Ten years ago, Steve Jobs died of pancreatic cancer at 56. He played a huge role in making Apple one of the most successful companies in the world. But what does Apple’s future look like? Karina Bafradzhian has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.
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Day: October 9, 2021
French President Emmanuel Macron said Friday that his country will return 26 African artworks — royal thrones, ceremonial altars, revered statues — to Benin later this month, part of France’s long-promised plans to give back artwork taken from Africa during the colonial era.
Discussions have been under way for years on returning the artworks from the 19th century Dahomey Kingdom. Called the “Abomey Treasures,” they currently are held in the Quai Branly Museum in Paris. The museum, near the Eiffel Tower, holds thousands of works from former French colonies.
Macron said the 26 pieces will be given back at the end of October, “because to restitute these works to Africa is to give African young people access to their culture.” It remains unclear when exactly they will arrive in Benin.
“We need to be honest with ourselves. There was colonial pillage, it’s absolutely true,” Macron told a group of African cultural figures at an Africa-France gathering in the southern city of Montpellier. He noted other works already were returned to Senegal and Benin, and the restitution of art to Ivory Coast is planned.
Cameroon-born art curator Koyo Kouoh pressed Macron for more efforts to right past wrongs.
“Our imagination was violated,” she said.
“Africa has been married to France in a forced marriage for at least 500 years,” Kouoh said. “The work (on mending relations) that should have been done for decades wasn’t done…It’s not possible that we find ourselves here in 2021.”
A sweeping 2018 report commissioned by Macron recommended that French museums give back works that were taken without consent, estimating that up to 90% of African art is located outside the continent. Some other European countries are making similar efforts.
Three years later, few artworks have been returned. To facilitate the repatriation of the Abomey Treasures, France’s parliament passed a law in December 2020 allowing the state to hand the works over and giving it up to one year to do so.
The Africa-France meeting Friday was frank and occasionally heated. Macron, who is trying to craft a new French strategy for Africa. met with hundreds of African entrepreneurs, cultural leaders and young people.
Speakers from Nigeria, Chad, Guinea and beyond had a long list of demands for France: reparations for colonial crimes, withdrawal of French troops, investment that bypasses corrupt governments and a tougher stance toward African dictatorships.
Macron defended France’s military presence in Mali and other countries in the Sahel region as necessary to keep terrorists at bay, and he refused to apologize for the past.
But he acknowledged that France has a “responsibility and duty” to Africa because of its role in the slave trade and other colonial-era wrongs. Noting that more than 7 million French people have a family link to Africa, Macron said France cannot build its future unless it “assumes its Africanness.”
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The COVID-19 outbreak has apparently sparked a global rise in depression and anxiety.
According to a study published in the medical journal The Lancet, there were millions more of such cases last year than had been projected. Women and young people were the groups most affected by pandemic-related depression and anxiety.
The report also said there has been “no reduction in the global prevalence or burden … for either disorder since 1990, despite compelling evidence of interventions that reduce their impact.”
“This pandemic has created an increased urgency to strengthen mental health systems in most countries,” the survey said. “Taking no action to address the burden of major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders should not be an option,” the researchers said.
On Friday, Brazil’s health ministry said the country’s COVID-19 death toll has passed 600,000. The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resources Center has recorded 21.5 million COVID-19 cases in the South American country.
Russia’s state statistics service reported nearly 50,000 coronavirus deaths in the country in August, taking the toll since the beginning of the pandemic to over 400,000, nearly double the official government figure.
Rosstat released its figures late Friday, reporting that 49,389 people died from COVID-19 in August, a figure much higher than 24,661, the government tally for the same month.
Overall, Rosstat says around 418,000 people have died in Russia since the pandemic began. This nearly doubles the official total death toll of 214,000 published by the Russian coronavirus task force earlier Friday.
Russian officials explained the discrepancy, saying COVID-19 deaths are counted differently by the two agencies. The government coronavirus task force counts only fatalities for which an autopsy confirms COVID-19 as the primary cause of death, while Rosstat uses a broader definition for deaths linked to the virus.
In other developments Friday, the World Health Organization announced it has established and released the first standardized clinical definition of what is commonly known as “long COVID” to help boost treatment for sufferers.
