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John McAfee: Cyberwar is here, and China is the enemy

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John McAfee
John McAfee is one of the most influential commentators on cybersecurity anywhere in the world. His new venture — Future Tense Central — focuses on security and personal privacy-related products. McAfee provides regular insight on global hacking scandals and internet surveillance, and has become a hugely controversial figure following his time in Belize, where he claims to have exposed corruption at the highest level before fleeing the country amid accusations of murder (the Belize government is currently not pursuing any accusations against him).

The Opening Salvos of the World’s First Cyberwar

On Sept. 25, Xi Jinping, leader of the Chinese Communist Party, will come to Washington to meet with President Obama.

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The issue of the Chinese regime sponsoring hackers to rob American companies in order to feed the Chinese economy is now reaching a boiling point. During remarks at the Sept. 16 Business Roundtable, a quarterly meeting of top CEOs, President Barack Obama gave a terse warning of where the Chinese cyberattacks could lead. “Although the Chinese and Russians are close, we are the best at this, and if we wanted to go on the offense, a lot of countries would have some significant problems,” Obama said in a streamed broadcast. — Epoch Times

President Obama has carefully danced around the real issue: It is not American companies that we should be concerned about. It is our own government, against which acts of war have blatantly been committed multiple times by the Chinese. Within the past year the FBI, the Department of the Army, Homeland Security and last but not least, our Office of Personnel Management have been attacked by the Chinese.

Trust me, America has been invaded, just as if the boots of Chinese soldiers occupied every state in our Union.

In the OPM hack, the Chinese made off with more than 14 million detailed records of every employee of the U.S. government for the past 25 years. This includes detailed information about every covert agent embedded within a foreign government in every country in the world. A greater coup of espionage has never been achieved in the history of warfare. And still, our president wants us to focus on the “corporate” aspects of the “Chinese Invasion” — and trust me, America has been invaded, just as if the boots of Chinese soldiers occupied every state in our Union.

Acts of War

The obvious acts of cyberwar have gone completely unnoticed, or at least unmentioned, by the U.S. government.

In a cyberwar, the attacker must first have a plan to remove access to the Internet by the nation being attacked; otherwise the attacker risks massive retaliation. Is there any evidence of this? F**k yes!

Eleven times in the past year fiber-optic cables have been inexplicably cut in California in the past year. — USA Today

If I were the enemy, I would want to know what my enemy’s response time would be to repair a disconnect, how difficult it would be to cut the cables in the first place, what methods of cutting work best, etc. Eleven times. Please think about this. If it is not the Chinese, then it is someone equally as frightening that we need to be watching closely, because these events are obvious precursors to all out cyberwar.

The second thing an attacker would need to do is to gain control of the enemy’s routers, thus controlling the flow of communications. Is there any current activity in this Arena? F**k yes!

“Cisco routers found to be slaves of hackers” — TechWorm

In anticipation of an upcoming cyberwar, an attacker would have to organize the information it had obtained through cyber espionage in a manner that would weaponize it. Is there any evidence of this? F**k yes!

“China reportedly compiling ‘Facebook’ of U.S. government employees” — Fox News

We have to get a clue. We are in the early stages of a cyberwar. As a candidate for President of the very nation under attack, I would be remiss in my duties if I did not shed light on our reality.

I am going to make the following prediction:

On September 25, when Xi Jinping meets President Obama, we will not have a single concrete response to the war that has been declared on us by the Chinese. By “concrete” I mean economic sanctions that take place on the 25th, or other immediate, visible actions. Our president is smart enough to know that the Chinese will merely laugh at any threat of “future” actions, such as “next week we are going to…”

The Chinese have been involved in diplomatic relations for 5,000 years. The U.S. has only existed for less than 250 years. Guess which nation has the advantage here. Any announcement that does not include “starting today, no Chinese cargo ship will be allowed in any U S. port,”  or something of similar magnitude, will be seen by the Chinese as confirmation of our idiocy.

If this sounds extreme, then wake up. We are at war.

John McAfee
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Who is John McAfee? John McAfee is one of the most influential commentators on cybersecurity anywhere in the world. His…
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