Cyber attacks may have us seeing double

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "Cyber Attacks May Have Us Seeing Double"

Click Here – Recorded Future News, September 12, 2025
Host: Dina Temple-Raston
Featured Guest: Anne Neuberger, Former Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technologies

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the escalating cyber conflict between China and the United States, spotlighting China’s digital threats to American critical infrastructure. Dina Temple-Raston interviews Anne Neuberger, exploring her provocative assertion that "China is Winning the Cyber War." The discussion centers on America's cyber vulnerabilities, China's unified digital defense model, and an emerging solution that may hold the key to resilience: AI-driven digital twins.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. China’s Cyber Advantage and the U.S. Cyber Lag

• Anne Neuberger on China’s Position (00:28):
  "China's positioned to take advantage of AI on both offense and defense, and the United States is not positioned to take advantage of AI for defense. And that will continue to advance China's advantage in cyberspace."
• The Salt Typhoon campaign, a Chinese-funded operation, deeply infiltrated U.S. telecoms, signifying not just espionage but preparation for possible sabotage of pipelines, power, and water systems (01:35).
• Quote (01:35):
  "China increasingly is compromising parts of U.S. infrastructure...not for Wu Qin espionage, but to preposition to potentially disrupt those operations in the event of a crisis or conflict." — Anne Neuberger

2. America’s Patchwork Defenses vs. China’s Unified Infrastructure

• Aging, varied, privately owned systems in the U.S. impede cohesive cyber defense.
• Neuberger on System Vulnerabilities (02:38):
  "We have a great deal of old systems that are hard to defend."
• China’s state ownership and centralized monitoring (via the "Great Firewall") enables immediate detection and defense coordination (05:10).
• Quote (05:10):
  "In the United States, almost all pipelines, water companies, and the power grid are owned by private companies." — Anne Neuberger

3. The “Digital Twin” Solution

• Anne Neuberger proposes AI-generated digital twins—virtual replicas of physical systems—to simulate attacks and identify vulnerabilities before adversaries do (06:30).
• What is a Digital Twin? (06:46):
  "A digital twin is essentially a virtual replica of a system. So think about...a manufacturing plant...you can glean that kind of information without actually having to disrupt the actual manufacturing floor." — Anne Neuberger
• Digital twins permit repeated, safe cyber-attack simulations, surfacing critical weaknesses and bolstering system resilience (07:29).
• Memorable explanation (07:29):
  "A virtual replica...helps you simulate attacks, helps you identify critical vulnerabilities, and helps you test resilience..." — Anne Neuberger

4. Adoption and Implementation: Global Examples and Key Risks

• Singapore and NATO already use digital twins to enhance infrastructure defense (08:16).
• Digital twins are cheaper than “sandboxes” (physical testbeds) and can be rapidly iterated.
• Addressing risks (08:58):
  "If a digital twin was hacked...it would give good insights on how the actual system is weak...That's what you want—to actually successfully hack a digital twin and say, okay, how easy is it to hack?" — Anne Neuberger
• Warning (09:32):
  Hacking a twin doesn't bring down real systems, but “a twin, after all, is a map of the real system,” so adversary access still poses strategic risks.

5. The Challenge of Private Sector Buy-in

• Getting private sector owners (who guard proprietary systems) to share operational visibility is “challenging” (12:04).
• Quote (12:04):
  "Getting private sector owners or operators to bring more visibility to their cybersecurity is challenging because making people more aware of risks and threats puts upon them then the obligation to address them." — Anne Neuberger
• Economic reality (12:34):
  "The nation's hospitals have spent hundreds of millions of dollars cleaning up after cyber attacks." — Anne Neuberger
• The Biden administration’s executive order mandates minimum cybersecurity for essential sectors—ending decades of hesitation in regulating infrastructure security (12:48).
• Quote (12:48):
  "President Biden overturned, really decades of bipartisan hesitation to put in place minimum cybersecurity requirements for power pipelines, water and airports." — Anne Neuberger

6. Institutional and Technological Innovations

• Department of Energy could pioneer digital twin modeling, leveraging AI expertise and classified intelligence (13:11).
• AI as a Game Changer (13:33):
  "What AI changes is the ability to integrate a lot of data...As much as AI is a game changer in helping attackers, it's a game changer in the ability to create digital twins." — Anne Neuberger
• Digital twins are expanding to agriculture, supply chains, and space (modeling the sun) (13:57).

