In October, Chinese hackers were able to gain access to the World Bank and this month it seems they have penetrated the International Monetary Fund. The analysis, provided by a former British intelligence officer, concludes that China is using this information for geopolitical leverage during the global financial crisis. Certainly sounds plausible but skips several steps in the process of getting from point A to point B in my opinion.

What the Chinese are particularly interested in at the IMF is what loans the IMF is likely to give to other countries,” says Nick Day, a former British intelligence officer who runs Diligence, a private investigative firm that does extensive work for many international corporations and institutions.

“The geopolitics of this is that essentially you’ve got a few countries in the world that are stacked on huge foreign capital reserves — Russia, China, Japan, the Middle East — and the rest of us are pretty much borrowers to those lenders.

“And what the Chinese are looking to do is to get influence over a number of third world countries where there are assets in particular, where there’s minerals, oil, etc. — where there’s wealth that would be strategically useful. And if the IMF is not going to bail them out, or is going to bail them out at a rate which is fairly punitive, then the Chinese can go into those countries and say, “Don’t go to the IMF. Come to us. We’ll bail you out and we want exclusive deals over the next 20 years to all your mining concessions in your country, access to mineral wealth, access to oil’— all the raw materials that China is going to need to keep carrying its economy forward.”