Tag Archive for: cybersecurity

Report: China Hacked U.S. Voter Databases in 2020 to Fraudulently Obtain Mail-in Ballots

/in , , , , , , , , , , , /by

A startling new report surfaced this week revealing that China’s communist regime hacked into U.S. voter registration databases in 2020 and planned to use the information to produce thousands of fake American driver’s licenses in order to obtain mail-in ballots, with the purpose of casting fraudulent votes for former President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Just the News reported Monday on the recent reemergence of a highly redacted formerly classified memo produced by the National Intelligence Council in April 2020, which stated, “[Redacted] Chinese intelligence officials analyzed multiple U.S. states’ [Redacted] election voter registration data, [Redacted] to conduct public opinion analysis on the 2020 US general election.” Two years after it was produced, the memo was quietly declassified by former Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.

But even after it was released, Just the News noted that the memo failed to gain attention, in stark contrast to the aftermath that occurred in March 2024 after it was discovered that Beijing had hacked into the U.K.’s databases and accessed the personal files of millions of Brits, causing widespread outrage. Now, the rediscovered memo could have significant implications for U.S. lawmakers as they consider the SAVE America Act, a bill currently being debated in the Senate that would require potential voters across the nation to present identification and proof of citizenship before being allowed to vote in federal elections.

The data that was reportedly obtained by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) operatives included driver’s license data and partial Social Security numbers, which can be used to make absentee ballot requests and to cast fraudulent ballots in person. According to Just the News, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is currently “working to declassify raw reports” on the CCP’s breach “for potential public dissemination.”

In June of last year, FBI Director Kash Patel made public an intelligence report from 2020 that warned the CCP was planning to mass-produce fraudulent U.S. driver’s licenses to obtain mail-in ballots, which the communist regime planned to cast for Biden, since he was considered more favorable to Beijing’s interests. According to a report from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) from July 2020, the CCP’s plan seemed to be taking shape as CBP officers “seized 1,513 shipments with fraudulent documents — a total of 19,888 counterfeit US drivers’ licenses” at the Chicago O’Hare International Airport, with “the majority of these shipments … arriving from China and Hong Kong.”

Experts like author Gordon Chang, who serves as a distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, say they are not surprised by reports of the CCP’s hacking efforts to subvert U.S. elections.

“They are in virtually every network in the United States that they want to be,” he told The Washington Stand. “So of course they’re messing in our elections. This should not be considered news. This is something we should have been acting on a long time ago.”

Chang went on to observe that legislation like the SAVE America Act will help to strengthen election integrity but argued that more fundamental reforms of the U.S.’s election processes are needed.

“The SAVE America Act will help, of course, but only marginally,” he contended. “It basically relates to people who actually show up and vote, so maybe it’ll help. Maybe China could manipulate voting rolls and orchestrate people to show up. But I don’t think that’s the issue. I’ve always thought that we should have paper ballots. We shouldn’t have election stuff online. It’s just an invitation to have the Chinese or others mess with our elections. The Taiwanese run nearly flawless elections because they just use paper ballots, and they count the votes in front of everyone. Why can’t we do this?”

Chang concluded by emphasizing that while U.S. networks could be better defended from CCP cyberattacks, “ultimately our election machinery should not be online. And if it takes a couple days more in order to determine who the winner is, well, that’s fine, because that’s the cost of having election integrity.”

“This is just us opening up our electoral system to interference not only by domestic parties, but by foreign parties as well,” he added. “So this is on us.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Report: DeepSeek AI Chatbot Sends User Data Directly to Chinese Government

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , /by

Following last month’s blockbuster launch of DeepSeek, a Chinese-owned artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that sent U.S. financial markets into a tailspin due to its direct competition with ChatGPT, reports have surfaced that the new AI program sends user data directly to the communist regime’s government.

In an ABC News report published Wednesday, a cybersecurity expert says he found code hidden within DeepSeek that sends user data to China Mobile’s website, a company owned and operated by Beijing. “We see direct links to servers and to companies in China that are under control of the Chinese government,” said Ivan Tsarynny, CEO of Feroot Security. “And this is something that we have never seen in the past.”

As ABC noted, “Users who register or log in to DeepSeek may unknowingly be creating accounts in China, making their identities, search queries, and online behavior visible to Chinese state systems.” In 2019, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) banned China Mobile from operating in the U.S. due to its “unauthorized access to customer … data [which] could create irreparable damage to U.S. national security.”

