-sector white hats suddenly getting legal pirate hats. Sounds rad, but as Dick Wilkinson, CTO and legendary cyber-grouch, pointed out, wrangling government hackers is tricky enough—herding freelance infosec cats? Total cyber-madness.

By Thursday, energy companies shared that all affected systems—yes, including the Northeast’s infamous “grid of patchwork and duct tape”—were purged, patched, and extra-segmented. Still, the lesson was painfully clear: China is digging digital tunnels not just for espionage, but to have “off switches” if the Taiwan question heats up. That’s not just a flex; it’s a real strategic lever.

So what now? Experts urge constant red-teaming, more public-private info sharing, and, as Andres quipped, “disconnect your life-support systems from the cloud. Seriously.” For listeners, back up your data and stock bottled water. Not joking.

Thanks for tuning in to Dragon’s Code! If you want to keep your digital dragon at bay, subscribe for more. This has been a quiet please production, for more check out quiet please dot ai.

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