On Thursday, June 29, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing several knowledgeable sources, that Beijing-linked hackers gained access to the email account of Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador to China, in a spying operation, and hundreds of thousands of private US government emails appear to have been monitored.
According to this report, the email account of Daniel Kreitenbrink, deputy director of the US State Department's East Asia division, was also hacked in a larger spying operation disclosed by Microsoft in early July.
In a statement that it is investigating this espionage operation, the US State Department refused to provide additional details and limited itself by saying: "For security reasons, at this time, we will not provide additional information on the nature and extent of this leak related to the field of cyber security."
Burns and Kreitenbrink were also named alongside Gina Raimondo, the US Secretary of Commerce, all three of whom are currently the only victims of these cyberattacks whose names have been made public.
Microsoft and China's ambassador to Washington did not respond to today's Wall Street Journal report, but China's foreign ministry has previously referred to the allegation of cyberattacks linked to the Chinese government as "false information."
What does this mean for Israel?
We have no choice but to ask whether those Chinese hackers, after penetrating the American ambassador's computer systems there, managed to continue their "cyber" journey to the servers of the US State Department, which are highly secure, one must assume, and from there they also reached the mailbox of the US ambassador to Israel, who receives highly sensitive intelligence material collected mainly from the entire Mediterranean region and even more?
Do the American computer systems pose a risk to Israel's security? A point of assumption, with no choice, that the answer is definitely positive, with all the associated meanings. A change in the concept of communication between the 2 countries must be considered right now.
And is it worth it for the Prime Minister of Israel, Netanyahu, to pay attention, if during his upcoming visit to China the opposing side does not "introduce" him with assistance material that they should not have?
It is also worth remembering the words of a very senior American officer, at the rank of admiral, who was the head of the Weapons Development Authority in the US Army, who said several years ago that he always had the feeling that the Chinese were peeking at him behind his back every time he read them on the monitor in front of him.