Concerns over data harvesting by Xi Jinping’s regime are already leading other countries to take action. On Tuesday, it was reported that Australia banned DeepSeek from its government platforms. In addition, Italy enacted a nationwide ban on the AI program. Some U.S. agencies are also blocking DeepSeek, including the U.S. Navy and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The state of Texas also enacted a ban of the chatbot on government devices.

At the national level, the Trump administration has so far signaled a mixed stance on China, despite tough rhetoric from administration officials. The president enacted a 10% tariff on Chinese goods this week but has also suspended enforcement of a ban on the China-owned social media app TikTok, which has been shown to harvest data for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at a massive scale.

During Tuesday’s episode of “Outstanding,” author and China expert Gordon Chang warned that DeepSeek is the latest example of the CCP stealing American technology.

“It is a big threat,” he underscored. “DeepSeek is open source. In other words, we can see it, we can see the algorithm. And yes, it is better than [ChatGPT] … but it is not as frightening as it first appeared. … [W]e know that DeepSeek stole ChatGPT. What the Chinese did — and it’s very clear now that this is the case — their large language model, DeepSeek model R1, was distilling ChatGPT’s large language model. In other words, they … learned off of ChatGPT. That’s a violation of OpenAI’s terms of service. This was one big intellectual property theft.”

Chang, who serves as a senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, went on to question China’s claims about DeepSeek.

“[L]et’s remember that this was not a $6 million project as the Chinese [claimed],” he pointed out. “This was a lot more expensive than that, and I think it probably took a lot longer than we believe. … I find it a little bit too convenient that DeepSeek releases its model on January 20th of all days, the day that there’s a change in management in the U.S. But they launch it at a time where there’s a propaganda blitz by the Communist Party in China’s central government about the futility of American sanctions. … I don’t believe in very many coincidences when it comes to Communist Party programs. So I think that this was a party project.”

“That’s not to say the Chinese aren’t ahead of us,” Chang added. “Yeah, they are ahead of us — we can see it from the open source, but they’re not as far ahead of us as we thought two or three weeks ago.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

President Trump Fires DHS Cybersecurity Chief Chris Krebs

/in , , , , , /by

Could this Kreb clown been more incompetent? Or worse, complicit?

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1328856932011167744?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1328856932011167744%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgellerreport.com%2F2020%2F11%2Fpresident-trump-fires-dhs-cybersecurity-chief-chris-krebs.html%2F

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1328852352787484677?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1328852354049957888%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgellerreport.com%2F2020%2F11%2Fpresident-trump-fires-dhs-cybersecurity-chief-chris-krebs.html%2F

Trump says DHS cybersecurity chief Chris Krebs has been terminated

By: Amanda Macias, CNBC, November 17, 2020:

President Donald Trump announced Tuesday on Twitter that he has “terminated” top U.S. cybersecurity official Christopher Krebs. In a pair of tweets, Trump said that Krebs gave a “highly inaccurate” statement about the security of the 2020 presidential election.

‘Krebs, who heads the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is the latest Trump administration official to depart on the heels of the election.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump announced Tuesday on Twitter that he has “terminated” top U.S. cybersecurity official Christopher Krebs.

In a pair of tweets, Trump said that Krebs gave a “highly inaccurate” statement about the security of the 2020 presidential election. Trump, who has not yet conceded to president-elect Joe Biden, alleged that there were “massive improprieties and fraud.”

Twitter labeled the president’s tweets with a warning citing the claim about election fraud is disputed.

Krebs, who heads the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, has previously said that there is no evidence that the elections were compromised by foreign interference.

Read more: No signs of hacks on computers used to record and tally votes, says top U.S. election protection official

Earlier on Tuesday, Krebs tweeted from his government account, “On allegations that election systems were manipulated, 59 election security experts all agree, “in every case of which we are aware, these claims either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.”

Less than an hour after Trump tweeted about his firing, Krebs wrote from his personal Twitter account that he was “honored to serve.”

He is the latest Trump administration official to depart on the heels of the election.