7. The Path Forward – Building Collaboration

• Successful adoption will require multi-stakeholder partnerships: big tech (Google, Microsoft, OpenAI), national labs, NIST, private infrastructure firms, and cybersecurity companies (14:32).
• Scaling up (14:32):
  "Bringing that consortium together can help us bring the actual networks that need to be defended, the AI knowledge that helps us build a copy of it, with the intelligence about adversaries..." — Anne Neuberger

8. Final Thought – From Defensive to Proactive Cybersecurity

• Digital twins, though not a panacea, could shift American cyber strategy from reactive “catch up” to proactive defense, buying precious time and resilience in a crisis (15:29).
• Closing statement (15:29):
  "A chance to finally get ahead.” — Dina Temple-Raston

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Anne Neuberger:
  "China is Winning the Cyber War." (00:02 as cited in Foreign Affairs)
• Anne Neuberger:
  "You can't defend what you cannot see." (05:52)
• Dina Temple-Raston:
  “A twin, after all, is a map of the real system, and if an adversary breaks into the map, they can learn exactly where to strike.” (09:32)
• Anne Neuberger:
  “Digital twins won’t solve every problem, but in a world where the line between conflict and cyber conflict is vanishing, they could buy us something priceless—time to respond and resilience to recover.” (15:29)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Description | |-----------|---------------------| | 00:28 | Anne Neuberger on China's AI advantage | | 01:35 | Chinese targeting of U.S. infrastructure | | 02:38 | Discussion of U.S. patchwork defenses | | 05:10 | China’s centralized cyber defense model | | 06:30 | Introduction to digital twins | | 07:29 | How digital twins simulate attacks | | 08:16 | Singapore and NATO using digital twins | | 09:32 | Risks of hacking digital twins | | 12:04 | Obstacles to private sector participation | | 13:33 | AI enabling digital twin creation | | 14:32 | Call for collaboration to scale the solution | | 15:29 | The real promise of digital twins |

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Tone and Style

The conversation is urgent but accessible, aiming to inform a general audience without technical jargon. Anne Neuberger delivers clear, authoritative insights, while Dina Temple-Raston draws connections and clarifies concepts for listeners.

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Summary prepared for listeners and readers interested in national cybersecurity, policy innovation, and the future of digital conflict.

Transcript

[Dina Temple-Raston]

From Recorded Future News and prx, this is Click here. The headline in Foreign affairs magazine was blunt. It read, china is Winning the Cyber War. And the author was none other than Anne Neuberger, Biden's White House cyber czar.

[Anne Neuberger]

The concern I was highlighting in the article is that China's position to take advantage of AI on both offense and defense, and the United States is not positioned to take advantage of AI for defense. And that will continue to advance China's advantage in cyberspace.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

If her voice sounds familiar, it's because we've had her on the show before. Her official title was Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technologies, and her piece in Foreign affairs zoomed in on a campaign we've written a lot about, the one launched by Salt Typhoon, a Chinese backed hacking group that burrowed deep into U.S. telecom networks.

[Radiolab Host]

Our government discovered a massive cyber breach and the more we learn about it, the bigger it gets. They've tapped into communications at the highest levels of American government, from staff of congressional leadership to the incoming Trump White House. And that's just the start.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

And here's the thing, Anne says that breach, it wasn't just another headline. It was a canary in the coal mine.

[Anne Neuberger]

China increasingly is compromising parts of U.S. infrastructure. Pipelines, water companies, power grid. Not for Wu Qin espionage, but rather to preposition to potentially disrupt those operations in the event of a crisis or conflict.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

From recorded Future News and prx, this is Click Here's Mic Drop A longer listen to one of our favorite interviews of the week. I'm Dina Temple Rowston. On Tuesday, we told you about visa denials, shrinking research budgets, and how those shifts are accelerating China's progress in science and tech. But there's another front where the US is lagging. Cyber resilience. That's the ability to absorb a cyberattack and recover quickly.

[Anne Neuberger]

Despite a lot of good progress and efforts made on improving the national cybersecurity, there's a big difference between China's model and the US's model.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

The problem isn't just old systems. It's how the whole thing is stitched together.

[Anne Neuberger]

We have a great deal of old systems that are hard to defend.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

A power grid in Ohio might have one level of defense, in California, something entirely different. That patchwork makes us vulnerable, and adversaries know it. But Ann says there's a way to change that.

