I can't say it any better or more clearly:
" What's really changed with China, we've seen, is pre-positioning in pipelines, in water systems, in power systems which don't have intelligence value. And our concern is that that pre-positioning is to disrupt, to make it difficult to operate those systems in a time of crisis or conflict.”
She then highlighted the issue of ransomware groups and cybercriminal gangs, which she called “the most disruptive set of adversaries today in cyberspace.”
Neuberger told the audience that she was the U.S. Representative at a UN Security Council session last Friday where the Director General of the World Health Organization and others spoke at length about the damage caused by recent ransomware attacks.
“We had the CEO of a national hospital chain talk about how they couldn't operate for weeks. They were using runners to run images into surgery as a result,” she said.
“That's driven by cryptocurrency and the $1.3 billion in ransoms paid in the U.S. alone in 2023 and it's driven by a global ecosystem, and the fact that Russia provides safe haven, but it's a global problem,” she said, adding that more than half of all ransomware attacks target the U.S.