China’s hackers target US water, electricity supplies: A shocking reality

China’s President Xi Jinping wants to steal money from under the U.S.’s cyber insurance policies by “sacking cities,” Chris Painter of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said at WIRED25 2021.
“China is trying to plunder the insurance policies we put in place to protect ourselves from China,” Painter said. “That seems to be one of the things China is doing strategically.”, reports Axios.
Why it Matters: The US and Europe have put in place myriad new cyber insurance policies to protect against cyber attack and data breaches. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping, China is doing the same thing, and with much more success than the U.S.
“A huge number of people think that by paying companies to provide security, they are shielding themselves from cyber attacks. The truth is that they are actually providing a shield to hostile states like China. They are buying laundered cash, and at the very least they are putting down payments on China’s future dominance over biotechnologies and artificial intelligence”, says the Axios report.
“The scale of the economic damage that China’s cyber weapons could cause will actually be greater than China’s current GDP”, says Painter.