[Anne Neuberger]

When you just think about the largest AI companies, many of them are American. On the other hand, American digital infrastructure that Americans rely on every day is some of the least resilient in the world.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

So she's looking for ways to make our systems stronger and smarter and safer. And she says it could start with something that sounds almost sci fi. Seeing double Stay with us Support for Click here comes from CleanMyMac. If you're like me, your cloud drives are packed with files you don't actually need. Sync duplicates, old backups, random junk, just gobbling up storage. CleanMyMac takes care of that with a new cloud cleanup feature. It connects to your accounts on iCloud, OneDrive and Google Drive, and scans to find large space wasters both in cloud storage and on your device. And while my Mac health is apparently excellent, CleanMyMac found 8 gigabytes of junk on my computer and tons of duplicate downloads. And it removed a bunch of leftover applications I never use. Who knew? And this happens locally on my Mac, so my data stays safe. CleanMyMac has a whole suite of other features too, including their moonlight anti malware engine. With just a click, the anti malware tool scans and removes viruses, ensuring your Mac remains threat free. Not everything deserves eternal storage, so why pay for it? Get tidy today with CleanMyMac. Try it free for seven days and use the promo code. Click to save an additional 20% on your purchase. @cleanmymac.com I'm Dena Templewest, and this is Click Here's Mic Drop. Before the break, we talked about how America's patchwork of aging systems and uneven defenses leaves us vulnerable to attack, a problem that China, with its centralized model, doesn't really have.

[Anne Neuberger]

China, both via state owned enterprises, owns pipelines, water companies and its energy grid, and also monitors it via something called the Great Firewall. So that positions the Chinese government to block cyber attacks. Because they can both monitor, for example, the network of a water company via the Great Firewall, and also can disrupt that cyber attack. Because in many cases they own, via state owned enterprise, the water company. And in the United States, almost all pipelines, water companies, and the power grid are owned by private companies.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

But here's the wrinkle. In the US Private companies don't just own the grid or the pipelines or the water systems. They also guard the secrets of how they run. And historically, they've been loathe to hand over those trade secrets or intellectual property to any centralized authority. That instinct to kind of protect their secret sauce makes sense for business, but it complicates resilience because you can't defend what you cannot see. But Ann Neuberger says there's a way to flip that script, and it starts with something that sounds kind of creepy. A digital twin.

[Anne Neuberger]

I proposed the idea of AI generated digital twins as a way to simulate cyber attacks on a copy, a virtual replica of, for example, our power grid, to help us identify the vulnerabilities that are the most critical.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

What exactly is a digital twin?

[Anne Neuberger]

A digital twin is essentially a virtual replica of a system. So think about, for example, a manufacturing plant that's manufacturing cars. A virtual replica of that can help a company, for example, optimize the production process, figure out, based on the data, where there are a lot of errors, based on the sensors, where different parts of it are getting wear and tear, and you can glean that kind of information without actually having to disrupt the actual manufacturing floor.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

That mirror also lets you test scenarios, even cyber attacks, without touching the real thing.

[Anne Neuberger]

A virtual replica of that system helps you simulate attacks, helps you identify what are critical vulnerabilities, and helps you test resilience to identify what are the most important things on a virtual replica of a given system, so that you really beaten out all the bugs and have identified the best solutions in order to actually deploy them on the live system with the least disruptions possible.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

And it's not just a theory.

[Radiolab Host]

In Singapore, we enjoy one of the most reliable standards of electricity supply in the world.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Singapore is already using digital twins with its critical infrastructure.

[Radiolab Host]

The answer lies in the digital twin of the grid. This is a virtual replica.

[Anne Neuberger]

I've talked with the team in Singapore. Essentially, they've worked to create digital twins of some systems as well as sandboxes of other critical infrastructure.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

A sandbox is like a practice field, a costly physical copy of a network system, same software, hardware, firewalls. But a digital twin is its cheaper, AI driven cousin. NATO is already experimenting with digital twins, building replicas of essential systems to practice defending against sophisticated attacks. Has a digital twin ever been hacked?

[Anne Neuberger]

I don't believe so. Huh?

[Dina Temple-Raston]

But that must be a concern.

