The Wall Street Journal is reporting that computer spies have broken into the Pentagon’s $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter program – the Defense Department’s costliest weapons program ever – according to current and former government officials, familiar with the attacks. Former US officials say the attacks originated in China, although they are difficult to track.
Perhaps this doesn’t qualify as an open act of war, but it would be hard to term it “friendly espionage.”
At the same time the Pentagon is fending off cyber attacks from China, Texas ranchers are experiencing the continuing flow of human trafficking from mainland China.
These two individuals were only two of 75 Chinese nationals apprehended in just the Falfurias sector alone, in January of this year. This kind of trafficking has been going on fairly steadily for the past few years, and it isn’t cheap.
One rancher friend of mine sat with a Chinese girl after calling Border Patrol. The rancher gave the Chinese girl water and tried to make her as comfortable as possible for the two hours needed for Border Patrol agents to arrive. Living on a remote South Texas ranch offers unique opportunities for Americans to meet international travelers and connect with them on a human to human level. To pass the time, and although the girl spoke no English, they were able to communicate through a Chinese language application on the rancher’s iPhone. The Chinese girl asked the rancher to call her stateside contacts to inform her family that she was ok. They offered the Texan $20,000 not to hand the girl over to Border Patrol. The rancher declined.
This is not an unusual event for border ranchers. Human trafficking from countries unfriendly to the USA has been the Southern border’s dirty little secret for years.
This is a vast global network. If countries such as China will go to lengths to exploit vulnerabilities in our cyber firewalls, why would they not spend comparable resources to exploit the vulnerabilities in our Southern border?
Chris Burgard
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