Chinese Hackers: From Heroes to PLA Recruits #shorts

During this period um there were those groups and the people behind it they were seen as hero. So um we have to start with the Chinese entry into the digital age uh in 1994. Um and uh by the late 90s you had the creation of informal networks of uh hacker collective that emerged. So most of them were actually university students that were passionate about tech and wanted to share um their knowledge and uh and also train and develop their capacities uh capabilities and uh so they created this this hacker collective. So um this ecosystem was also influenced uh by um geopolitical incident during that time that were perceived as hostile against China. So we had um an anti-Chinese protests

uh in Indonesia the collusion of um rec US reconnaissance plane against Chinese fighter jet. So all these incidents um mobilized those groups and uh motivated uh their attacks. So during this period um there were those groups and the people behind it they were seen as hero. the Chinese state, they really tolerated uh the their activity as long as it was aligned with um uh national sentiment and also with um not targeting any Chinese entities but on uh focusing on foreign targets. But uh this started to change um in the 200 uh uh the people liberation army started to recruit some of the hackers and uh finally in 2010 around that time uh the Chinese state discourse started

to change. They started to say, "Hey, those activities are actually illegal." And they started to um arrest some of these hackers that had uh the opportunity to work for the PLA in exchange of amnesty. And uh yeah they also um started to uh gradually impose more control uh get more control of uh the cyber sphere in in China and every anything that was happening online.