[Anne Neuberger]

A digital twin, it's a virtual replica. It's not actually an operational system. It's more of a simulation, resilience and testing system. So in some ways, if a digital twin was hacked, it would give good insights on how the actual system is weak. Because in some ways, what you want to do is actually successfully hack a digital twin and say, okay, how easy is it to hack? How are the ways we ensure that the system it's copying is far harder to hack, or we address the vulnerabilities that enabled it to be hacked.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Still, it's worth pausing here, because hacking a digital twin may not bring the lights down, but it isn't harmless, either. A twin, after all, is a map of the real system, and if an adversary breaks into the map, they can learn exactly where to strike. Ann says it's useful to test vulnerabilities that way, but it doesn't erase the risk. Sometimes practice fields can be breached, too. Now the question is whether the US can move fast enough to put all that in place before China does. That's when we come back. Stay with us. Support for Click Here comes from Claude AI. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you, not for you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing for your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. Who needs a regular search when you can have a conversation with Claude about what you're looking for? And unlike some of the other AI helpers I've used, Claude doesn't retain information from previous conversations, so it's private. Ready to tackle bigger problems? Sign up for Claude today and get 50% off Claude Pro when you use my link. Claude AI clickhere. That's Claude AI clickhere right now for 50% off your first three months of Claude Pro, and that includes access to all the features mentioned in today's episode. Claude AI Clickhere At Radiolab, we love.

[Radiolab Host]

Nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry.

[Anne Neuberger]

But but we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex of bugs.

[Radiolab Host]

Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers and.

[Anne Neuberger]

Hopefully make you see the world.

[Radiolab Host]

An Adventures on the Edge of what We Think we know Wherever you get.

[Anne Neuberger]

Your podcasts.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Before the break, Anne Neuberger laid out a vision for how digital twins could transform the way we defend our critical infrastructure. But getting there? That's where things get complicated.

[Anne Neuberger]

Getting private sector owners or operators to bring more visibility to their cybersecurity is challenging because making people more aware of risks and threats puts upon them then the obligation to address them.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Because the moment companies acknowledge vulnerabilities, they're on the hook to fix them.

[Anne Neuberger]

Critical infrastructure companies hadn't made the investments because it cost money.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

But here's the thing. Cleanup costs even more.

[Anne Neuberger]

The nation's hospitals have spent hundreds of millions of dollars cleaning up after cyber attacks.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

That reality pushed the Biden administration to issue an executive order requiring minimum cybersecurity standards for key Industries.

[Anne Neuberger]

President Biden overturned, really decades of bipartisan hesitation to put in place minimum cybersecurity requirements for power pipelines, water and airports.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Ann believes a logical next step is to start with the Department of Energy, which already models physical grid disruptions like those caused by big storms.

[Anne Neuberger]

The Department of Energy also has a lot of AI expertise via the national labs, and a lot of classified intelligence about Chinese, Iranian and Russian offensive cyber capabilities.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

And AI could be a game changer, making digital twins faster and less expensive to build and give companies the tools to spot weaknesses before attackers do.

[Anne Neuberger]

What AI changes is the ability to integrate a lot of data, for example, from lots of sensors, and then create a visual and a mapping of something. So as much as AI is a game changer in helping attackers, it's a game changer in the ability to create digital twins and then to use those to make sense of a lot of data.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

And it turns out digital twins aren't just for cybersecurity. They're popping up everywhere. Farms use them, supply chains use them, space agencies use them. IBM and NASA in fact, just built one for the sun, a digital replica that lets scientists model solar flares in space weather without waiting to see what the real sun does to our satellites. What institutional changes do you think we need in government, industry, academia so that digital twins don't sort of stay in the lab, but actually get operationalized in a really large scale way?

[Anne Neuberger]

I love that question, because that last mile in cybersecurity is often where it breaks down. And I think the key stakeholders we want to connect are the private sector companies with good AI knowledge. The Google's, Microsoft's, OpenAI's of the world, the government agencies with good AI knowledge, the national labs, the National Institute for Standards, with those specific companies that own and operate our critical infrastructure, bringing that knowledge together to build digital twins. And then, most importantly, and that can include a fourth group I would actually add, are cybersecurity companies. Bringing that consortium together can help us bring the actual networks that need to be defended, the AI knowledge that helps us build a copy of it, with the intelligence about adversaries capabilities to ensure that our defenses can defend against the most powerful attacks.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Digital twins won't solve every problem, but in a world where the line between conflict and cyber conflict is vanishing, they could buy us something priceless time to respond and resilience to recover. And maybe, just maybe, they'll help us stop seeing cybersecurity as an endless game of catch up and start seeing it for what it could be. A chance to finally get ahead From Recorded Future News this has been Click Here's Mic Drop. It was written and produced by Megan Dietry, Sean Powers, Erica Gaeda, Zach Hirsch, Lucas Riley and me, Dina Temple Raston. It was edited by Karen Duffett. We'll be back on Tuesday with an all new episode of Click Here. Have a great weekend.

[Recorded Future News Announcer]

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