A North Korean Hacking groups named ” Zinc” and ” Cerium” have been accused of attempting to hack into several different pharmaceutical companies with the goal of stealing information on how to develop Covid-19 vaccine. They target countries like Canada, France, South Korea, and the U.S. The Russian hacking group “fancy bear” attempted to log in using brute force. Essentially, they just tried a million different passwords. While the Chinese groups posed as World Health Organization officials to try to get the specific targets login information. When asked, Russia representation denied all claims, and North Koreas U.S representative has still not responded to the questions. This is not the first time states have attempted to steal data on Covid-19 vaccines. In July, The UK claims that Russia had attempted to steal info from the Oxford vaccine project. The reason why countries are attempting to steal information is fairly logical. The first country to come out with a proven vaccine gains wealth, bragging rights, and general health benefits. Most states have attempted espionage, rather than developing their own vaccine.
The most interesting part about this article is when it discuses the countries that were targeted vs the countries that are attempting to steal. The democratic countries ( U.S, Canada, France, South Korea, UK) are all trying to make their own vaccine and then distribute it to the world. While more communist countries ( China, North Korea, Russia) are all trying to steal info. Obviously, the communist countries are trying to steal because it is a much more inexpensive method of coming up with a vaccine rather than doing it themselves. Its the same reason why kids cheat on a test: they don’t feel like studying, or they aren’t smart enough to get a good grade so they have to cheat. I think that this goes to show what set up of government allows for the most success. Specifically in this situation , I believe that democratic governments are flexing their ability to have a flexible government. By flexible I mean to have the ability to adapt to any specific challenge. These communist countries, do not have the infrastructure necessary to produce a vaccine at the same rate as the democratic countries. So in turn, they must cheat in order to keep pace with them.
I think that this situation demonstrates national interest very well. Take the U.S vs North Korea. In the U.S right now, there are few problems that are more important to us than getting a vaccine and returning to normalcy. Because of this, the U.S. is putting a massive amount of money into the development of a vaccine. North Korea on the other hand, clearly does not value the development of a vaccine in the same way. This is because North Korea has a number of other problems that take priority: continuing to develop nukes, keeping an eye on their strong democratic neighbors of South Korea and Japan, addressing the mass poverty in their country. Because of North Korea national interests, they probably do not have the funds to keep pace with these strong democratic countries. So in order to try to win the race to find a vaccine, North Korea attempted to steal information. It is important to note however, that the U.S. did not attempt to steal info from North Korea. This is because the U.S. is a world leader, and its not in their national interest to waist their time gathering info on an irrelevant country to them.