Well, just as China begins to wrap its arms around the coronavirus, the US Dept. of Justice threw a grenade into its arms. Attorney General William Barr announced that he had indicted 4 Chinese members of the Peoples Liberation Army for their collective hacking US company Equifax, a credit reporting agency, stealing the personal data of over 150 million American citizens. The stolen information includes social security numbers, addresses, drivers license numbers, birthdays, and other private information. The 4 defendants- Wu Zhiyong, Wang Qian, Xu Ke, and Liu Lei are alleged members of the PLA's 54th Research Institute, aka the Chinese Hackers Collective Brigade to Steal everything from the USA. These 4 are outside of the US and are believed to be in China. They are unlikely to face prosecution.
This has been known since 2017, and comes on the heels of other hacking operations by the Chinese government of Mr. Xi. These indictments follow similar cyberspace attacks directed at health-insurance provider Anthem Inc. Also, the Chinese PLA was fingered as being responsible for the attack on the US Office of personnel management where 20 million records were stolen that included most Federal employees personal data. Additionally, hundreds of millions of records were stolen from Marriot International Inc, the hotel company. An indictment for that theft is being prepared and will be announced shortly. Apparently, the Chinese are banking on a tepid response to these clandestine efforts to steal everything American in its quest to takeover the world number spot as the leading economic power, supplanting the US and the West.
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