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 had 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.
It is not clear exactly why Ms. Loomer focused on General Haugh. Some intelligence officials had said Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, had asked him to speed up production of key reports on key topics. But current and former officials said the N.S.A. had acted quickly.
Current and former officials said there were few signs that the White House had found specific faults with General Haugh’s leadership. Mr. Trump allowed him to retire at the four-star rank, granting a waiver to prevent an automatic reduction.
General 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 U.S. telecom networks, allowing Chinese intelligence to listen to calls from prominent Americans.
“This is a bipartisan issue: cybersecurity and the security of our nation,” General Haugh said.
Artificial intelligence, he added, can make the threat worse but can also help generate new ways to defend against attacks.
General Haugh is set to teach a class at Yale in the fall, and Ballistic Ventures, a company that funds and advises cybersecurity start-ups, announced on Tuesday 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,” General Haugh said.
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,” Mr. Gerstell 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 U.S. 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.
General 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.”
Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.
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