Speaking virtually to reporters from the agency’s Geneva headquarters, WHO Head of Clinical Management Janet Diaz said the definition was agreed on after global consultations with health officials.
She said the condition, in which symptoms of the illness persist well beyond what is commonly experienced, is usually referred to as “post COVID.” Moreover, it occurs in people who have had confirmed or probable new coronavirus infections, “usually three months on from the onset of the COVID-19, with symptoms that last for at least two months and cannot be explained by an alternative diagnosis.”
Those symptoms include fatigue, shortness of breath and cognitive dysfunction, she said, but there also are others that generally have an adverse effect on everyday functioning. Diaz said that until now, a lack of clarity among health care professionals about the condition has complicated efforts in advancing research and treatment.
In the United States, officials said they would accept the use by international travelers of any COVID-19 vaccine authorized by U.S. regulators or the WHO. Last month, the White House announced that it would lift travel restrictions on people from 33 countries who show proof of vaccination. Officials did not say at that time which vaccines would be accepted, however.
The Associated Press reports that the number of Americans getting COVID-19 vaccines has reached a three-month high, averaging 1 million per day, as more employers mandate the shots and some Americans seek boosters. That figure is almost double the level for mid-July but still well below last spring, according to the AP.
Meanwhile, a senior White House official announced Friday that the U.S. government is shipping more than 1.8 million doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to the Philippines — a donation that will be executed through the WHO-managed COVAX vaccine cooperative. The doses will arrive in two shipments, probably Sunday and Monday, according to the official.
U.S. drugmaker Moderna announced earlier Friday it was planning to deliver another 1 billion doses of its COVID-19 vaccine to low-income countries next year. In a message posted to the company’s website, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said the company was investing to expand its capacity to deliver the additional doses.
The disclosure is part of what Bancel describes as his company’s five-pillar strategy to ensure low-income countries get access to the company’s vaccine. The plan includes not enforcing its vaccine patents, expanding its production capacity worldwide, and working with the United States and others to distribute their surplus doses of vaccine.
Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
When the remnants of Hurricane Ida dumped record-breaking rain on the East Coast this month, staircases into New York City’s subway tunnels turned into waterfalls and train tracks became canals.
In Philadelphia, a commuter line along the Schuylkill River was washed out for miles, and the nation’s busiest rail line, Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor running from Boston to Washington, was shut down for an entire day.
Nearly a decade after Superstorm Sandy spurred billions of dollars in investment in coastal flooding protection up and down the East Coast — some of which remains unfinished — Hurricane Ida and other storms this summer provided a stark reminder that more needs to be done — and quickly — as climate change brings stronger, more unpredictable weather to a region with some of the nation’s oldest and busiest transit systems, say transit experts and officials.
“This is our moment to make sure our transit system is prepared,” said Sanjay Seth, Boston’s “climate resilience” program manager. “There’s a lot that we need to do in the next 10 years, and we have to do it right. There’s no need to build it twice.”
In New York, where some 75 million gallons (285 million liters) of water were pumped out of the subways during Ida, ambitious solutions have been floated, such as building canals through the city.
But relatively easy, short-term fixes to the transit system could also be made in the meantime, suggests Janno Lieber, acting CEO of the Metropolitan Transit Authority.
Installing curbs at subway entrances, for example, could prevent water from cascading down steps into the tunnels, as was seen in countless viral videos this summer.
More than 400 subway entrances could be affected by extreme rains from climate change in coming decades, according to projections from the Regional Plan Association, a think tank that plans to put forth the idea for a canal system.
“The subway system is not a submarine. It can’t be made impervious to water,” Lieber said. “We just need to limit how quickly it can get into the system.”
In Boston, climate change efforts have focused largely on the Blue Line, which runs beneath Boston Harbor and straddles the shoreline north of the city.
This summer’s storms were the first real test of some of the newest measures to buffer the vulnerable line.
Flood barriers at a key downtown waterfront stop were activated for the first time when Tropical Storm Henri made landfall in New England in August. No major damage was reported at the station.
Officials are next seeking federal funds to build a seawall to prevent flooding at another crucial Blue Line subway stop, says Joe Pesaturo, a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. The agency has also budgeted for upgrading harbor tunnel pumps and is weighing building a berm around an expansive marsh the Blue Line runs along, he said.
