Our lives, economies, and politics are lived online. Increasingly, Americans have become aware of the challenges of cybersecurity but tend to see it in personal terms. (“Don’t click on the strange link!”)
Members of the US government, whether the Office of the National Cyber Security Director or the defense and intelligence agencies, tend to look at the scenario from a national threat perspective. Arguably the rival of the United States with the greatest commitment in cyberspace is the Popular Party. Republic of China.
Chinese capacities in the dark arts of the cyber domain are top-notch. They have found ways to penetrate some of the most secure systems in the United States and have collected vast amounts of information on millions of Americans. In short, they must be taken seriously as a rival and a threat to U.S. national security in cyberspace and other domains.
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During the last four years, China has been on a charm offensive with the United States. In one example, last year China loaned new panda bears to zoos in San Diego and Washington, D.C. This and other actions help to soften China’s image.
But don’t be fooled by his vague kindness. China does not wish the United States well. In its pursuit of national strength, China correctly understands that national strength is deeply connected to technological mastery.
In a 2022 speech, Chinese President Xi Jinping promised that China would “win the war on key core technologies. “Semiconductors are key in these technologies.
Over the past several years, China has gradually, and not particularly subtly, bolstered its technological capabilities. It has invested tens of billions of dollars in an effort to dominate both leading edge and trailing edge semiconductors. Trailing edge semiconductors are the workhorses that make established applications, from cars to mass market smart phones, work. Leading edge semiconductors are powering future applications, including AI systems.
If semiconductors are the basis of new technologies, the resilience of their chains of origin is the basis of a new cybersecurity. As the attack on an Israeli pager in September dramatically demonstrated, when vulnerabilities are intentionally built into technologies, the effects can be devastating when used as a weapon. The United States cannot count on China for such basic technology.
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You may be wondering: Isn’t the software that powers those chips important? No, not exclusively. Of course, we have many examples where software is the source of major vulnerabilities. However, it is essential to keep in mind that software controls hardware and hardware, by adding semiconductor chips, has its own vulnerabilities.
The dangers related to “instruction set architecture” are particularly significant. An ISA is an essential manual that defines how a computer’s hardware, that is, its central processor, is controlled through its software. Specifies what the processor can do and how. An ISA is essential to produce a complex chip.
Western corporations monitor the maximum ISA standards, which helps make chips more secure, but there is also an open-source ISA chip architecture that is becoming increasingly popular in China called RISC-V.
Open source means there can be no U.S. export controls, sanctions, or other government oversight. It is hard to overstate how much time and effort China is saving by not having to build its own ISA.
Unsurprisingly, RISC-V is at the center of China’s strategy to catch up and overtake the United States in the global chip race. According to Reuters, Chinese state-owned entities and institutes have jointly invested at least $50 million in RISC-V projects between 2018 and 2023.
RISC-V originated at the University of California, Berkeley, but is now controlled by a foreign nonprofit organization. According to the New York Times, its US incorporation into Switzerland was replaced in 2020 to alleviate “concerns of political disruption. ” Its 4,000 members include the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Huawei and Alibaba.
While this (now) Swiss non-profit organization is fortunately driving China’s technological development, a new discovery raises the stakes even further. Researchers recently discovered a major security flaw in the RISC-V design that would allow hackers to access the chip’s architecture at an administrative level. The discovery is a setback for China’s booming chip industry: after all, no one needs to buy unsafe semiconductor chips. It also raises serious considerations about the security of the millions of Chinese RISC-V-powered chips already deployed and distributed in consumer, military and infrastructure-related technologies around the world.
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Fortunately, the US government seems to be waking up and the Department of Commerce is recently reviewing the security implications of RISC-V technology. A bipartisan organization of lawmakers also pressed the Biden leadership to address national security considerations raised by China’s growing investments in RISC-V and its flawed technology.
As President-elect Donald Trump prepares for his inauguration, restricting Beijing’s ability to freely access RISC-V while cutting off deployed Chinese RISC-V chips will have to be at the center of its online generation strategy. China.
Eric Miller is president of Rideau Potomac Strategy Group and a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center.