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Straits Times
a day ago
- Business
- Straits Times
China sees gaps in US defences, ousted national security official says
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox General Timothy D. Haugh said there were weaknesses in American cyberdefences that the Chinese government was trying to exploit. WASHINGTON – China is taking advantage of gaps in American defences, as its cyberprogramme poses a core challenge to the United States, the former director of the National Security Agency said in an interview. General Timothy D. Haugh, the former head of both the NSA and US Cyber Command, said there were weaknesses in American cyberdefences that the Chinese government was trying to exploit. While cybersecurity and cloud computing firms are trying to improve their defences, China is constantly looking for vulnerabilities, areas that neither kinds of firms are focusing enough of their attention on. China, Mr Haugh said, is trying to exploit the 'seams' in the defences. He was forced out of his positions in April after Ms Laura Loomer, a right-wing conspiracy theorist and adviser to President Donald Trump, accused Mr Haugh – without evidence – of disloyalty. In a social media post, Ms Loomer said Mr Haugh had been chosen by General Mark Milley, the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was critical of Mr Trump and whom she called a traitor. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers lamented Mr Haugh's dismissal. Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Mr Haugh's firing made the country less safe. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former Republican leader, said he 'couldn't figure out' what the Trump administration wanted in its senior national security figures. In his first interview since being fired, Mr Haugh seemed reluctant to talk in detail about his dismissal, saying only that he had served at the pleasure of Trump. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. 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Mr Haugh did not appear to be dwelling on his lost jobs, but instead focused on new ways to work against the same threats he had been trying to counter while in government, in particular China's cyberoperations. China's priorities, he said, are collecting intelligence, stealing intellectual property from American institutions and companies, and positioning for a possible attack. In recent years China has mounted two major cyberoperations: Volt Typhoon, which positioned malware to attack critical infrastructure in the event of a possible conflict with the United States, and Salt Typhoon, an ambitious effort to hack US telecom networks, allowing Chinese intelligence to listen to calls from prominent Americans. 'This is a bipartisan issue: cybersecurity and the security of our nation,' Mr Haugh said. Artificial intelligence, he added, can make the threat worse but can also help generate new ways to defend against attacks. Mr Haugh is set to teach a class at Yale University in the fall, and Ballistic Ventures, a company that funds and advises cybersecurity startups, announced July 29 that he would join the firm as a strategic adviser. 'For me, two of the things I think I can be impactful with, is how do you inspire people to public service and how do we think about implementing new technologies in ways that more secure as a nation,' he said. Mr Glenn Gerstell, a former general counsel for the National Security Agency, said China's threat was still not well understood, despite breaches like Salt Typhoon and Volt Typhoon. 'The way China approaches cyberoffense is so wildly different from the way we do, with massive investments in personnel, with massive amounts of money and compute power,' he said. 'Americans, including policymakers, don't understand that the threat is overwhelming and pervasive.' Cyberweapons and their effects can often be invisible and hard to understand. The US government, Mr Gerstell said, could better explain what it knows about China's offensive capabilities, to draw the public's attention to the challenges. 'If it caused us to focus more on the threat, the trade-off could well be worth it,' he said. Mr Haugh said he hoped that in his two new roles he could bring new attention, research and focus to the threat from China. He noted that in the annual threat assessment, the intelligence community warned of how artificial intelligence could help power efforts by adversarial countries to mount malign influence campaigns. Ballistic Ventures, he said, was helping work on a range of challenges, including identifying 'synthetic media' – propaganda pushed by Russia, China or firms they hire. 'This is one of the areas that I am excited to dive into – how do you identify synthetic media, how do you ensure that we understand the source of what we are looking at,' he said. 'There's work for industry to do.' NYTIMES
New York Times
a day ago
- Politics
- New York Times
Top Lawyer for National Security Agency Is Fired
The top lawyer for the National Security Agency was removed from her job on Friday, according to multiple former officials, after she was criticized by conservative activists. April Falcon Doss had been appointed to the general counsel post in April 2022, during the Biden administration. The web page on the N.S.A. site that displayed her biography now redirects to an error page. On July 23, the Daily Wire, a conservative website, wrote about Ms. Doss and her former work for the Senate Intelligence Committee's Democratic staff. Later that day, Laura Loomer, a far-right conspiracy theorist, amplified a social media post critical of Ms. Doss that cited the Daily Wire article. In a text message on Tuesday, Ms. Loomer said that she had 'reposted a tweet that exposed her last week and flagged it for the right people.' Ms. Doss could not be reached for comment. But an official briefed on the matter said Ms. Loomer's criticism appeared to have a role in the firing. In the spring, Trump administration officials removed Gen. Timothy D. Haugh, the N.S.A. director, and his deputy, Wendy Noble, from their jobs after Ms. Loomer complained about them. Ms. Loomer argued, without evidence, that they were disloyal to the Trump administration. And in February, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, announced she was firing more than 100 N.S.A. employees who she said had participated in an explicit chat group on classified computers. Ms. Doss worked at the agency before becoming general counsel and has extensive experience in cybersecurity law, including writing a 2020 book, 'Cyber Privacy: Who Has Your Data and Why You Should Care.' Spokesmen for the National Security Agency did not immediately comment. The general counsel post is a civil servant job and is supposed to be apolitical. At the end of President Trump's first term, Michael Ellis, an administration loyalist, was appointed to the job amid protests from Democrats in Congress. Mr. Ellis was put on leave at the start of the Biden administration and ultimately resigned from the role. He is now the deputy director of the C.I.A.
