Following recent Justice Department charges against alleged Chinese spies, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro today cautioned the U.S. defense industry to be "very protective" of company data and to perform due diligence to thwart adversaries trying to steal sensitive technological information.
“Do everything that you can afford to do within your own companies to protect that data, to protect it electronically, but also physically,” Del Toro said. “We are really challenged in this country by what China has done.”
On Monday, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment charging two alleged Chinese spies with attempting to influence a criminal prosecution of the Chinese technology giant Huawei.
“This was an egregious attempt by [People’s Republic of China] intelligence officers to shield a PRC-based company from accountability and to undermine the integrity of our judicial system,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said during a press briefing yesterday.
Garland also detailed two other cases where Chinese intelligence officers were indicted for working on behalf of the PRC.
Del Toro said the charges highlight the ongoing challenges the U.S. defense industry faces.
“They really are out there and they're really trying to get to your data and I'm not saying this to put the fear of God into you -- even though maybe I am saying it to put the fear of God into you,” Del Toro said today at the AFCEA NOVA Naval IT Day 2022.
“Too many of their ships and aircraft look just like our own because they've stolen our -- your -- intellectual property,” he added.
Del Toro said he has spoken with his own professional acquisition specialists to address this issue within the Navy Department.
“It's OK to come to a conference and talk about the challenges that we face and need to work on together,” he said. “It's not OK to go into specific details about specific programs that we're developing.”
Del Toro told industry officials to pay close attention to the people they’re engaging in business with and to be suspicious of unfamiliar individuals seeking information.
“Someone just walks off the street and wants to become your new partner and offers you $10 million and you never heard of them -- do a little bit of due diligence into who they are,” Del Toro said. “I really would appreciate it if you took the time to do that because it's very, very important.”
For example, he said, the Navy has made “major transformations” in cloud computing, which is a critical part of protecting data, especially for the service’s unmanned systems. In late August and September, the Iranian Navy attempted to take Saildrone unmanned surface vessels on two different occasions. Del Toro said he “didn’t lose sleep over it” because Iran didn’t have access to the data on the vessel.
“All the information was in the cloud,” he said. “We gave nothing up. Thinking differently about how we can employ unmanned technology to our advantage and in a far more effective and economical way is the way of the future. That's what cloud computing is all about: to be able to take all that data basically and have it not necessarily accessible to the enemy through the capture of an unmanned drone.”