In Philadelphia, some flood protection measures completed in Superstorm Sandy’s wake proved their worth this summer, while others fell short.
Signal huts that house critical control equipment were raised post-Sandy along the hard-hit Manayunk/Norristown commuter line, but it wasn’t high enough to avoid damage during Ida, said Bob Lund, deputy general manager of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority.
On the bright side, shoreline “armoring” efforts prevented damaging erosion in what was the highest flooding in the area since the mid-1800s. That has buoyed plans to continue armoring more stretches along the river with the cable-reinforced concrete blocks, Lund said.
If anything, he said, this year’s storms showed that flood projections haven’t kept up with the pace of environmental change.
“We’re seeing more frequent storms and higher water level events,” Lund said. “We have to be even more conservative than our own projections are showing.”
In Washington, where the Red Line’s flood-prone Cleveland Park station was closed twice during Hurricane Ida, transit officials have begun developing a climate resiliency plan to identify vulnerabilities and prioritize investments, said Sherrie Ly, spokesperson for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.
That’s on top of the work WMATA has undertaken the last two decades to mitigate flood risks, she said, such as raising ventilation shafts, upgrading the drainage systems and installing dozens of high-capacity pumping stations.
On balance, East Coast transit systems have taken laudable steps such as sketching out climate change plans and hiring experts, said Jesse Keenan, an associate professor at Tulane University in New Orleans who co-authored a recent study examining climate change risks to Boston’s T.
But it’s an open question whether they’re planning ambitiously enough, he said, pointing to Washington, where subway lines along the Anacostia and Potomac rivers into Maryland and Virginia are particularly vulnerable.
Similar concerns remain in other global cities that saw bad flooding this year.
In China, Premier Li Keqiang has pledged to hold officials accountable after 14 people died and hundreds of others were trapped in a flooded subway line in Zhengzhou in July. But there are no concrete proposals yet for what might be done to prevent deadly subway flooding.
In London, efforts to address Victorian-age sewer and drainage systems are too piecemeal to dent citywide struggles with flooding, says Bob Ward, a climate change expert at the London School of Economics.
The city saw a monsoon-like drenching in July that prompted tube station closures.
“There just isn’t the level of urgency required,” Ward said. “We know these rain events will get worse, and flooding will get worse, unless we significantly step up investment.”
Other cities, meanwhile, have moved more swiftly to shore up their infrastructure.
Tokyo completed an underground system for diverting floodwater back in 2006 with chambers large enough to fit a space shuttle or the Statue of Liberty.
Copenhagen’s underground City Circle Line, which was completed in 2019, features heavy flood gates, raised entryways and other climate change adaptations.
How to pay for more ambitious climate change projects remains another major question mark for East Coast cities, said Michael Martello, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher who co-authored the Boston study with Keenan.
Despite an infusion of federal stimulus dollars during the pandemic, Boston’s T and other transit agencies still face staggering budget shortfalls as ridership hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels.
The stunning images of flooding this summer briefly gave momentum to efforts to pass President Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion infrastructure plan. But that mammoth spending bill, which includes money for climate change preparedness, is still being negotiated in Congress.
“It’s great to have these plans,” Martello said. “But has to get built and funded somehow.”
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Jenny Chan strode through central London on a late summer Saturday afternoon, heading for the South Bank Lion statue opposite Big Ben.
There, by the River Thames, the 57-year-old mother and her two children joined a group of fellow Hong Kong expats who had gathered to sign a banner for Anson Lo, a 26-year-old singer with Hong Kong boy band Mirror.
About 200 people, most wearing clothes in Lo’s signature pink, wrote messages on the giant scroll. The banner had been hauled to the United Kingdom by Mirror fans, and its London stop on Sept. 25 was just one of many scheduled for outposts of the global Hong Kong diaspora. Its final destination is Hong Kong, where it will be presented to Lo himself.
The 12-member Hong Kong boy group Mirror originated in 2018 on the first season of King Maker, an elimination-style talent contest produced by Hong Kong’s ViuTV. The producers hand-picked contestants to form a boy band around the winner, Keung To. Mirror’s first release, roughly translated as One Moment in Time, debuted in November of that year.
