China, Cyber Attacks, and the USA's Raid on Maduro

So there appears to be a sizeable portion of Twitter users that feel that China could not mount a significant attack on the United States. First, while it’s true China could not mount a Maduro-style raid using helicopters, stealth aircraft, and amphibious assault groups on CONUS, they certainly could engage in major kinetic and cyber attacks.
 
Most of the people refuting this idea do it based on ignorant jingoism, not evidence. “AMERICA IS SO GREAT, A BUNCH OF SLIT-EYED CHINKS COULD NEVER ATTACK US. ‘MERICA!”
 
China has spent two decades probing US networks, mapping infrastructure, and quietly demonstrating access. Those intrusions are not speculative, they’ve been documented. Cyber operations require, only patience and scale, both of which China has in abundance. Remember that the reason Space Force was developed was in-part to counter Chinese cyberwarfare units like PLA Unit 61486 and Volt Typhoon.
 
America is so smugly confident in its own safety that serious hardening of utility infrastructure is routinely deferred or ignored. The assumption that distance or American Competence™ makes a successful attack unlikely has bred complacency. Much of the US grid still runs on legacy systems while being treated as a strategic afterthought.
 
One example is the example is the 2021 Oldsmar, FL, water treatment incident. An attacker remotely accessed the water plant’s control system and attempted to raise the sodium hydroxide level in the drinking water 100x, which could have caused chemical burns or undrinkable, at best. The idiots running this system allowed remote access (work-from-home, anyone?) and passwords were unchanged, among other things. Luckily someone noticed when they saw their mouse cursor moving all by itself.
 
Just because we live on the other side of the ocean and have 12 aircraft carriers and China is known for selling shitty products at Walmart doesn’t mean that they aren’t sophisticated to attack our infrastructure. Much of the US utility grid remains poorly secured and dependent on legacy control systems never designed for cyberwarfare.
 
A coordinated cyber campaign doesn’t need to black out the entire country to have strategic effect. The disruption caused by power, communications, or utility outages would be enough to delay the response and recovery. It’s been documented that China has shown interest in water utilities serving military bases: why? Cuz not having running water makes life hard on the troops/sailors preparing to deploy.
 
Cyber attacks on power, communications, ports, and logistics nodes offer strategic leverage too. Even temporary outages complicate mobilization, slow command-and-control, and force political leaders to spend attention inward rather than outward. Instead of using the normal infrastructure, they’re busy using inferior systems like water buffalos, generators, or HF radio. Couple this with a few infiltrated commando raids engaging US military troops at their bases with some shipping container drone or cruise missile attacks. The US expects to be immune in CONUS, the rear-of-the-rear, and instead of focusing totally on a response, like we did in WWII, we’d have to fight, defend, and recover back home instead of just overseas.
 
The objection that it would be irrational (“Hell buddy, we’d just do it back to them and worse!) misses that this actually has happened before. Yamamoto warned the Japanese Navy establishment that they could not win a war with the US and that the Pearl Harbor strategy relied on everything going perfectly. They attacked anyway and they hoped that shock, confusion, and early advantage might force a political settlement. China is well-known for their delusion hubris that they are better than everyone else and can’t fail; it is entirely in their character to do something this stupid.
 
If you ask an honest FBI agent, probably the largest national security threat is Chinese intelligence operations. Utility intrusions, easy telecom and infrastructure access, plus the history if hacking and penetration, are not speculative, but openly acknowledged. Legal travel, illegal entry, dual-use professionals, and long-term residents all provide cover for sabotage and intelligence work without requiring Hollywood-style infiltration. China ROUTINELY takes advantage of this and it would be easy for them, even with Trump in office, to get actual commandos and saboteurs into the country.
 
The strategic logic is pretty straightforward; attacking the population dates back, in recent times, to the strategic city bombing campaigns of World War II. Fear and uncertainty at home weaken resolve and complicate decision-making because the public (in theory) is afraid and will pressure their politicians to end/avoid the war. A population dealing with rolling blackouts, disrupted internet, or compromised water systems is harder to rally and harder to coordinate. In the current political climate, there would certainly be attempts to rally the Left against the war effort. “Oh no, I can’t stream Netflix; we have to stop this horrible war!”
 
As far as mutually-assured destruction (we’ll do it back to you, but worse), yes, we can, but China also has probably taken this possibility more seriously than we have. China is also probably willing to make serious sacrifices to win that the American people aren’t. “Make peace so my boy in the Marines (he just joined up for the uniform and benefits and so I can put a bumper sticker on my car) doesn’t die and I can go back to watching NASCAR!”, but I digress. What does it matter if we can wreck China, after they’ve wrecked us? If your neighbor burns down your house, burning down his house still leaves you homeless, and if he’s crazy/stupid enough to do it in the first place, he’s going to assume that you can’t/won’t burn down his house or he will be so glad he got yours first that he doesn’t care what happens to his home.
 
So in conclusion, not only can China actually attack the US’s grid and kinetically too, they probably will as war strategy. They believe in a total war concept and winning by any means necessary. There are no rules to them and they’ve been planning for this kind of thing for ages. The reason they haven’t done it yet is because it doesn’t serve them to just attack us out of nowhere with no other real strategic advantage. Taking our money and stealing our ideas/secrets is too profitable to them, at least until it means that trading their plundering of us might give them Taiwan or whatever.