I love Sunday nights.
Unfortunately, no groundbreaking news. Nevertheless, Nicole Perlroth, David Sanger, and Michael Schmidt wrote a very good article for The New York Times discussing the differences between Chinese and Iranian motives. We often hear about all these hacking episodes where the Chinese break into Corporation X or critical infrastructure provider Y; the authors questioned “[w]hy had the Chinese done it?” The answer could be simple economic gain, or it could be an attempt “to plant bugs into the system so [the Chinese] could cut off energy supplies and shut down the power grid if the United States and China ever confronted each other. . . .” However, even if the Chinese were planting logic bombs in the grid, it’s unlikely that they would ever use them. The article noted that China is a rational actor, and as such, it wouldn’t risk harming its #1 trade partner.
Iran is a different story. The authors suggested that Iran is slightly less than rational, and with no holdings in the U.S., may someday attempt a cyberattack on U.S. critical infrastructure as payback for Stuxnet.
There’s more to the NYT article, so check out the rest here.
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