China openly admitted it was behind a series of cyber attacks on US infrastructure in a secret meeting with American officials, according to reports.
Members of the Chinese delegation indicated to their US counterparts in December that they had spent years targeting computer networks in electrical grids, water supplies and ports, in what appeared to be a warning against Washington providing support to Taiwan.
US officials were said to have been shocked at China admitting culpability for what it has called the “Volt Typhoon” campaign, sources told the Wall Street Journal.
The meeting between security teams from the two superpowers is said to have taken place in Geneva, Switzerland last year, during Joe Biden’s last few weeks as US president.
The Biden administration went public with warnings about the Volt Typhoon campaign last year, claiming that Beijing was attempting to establish itself in critical infrastructure to cause chaos if a war broke out.
Wang Lei, a top cyber official with China’s ministry of foreign affairs, reportedly indicated that the hacks were the result of Washington lending military backing to Taiwan, according to current and former US officials.
He is not said to have directly stated that China was responsible for the campaign of cyber attacks on the US.
However, American officials took the admission as an implicit warning against coming to Taiwan’s aid in the event of a Chinese invasion. China regards the island as part of its territory even though it has been effectively independent since 1949.
Nate Fick, then the ambassador-at-large for cyberspace and digital policy in the Biden administration, is said to have led the US delegation at the summit.
Both Mr Biden’s White House and Donald Trump’s transition team, which was preparing to assume control of the US government, were briefed on the meeting.
Relations between Washington and Beijing have deteriorated even further under Mr Trump, as Pentagon officials vowed to retaliate with their own cyber attacks and the US president imposed a 145 per cent tariff on Chinese imports.
The US state department did not comment on the specifics of the meeting in a statement to the Wall Street Journal.
However, it said that Washington had made clear to Beijing that it would “take actions in response to Chinese malicious cyber activity”, which it described as “some of the gravest and most persistent threats to US national security”.
The Chinese embassy in Washington accused the US of “using cybersecurity to smear and slander China” and spreading disinformation about “so-called hacking threats”.
