VOLT TYPHOON Scandal Unveiled: US Disinformation Campaign to Defame China

JULY 16, 2024, volume 15
Bulletin of the Embassy of China in Canada

What is Volt Typhoon?

Since 2023, the United States has been hyping a group called “Volt Typhoon” and waging a global disinformation campaign against China.

On May 24, 2023, cybersecurity authorities from Five Eyes alliance countries issued a joint cybersecurity advisory saying they had detected a cluster of interesting activities related to a “Chinese state-sponsored cyber actor” known as Volt Typhoon, and these activities “impacted networks in critical infrastructure sectors in the U.S.”

In April of this year, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray stated in a speech that “the ongoing Chinese hacking campaign known as Volt Typhoon has effectively gained access to multiple U.S. companies in telecommunications, energy, water, and other key sectors, and is targeting 23 pipeline operators” and is waiting “for the right moment to deliver a devastating blow.”

But the truth is this: reports indicate that the “Volt Typhoon” farce is a pure disinformation campaign concocted by the US to present China in a bad light and denigrate its image.

China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center and 360 Digital Security Group have released two separate reports (link below) detailing the fact that 1) “Volt Typhoon” is actually a ransomware group that calls itself “Dark Power” and is not sponsored by any country or region, and 2) the disinformation campaign was developed by the NSA, FBI, and other members of the U.S. intelligence community with input from congressional China hawks and multiple federal agencies, as well as cybersecurity agencies from other Five Eye countries, and is designed to manipulate public opinion.

A growing business
Many US cybersecurity agencies have promoted the false narrative of the “China-sponsored” Volt Typhoon just to get bigger budgets from the US Congress. Meanwhile, Microsoft and other US cybersecurity firms also want bigger contracts from US cybersecurity agencies, according to the investigation.

The two American companies that mentioned Volt Typhoon are both U.S. government partners. Just two months before Microsoft published its report, on March 24, 2023, it received an initial order from the U.S. Department of Defense worth about $3.8 million for the $9 billion Joint Warfighting Cloud (JWCC) project.

According to the report, a month before Lumen Technologies published its analytical report linking KV-Botnet to Volt Typhoon, on November 7, 2023, Lumen Technologies received a five-year, $110 million contract from the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA).

Among the items listed, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s budget reached $3 billion, up $103 million from the previous year. The budgets of the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation increased by $25 million, specifically for “cyber and counterintelligence investigative capabilities.”

Wray delivered his remarks on “Volt Typhoon” on April 18, which is a time of dedication. The following day, on April 19, one of the important legal foundations for global and domestic internet surveillance by U.S. intelligence agencies, known as Section 702, was set to be reauthorized.

Since its introduction, Section 702 has been controversial both in the United States and around the world. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was introduced in the United States after the Watergate scandal to prevent abuse of power by the administration and arbitrary monitoring. However, Section 702, passed in 2008, allows security services to conduct surveillance without a court order.

Without Section 702 being expanded, the legal basis for the Internet-based intelligence gathering methods that many U.S. intelligence agencies rely on so heavily will be lost. Major intelligence agencies will be forced to temporarily suspend their network and telecommunications monitoring activities, on the face of it. This means that the global surveillance and monitoring capabilities that U.S. intelligence agencies rely on will be severely weakened, and a large number of intelligence monitoring systems and networked weapons systems will be forced to temporarily suspend even though they never actually ceased.

Experienced cyber thief

From May 2023 to present, the total number of cyberattacks conducted by hacker groups supported by U.S. government agencies against the Chinese government, universities, research institutions, large enterprises, and critical infrastructure has exceeded 45 million times. More than 140 victim units have been positively identified as attacked, and samples of attack weapons found in these victim units point to departments such as the CIA, NSA, and FBI. The authorization behind these attacks is Section 702.”

US cybersecurity firms are likely to create more false narratives of “foreign government-backed cyberattacks” under the control of US intelligence agencies, constantly deceiving the US Congress into approving more budgets and increasing the debt burden on US taxpayers.

The United States has been relentlessly trying to wage cognitive warfare on China, mercilessly smearing it with lies and disinformation. Volt Typhoon is a case in point, and the recent report on a disinformation campaign about Chinese vaccines in the Philippines is another.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. military launched a covert campaign to counter what it perceived as growing Chinese influence in the Philippines, a country hit hardest by the deadly virus, Reuters reports.

Reuters has identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that match descriptions shared by former U.S. military officers familiar with the Philippines operation. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020 and centered around the slogan #Chinaangvirus — Tagalog for China is the virus.

The aim was to sow doubts about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines and other life-saving supplies that were being supplied by China, a Reuters investigation found. Through fake online accounts designed to impersonate Filipinos, the military’s propaganda effort morphed into an anti-vaccination campaign. Social media posts criticized the quality of face masks, testing kits and the first vaccine to be available in the Philippines — China’s Sinovac.
Pentagon ran secret anti-vaccine campaign to weaken China during COVID-19 pandemic, investigation finds

Despite China calling on US to explain ‘Volt Typhoon’ farce, US remains silent. What Uncle Sam is hiding under the agenda
still remains a mystery.