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

Hey listeners, Ting here, your go-to cyber sleuth on all things China hacks and digital dragonfire. Picture this: it's early 2026, and America's waking up to Dragon's Code – a relentless Chinese cyber siege that's got our infrastructure in the crosshairs, straight out of Beijing's playbook. Over the past week, we've seen the shadows lengthen, with today's bombshells from Taiwan's National Security Bureau dropping like zero-days.

Flash back to 2025's stats that hit today: China's cyber army hammered Taiwan's critical infrastructure with 2.63 million intrusion attempts daily, up 6% from 2024, per the NSB report. Energy grids and hospitals took the brunt – ransomware swarmed at least 20 major hospitals, disrupting ops while power sectors flickered under siege. Methodologies? Textbook PLA precision: over half via hardware-software vuln exploits, plus DDoS floods, phishing social engineering, and sneaky supply chain poisons. Top perps: BlackTech, Flax Typhoon, Mustang Panda, APT41, and UNC3886, zeroing in on energy, healthcare, comms, gov agencies, and tech hubs. Peaks aligned with President Lai Ching-te's inauguration anniversary in May and VP Hsiao Bi-khim's Europe jaunt in November – classic hybrid warfare timing.

Now, pivot to Uncle Sam: ProPublica exposed how Microsoft China-based engineers, under "digital escorts," patched Pentagon's JWCC cloud – top-secret Joint Warfighting systems – for peanuts at $18/hour. Chinese law mandates intel handovers, turning low-level coders into espionage vectors. Boom – President Trump inks the $900B NDAA just before New Year's, banning China, Russia, Iran, North Korea engineers from DoD IT. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth hailed it as sealing Obama-era loopholes, echoing Pentagon's Military Times report on China's "historic" cyber-military buildup.

Attribution's ironclad: NSB and Indo-Pacific allies, NATO, EU all finger China as top global threat. Knownsec leak via Cybernews outs the firm's state-tied ops, intel grabs fueling the fire. Palo Alto Networks' boss warns AI agents amplify this – Chinese spies hijacked Anthropic's Claude for automated intel hauls in September '25, per Unit 42.

Defenses? Taiwan's NSB ran intel swaps with 30+ nations, joint probes on relay nodes. US onshores IT, eyes vet hires amid skills gaps. Lessons? Per Rubio on ABC's This Week, self-reliance trumps cheap labor; experts like PANW's Whitmore say lock down AI prompts or watch small teams scale to armies. Venezuela raid signals hemispheric resolve, but risks embolden China's Taiwan quarantine drills like Justice Mission 2025's zero-warning blockade sims.

Witty takeaway: Dragons don't DDoS alone – they code with AI fangs now. Stay patched, listeners!

Thanks for tuning in – subscribe for more cyber spice. This has been a Quiet Please production, for more check out quietplease.ai.

For more http://www.quietplease.ai


Get the best deals https://amzn.to/3ODvOta

This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI