Chinese Army has still some way to go in cyber capabilities: NSAB member

The cyber budget of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of China is "phenomenal", but their offensive capability is still building up and "they have still some way to go", Lt General (retd) S L Narasimhan, member, National Security Advisory Board (NSAB), said here on Wednesday.

"The cyber capabilities -- though they have a huge cyber network -- the kind of report you get to see in open source is actually indicating that they still have some way to go. They may be very good at getting the cyber data etc., but the cyber offensive and defensive capability are still being questioned," he said.

"But my reading sometime back was, they were able to shut down the entire system to the outside world in about six-seven minutes. But the offensive capability was still getting built up," the NSAB member added.

During a discussion on "China's military modernisation: Recent Developments" at the Observer Research Foundation, he said, "The kind of funding, the number of people who are working on this (cyber) are phenomenal. I mean, half the defence budget of India is actually the cyber budget for China.... They will catch up at some point of time. But at this point in time, their capability is still being questioned."
Stating that the PLA is still evolving as a force, Narasimhan said, "Their command and control structure has totally undergone a change. The organisational structures have undergone a total change. And for a large-sized army like this, to do everything in a churn, it is not a very easy thing to do."