What security threats does our country face?

As a large developing country, China still faces multiple and complex security threats. It encounters increasing external resistance and challenges. Survival and development security issues, traditional security threats and non-traditional security threats are intertwined. , the tasks of safeguarding national unity, safeguarding territorial integrity, and safeguarding development interests are arduous and onerous.

Some maritime neighbors have taken provocative actions on issues involving China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, and strengthened military presence on China’s illegally “occupied” islands and reefs. Some countries outside the region are also actively interfering in South China Sea affairs, and certain countries maintain high-frequency close-in sea and air surveillance of China. The struggle to safeguard rights at sea will exist for a long time.

Some land territorial disputes also still exist. There are many unstable and uncertain factors in the situation on the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia. Regional terrorism, separatism, and extremist activities are rampant, which has also adversely affected security and stability in China's surrounding areas.

The Taiwan issue is related to national reunification and long-term development. National reunification is a historical necessity for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Cross-Strait relations have maintained a good momentum of peaceful development in recent years, but the root causes affecting stability across the Taiwan Strait have not been eliminated. "Taiwan independence" separatist forces and their separatist activities remain the biggest threat to the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations.

The task of maintaining national political security and social stability is arduous and arduous. The "East Turkistan" and "Tibetan independence" separatist forces are causing serious harm. In particular, the threat of "East Turkistan" violent terrorist activities has escalated, and anti-China forces are plotting to create a "color revolution." National security and social stability face more challenges.

Extended information:

The 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly reviewed and adopted the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy for the fourth time. Based on China’s proposed revisions, this resolution was written for the first time. Include content on combating cyber terrorism. In the face of cyber terrorism, all countries should join hands to fight against it, and must not let the Internet become a breeding ground for terrorism

In the information age, the Internet plays an increasingly important role in people's lives and has become a national political , military, diplomacy and many areas related to the national economy and people's livelihood are the basis for survival. However, while scientific and technological progress allows humans to enjoy the fruits of civilizational progress, it also provides new means and methods for terrorist organizations.

All network-related activities of terrorist organizations can be included in the category of cyber terrorism

In 1997, Bailey Colin, a senior researcher at the California Institute of Intelligence and Security, first proposed The term "cyber terrorism" was coined, believing that it is the product of the combination of the Internet and terrorism. In the same year, FBI expert Mark Pollitt added to this concept and believed that "cyber terrorism is a premeditated and politically motivated attack on information, computer systems, computer programs and data, consisting of Violent activities launched by national groups or secret organizations against non-military targets." Since then, the definition of cyber terrorism has been continuously supplemented and improved, and terms such as "electronic jihad" and "cyber jihad" have appeared one after another. They highlight the initiators of activities and their purposes to distinguish them from cyber criminals and hackers in the usual sense.

Although there is no unified concept, the international community’s consensus is that, like terrorism in the traditional sense, all network-related activities of terrorist organizations can be included in the category of cyber terrorism, including terrorism. Propaganda, recruiting personnel, teaching violent terrorist techniques, raising funds, organizing and planning terrorist attacks, implementing cyber attacks and sabotage, etc., should all be regarded as behaviors that endanger public security.

The anonymity and complexity of cyberspace make it easier for terrorists to hide in it. The "end" of borders and distances can theoretically allow terrorists to carry out operations anywhere. Every chip is a potential weapon, and every computer can become an effective combat unit. Terrorist organizations weave a complex web in which each person is a node. Even if most of the organization is destroyed, they can complete the operation independently. An online attack often occurs without any obvious warning signs, and it is difficult to determine where the attack actually originated. The combination of reality and virtual world has become the best breakthrough point and attack point for terrorists.

The number of websites related to terrorists is growing rapidly, all over the world, and the content is horrifying

From the perspective of terrorists, the Internet is a "natural battlefield" for launching psychological warfare and propaganda warfare. . Al-Qaeda leader Zawahiri once said, "We are in a media war for hearts and minds." The U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee reported in 2008 that "Al Qaeda" has gradually established a multi-level online propaganda network that spans the world, with strict procedures from production to dissemination. It mainly relies on four major media centers to carry out online propaganda, namely "Team" (belonging to the "Islamic State of Iraq"), "Cloud" (belonging to the "Al Qaeda" organization headquarters), and "Media Council" (belonging to the "Al Qaeda" in the Maghreb region). "Organization") and "Voice of Jihad" (belonging to "Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula"). These organizations produce a wide variety of propaganda, including videos recording the entire process of terrorist attacks with illustrations, sound effects, slogans, subtitles, and animations; as well as various online magazines, real-time news, articles, white papers, and even poems. Before promotional materials are uploaded to the Internet, they are usually sent to the so-called "clearing house" for verification, while ensuring that the information is updated in real time. According to statistics from Gabriel Weiman, a professor of communication at the University of Haifa in Israel, there were 12 terrorist-related websites in 1998, and now there are nearly 10,000. In 2011, there were 7,500 extremist websites in Russia; websites and forums promoting extremist ideas mainly in Indonesian and Malay languages ??in Southeast Asia are growing rapidly, and websites such as the "Indonesian Liberation Party" and "Paradise Jihad" are gaining momentum.

The Internet has become an excellent place for terrorists to communicate and teach "skills", and it has also become the first choice "classroom" for new terrorists. A "base" website called "Sharp Sword" is only open twice a month, but the content is horrifying - terrorists openly discuss techniques for kidnapping and killing hostages. The website also provides other tutorials on the lethality and use of sarin gas, car bombs, and various explosives. When some experts used Internet search technology to understand the current status of these websites, they found that there were 500 million terrorist web pages and posts in 2008, of which tens of thousands discussed improvised explosive devices.

