Chinese Hackers Outnumber FBI Cyber Staff 50 To 1, Bureau Director Says (cnbc.com) 48
According to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Chinese hackers vastly outnumber U.S. cyber intelligence staff "by at least 50 to 1." CNBC reports: "To give you a sense of what we're up against, if each one of the FBI's cyber agents and intel analysts focused exclusively on the China threat, Chinese hackers would still outnumber FBI Cyber personnel by at least 50 to 1," Wray said in prepared remarks for a budget hearing before a House Appropriations subcommittee on Thursday. The disclosure highlights the massive scale of cyber threats the U.S. is facing, particularly from China. Wray said the country has "a bigger hacking program than every other major nation combined and have stolen more of our personal and corporate data than all other nations -- big or small -- combined."
The agency is requesting about $63 million to help it beef up its cyber staff with 192 new positions. Wray said this would also help the FBI put more cyber staff in field offices to be closer to where victims of cyber crimes actually are.
The agency is requesting about $63 million to help it beef up its cyber staff with 192 new positions. Wray said this would also help the FBI put more cyber staff in field offices to be closer to where victims of cyber crimes actually are.
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You're trying too hard to turn it into a racial issue...
Re: Sorry, that feels mildly racist. (Score:2)
At least I'll put my handle to my thoughts.
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Hasn't that always been the racial trope about the Chinese? The "legions of them"? The "yellow peril" (sorry guys...).
My Dad told me when I was young, an unpleasant metaphor about China's birth rate that involved how fast Chinese could be killed off while repopulating their nation on the fly. I'm not gonna repeat the whole thing here 'cuz it doesn't need any air, but srsly, WTF? You wanna put that image in a kid's head? Can you think of the humans that live there as something other than a monolith?
Sounds very much like the depersonalization machine is trying to gin us up for a war.
How would you rewrite it so it still conveys the needed information without be slightly racist?
Re: Sorry, that feels mildly racist. (Score:5, Interesting)
Good question.
The phrase "Chinese Hackers" seems to imply an equivalency between anyone hacking in China and the FBI. As though people working in cyber security for the FBI are the only offensive or defensive cyber intelligence people we have in this country, and there's a faceless mass of hacking Chinese just outside the door.
Maybe this is what's giving me the racist feel: undifferentiated "Chinese Hackers" - the faceless mass.
How about get the comparative numbers in groups straight first:
All the hackers in China's People's Liberation Army.
All of China's "Specialized military network warfare forces"
Chinese "non-governmental forces"
The staff of China's 56th Jiangan Computing Technologies Research Institute
etc.
(Yes, I'm cribbing some of these from Wikipedia)
Point being: yes, China as a state fields hacking operations. So does the US.
Wray IS trying to refer to the actions of one state vs. another, but does so by referring to an undifferentiated Chinese threat - just like US hawks have spoken about China since at least the Korean war.
It _does_ feel mildly racist to me, and I think I've elucidated why.
I carry no water for China - they've done awful things to their own citizens, and Xi is definitely not on my Christmas card list after bringing down the hammer on Hong Kong, a city I had the pleasure of visiting only once.
I'm a European-descended guy who's seen more than one march to war in this life, and it always starts with trying to dull the public's appreciation for the adversary as a country full of human beings.
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They have a larger population pool easy to get more talent.
A lot of the "hackers" won't be good ones but good enough to do the grunt work set to them
Many will be friends and relatives who need work and they are also usually CCCP party friendly and spy on the the real "hackers" to keep them inline. (similar to the old soviet era joke why do KGB agents always work in 3's, One can read, One can write, and the other keeps an eye on the 2 intellectuals).
If you want to catch up to the west the
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How would you rewrite it so it still conveys the needed information without be slightly racist?
Have you considered asking that question to ChatGPT?
I bet it's answer would be very interesting.
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Re: Sorry, that feels mildly racist. (Score:1)
Re:Sorry, that feels mildly racist. (Score:5, Informative)
Hasn't that always been the racial trope about the Chinese? The "legions of them"? The "yellow peril" (sorry guys...).
This is about the nation of China, not about the Taiwanese, or the Singaporeans, or the ethnic Chinese in Malaysia, Vietnam, or Indonesia. It's not about race or even ethnicity. It's about a nation and its military.
Sounds very much like the depersonalization machine is trying to gin us up for a war.
Racial discrimination is a bad thing, but that won't lead to war. What the Chinese military has been doing on the electronic front, that might lead to war.
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Get racially abused on the street and tell me people care to tell the difference between "Chinese" and "Taiwanese" or "Singaporeans" or "ethnic Chinese" in "Malaysia", "Vietnam", or "Indonesia".
