An hour after Nova started her attack on the Chinese internet, the government shut it down. Not only did they hit their kill switch, they even went so far as to physically cut the cables that connected their data centers.

Despite all of the havoc she had caused, Nova didnt attempt to go after the civilian infrastructure systems. She knew it would cause massive casualties if she disabled the power grid, transportation system, emergency services, utilities, or even the financial market. Though there was some collateral damage done to the marketplace, as a system freeze was still costly, it was as limited as she could manage to make it.

So even though the cyberattack was definitely savage, it was specifically aimed at the Chinese government and normal people basically only had the minor inconvenience that any interruption of their internet service would cause.

Thus, Nova had singlehandedly brought down a country that boasted the worlds second largest economy, the highest population, and the most goods exported, all by nothing more than the strategic application of her qubits and a wave of her virtual hand. Without even firing a single bullet, much less a protracted war, a highly industrialized nation had been brought to its knees and the world would soon know it. After all, with all of their connections to the world at large cut, it was impossible for anyone outside of China to even notice that a problem existed. That, in fact, was the only hint that anything was wrong with the country, though the timing of the attack ensured that very few peoplemostly those dealing with international trade and foreign marketplaceswould notice that the disconnect had even happened.

At least in a short amount of time, anyway; it wouldnt be long before the rest of the world cottoned to the issues China was facing beyond the recent swarm of missiles and bombs bringing the military to a screeching halt.

The Chinese government was forced to implement a countrywide curfew as they scrambled to recover, using every bit of power they had in a desperate attempt to recover from the brutal attack.

Thankfully, Nova hadnt gone after their energy sector, or they would have been crippled and millions, if not dozens or hundreds of millions, of their citizens would have died.

...

Whats the extent of the damages? Zi Jinping asked. He had been noticing that every computer monitor near him was displaying a mocking image of a certain fictional anthropomorphic animal that was often used to mock him. Even worse, the image would only appear when he was the only one looking at a particular screen, proving that he was being singled out for individual attention by whoever was behind the attack on their internet, and it was proving a very effective distraction and keeping him from paying full attention to the ongoing attacks in Fujian.

Were still evaluating it, as the attack disabled every network we have and forced us to rely on physical verification face to face rather than network diagnostics, the head of the Internet Security Bureau reported. But we estimate that the damage is severe, and it might even be unrecoverable.

You call yourself the leader of our most technologically advanced department and you cant even tell me the extent of the damage this cyberattack caused? Zi Jinping snapped. Things were already grim with the overwhelming and ongoing attacks in Fujian, and now he had to deal with a completely unprecedented cyberattack crippling every government service.

Were being as careful as we can in order to limit the potential for the attacker to cause further damage, sir. All we know now is that... the ISP briefly paused, then sighed, all we know is that we dont know anything, sir. Nothing we tried could stop whoever was behind the attack, and they didnt leave behind a calling card, so we cant even tell who they are. All we know is that weve never seen anything like this before. I dont think anyone has.

So you dont have a way of making sure another cyberattack on this scale cant happen?

Unfortunately, we dont. The only thing we can do is bring the great firewall up to full strength and prevent any kind of information that originates from outside China from coming in. That should, in theory, prevent a repetition of this attack, since nobody believes it originated from inside China. The biggest problem with that is that we wont be able to interact with the rest of the world. Well be crippling our own financial market and the economic damage from that will be... considerable, sir.

President Zi pinched the bridge of his nose and ordered, Do it. We cant let the rest of the world know about this attack, either, so do whatever it takes to restore everything to how it was before. Clear everything that was mentioned about it and add all the terms to the blacklist.

Sir, thats impossible. We cant use our backups, as the attacker encrypted some of them and deleted others. They even lit our data centers on fire after disabling the fire suppression systems. If we want to recover any of the encrypted data, we either need to contact the attacker and get the decryption key from them, or spend who knows how long decrypting it ourselves, the director said in a shaky voice.

Then

Just as the president was about to ask why the attacker didnt cause more damage when they clearly could have done so, someone barged into the room without knocking. Before he could vent his anger on the interloper, the man panted, our Beidou Navigation Satellite System is in trouble!

Fuck, President Zi thought. He had finally realized what the attacker was really after: their navsats. Everything else was nothing but a massive smokescreen.

While we were focused on the websites and servers, they used the distraction to gain control of our navsats. Then they ordered the satellites to use all of their available fuel to deorbit and locked us out of the system so we cant stop it, the man continued.

Thirty.... Thirty fucking satellites that had cost billions to develop and send into space, replacing their reliance on the American GPS network with self-reliance, were going to be brought crashing down by the unprecedented cyberattack. All the time spent on research and development, brought down within minutes by a single determined attacker. All of their blood, sweat, and tears, lost! Just like that!

And in addition to the financial cost of replacing them, much less launching them, the inability of devices to use GPS navigation was still secondary. What was crucial now was that the targeting systems of their missiles and most of their standoff weapons, much less their entire fucking Navy, had been taken down! That was a far, far more severe blow to them and their ambitions than a mere economic loss that they could easily recover from given a short amount of time.

FUUUUUUUCK the president shouted in a rage, then threw the glass of water in front of him to the wall. The sound of shattering glass echoed the shattering of the mans ambitions as he forcibly harnessed his rage, lest he have a stroke and die of anger.