Mada
a day ago
- Politics
- Mada
Surging arrests in several governorates in parallel with alleged Gaza protest incident at Helwan station, lawyers say
Citizens and lawyers across several governorates have described a clear surge in arrests being carried out by the National Security Agency, human rights lawyer Nabih al-Genady told Mada Masr, describing the pace as 'higher than usual.' A second lawyer who works frequently near the Maasara police station in Helwan, the site of an alleged security incident that has prompted public commentary after footage was shared widely over recent days, said they have also observed arrests and raids in the area around the police station, as well as in several other governorates, describing them as proceeding 'at an unusual pace.' Footage circulating on Friday night of the Maasara incident shows two young men apparently storming the NSA office in the Maasara police station in Helwan and briefly holding an officer in an adjacent room, while calling for Egypt's border crossing with the Gaza Strip to be opened to allow for aid to be delivered to Palestinians enduring Israel's starvation policies and protesting Egyptian authorities' arrest of civilians for expressing support for Palestine. The Interior Ministry has since issued two statements denying the authenticity of the video. It described the footage as 'fabricated,' adding that the documents shown — apparently former prisoner cards used by the NSA for monitoring purposes — are 'completely unrelated to reality.' The individuals responsible for producing and disseminating the video have been apprehended and legal action is being taken against them, the ministry stated in its first statement in the early hours of Saturday morning. Citing an unnamed security source, the ministry said the incident was part of what it called 'attempts by [the Muslim Brotherhood] to falsify facts and spread rumors in an effort to undermine the country's stability,' adding that 'the Egyptian people are fully aware of these attempts.' The statement accused the Muslim Brotherhood of seeking to discredit Egypt's longstanding support for the Palestinian cause. The Helwan-based lawyer told Mada Masr, however, that people who frequent the building, especially those who have previously visited the NSA offices on the fourth floor, are aware that the incident 'did in fact happen.' 'Everyone here knows the incident is real,' the lawyer said. 'But when it's brought up, people prefer to stay silent. They say, 'we don't know.' They neither confirm nor deny. If someone admits it, it's as if they've told a secret.' Speaking on condition of anonymity, the lawyer said documents visible in the footage, including the prisoner monitoring cards, belong to known detainees who are currently under surveillance. The lawyer said they believe the incident likely took place on the morning of July 25, just before Friday prayers. Additional security has been deployed since then at the Maasara police station, they continued, describing a security cordon and the frequent sounds of police sirens in the area, with a military police vehicle visible stationed nearby. Iron fencing which has enclosed the building for years also remains in place. In a statement likewise casting doubt about the official narrative of the events, the Egyptian Network for Human Rights (ENHR) has also expressed deep concern over the fate of the two young men visible in the video — Mohsen Mohamed Mostafa and Ahmed al-Sherif. In a statement published Monday, the organization held the public prosecutor, Interior Ministry, and NSA responsible for their safety. While the surge in arrests was notable in Helwan, Genady said he observed the uptick even before the video's circulation. The arrests do not appear to be targeting a specific group, the lawyer continued, noting that some of the arrests were conducted in connection with content people had published on their personal Facebook pages. But the uptick in arrests is not reflected in the pace of referrals to the State Security Prosecution, the defense lawyer said, with the prosecution already processing a steady stream of cases related to publishing offenses and affiliations with banned groups. Detainees in such cases, however, are often held by the NSA for longer periods of two to seven days before being presented to prosecutors, Genady added, which perhaps explains the fact that arrests are not yet reflected in prosecution referrals.