Last week, Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper via Twitter and replaced him with Christopher Miller, director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

On the heels of Esper’s removal, a Trump administration official told CNBC’s Eamon Javers that “I assume FBI and CIA are next,” referring to FBI Director Christopher Wray and CIA Director Gina Haspel.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The latest revelation comes as Trump has rejected the results of the U.S. presidential election. Other top administration officials, such as Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have publicly insisted that the election is not over.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Michigan’s Most Populated County Won’t Certify Election Results After Deadlock Vote

Dominion Confirms Clinton Foundation Donation, Former Pelosi Staffer Link

The Kraken

Trump Team Sidney Powell: “It’s Massive Criminal Voter Fraud Writ Large Across At Least 29 States”

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

A New Age – The Cyber Information Age

/in , , , , /by

As you know, our firm The Sylint Group, Inc., is composed of engineers from the Intelligence Community, Department of Defense and other government agencies and have been involved with digital data communications and cyber security since the ‘70’s.  In fact the name Sylint is derived from the intelligence community jargon.  “Syl” is Greek for “with” or “together” and “int” is used with various prefixes as intelligence community descriptors such as “commint”, “humint”, etc.  Sylint is therefore bringing together the disciplines of the intelligence world into Cyber Security and Digital Data Forensics. And of course, it’s sounded like “Silent” and therefore a play on the word.

So, Sylint has a certain developed perspective on what people today are recognizing as cyber security. 

Personally, I’ve done everything from programming low orbiter satellites in assembly language as they sped by on their 450 nautical mile orbit, to intercepting digital data communications systems following terrorists across the continents.  That’s before digital data became an integral part of each person’s daily life; cell phone messaging, nanny cameras, “world news” on demand, Facebook, Twitter, digital pictures to be shared in an instant.  I remember when bleeding edge data storage was performed on a RM05, about the size of a washing machine, with a disk pack about 14” in radius, with 12 platters and 250 Mega Bytes (MB) of storage capability.  Today that equals storage for about 10 high resolution photos.  In today’s age my SD storage card, which slips into my pocket, holds 128 Giga Bytes (GB) of data.  Or, consider my digital photography SD (Secure Data) card with 32GB of storage and wireless communications capability from my camera to my tablet.  Data storage and handling has changed dramatically in the last 30 years.  But, so has the amount and types of data communicated.

We are connected to each other electronically through communications systems that we don’t understand and to people we don’t know personally, and maybe don’t know that they are connected to us.  Our lives bleed out through on-line personal accounts and everyone knows our foibles and sins. Our hard earned money is stolen from our bank accounts by somebody in a mid-eastern country, which we didn’t know existed.  And all of this is accomplished using 1’s and 0’s in a nanosecond of time from thousands of miles away.

I notice that the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is held a conference titled “Road Ahead to Cybersecurity”.  I don’t think that there is a “road ahead” for cybersecurity.  There isn’t a road at all!  The whole playing field has changed and there are no defined roads in or out.

I firmly believe that we are stuck in a quagmire alongside that “road” to the playing field and it dead ended at the entry to a new age called “the Cyber Information Age”. 

We have entered this new age, the Cyber Age, and no one realizes it.  A “new age” means that life as we know it has changed dramatically and the forces that shape the economy, world order, international boundaries, social structure, centers of military and political power, level of conflict between countries, and societies moral and ethical foundation are being driven by a new impetus and energy; something called Cyber Information.  Cyber information is different than anything that society has dealt with in the past.  Cyber information is instantaneously created, changed, modified, reformatted and retransmitted.  It’s a lie, half-truth, or fact that is immediately thrown into the world, globally, from unknown sources without vetting, modulation or consideration for its consequences.

Cyber information can be news, control software for a power grid, Programmable Logic Controllers for manufacturing, communications between First Responders, infrastructure support for large buildings, corporate intellectual property, charge card information, a city sewer system, the processor for a pacemaker.  Cyber information has created a virtual world and real world that exist side by side, interact with one another, and impact one another.

Cyber information cannot be easily secured, stopped, acknowledged, or controlled. No leadership has arisen that can formulate a means to force the direction of cyber information for the good of society.  Rather, just the opposite, forces both immoral and unethical are using cyber information for nefarious purposes because it’s a crime against society which goes unpunished and yields huge rewards.

To address Cyber Security we must first understand that we are in a new age, an age of Cyber Information and what that means for society, business and the world order.

Just a few thoughts for a Monday morning surrounded by ones and zeroes.

RELATED ARTICLE: What Was Stolen?: Massive Cybersecurity Breach Raises Concerns About What Hackers Stole [+video]

RELATED VIDEO: June 14, 2014 AEI Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy conference – After Snowden: The Road Ahead for Cybersecurity