>China has an off-switch for America, and we aren’t ready to deal with it.
>Chinese-made chips, routers and switches embedded throughout U.S. networks contain dormant firmware that, upon activation, could place critical U.S. infrastructure under Chinese Communist Party command.
>Under this approach, China targets power grids, satellites, telecom networks and data centers...
https://thehill.com/opinion/5313034-china-off-switch-america-threat>Assassin's Mace (杀手锏, pronounced "sha-shou-jian") represents China's asymmetric warfare strategy aimed at defeating a technologically superior adversary by targeting critical vulnerabilities. Rooted in ancient Chinese strategic thinking, this concept envisions a suite of unconventional weapons and tactics designed to create devastating effects against Western military and civilian infrastructure at precisely the right moment.
>These weapons operate within China's "Unrestricted Warfare" doctrine, described by PLA Colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, who argued that "the battlefield will be everywhere" and "all the boundaries lying between the two worlds of war and non-war, of military and non-military, will be totally destroyed." Most concerning is how these weapons could be deployed together at the "Moment of Shi" (势/勢) – the optimal strategic timing – creating cascading failures across military and civilian domains that exceed the sum of their individual effects.
>China has developed sophisticated conceptions of "systems destruction warfare" that target networks and systems providing U.S. forces with their technological advantage rather than engaging in symmetric warfare. By targeting command, control, and communications infrastructure before conventional operations begin, China aims to blind, deafen, and isolate adversaries through attacks on supporting digital systems.
>The most tragic Assassin's Mace starts from China's principle to ignore any distinction between Ba's civilians and her defenders. By erasing traditional boundaries between civilian life and war, People's Liberation Army employs social, economic, chemical, information and biowarfare before and during war. From limitless fentanyl precursors to mind-altering algorithms to destabilizing Western markets, Blended Domains before war begins pales in comparison to what happens when the Moment of Shi arrives.
>This approach directly implements the "cocktail warfare" strategy advocated in "Unrestricted Warfare," which argued that “the great masters of warfare techniques during the 21st century will be those who employ innovative methods to recombine various capabilities so as to attain tactical, campaign and strategic goals.”
https://ready.net/digital-infrastructure-terms/chinas-assassins-mace-asymmetric-warfare