New York Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- New York Times
China Sees Gaps in U.S. Defenses, Ousted National Security Official Says
China is taking advantage of gaps in American defenses, as its cyberprogram poses a core challenge to the United States, the former director of the National Security Agency said in an interview. Gen. Timothy Haugh, the former head of both the N.S.A. and U.S. Cyber Command, said there were weaknesses in American cyberdefenses that the Chinese government was trying to exploit. While cybersecurity and cloud computing firms are trying to improve their defenses, China is constantly looking for vulnerabilities, areas that neither kinds of firms are focusing enough of their attention on. China, General Haugh said, is trying to exploit the 'seams' in the defenses. General Haugh was forced out of his positions in April after Laura Loomer, a right-wing conspiracy theorist and Trump adviser, accused him — without evidence — of disloyalty. In a social media post, Ms. Loomer said General Haugh had been chosen by Gen. Mark A. Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was critical of Mr. Trump and whom she called a traitor. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers lamented General Haugh's dismissal. Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said General Haugh's firing made the country less safe. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former Republican leader, said he 'couldn't figure out' what the Trump administration wanted in its senior national security figures. In his first interview since being fired, General Haugh seemed reluctant to talk in detail about his dismissal, saying only that he served at the pleasure of President Trump. 'I don't and did not expect an explanation, and from the second I was told I was no longer serving in the role, the focus shifts to the leaders the president has put in the capacity,' General Haugh said. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Miami Herald
2 days ago
- Business
- Miami Herald
Security experts warn against selling Nvidia AI chips to China
July 28 (UPI) -- Twenty national security experts and former government officials are urging the Trump administration to reverse a decision earlier this monthto let Nvidia resume selling H20 AI chips in China. They wrote a letter Monday to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, saying that the decision announced two weeks ago was a "strategic misstep that endangers the United States' economic and military edge in artificial intelligence (AI) -- an area increasingly seen as divisive in the 21st-century global leadership." The signees include seven officials in government, including the National Security Agency, Homeland Security and the Defense Department. H20's AI is the process of using an AI-trained model to make decisions on unseen data. "The H20 is a potent accelerator of China's frontier AI capabilities, not an outdated AI chip," the letter said. "Designed specifically to work around export control thresholds, the H20 is optimized for inference, the process responsible for the dramatic capabilities gains made by the latest generation of frontier AI reasoning models. For inference tasks, the H20 outperforms even the H100, an AI chip this administration has restricted access to due to its advanced capabilities." The letter noted that U.S. and Chinese labs envision further investment in inference computing "will be critical to the next leap in frontier AI capabilities." Chinese labs have been bulk ordering H20 chips to develop even more advanced AI models. The letter claims selling those chips to China will worsen the supply bottleneck in the United States, noting projected data center demand would require 90% of global chip supply through 2030 even without China getting them. Also, the experts say these chips can be used to support China's military, writing "we fully expect the H20 and the AI models it supports to be deployed by China's People's Liberation Army." And they warn it will weaken overall chip exports controls, writing "such a policy is likely to generally weaken export controls as an effective foreign policy tool for the United States. This policy reversal is likely to create confusion among both allies and competitors, and may even be interpreted as a weakening of U.S. resolve on other key issues in which trade and national security may be in tension with one another." Earlier this month, the government allowed the chip sales as part of trade discussions with China on rare earth elements. In May, the White House said sales of the chip to China would be restricted. "The decision to ban H20 exports earlier this year was the right one," the letter said. "We ask you to stand by that principle and continue blocking the sale of advanced AI chips to China as America works to maintain its technological edge. This is not a question of trade. It is a question of national security." Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang met with Trump and other legislators earlier this month. Huang also traveled to Beijing to meet with industry and government officials. "We want to keep having the Chinese use the American technology stack because they still rely upon it," Lutnick said on CNBC on July 15. In April, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had told Nvidia it would need a license to sell the chips to China, which froze those sales as the H20 chips had been designed explicitly to sidestep earlier export controls on Beijing. Huang said the company wants domestic job creation, including manufacturing. Nvidia has market capitalization of $4.2 trillion, making it the world's most valuable company, according to CompaniesMarketCap. At one time Apple and Microsoft topped the list. The company's stock price rose 1.87% Monday to a record-high $176.75 on Nasdaq. The company began trading in 1999. Copyright 2025 UPI News Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