Mirror’s trajectory — from its emergence before Hong Kong’s massive pro-democracy protests of 2019 to its superstar status in the Cantonese-speaking world — has made listening to the band “a type of resistance,” wrote Mary Hui on Quartz, as China cracks down almost daily on Hong Kong’s civil society.
Inspirational lyrics
Mirror members are identified more by their signature colors — Keung To’s is peach — than their politics. But it was widely reported via Facebook that former journalist and activist Gwyneth Ho, detained on a national security charge and facing the possibility of life imprisonment, cried upon hearing their song Warrior, which includes a line that translates to “I’d rather die / And I won’t retreat.”
Such lyrics help explain why Mirror is now a common thread among those fleeing China’s repression in the once freewheeling former British colony. Today, wherever Hong Kongers gather, Mirror provides the soundtrack, with hits such as Ignited and Boss.
Howard Chan, 23, and his sister Maggie Chan, 16, were studying in the United Kingdom when Maggie discovered Mirror late in 2018 on a show streaming online. She was drawn by the Cantonese, the language spoken in Hong Kong. VOA is using pseudonyms to ensure the safety of Chan family members as China tracks people overseas under Hong Kong’s national security law.
Through the band, the younger Chans told VOA Cantonese, they have connected with old friends in Hong Kong and friends who had moved to Australia.
Maggie Chan, a high school student, said she persuaded her brother, a Ph.D. candidate in engineering at a U.K. university, to join her in binge-watching Mirror’s ViuTV shows.
Howard Chan became a Mirror fan.
Their mother, Jenny Chan, moved to London in August 2019 to take care of her children. She continued watching a daily sitcom on TVB, a Hong Kong station often labeled pro-China.
Her children pushed her to quit TVB, but she resisted until the COVID-19 lockdown, when she started watching ViuTV.
Jenny Chan became a Mirror fan in part because “they’re handsome.”
The U.K. Chans rely on Thomas Chan, a 60-year-old patriarch and an executive with an international company in Hong Kong, to collect Mirror-related material and send it to them.
When he visited in July, he pushed through jet lag by binge-watching Ossan’s Love HK, which features Mirror’s Edan Lui and Lo.
The 15-episode series is a remake of a Japanese “boys love” drama. ViuTV’s Cantonese version is the first of the genre to air in Hong Kong.
Thomas Chan became a Mirror fan.
Mom worries about band
Despite Mirror’s popularity, Jenny Chan worries about the band’s fate given China’s targeting of effeminate male celebrities.
Her favorite, Lo, is known for his androgynous style.
Described by her son as politically liberal and open to new ideas, she also worries that the band’s influence may upset authorities.
When hundreds of fans attended a Hong Kong birthday event for Lo in July, they ignored police orders to disperse, instead waiting for a pink double-decker bus proclaiming “Happy Birthday Anson Lo” on its side.
“I believe China would feel afraid, as a group of people gathered, and they were not scared (of the police). We were worried (about Mirror),” she told VOA Cantonese.
She is relieved the semiofficial Hong Kong Tourism Board recently invited Lo and fellow Mirror member Ian Chan to appear in a promotional advertisement.
The U.K. Chans attend fan-hosted events in the London area, the most recent on Oct. 3. Howard Chan told VOA Cantonese that the events help maintain a Hong Kong identity.
“We live in London and often see many Hong Kongers. But for some who live quite far away, there is barely any chance to speak Cantonese. These events are something where we can get together,” he said.
Howard Chan recalled attending London marches supporting Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement with his sister before the pandemic. Those felt similar to Mirror fan events, he said, in that both attracted Cantonese-speaking people to a common activity.
“When I see someone with an Asian face, I don’t even have to think or ask in English whether they are Hong Kongers. I can just speak Cantonese,” he said of the marches and Mirror events.
Jenny Chan, who said she could tell her son felt heavy-hearted at the protests, likes seeing him relaxed at Mirror events. “It was like going to therapists, helping him to release his emotions and get happier.”
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Russia’s state statistics service reported nearly 50,000 coronavirus deaths in the country in August, taking the toll since the beginning of the pandemic to over 400,000, nearly double the official government figure.
