US Cyber Force Surges Global Operations Amid Rising Threats

An American cyber military unit that carries out cyber operations abroad significantly expanded operations in 2024 as Chinese hackers infiltrated critical infrastructure, positioning for potential conflict with the United States, a senior U.S. Cyber Command official said Friday.

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The Cyber National Mission Force has been deployed more than 85 times over the last year and carried out missions spanning across at least 80 networks, said Morgan Adamski, executive director of the U.S. Cyber Command. Adamski said the force has significantly evolved since its 2014 launch to combat hacking and protect domestic critical infrastructure, a mission that is increasingly urgent as attacks on Department of Defense networks escalated in the years that followed.

“Cyberspace is a warfighting domain,” Adamski said while speaking at the Cyberwarcon security conference in Arlington, Virginia. She added that DOD’s information network faces an estimated 194 million malicious digital attacks and a total of 798 million cybersecurity events “on any given day.”

Often described as an enigmatic military command by outsiders, the Cyber National Mission Force has recently carried out a series of campaigns supporting election security initiatives and resilience building operations around the world. The mission force has been deployed more frequently to partner nations in recent years, Adamski said, responding to invitations to identify malicious cyber activity on government networks.

The Cyber National Mission Force conducted significantly more operations in 2024 compared to the 22 carried out the previous year. Before 2024, the mission force had deployed just 55 times since 2018, according to Cyber Command (see: US Cyber Command Expanded ‘Hunt Forward’ Operations in 2023).

Cyber Command’s expanded operations come amid intensifying threats from foreign adversaries like China, which federal agencies warn has been carrying out broad and significant cyberespionage campaigns targeting top government officials in the U.S. An ongoing FBI probe into Chinese hacking of commercial telecom infrastructure revealed that Beijing-linked threat actors “have compromised networks at multiple telecommunications companies” while aiming to steal customer call records and copy sensitive information used in law enforcement requests (see: FBI Updates on Vast Chinese Hack on Telecom Networks).

Chinese and North Korean hackers have spent the past decade refining their tactics to steal billions in cryptocurrency and target Western defense systems, security researchers said at Cyberwarcon. Microsoft analysts detailed how North Korea’s “Ruby Sleet” used advanced phishing and supply chain attacks to breach aerospace and defense firms, while the Chinese state threat actor “Storm-2077” has routinely targeted the U.S. defense industrial base for intelligence collection purposes.

Adamski said Cyber Command and federal cyber authorities have “executed globally synchronized activities” throughout the year that are “laser-focused on degrading and disrupting PRC cyber operations worldwide.”

Cybersecurity experts have recently called on key federal departments to do more to respond to intensifying sophisticated espionage campaigns from China. Analysts say improved public-private collaboration around threat hunting and in performing threat actor infrastructure takedowns could help counter the growing cyber threat (see: US Agencies Urged to Combat Growing Chinese Cyberthreat).