Shows
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber SupremacyEp 9: The New FrontlineColonial Pipeline was a warning shot. Now, Chinese hackers are inside the digital guts of hundreds of Colonial equivalents across the U.S.—power, water, transportation, and more. The question isn’t if they’re in. It’s why. And what happens next.
Is this digital coercion? A warning to stay out of Taiwan? Is an invasion imminent—and are we ready for the cyber fallout that could come with it?
In the final episode of this series, host and former New York Times cybersecurity reporter, Nicole Perlroth, investigates the nightmare scenarios U.S. officials are gaming...
2025-05-291h 41
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber SupremacyEp 8: Living Off The LandCyber experts start getting called into electric, water, pipeline, railway, and transportation hubs around the country. Hackers have found a clever way to embed in these systems, using a small, unsuspecting device in everyday Americans’ homes. And once these hackers get in, they’re not dropping the usual malware, or sucking much of any data out. Unlike their predecessors, these hackers are very careful to cover their tracks. It appears they’re just lying in wait. Sleeper cells waiting for marching orders. So what’s the trigger? And what happens if they pull it?
2025-05-0534 min
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber SupremacyEp 7: Everything Everywhere All At OnceThe General Manager of an electric and water utility in Littleton, Mass. gets a surprise call from the FBI. At first he suspects the caller is a spammer, but soon he learns the agent is very real. Chinese hackers are lurking deep in his utility’s systems. And his is not the only one. Hundreds of other power, water and pipeline operations across the United States are getting hit. These targets have little to no intelligence value at all. But their potential for sabotage? Enormous.
In Episode 7, host and former New York Times cybersecurity reporter, Nicole Perlroth, rev...
2025-04-2845 min
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber SupremacyEp 6: The GunslingersDuring China’s pseudo-cyber-hiatus, the PRC’s hacking operations get a major overhaul. CCP leadership moves responsibility away from the sloppy, brazen hackers at the People’s Liberation Army to the far more stealthy, and strategic, Ministry of State Security. Gone are the “most polite” hackers in the digital world. Here to stay are the gunslingers – the elite of the elite in their field.
In Episode 6, host and former New York Times cybersecurity reporter, Nicole Perlroth lays out what it looked like as China’s hackers went underground… and what we missed in Eastern Europe as they did.
2025-04-1432 min
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber SupremacyEp 5: A Cyber DetenteEvery U.S. administration, dating back to President H.W. Bush has struggled to address the threat of Chinese trade theft. But a growing sense of urgency kicks in as American businesses start hemorrhaging trade secrets and entire product lines start vanishing to Chinese copycats. Just as the Obama Administration is set to do something about it, Edward Snowden shifts the narrative back onto the United States.
For years, the U.S. fends off its own accusations of hacking. But then China goes for the mother lode. And creates an opening for Obama to strike a deal w...
2025-04-0745 min
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber SupremacyEp 4: Naming and ShamingAs Chinese hackers continue their raid of American companies, the threat reaches new levels of urgency, not so much for the sophistication of these hackers, but because of the sheer volume of attacks. And yet, victims continue to keep their breaches under wraps, and the government is hamstrung in what they can say because most everything they know about Chinese cyberespionage is classified.
Then, the Times’ outing of its own breach, and its Shanghai assailants, gives the White House an opening. The Obama Administration decides to indict the Chinese military hackers responsible for thousands of hacks on Am...
2025-03-3140 min
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber SupremacyBONUS: Live Panel with Top China & Cyber Experts at The New York Stock ExchangeFor this special live recording of To Catch a Thief at The New York Stock Exchange, host and former lead cybersecurity and digital espionage reporter for The New York Times, Nicole Perlroth sits down with those who have been directly targeted by, traced, or directly engaged China’s state-sponsored hackers, diplomatically, or in the cyber domain: Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Barboza, the National Security Agency’s former Cybersecurity Director Rob Joyce, former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly, Jim Lewis, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Rubrik CEO Bipul Sinha. They discuss how the...
2025-03-271h 08
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber SupremacyEp 3: The Most Dangerous Time in American HistoryIn Episode 3, host and former lead cybersecurity and digital espionage reporter for The New York Times, Nicole Perlroth visits a welding shop in rural Wisconsin where Chinese hackers have set up shop in a dusty, back-office server. Hackers are using the welding shop as staging grounds to attack a staggering range of American businesses, including a major American airline, fast-growing Silicon Valley start-ups, law firms and research labs, in search of capitalism’s crown jewels: Intellectual property.
Nicole revisits a period that cybersecurity experts now call “the most dangerous time in American history”-- a period in which...
2025-03-2441 min
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber SupremacyEp 2: Then They Came for UsGoogle discloses its hack and points the finger squarely at Beijing, which spells the end for Google’s business ambitions in China. Other victims stay silent, too fearful to offend the gatekeepers to the world’s largest market. Nobody will talk. Until they came for The New York Times.In Episode 2, host and former lead cybersecurity and digital espionage reporter for The New York Times, Nicole Perlroth outlines what happened when she learns hackers are inside the Times. Mandiant is called. The malware traces back to a Chinese military unit based in Shanghai. Hackers’ digital crumbs make clear...
2025-03-1734 min
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber SupremacyEp 1: The Five PoisonsFormer NSA Director Keith Alexander called it “the greatest transfer of wealth in history.” Hillary Clinton, FBI Director James Comey and President Barack Obama also sounded the alarm on the biggest heist in human history.In Episode 1, host and former lead cybersecurity and digital espionage reporter for The New York Times, Nicole Perlroth, pulls back the curtain on China’s sprawling hacking operations. To combat the “Five Poisons”, or the five groups the Chinese Communist Party deems existential threats, China builds an expansive domestic surveillance apparatus. As these dissidents fled China, China’s state-sponsored hackers followed closely behind, wiri...
2025-03-1739 min
To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber SupremacyComing Soon - To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber SupremacyAmerican companies, whole towns, have been eviscerated by Chinese cyberattacks. But their stories remain untold, even as the stakes get higher and the targets more reckless.To Catch a Thief is a first-of-its-kind, documentary look at China’s rise to cyber supremacy. This podcast charts the evolution of China’s state-sponsored hackers, from their beginnings as “the most polite, mediocre hackers in cyberspace” to the “apex predator” that now haunts America’s critical infrastructure. Host Nicole Perlroth, bestselling author and former lead cybersecurity and digital espionage reporter for The New York Times...
2025-03-0402 min
GreymatterBipul Sinha & Nicole Perlroth | The Zero Trust StrategyAs software and data management systems have evolved, so too have the cybersecurity threats targeting them. How can companies, government agencies, and individuals keep their data secure when risk is at an all-time high? Greylock general partner Asheem Chandna, New York Times cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth, and Rubrik CEO and co-founder Bipul Sinha discuss the current world of cybersecurity, ransomware, and the need for everyone to adopt a "zero-trust" strategy to protect their data. You can read a transcript of this podcast here: https://greylock.com/greymatter/the-zero-trust-strategy/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm...
2021-11-3031 min