An updated military document for the first time admits that the Chinese government has a full fledged cyber army for raising cyber wars
Despite several rebuttals and denials by its leadership and the military, it is quite well known that China has specialised cyber warfare units which are ready to launch cyber attacks on orders of PLA and Chinese leadership.
Officially, China has always maintained that it does not sponsor or support any form of hacking. These denials however came to naught when a latest update in top security military document mentions the existence of such cyber warfare units in China.
The updated The Science of Military Strategy which is a top level military document and an authoritative analysis of China’s military thinking, includes references to China’s cyber-warfare units.
“This is the first time we’ve seen an explicit acknowledgement of the existence of China’s secretive cyber-warfare forces from the Chinese side,” Joe McReynolds of the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis told The Daily Beast. “[T]hey’ve come out and said, ‘Yes, we do in fact have network attack forces, and we have teams on both the military and civilian-government sides.’”
The Science of Military Strategy which was first published in Chinese in 2001 and translated into English in 2007 has been giving meaningful insights into the workings of the largest army in the world.
The updated edition was published in Chinese in December 2013 and recently become available to foreign analysts. Chinese top leadership and the military is aware that this book is used as a reference point by defense analysts and security strategists.
McReynolds said China has dedicated cyber units operating in both the military and the civilian sphere. The Daily Beast report goes on to state that China has “specialized military network warfare forces” for carrying out both offensive and defense cyber operations and its organisations like, Ministry of State Security and the Ministry of Public Security are “authorized by the military to carry out network warfare operations.”
Chinese Army which has always been shrouded under a cloak of mysteriousness, had earlier revealed the existence of a 30 member “Blue Army.” “The Blue Army’s main target is self-defense. We won’t initiate an attack on anyone,” a senior PLA official insisted when news of the unit’s existence broke.