Rosstat released its figures late Friday, reporting that 49,389 people died from COVID-19 in August, a figure much higher than 24,661, the government tally for the same month.
Overall, Rosstat says around 418,000 people have died in Russia since the pandemic began. This nearly doubles the official total death toll of 214,000 published by the Russian coronavirus task force earlier Friday.
Russian officials explained the discrepancy, saying COVID-19 deaths are counted differently by the two agencies. The government coronavirus task force counts only fatalities for which an autopsy confirms COVID-19 as the primary cause of death, while Rosstat uses a broader definition for deaths linked to the virus.
In other developments Friday, the World Health Organization announced it has established and released the first standardized clinical definition of what is commonly known as “long COVID” to help boost treatment for sufferers.
Speaking virtually to reporters from the agency’s Geneva headquarters, WHO Head of Clinical Management Janet Diaz said the definition was agreed on after global consultations with health officials.
She said the condition, in which symptoms of the illness persist well beyond what is commonly experienced, is usually referred to as “post COVID.” Moreover, it occurs in people who have had confirmed or probable new coronavirus infections, “usually three months on from the onset of the COVID-19, with symptoms that last for at least two months and cannot be explained by an alternative diagnosis.”
Those symptoms include fatigue, shortness of breath and cognitive dysfunction, she said, but there also are others that generally have an adverse effect on everyday functioning. Diaz said that until now, a lack of clarity among health care professionals about the condition has complicated efforts in advancing research and treatment.
In the United States, officials said they would accept the use by international travelers of any COVID-19 vaccine authorized by U.S. regulators or the WHO. Last month, the White House announced that it would lift travel restrictions on people from 33 countries who show proof of vaccination. Officials did not say at that time which vaccines would be accepted, however.
The Associated Press reports that the number of Americans getting COVID-19 vaccines has reached a three-month high, averaging 1 million per day, as more employers mandate the shots and some Americans seek boosters. That figure is almost double the level for mid-July but still well below last spring, according to the AP.
Meanwhile, a senior White House official announced Friday that the U.S. government is shipping more than 1.8 million doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to the Philippines — a donation that will be executed through the WHO-managed COVAX vaccine cooperative. The doses will arrive in two shipments, probably Sunday and Monday, according to the official.
U.S. drugmaker Moderna announced earlier Friday it was planning to deliver another 1 billion doses of its COVID-19 vaccine to low-income countries next year. In a message posted to the company’s website, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said the company was investing to expand its capacity to deliver the additional doses.
The disclosure is part of what Bancel describes as his company’s five-pillar strategy to ensure low-income countries get access to the company’s vaccine. The plan includes not enforcing its vaccine patents, expanding its production capacity worldwide, and working with the United States and others to distribute their surplus doses of vaccine.
Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
President Joe Biden on Friday signed legislation that will provide financial support to U.S. government employees believed to be suffering from the so-called Havana syndrome, mysterious health incidents that have affected American intelligence officers, diplomats and other personnel around the world.
“Today, I was pleased to sign the HAVANA Act into law to ensure we are doing our utmost to provide for U.S. Government personnel who have experienced anomalous health incidents,” Biden said in a statement released by the White House.
The Helping American Victims Afflicted by Neurological Attacks Act, or HAVANA Act, was passed unanimously by the Senate on June 7 and the House of Representatives on Tuesday.
In his statement, Biden acknowledged that American civil servants, intelligence officers, diplomats and military personnel around the world have been affected by “anomalous health incidents,” and some are struggling with debilitating brain injuries that have curtailed their careers. He vowed to commit the full resources of the U.S. government to provide medical care to victims and determine what causes it and who is responsible.
The Havana syndrome — a set of ailments that includes migraines, nausea, dizziness, tinnitus, visual and hearing problems, vertigo, memory lapses, and even mental breakdown — became public in 2016 after dozens of diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Havana complained of the symptoms. Since then, other U.S. personnel in China, Russia, Poland, Austria and other countries have reported similar symptoms.
Robyn Garfield, an advocate for Havana syndrome victims, welcomed the signing but said much more needs to be done. As a Commerce Department officer, Garfield was evacuated from Shanghai, China, with his wife and two children in June 2018 after experiencing symptoms.
