EMILY PARKER 07.01.14
iconValentina Petrova/AFP/Getty Images
In May, the U.S. announced the indictment of five Chinese hackers for breaking into the computers of U.S. companies. The men went by code names like UglyGorilla and KandyGoo. A recent report revealed that the hackers, who worked for Unit 61398 of the People’s Liberation Army, were on the job from 8 am to 6 pm and had two hours scheduled for lunch.
Other than these small details, we know very little about Chinese hackers or what motivates them. What brings people to the front lines of cyber war between the United States and China? Are they driven by patriotism—or is it just a day job? Real life may not provide satisfying answers, but we can turn to literature. Mai Jia’s novel Decoded, which was published in English in March, 2014, describes the inner life of the Chinese code breaker Rong Jinzhen.
Mai’s novel is about post-World War II cryptography, not contemporary cyberbattles, but it illustrates how this kind of top-secret work can destroy an individual. Decoded is an alarming tale about a reluctant code breaker whose genius is shattered by his service to the nation.
Mai spent more than a dozen years in the People’s Liberation Army, spending time among cryptographers in a secret location. (Mai Jia is a pen name; he was born in 1964 as Jiang Benhu.) Not long after Decoded was first published in 2002, according to a story on the People’s Daily website, Mai’s publisher received a phone call from a government confidentiality committee. The message was clear: Stop publishing this book, stop publicizing it, and remove the existing books from the shelves.