Terrorist organizations use the Internet to collect large amounts of government information from various countries, and the Internet is developing intelligently to make money

The open network also provides terrorist organizations with abundant resources. Online content is all-encompassing. Terrorists can not only obtain political, economic and military information about the country, but also master weapons manufacturing, hacking technology, etc. Before the "9·11" incident, the official websites of the Federation of American Scientists, the Nuclear Energy Coordinating Council, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention contained a large number of information about the U.S. nuclear weapons list, spy satellites, the distribution of nuclear weapons production plants, emergency response, and chemical equipment. Security and other aspects of archival materials. Al Qaeda computers found in Afghanistan contained instructions and planning information on how to use the U.S. communications, electricity, and water distribution networks, as well as detailed structural diagrams of some dams. During the 2008 Mumbai bombings in India, terrorists used the Global Positioning System and Google Maps to grasp the target terrain, and used BlackBerry phones to understand the government's response deployment in real time.

In addition, terrorist organizations’ online wealth-raising has moved away from the original method of money exchange and fundraising and developed in an intelligent direction. For example, by entering other people's computers, stealing bank cards and credit card passwords, and stealing money. Tesuri, the cyberterrorist leader known as "Cyber ??007," once stole 37,000 credit cards, totaling $3.5 million. Another example is the behind-the-scenes manipulation of the online gambling and gambling industry. Every year, terrorists use online gambling to launder money and raise hundreds of millions of dollars. Terrorist organizations also use the guise of "charity" to defraud money, such as using the "Global Relief Foundation" that has close ties with "Al Qaeda" and the Taliban, and the websites of non-governmental organizations under the banner of humanitarian relief.

The online activities of terrorist organizations have adopted new methods and presented new characteristics

First of all, the popularity of new media such as Facebook has set off a new wave of online terrorism.

Some experts pointed out that social media has become a "strategic tool" for terrorists, allowing terrorists to directly "knock on the door" of the target audience without waiting for visitors to come.

Major jihadi forums have called for "Facebook invasion" operations, and "Twitter terror" and "Youtu terror" are common occurrences. In September 2013, the perpetrator of the terrorist attack at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya's capital, "live-tweeted" the attack.

Secondly, it spawned a lot of "local terror". The "online bombing" of terrorist organizations such as "Al Qaeda" has begun to target young people, especially young people in the West.

The global Islamic extremist ideological network "At-tibyan Publishing" is mainly responsible for propaganda to Western countries. The article "39 Ways to Serve and Participate in "Jihad"" published by it is very popular on the Internet. The propaganda videos of the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" also target European countries such as the United Kingdom. In the video, a 20-year-old British student joined the organization after traveling to Syria, claiming that "there is not much work, a good salary, and food and accommodation are included." By borrowing these tactics, terrorist organizations have successfully "incited" a large number of "white Muslims" in the United States and Western European countries and turned them into "jihadists." Anwar al-Awlaki, the former leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemen branch, is a native American, and the “White Widow” suspect in the massacre of Kenya’s shopperism is a native British man. The Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C., is worried that "the greatest terrorist threat facing the United States no longer comes from the mountainous border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, but from domestic terrorists breeding in the United States." European Commission Commissioner for Home Affairs Malmstr?m said that more than 1,200 Europeans have gone to war-torn areas to participate in the activities of terrorist organizations. If they return to Europe in the future, they will definitely pose a threat. The person who carried out the shooting at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, Belgium, on May 24 this year was a Frenchman who had returned from the battlefield in Syria.

Third, “lone wolf” terrorists have surged, and network technology has become the blood that “lone wolves” rely on for their survival.

In February 2013, Jeffrey Simon, president of the US Political Risk Assessment Company, pointed out in the book "Lone Wolf Terrorism: Understanding Its Growing Threat" that scientific and technological progress, especially The network technology revolution has fueled "lone wolf" terrorism, and mankind is about to face the fifth "terror wave", that is, the "technological terror wave." "Lone wolves" can obtain information from various places through tools such as websites and social media without showing up, and even directly carry out cyber terrorist attacks. The branch of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula specializes in producing and publishing the English-language online magazine "Inspire" to incite Western extremists to launch "lone wolf"-style terrorist attacks. Army psychiatrist Nidal Hassan, who killed 13 U.S. soldiers in the 2009 Fort Hood military base shooting, and the Tsarnaev brothers, who carried out a terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon in April 2013, were all influenced by the "jihadi" trend. The “lone wolf” of baptism.

Fourth, terrorists have begun to shift from using the Internet to attacking the Internet, and the boundaries between radicals, hackers, and terrorists are becoming blurred.

There are black markets selling attack programs, system vulnerabilities and user information all over the world on the Internet. Brokers can even be used to "buy criminals", greatly lowering the threshold for carrying out cyber attacks. In addition, the boundaries between radicals, hackers, and terrorists are becoming increasingly blurred, and the possibility of a "merger" of the three in the future cannot be ruled out. For example, the well-known hacker organization "Syrian Electronic Army" is increasingly interfering in international and domestic affairs, with a negative impact. On April 23, 2013, the organization stole the official Twitter account of the Associated Press and falsely claimed that "two explosions occurred in the White House and Obama was injured." The U.S. stock market fluctuated sharply in response, causing a loss of approximately US$200 billion.

Reference materials: People's Daily Online - China still faces multiple and complex security threats

People's Daily Online - China faces cyber security threats and the Internet has become a new battlefield for major powers