“We remain deeply concerned by the continued disparity in treatment and support among different agencies of our government,” Garfield said in a statement to VOA. “In concert with implementation of the HAVANA Act, we urge the Administration to adopt a uniform diagnostic and treatment protocol across agencies to ensure that all who serve, and their families, have access to the best possible care.”
Garfield said that for too long, too many victims have faced skepticism and have been treated as adversaries instead of partners by the agencies they worked for. “That needs to stop.”
While the cause of Havana syndrome remains under investigation by the intelligence community, a 2020 National Academy of Sciences report (( )) concluded that “directed, pulsed radio frequency energy appears to be the most plausible mechanism in explaining” these anomalous health incidents.
Dr. David Relman, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University who chaired the committee that produced the report, welcomed the legislation.
“This is good news. This has been a long time— too long, in coming,” Relman said in a statement to VOA. “The public needs to acknowledge the many sacrifices by these folks, and their families, who serve our nation in so many ways.”
Frustrated victims
Several diplomats and government personnel who believe they are suffering from Havana syndrome expressed their frustration over having to fight a skeptical bureaucracy when reporting incidents and finding care.
“How are we going to take care of ourselves, our family and our kids?” said one civil servant who spoke to VOA on condition of anonymity.
They also complain that government acknowledgement of their suffering differs according to the country where the incident happened.
“The people who were impacted in Cuba all got plaques saying you were attacked,” said one diplomat who also asked not to be named. “The people in China — only one person has been acknowledged by the State Department to have been impacted in some way.”
The White House denied the accusation when asked by VOA.
“Our objective and the president’s commitment is to standardizing the reporting process, is to ensuring we’re improving the quality and speed of medical care, is to ensuring every case that comes forward is taken seriously, treated seriously,” said press secretary Jen Psaki.
“That has not always been the case, but that is our objective and the commitment of this administration,” Psaki added. She pointed out that Biden was the first president to acknowledge the existence of Havana syndrome and underscored that steps were being taken to coordinate reporting among the different agencies.
New cases
On the same day Biden signed the bill, German newspaper Der Spiegel reported that German police were investigating several cases of “alleged sonic weapon attack on employees of the U.S. Embassy” in Berlin.
In August, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’ flight from Singapore to Vietnam was delayed by several hours after reports of a “possible anomalous health incident,” according to the State Department.
The legislation that Biden signed authorizes the CIA director and the secretary of state to provide injured employees with additional financial support for brain injuries. The CIA and State Department would be required to create regulations detailing fair and equitable criteria for payment and report to Congress on how this authority was being used.
The bill was authored by Senator Susan Collins of Maine and co-sponsored by Senators Mark Warner, Marco Rubio and Jeanne Shaheen.
“These Americans who experienced traumatic brain injuries from likely directed energy attacks while serving our country should have been treated the same way we treat a soldier who suffered a traumatic brain injury on the battlefield,” said Collins in a statement released after the signing.
“Now that the HAVANA Act has been signed into law, Havana syndrome victims will finally receive the financial assistance and medical support that they deserve,” Collins said. “As we continue our efforts to support victims, we must also redouble our whole-of-government approach to identify and stop the heartless adversary who is harming U.S. personnel.”
Marc Polymeropoulos, a 26-year veteran of the CIA, was forced to retire in 2019 after being hit by a suspected directed energy attack in Moscow in late 2017. He welcomed Biden’s announcement.
“The signing of the Havana Act is a watershed moment for the victims. It is an acknowledgement from the (U.S. government) that the attacks are real, and an admission that the (U.S. government) for a long time has not treated victims properly,” he told VOA in a statement. “I am very thankful to Congress, on both sides of the aisle, who has championed the victims’ cause, as well as the Biden administration — for finally acting to provide financial relief to those with terrible injuries.”
It is unclear just how many people have fallen victim to Havana syndrome, but various media reports estimate as many as 200 Americans around the world have come forward to describe symptoms.
Mustang Panda is a Chinese hacking group that is suspected of attempting to infiltrate the Indonesian government last month.