I'm not saying that doesn't happen or that it isn't hurtful. However, it is very much a different issue. Both exist orthogonally and need to be dealt with in separate ways. In fact, for the non-China Chinese in the US, they get hit doubly, first by the racial discrimination from Americans and second by the economic, political, and military offensives from China.
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That Indian engineer that was murdered because of the fear after 9/11 probably would not say that racism against brown people, and people being told to be afraid of brown terrorists, are orthogonal issues.
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What's often forgotten is that "Chinese" denotes someone's ethnicity about as well as "European" does.
There are many different ethnic and cultural groups within China that each have their own distinct genetic and cultural heritage who now all happen to live under one political regime and are all labelled "Chinese" as a result.
Here's a list of some of the groups within China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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"China" is not a race you woke dumbass.
Buit FBI have 50 times (Score:1)
more people who believe Jesus will save the USA.
Take that Xinnie the Pooh!
More crooks than cops (Score:2)
It's usually the situation that there are a lot more criminals than there are cops. I'm not sure what Wray is intending with his remarks. Is he trying to set low expectations? Does he just want more staff reporting to him? Perhaps if he refocused some of the agents pursuing American politicians he would be able to cover the Chinese hacking threat better.
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It's usually the situation that there are a lot more criminals than there are cops. I'm not sure what Wray is intending with his remarks. Is he trying to set low expectations? Does he just want more staff reporting to him? Perhaps if he refocused some of the agents pursuing American politicians he would be able to cover the Chinese hacking threat better.
Asking for $63 million seems like a small amount, especially given that the FBI budget is over $10 billion. Since this seems like an important aspect of national defense, I would think that bipartisan support for a much larger amount wouldn't be that hard to garner.
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You'd think there'd be bipartisan support for stopping a pandemic, too, but that would be underestimating the willingness of our political parties to turn anything into a partisan issue if they think they can portray the other candidate in a bad light.
Drop the fbi academy and age limits for IT work (Score:2)
Drop the fbi academy and age limits for IT work.
Also add an POT waver as well.
But still even then it's hard to compete with Cheap Chinese Labor
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So, you think a 14 year old (the federal limit) with 20 weeks of training is both older than necessary and more trained than necessary?
What, exactly, would you propose for the age and training time requirements for FBI specialists?
Drop MAX AGE and other LEO field needs (Score:3)
Drop MAX AGE to be hired 37 can be low for some PRO's
Also why does an IT pro working an desk need to pass
Firearms skills?
Police interrogation skills?
Tactical driving?
Physical surveillance of people? (maybe some what useful)
physical fitness at the cop in the field level? and say some one with issues that need an wheelchair can't work an IT job?
Someone can do math! (Score:3)
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but apparently not everyone can. :)
3:1 and 50:1 are dramatically different ratios.
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I thought ChatGPT v7 is going to fix all this... (Score:1)
ai agents (Score:1)
The FBI is the wrong agency (Score:2)
Yes, so? (Score:2)
Their top people will not be that many. The only reason the mediocre and bad Chinese hackers get into US secrets is the abysmally bad state of IT security that is prevalent. The FBI is not the right tool to do anything there, they just want more money for entirely different reasons, namely growing their power. Like any bureaucracy. What would do something is real penalties for the CEOs that screw up by not protecting their assets adequately. But apparently that is un-American because it would mean people ma
Has China Won? (Score:2)
Kishore Mahbubani gives China's view of things and that we can and should work with China
John Mearsheimer sticking with his theory on great power politics, e.g. like it or not conflict is just the way things will go.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
This is dumb. (Score:2)
Someone give me an example from any time or place on planet Earth where the police weren't outnumbered by bad guys? 50 to 1 sounds like really good odds. Normal police probably face a thousand to one odds at least.
Re: This is dumb. (Score:1)
Except, the "1" is the "bad guys".
Misleading (Score:2)
This is misleading in so many ways:
- Chinese hackers do not target exclusively the US, they target a lot of other countries too and those countries have their own cyber defences
- Chinese hackers do not target exclusively US government, they also target the private sector, which has its own cyber defences
- FBI is not the only cyber security gov organization in the US
- while a FBI cyber staff will work full time, we don't know those Chinese hackers also work full time
- all that is said about Chinese hackers i
Chinese Slashdot moderators used all their points (Score:2)
Chinese hackers attacked my Linkedin account and deleted it. I lived in China and it is the simple thinking people that follow the CCP., similar to the MAGA in America. The rest are too scared to do anything.
Re: Chinese Slashdot moderators used all their poi (Score:1)
That's nonsense.
Too busy rounding up citizens? (Score:2)
The FBI is maxed out rounding up citizens who were linked to Jan. 6, parents who complained too loudly at school board meetings, and people making fun of the government on social media.