TOKYO — The intrusion of a Chinese spy plane into Japanese airspace is a “wake-up call” for Tokyo about the aggressive nature of China’s leadership, US lawmaker John Moolenaar, who chairs the House Select Committee on China said on Wednesday.

The incident on Monday involving a Y-9 reconnaissance aircraft flying near the southern Kyushu island was the first time a Chinese military aircraft had breached Japan’s airspace, according to Tokyo, which told Beijing it was “utterly unacceptable.”

The Chinese foreign ministry said on Tuesday it was still trying to understand the situation.

We’ve “seen a very different China in the last few years and the question is what’s the best way to deter future aggression and malign activity,” Mr. Moolenaar, who is a Republican member of the House of Representatives, said in an interview in Tokyo on Wednesday.

His visit to Japan, with half a dozen members of a bipartisan committee that has looked at topics ranging from China’s exports of fentanyl precusor chemicals to Beijing’s influence over US businesses, comes as President Joseph R. Biden’s administration looks to expand restrictions on semiconductor manufacturing equipment exports.

While Japan has worked with its US ally to restrict shipments of such technology, unlike Washington it has avoided trade curbs that directly target its neighbor and largest trading partner.

A new rule that will broaden US powers to halt semiconductor manufacturing equipment exports to China from some foreign chipmakers will exclude Japan, the Netherlands and South Korea, two sources told Reuters last month.

In Japan, Mr. Moolenaar met trade and industry minister Ken Saito, who oversees Japan’s technology exports and is meeting with the Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and other senior Japanese officials.

“The question is what’s the best way to deter future (Chinese) aggression and malign activity. We don’t want to feed into a military complex that can be used against us,” he said. — Reuters

AN IRANIAN hacking group ran a fake professional recruiting business to lure national security officials across Iran, Syria and Lebanon into a cyber espionage trap, according to new research by US cybersecurity firm Mandiant, a division of Alphabet’s Google Cloud.

Researchers said the hackers are loosely connected to a group known as APT42 or Charming Kitten, which was recently accused of hacking the US presidential campaign of Republican candidate Donald Trump. APT42 is widely attributed to an intelligence division of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, an expansive military organization based in Tehran. The FBI has said it is investigating APT42’s ongoing efforts to interfere in the 2024 US election.

The mission uncovered by Mandiant dates back to at least 2017 and was active until recently. At different times, the Iranians made their operation appear as if it was controlled by Israelis. Analysts say the likely purpose of the impersonation was to identify individuals in the Middle East who were willing to sell secrets to Israel and other Western governments. It targeted military and intelligence staff associated with Iran’s allies in the region.

“The data collected by this campaign may support the Iranian intelligence apparatus in pinpointing individuals who are interested in collaborating with Iran’s perceived adversarial countries,” the Mandiant report said. “The collected data may be leveraged to uncover human intelligence (HUMINT) operations conducted against Iran and to persecute any Iranians suspected to be involved in these operations.”

Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mandiant found that the digital spies used a network of websites impersonating human resources companies to manipulate Farsi-speaking targets. The bogus firms were named VIP Human Solutions, also known as VIP Recruitment, Optima HR and Kandovan HR, among others. They leveraged dozens of inauthentic online profiles on Telegram, Twitter, YouTube and social media platform Virasty, which is popular in Iran, to promote the front companies. Nearly all the associated internet accounts have since been removed.

“VIP Recruitment, a center for recruiting respected military personnel into the army, security services and intelligence from Syria and Hezbollah, Lebanon,” said a statement on one of the websites. “Join us to help each other impact the world. Our duty is to protect your privacy.”

The hackers cast a wide net by using various social media platforms to disseminate links about their fake HR scheme. It is unclear how many targets ultimately fell for the ruse. The collected data, which included addresses, contact details and other resume-related data, could still be exploited in the future, Mandiant said. — Reuters

SINGAPORE — A devastating typhoon that tore through the Philippines, Taiwan and China last month, destroying infrastructure and leaving more than 100 people dead, was made significantly worse by human-induced climate change, scientists said in a report on Thursday.

As another typhoon made landfall in Japan, climate researchers said warmer seas were providing extra “fuel” for tropical storms in Asia, making them more dangerous.

Typhoon Gaemi swept across East Asia beginning on July 22, with more than 300mm (11.81 inches) of rainfall falling on Philippine capital Manila in just one day.

Wind speeds as high as 145 mph (232 kph) drove storm waves that sank an oil tanker off the Philippine coast and a cargo ship near Taiwan. Rain from Gaemi also caused fatal mudslides in the Chinese province of Hunan.

Typhoon Gaemi’s wind speeds were around 9 mph more intense and its rainfall up to 14% higher as a result of warmer sea temperatures, according to scientists in a report from World Weather Attribution, an alliance of researchers that analyze the relationship between climate change and extreme weather.

“With global temperatures rising, we are already witnessing an increase in these ocean temperatures, and as a result, more powerful fuel is being made available for these tropical cyclones, increasing their intensity,” Nadia Bloemendaal, researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, told a briefing on Wednesday ahead of the report’s release.

At the same briefing, Clair Barnes, research associate at London’s Grantham Institute, said typhoons were now 30% more likely to occur compared to the pre-industrial age, warning that they will become even more common and intense if global temperature increases reach 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit).

East Asia is accustomed to extreme weather, but its flood prevention infrastructure and emergency response planning are coming under increasing pressure, said Maja Vahlberg, a climate risk consultant with the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.

“Even our best efforts are being stretched to their limits,” she said. — Reuters