Africa -China Review Africa -China Cooperation and Transformation
By Gerald Mbanda
When one reads through western media, it is common find headlines accusing China of cyber-attacks and cyber espionage against US. Cyber security analysts question how the US considered having a big monopoly on many key cyberspace resources continually accuses China of carrying out cyber-attacks. The analysts conclude that the US cry is of disguise as a poor victim and a deceptive cover-up of their own cyber hegemony and attacks on other countries. The US does exactly what it blames other countries to be doing.
The director of the Institute of International affairs at Renmin University in China Wang Yiwei, observes that, “The US playing the cyber-attack card is moving the ideological struggle to cyber security, and seeking to monopolize the world by suppressing any challengers with a variety of reasons.” Wang further notes that, “Russia and China have broken US hegemony in the cyber world with advanced technological developments. China, seeing a rapid development in technologies like 5G, blockchaintechnology and digital currency when the internet is experiencing a major intergenerational development, is seen by the US as a potential “threat” in not only cyber space but also in finance.”
Experts believe that by the US claiming cyber-attacksfrom China, is an act of politicizing the cyber security issue, in order to influence global public opinion and tarnish the image of China as the aggressor and violator of international laws governing cyber security.On the other hand, the US is on record with evidence for various violations of cyber security laws at home and abroad.
In 2013, Edward Snowden a former National Security contractor let the cat out the bag when he exposed US hypocrisy of mass surveillance of Americans’ telephone records and intelligence chiefs insisted they had done nothing wrong. Seven years later, the US court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the secretly collected millions of Americans’ telephone records violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and may well have been unconstitutional. The court also pointed a finger at the US intelligence chiefs who publicly defended the act for not telling the truth.After the Court ruling, Snowden, who lives in exile since 2013, wrote on his twitter page and commented that the ruling “was a vindication of his decision to go public with evidence of the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping operation.”
The US does not trust even its allies. In May this year,European media revealed a scandal where the US used Denmark’s secret service to spy on European leaders ahead of US president Biden’s visit to United Kingdomand Belgium for the G7 and NATO meetings respectively. With their hand caught in the cookie jar, the US loses moral authority to condemn cyber-attacks when it is at the forefront of committing the crime and should be condemn for espionage against other countries. According to media sources, quoting Norwegian defence Minister Frank Bakke-Jansen, the Norwegian government summoned US embassy officials for explanation following spying allegations.
The French President Emmanuel Macron told media that, “If these revelations [of spying] are correct, I want to say it is not acceptable among allies, very clearly,”and called for ties between US and Europe to be based on trust. But knowing the way US does things, such illegality hidden behind playing Mr. Right and blaming the rest as Mr. Wrongs, is their well-known unchanging policy towards other countries deemed a threat to their hegemony.
A report published in October 2019 by the Washington based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, reveals that China is eclipsing the US in terms of technological innovation and investment using state led policies such as Made in China 2025 and the New Generation of Artificial Intelligence Development Plan. In addition, the report further says, that, “China is the world leader in patent applications with 40 percent of the global total, a share more than two times larger than that of the United States and four times larger than that of Japan.” China projects to become the world’s leader in Artificial Intelligence by 2030 whichgives US policy makers sleepless nights.
In a world where geopolitical power is increasingly linked to technological advancement, The US is increasingly becoming uncomfortable with China’s aggressive cut throat competition hence resorting to measures like banning Chinese telecom equipment as well as Huawei celluar technology under the pretext of “cybersecurity threat.” The US is therefore using Cyber security as a weapon against China.
Gerald Mbanda is a Researcher and publisher on China and Africa
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