Old habits die hard, especially if you are a kleptomaniac like China. The Communist nation keeps stealing the Russian defence designs even if it comes at the cost of angering Moscow.
According to a new research published by Boston-based cybersecurity technology company Cybereason, a threat actor believed to be acting on behalf of the Chinese State-sponsored interests was spotted targeting a Russian defence contractor engaged in making designs for nuclear submarines to be used by the Russian Navy. This incident has reignited the concerns regarding Chinese attempts to steal Russian defence designs and could potentially expose the deep fissures in the Sino-Russian relationship.
Cybereason has called the attack narrowly focused and it came into being with a spear-phishing attempt against a General Director working at the Rubin Design Bureau, Russia’s leading shipbuilder based out of Saint Petersburg. Rubin Design Bureau has a close relationship with the Russian Navy and has designed most of the Russian nuclear submarines.
The email attachment used to target the Russian defence contractor reportedly used RoyalRoad payload, which is often associated with China-linked threat actors such as Tick, Tonto Team, Goblin Panda, Rancor, and TA428. Therefore, Cybereason came to the conclusion of Chinese involvement.
The cybersecurity technology company did not specifically blame a particular threat group for the attack. But the report is good enough to play up the divisions between Moscow and Beijing, as it clearly concludes that the cyber attack shared similarities with a few Chinese APT groups.
This is really not the first time that Chinese attempts to steal Russian defence designs have grabbed eyeballs. Last year also, similar attempts by China had irked the Putin administration.
In June 2020, TASS, Russia’s largest news agency, reported that Valery Mitko, President of the St. Petersburg Arctic Social Sciences Academy, was charged with treason. Mitko was accused of spying for China. TASS quoted his lawyer as saying, “According to the investigation, during his trip to China, Mitko handed over classified materials to the Chinese intelligence. After his return to Russia, a search took place in his apartment; he was charged with [treason].”
Earlier, Russia’s state-owned defence conglomerate, Rostec had even flagged the issue of Intellectual Property theft by the Middle Kingdom. Yevgeny Livadny, Rostec’s chief of intellectual property projects, had said, “Unauthorized copying of our equipment abroad is a huge problem. There have been 500 such cases over the past 17 years. China alone has copied aircraft engines, Sukhoi planes, deck jets, air defense systems, portable air defense missiles, and analogues of the Pantsir medium-range surface-to-air systems.”
Later, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill, which allows any politically active, foreign-funded individual or organisation to be labelled a “foreign agent.”
However, China clearly has many channels and methods when it comes to stealing Russia’s critical defence designs and as the latest cyber-attack shows, Xi Jinping’s China has a compulsive need to steal Russian defence designs. Therefore, it would use any means to lay hands on Russian defence technology.
Yet, China’s actions are bound to anger Putin. In fact, such Chinese mischief is what pushes Moscow closer to its time-tested friend- India. Putin and his administration understand that while New Delhi is a true ally, China is nothing more than an opportunistic and transactional partner.
The Russian defence industry too, understands that India is a safe market for its arms and equipment because it will never steal Russian defence designs. On the other hand, selling arms to India’s enemy- China is almost always fraught with the dangers of design theft and mischief.
Chinese kleptomania is thus the biggest reason why Russia trusts and prefers New Delhi over Beijing. With the latest attempt to steal a Russian defence design, Putin would be definitely exploring the possibilities of completely decoupling Russia’s defence industry from China.
Stealing hi-tech is the CCP M.O.(modus operandi)! They steal because they cannot invent it themselves. Two issues have contributed to this, China has been losing their brain trust for years and, they have never set up a technological base to develop hi-tech. Recently over 90 nuclear scientists resigned at an institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The world only found out about this because it was too large a story to coverup. When events like this are leaked to the world the CCP propaganda machine goes into overdrive downplaying the story and fabricating new ones to minimize the damage. So why does China have to steal technology? China surpassed the United States in 2019 to become the top country in international patent applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) administrated by WIPO. One would think that they are, or should be, the technology capital of the world based on these statistics. However when the quality of the patents are analyzed another picture begins to emerge. “The rapid increase of patent filings, including the PCT applications, was to a large extent a result of a great leap of patent applications boosted by subsidies of governments at all levels and spurred by the central government’s quantity-first and subsidy-driven instructions to improve China’s patent level. Instead of being innovation-driven, most of China’s patent applications are driven by other motives, such as seeking government subsidy or job promotion, reputation building for individuals or universities and institutions, or acquiring certification as national high-tech enterprises”. “One Chinese patent expert stated rather bluntly that only 10 percent of China’s patents have market value and that probably 90 percent of them are “trash.” Thus the same old story begins to emerge as to why China is struggling to gain technology and has not been able to compete on the world stage. Instead of taking the time and money to invest in their own hi-tech industry, they have relied on stealing or forced technology transfer to be handed to them by the West. Their plan (through Globalism) was to quickly surpass the US and the West to become the number one most powerful country in the World. Their subsidized state owned corporations would control the marketplace, allowing them to take what they need and the wealth they would accumulate would finance their military power to surpass the ability of the US to counter their plans for world domination. We now know this to be true. Their belligerent and expansionist actions, not to mention the most serious event to plague the world since civilization began, the CCP created Pandemic, has given the world a taste of what it would be like if the CCP achieved their goal of world domination. However, they have failed! They are broke, their economy is failing and their people are rebelling. Excepting for the Globalists, the World is beginning to realize this grave threat. The future for China, minus the propaganda we hear from the World Bank, WHO, Human Rights Council, and at least four of the U.N.’s 15 specialized agencies that the CCP heads, is not promising. The real statistics tell the truth! China lags far behind the leading technological countries of the US, Japan and Korea and will continue to fall behind. Stealing is the M.O. of the CCP and their reliance on this strategy will prove to be one of the many reasons for the eventual downfall of the Chinese Communist Party!