In May 2022, Joe Biden was on a charm offensive. “The identified intrusion campaigns almost certainly support key strategic aims of the Chinese government, such as gathering intelligence on countries engaged in South China Sea territorial disputes or related to projects and countries strategically important to the Belt and Road Initiative,” the report says. “The amount of cyber intrusions are driven by intelligence requirements—somebody in Beijing saying, ‘We need to know more about this because it's important,’” Read says