How China Hacked The US Treasury

Chris discusses the recent breach of the U.S. Treasury by Chinese state-sponsored hackers. How should America respond to cyber threats? Markowski shares his perspective on creating a “mutually assured destruction” approach to cybersecurity, highlights flaws in current defenses, and calls for stricter measures like closed government systems. From James Bond’s Goldfinger to Mission Impossible, this episode draws unique parallels to the high-stakes world of cybersecurity. www.watchdogonwallstreet.com

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
So the Chinese have hacked our treasury. Come on, man,
oh boy. Chinese state sponsored hackers reached the US Treasury
departments computer security guard rails and stole documents. The Treasury

(00:40):
Treasury is calling it a major incident. They compromised a
cyber security service provider able to Actually they were unclassified documents. Okay,
I guess this happened back in December. All right, let

(01:02):
me let me explain to you how this would be
handled if Markowski was in charge. Real simple. You get caught,
you get caught, but yeah, just give me a phone. Listen,
you guys, you know you get caught hacking our stuff.

(01:22):
We are going to wreck your computer systems. We are
gonna we'll shut down your I'm gonna shut down your water.
Just don't bother. It's again. How is this not a
mutually assured destruction type of a scenario? Okay, mad, mutually
assured destruction, same type of situation we have with nukes.

(01:44):
If you're planning on messing around with any of our stuff,
we are going to come back at you one hundred
and ten percent. And again, how are we not protected
with this stuff? Was thinking about what was it about Goldfinger?
Remember Pussy Galore and her flying circus. Yeah, they wanted

(02:05):
to well, they were breaking into Fort Knox. You remember
Goldfinger break it or Goldfinger break it into gold mockx
Fort Knox gonna set off a nuke, wrecking the whole
gold supply there, driving up the value of his gold.
Kind of an ingenious plot if you actually think about
it again. You know Pussy Golrner flying circus. They were

(02:28):
much easier on the eyes, I guess than Chinese hackers.
But what are you gonna do. I'll tell you what
you're gonna do. You go back at him. If this
is actually true, if this is actually believable, For the
life of me, I can't understand. I don't get it.
You are going to hack our stuff. We're gonna come

(02:51):
back at you. But again, let's go back in time.
Let's go back in time to it tw twenty ten.
You know Snowden and Wiki leaks and all that information
comes out and how we are not necessarily hacking. But yeah,

(03:13):
we're you know, following what our allies and what they're
saying and what they're doing, and we're looking at American
search history and we're gobbling up all of this this information. Again,
you know, I guess you can take a look at it.
You know, people who live in glasshouses maybe maybe shouldn't

(03:34):
throw stones. But again, it's it's a whole new world.
We've talked about this in the past when it comes
to cyber security and the type of business that that
involves in.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
You need to.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Have our government needs to have close systems, meaning that
there's no out, there's no access to the outside, there's
no access to the internet. You want to have an Internet, fine, fine, yeah,

(04:12):
you can have an intranet. No access from the outside.
Another another obscure sub reference. Remember admission impossible the first one.
Remember Ethan has to he's got to sneak into the CIA.
He's got to steal a knocklist, the list of agents.
And remember that he's hanging from the ceiling with the

(04:34):
rope and can't touch the floor, and a temperature can't
go above a certain amount there inside of the CIA's headquarters.
It needs to be that difficult, you know, and that
the knock list is not on the internet. You can't
get in from the outside. You have to actually be
there at the actual computer and deserver. There's no way

(04:57):
you can get in to me. Pretty simple problem to solve,
quite frankly, Watchdog on Wall Street dot com