World's Biggest Robbery: $600 Billion a Year, Zero Arrests
China and Us: A Comic Explainer
For over 25 years, China has been running the biggest robbery in human history. Not with masks and getaway cars, but with hackers, spies, and stolen tech. They’ve taken our military secrets, our factory designs, our phone calls, and even burrowed into our water plants and power grids that keep the lights on. This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s documented by the FBI, the NSA, CSIS, and 12 allied nations. Here’s the whole story in pictures to help even New York Times readers grasp the implications.
The Warm-Up (1996–2005)
Before the word “cyberattack” was well-known, China was already taking American technology. In the late 1990s, U.S. companies Loral Space & Communications and Hughes handed over technical fixes after Chinese rockets failed carrying American satellites — help that could improve China’s missiles, according to the 2018 White House report on Chinese economic aggression. Around the same time, the “Chinagate” scandal raised alarms about foreign money and influence over sensitive export decisions. By 2000, CSIS began cataloging what would grow into 224 publicly reported Chinese espionage cases. And America was asleep at the wheel.
The Break-In (2006–2009)
By 2006, the robbery went industrial. Per the CSIS survey, Chinese hackers cracked the State Department’s network in July 2006 and stole passwords, then hit the Defense Department’s NIPRNet in August 2006, reportedly hauling off 10 to 20 terabytes of data. In 2007 they breached the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. Insiders like Xiaodong Sheldon Meng (Quantum3D) and Xiang Dong Yu (Ford) walked out with military and corporate secrets worth tens of millions. They even allegedly bugged Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez’s laptop. This wasn’t random — it was a system.
Caught Red-Handed (2010–2015)
This is when the world caught China in the act. In January 2010, Google revealed “Operation Aurora,” a sophisticated attack from China that stole its intellectual property and hacked activists’ Gmail accounts — and hit at least 34 other companies including Northrop Grumman, Yahoo, and Adobe. In May 2014, the DOJ indicted five officers of PLA Unit 61398, the first-ever U.S. criminal charges against Chinese military hackers. Then came the OPM breach, exposing security-clearance files and fingerprints on over 21 million federal workers, operatives, agents and military personnel. China signed a 2015 deal promising to stop commercial IP theft — and per the NSA, was violating it within a year.
The Pivot (2016–2023)
Around 2016, China changed the game. The “Cloudhopper” campaign hacked managed service providers — the IT companies that run other businesses’ networks — giving Beijing a master key to hundreds of downstream targets across 12 countries, per the joint 2018 allied accusation. In 2018, Bloomberg Businessweek alleged malicious backdoor chips in Supermicro servers, though Apple, Amazon, and Supermicro strongly denied it. The bigger shift, described by journalist Nicole Perlroth, was strategic: China stopped just stealing secrets and started lurking inside water systems, power grids, and pipelines. In May 2023, Microsoft and Western intelligence exposed “Volt Typhoon” doing exactly that in Guam, Hawaii, and Texas — pre-positioning for sabotage.
Your Phone Was Tapped (2024–2025)
Then it got personal. In 2024, the Chinese group “Salt Typhoon” breached at least nine U.S. telecom networks, according to Deputy National Security Advisor Anne Neuberger. They reached phones used by Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Kamala Harris’s campaign staff. House Homeland Chairman Mark Green and Select Committee Chairman John Moolenaar wrote that hackers hit more than a dozen telecom providers, capturing real-time call audio and texts from millions of ordinary Americans. In late 2024, they even breached the Treasury Department — including the Secretary’s own computer — targeting the sanctions offices (OFAC). By August 2025, the U.S. and 12 allies warned the campaign had hit over 200 U.S. targets across more than 80 countries.
Time to Wake Up (2025–2026)
The stakes keep rising. In July 2025, Chinese state-sponsored groups (Linen Typhoon, Violet Typhoon, and Storm-2603) reportedly breached the National Nuclear Security Administration, which safeguards America’s nuclear weapons. According to Wall Street Journal reporting, Chinese officials privately acknowledged in a secret meeting that Beijing was behind the infrastructure hacks — tied to U.S. support for Taiwan. Cybersecurity officials told Congress that Volt Typhoon had been hiding inside U.S. water, power, and pipeline systems for at least five years. The bipartisan message from Chairmen Green and Moolenaar is blunt: stop playing defense and start imposing real costs on the Chinese Communist Party — before a crisis over Taiwan turns our own infrastructure into a weapon against us.
Here’s the bottom line. For a quarter century, China played America for a fool — and it worked. They stole our jet designs, our factory secrets, our nuclear know-how, and listened to our phone calls, all while we hit the snooze button. Estimates put the cost of China’s IP theft at up to $600 billion every single year, according to the U.S. Trade Representative and the 2018 White House report. But the scariest part isn’t the theft anymore — it’s the lurking. China isn’t just robbing us; they’ve buried digital bombs in the systems that give us water, power, and heat, waiting for the day they decide to flip the switch. The good news? We finally see it. Now the only question is whether we do something about it.
Wake up, America. The alarm’s been ringing for years.
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Why, oh why, do I think that there is a much more insidious and extremely clever presence in this whole story than a bunch of squabbling Chinese Communists?
https://breakingmatzo.com/history-of-jews/jews-and-judaism-in-china/
This reminds me of the whole fraud network being exposed which has been robbing us blind for God knows how long.
Our government has been completely asleep at the wheel and completely neglectful whenever it comes to setting up any safeguards, checks, balances, or mechanisms of accountability for all of their programs, policies and projects.
They just let these things spin (and spend) wildly and unaccountably until someone or something screwing with them gets caught, and then it’s usually too late.