The reported breach, which the Indonesians denied, fits the pattern of China’s recent cyberespionage campaigns. These attacks have been increasing over the past year, experts say, in search of social, economic and political intelligence from Asian countries and other nations across the globe.
“There’s been an upswing,” said Ben Read, director of cyberespionage analysis at Mandiant, a cybersecurity firm, in an interview with VOA. Cyber operations stemming from China are “pretty extensive campaigns that haven’t seemed to be restrained at all,” he said.
‘Large-scale and indiscriminate’
For years, China was considered the United States’ main cyber adversary, having coordinated teams both inside and outside the government conducting cyberespionage campaigns that were “large-scale and indiscriminate,” Josephine Wolff, an associate professor of cybersecurity policy at Tufts University, told VOA.
The 2014-15 hack on the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, in which the personnel records of 22 million federal workers were compromised, was a case in point — a “big grab,” she said.
After a 2015 cybersecurity agreement between then-U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping, attacks from China declined, at least against the West, experts say.
Hacking rising with rhetoric
But as tensions rose between Beijing and Washington during the Trump presidency, Chinese cyberespionage also increased. Over the past year, experts have attributed notable hacks in the U.S., Europe and Asia to China’s Ministry of State Security, the nation’s civilian intelligence agency, which has taken the lead in Beijing’s cyberespionage, consolidating efforts by the People’s Liberation Army.
TAG-28, a Chinese state-sponsored hacking team focused on the Indian subcontinent, reportedly infiltrated targets that included the Indian government agency in charge of a database of biometric and digital identity information for more than 1 billion people, according to The Record, a media site focused on cybersecurity.
A Microsoft report released in October accuses the Chinese hacking group Chromium of targeting universities in Hong Kong and Taiwan and going after other countries’ governments and telecommunication providers.
Hafnium, the name Microsoft gave to a Chinese hacking group, was behind the Microsoft Exchange hack earlier this year, according to the company and the Biden administration. Chinese hacking teams, Microsoft reported, took advantage of a weakness in the software to grab what they could before an emergency patch could be issued.
Scooping up data
A National Public Radio investigation asserted that the Microsoft Exchange hack may have been, in part, an information scoop aimed at acquiring large amounts of data to train China’s artificial intelligence assets.
Hafnium also targets higher education, defense industry firms, think tanks, law firms and nongovernmental organizations, the Microsoft report said. Another group from China, Nickel — also known as APT15 and Vixen Panda — targets governments in Central and South America and Europe, Microsoft said.
“What you are seeing now is this realization that Chinese espionage never disappeared and has become more technologically sophisticated,” Wolff said.
White House response
The Biden administration has stepped up its response to Chinese hacking. Over the summer, the U.S. and its allies, including the European Union, NATO and the United Kingdom, accused China of being behind the Microsoft hack and called on Beijing to cease the activity.
The Biden administration has not indicted anyone related to the Microsoft Exchange hack, nor has it instituted economic or other sanctions against China.
However, the U.S. unsealed in July an indictment against four members of China’s Ministry of State Security in a separate attack conducted by a group that security researchers call Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) 40, Bronze, Mohawk and other names.
A Chinese government spokesman demanded that the U.S. drop the charges and denied the nation was behind the Microsoft Exchange hack.
“The United States ganged up with its allies to make unwarranted accusations against Chinese cybersecurity,” said Zhao Lijian, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, in a July statement. “This was made up out of thin air and confused right and wrong. It is purely a smear and suppression with political motives.”
Pushing back
While China has stepped up its use of hacking, it has not crossed what some cyber experts say is a bright line in cyberespionage: public, overt hacks, such as the Russian disinformation campaign to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election and, in May, the Colonial Pipeline ransomware hack, which was attributed to Russian-based cybercriminals.
China’s aims appear to be long term and both economic and strategic, such as shoring up its capabilities “so they are not only well defended but surpass capacities,” Philip Reiner, the CEO of the Institute for Security and Technology, told VOA.
A collective push from world leaders that cyberespionage is unacceptable might resonate with Chinese leaders in Beijing, who want to be accepted on the world stage, he said. Detailing clear consequences for state-sponsored hacks is also critical, he said.
Without a strong push from the U.S. and its allies, experts say, China’s state-sponsored cyberattacks will continue.
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