America has a serious Russia-China issue if Russia-Ukraine tensions escalate into military operations.  The reconnaissance hacking that has occurred for upwards of a decade has provided Russia and China — who recently struck an alliance declaring a "new era," where the United States will be challenged as a global power and NATO as the "cornerstone of international security" — the ability to remotely cause instantaneously destruction by ushering in a new era of cyber-warfare.

The territorial ambitions we see with both Russia, in its desire to reclaim a former Soviet territory that formally held the world's third-largest nuclear stockpile, and China, which has repeatedly tweaked the U.S. in the period after the Afghanistan debacle, show the potential to spiral into a global conflict.  China has continually threatened Taiwan over the past several months as a result of what the Chinese perceive as American weakness and a lack of desire to protect longtime allies.

These developments have the world sitting at the edge of its collective seats to see if Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky's prediction, given in a Monday speech, that Wednesday will be the "day of the attack" materializes.

Should Russian aggression prompt an international response, this potentially sets the world on a path to global war.  As this new Russian-Chinese alliance looks toward reclaiming sovereign nations that offer strategic advantages to Western countries, the battle lines will be set, with the allies of the new alliance, which includes cyber-powers Iran and North Korea, contributing an element of explosive instability to an already dicey situation.

Although America finds itself outside the immediate line of fire, there are a number of dangers presented by the worst-case cyber-scenario.  This is what the heads of agencies like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) have long feared.

And that fear is justified, as for about a decade, both China's and Russia's militaries, alongside their intelligence agencies and sponsored hackers known as Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), have continually conducted cyber-attacks against critical infrastructure targets globally, with a particular concentration on American targets.

Most of these reconnaissance operations, including the wide-ranging SolarWinds attack, have been well documented.  Despite this, it is still not fully known how far attacks against America using this ill-gotten intelligence can go.

The hackers behind SolarWinds, the Russian APT Group Nobelium, easily hacked private companies including cyber-security firm FireEye and U.S. government agencies that include DHS and the Treasury Department, in addition to thousands of other entities, including ones operating in the energy and infrastructure sectors.

Although some important government officials, including then-president Donald Trump, initially suspected China of being behind SolarWinds, the fact that the hack closely resembled Russian cyber-attacks against Ukrainian targets in the Petya/NotPetya hacks of 2015–2016 led most experts to then identify Russia as the culprit.  Those Russian attacks against Ukraine also saw hackers use an update to a popular software program as the vector to install malware.  

Chinese government-backed hackers pose a similar, if not more dangerous threat to America.  In just the past several years, a 2018 incident targeted a U.S. Navy contractor working with America's submarine and underwater programs project with the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, Rhode Island.  In addition, an NSA document obtained by NBC News in 2015 revealed "more than 600 corporate, private or government 'Victims of Chinese Cyber Espionage' that were attacked over a five-year period, with clusters in America's industrial centers," according to a report.

The report specifically cited instances of Chinese attacks against America's critical infrastructure.  Should the intelligence collected previously be used today, it could easily have a devastating impact on the U.S. from half a world away. 

In late January, as the tensions between Russia and Ukraine were heating up, DHS issued a warning regarding potential cyber-attacks.  In the time since, many attacks have materialized, although they pale in comparison to what could occur should Russia launch an attack against Ukraine.  Such an attack is sure to provoke a massive global response that could lead to a series of Russian, and potentially Chinese counterattacks in the cyber-sphere.

Julio Rivera is a business and political strategist, the editorial director for Reactionary Times, and a political commentator and columnist.  His writing, which is focused on cyber-security and politics, has been published by numerous websites, and he is regularly seen on national and international news programming.

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