From October 20 to 22 along the banks of Shanghai's Huangpu River, the 2026 Sustainable Global Leaders Conference returns once again. Nobel and Turing Award winners will take the stage to discuss the future and trends of technology, and the popular professor who "rescues" people from anxiety and the era of involution, Michael McFarlane, will engage in a live dialogue with Xiang Biao.

Limited seats available, first come first served. Let us embark together on this journey of sustainability. On October 1, 2026, the newly revised National Defense Mobilization Law of the People's Republic of China officially took effect. This law underwent a major overhaul after 16 years, and one provision deserves particular attention: Article 60 of the new law addresses which entities should legally undertake national defense duties, listing 13 categories of industries. The corresponding Article 51 of the old law listed 12 categories. The additional category is "cybersecurity."

Qi An Xin believes that the core significance of this change lies in the fact that cybersecurity has been formally upgraded from a "communications support sub-item" within the national defense mobilization system to an industry category capable of independently undertaking duties. This also means that cybersecurity construction has shifted from being "compressible informatization spending" to an "unavoidable compliance expenditure," entering a new phase of rigid mandates.

The Leap for Cybersecurity: From "Sub-Item" to "Independent Category"

Comparing Article 60 of the newly revised National Defense Mobilization Law with Article 51 of the old law, there is only one difference. The position of the addition deserves attention: cybersecurity was inserted between "telecommunications" and "medicine and health," becoming the fourth category.

The old law's Article 51 (2010) listed: 1. Transportation, 2. Postal services, 3. Telecommunications, 4. Medicine and health, 5. Food and grain supply, 6. Engineering and construction, 7. Energy and chemicals, 8. Large water conservancy facilities, 9. Civil nuclear facilities, 10. News media, 11. National defense research and production, 12. Municipal facility support. The new law's Article 60 (2026) lists: 1. Transportation, 2. Postal services, 3. Telecommunications, 4. Cybersecurity (newly added), 5. Medicine and health, 6. Food and grain supply, 7. Engineering and construction, 8. Energy and chemicals, 9. Large water conservancy facilities, 10. Civil nuclear facilities, 11. News media, 12. National defense research and production, 13. Municipal facility support.

Becoming an independent category from a sub-item changes the meaning: in the old mobilization system, the mobilization attribute of cybersecurity was long attached to the telecommunications item, treated as a sub-item of communications support. Incidental capabilities are called upon as needed, while independent categories fulfill duties by responsibility. The new law separates it out as its own category. The Constitution and Law Committee of the National People's Congress noted in its revision review explanation that one of the important directions of this legislative amendment is to "promote the application of advanced technologies in national defense mobilization." Article 8 of the new law further clarifies: "The state promotes the application of advanced technologies in national defense mobilization and develops national defense mobilization forces in emerging domains."

Qi An Xin security experts believe that including cybersecurity in Article 60 will drive cyberspace to evolve from an "information interaction space" into an "intelligent action domain." Once the territory expands into the cyber domain, there must be corresponding industries to undertake duties. And duties in the cyber domain can only be undertaken by professionals.

Strategic Layout at the National Defense Level: An Inevitable Choice for Adapting to Cyber Warfare in the New Era

Writing cybersecurity into the National Defense Mobilization Law needs to be observed alongside another strategic thread. In April 2024, the Information Support Force of the Chinese People's Liberation Army was established, simultaneously forming a new service structure layout of "Military Aerospace Force, Cyberspace Force, Information Support Force, and Joint Logistic Support Force." The Ministry of National Defense made clear that the Cyberspace Force's mission is to "solidify the national cyber border defense, promptly detect and resist cyber intrusions, and safeguard national cyber sovereignty and information security," while the Information Support Force serves as "the key support for coordinating the construction and application of network information systems."

Behind these measures, the core issue is that cyberspace confrontation is intensifying, and real-world cases from an international perspective profoundly demonstrate that cyberspace is leaping from an "auxiliary battlefield" to a "primary battlefield." Taking the US-Israel-Iran conflict of February 2026 as an example, foreign reports cited by Reference News indicated that Israeli and US military operations against Iran "are spreading into cyberspace." A popular religious app in Iran with over 5 million downloads was hacked, and users received targeted push notifications such as "the time of reckoning has come." An organization called the "Islamic Cyber Resistance Axis" claimed responsibility for multiple attacks, with targets including the air defense systems of Israeli defense company Rafael.

More noteworthy is the shift in attack patterns. Ukrainian cybersecurity officials disclosed that Russian cyberattacks against energy infrastructure are shifting from "direct destruction" to "intelligence collection"—maintaining covert access within networks, mapping facilities, tracking repair crews, and assessing post-strike recovery speeds to calibrate targets for subsequent precision physical strikes. This means that confrontation in cyberspace no longer has a clear distinction between "wartime" and "peacetime"; infiltration, reconnaissance, and pre-positioning are already underway during peacetime. Meanwhile, Russia's "information confrontation" system integrates cyber intrusions, electromagnetic suppression, public opinion manipulation, and psychological warfare into one, achieving integrated "cyber plus electromagnetic plus firepower" strikes. Cyberspace is not only an independent digital battlefield but also a key link deeply embedded in the physical battlefield.

A common feature across these conflicts is that the automation threshold for cyberattacks continues to decline, and the pace of confrontation approaches machine speed. The traditional linear process of "wartime mobilization, force concentration, mission deployment" is almost ineffective when facing minute-level cyberattacks. Moving capability building from "wartime mobilization" forward to "peacetime reserves" is an inevitable choice for responding to this reality.

Qi An Xin's Capability Alignment: Supporting Cybersecurity Construction with Combat-Proven Capabilities

Previously, Qi An Xin Group Chairman Qi Xiangdong presented a set of data at the BCS2026 conference: IDC predicts that by 2026, the scale of the US cybersecurity industry will exceed 1 trillion yuan, while China's will be only about 80 billion yuan, a 12-fold gap. "China's cybersecurity industry still has a long way to go."

And the inclusion of cybersecurity in the National Defense Mobilization Law will inevitably inject a new growth engine into the industry. After all, Article 60 brings about a change in the nature of demand: from compressible informatization spending to unavoidable compliance expenditure. In this shift, leading comprehensive security vendors possess a natural first-mover advantage.

Taking Qi An Xin as an example, the company is committed to building systematic and highly combat-oriented cybersecurity attack and defense capabilities, threat intelligence and threat detection capabilities, situational awareness capabilities, and emergency response capabilities, and has formed a mature and professional heavy-protection operations mechanism. In 2025, Qi An Xin actively participated in various national-level cybersecurity heavy-protection tasks, providing 7x24 emergency response security services for major events such as the National "Two Sessions," the September 3 military parade, the Harbin Asian Winter Games, the Chengdu World Games, the National Games, and the Shanghai Import Expo. As of the end of 2025, it had cumulatively undertaken 108 security protection tasks during important national and regional events and conferences.

In terms of cybersecurity product coverage, a CCID report shows that Qi An Xin's overall cybersecurity product revenue has ranked first in market share for seven consecutive years, with endpoint security, security services, and cloud security ranking first in the market for eight consecutive years, security management platforms leading the market for five consecutive years, and UTM and Web security ranking among the top two in market share for multiple consecutive years. With a comprehensive and solid product matrix, it continues to lead China's cybersecurity market, fully demonstrating Qi An Xin's industry-leading position from market data to product capabilities, and from technical strategy to combat implementation.

Conclusion: An "Independent Category" in the National Defense Mobilization Law

As an "independent category" written into the National Defense Mobilization Law, the cybersecurity industry for the first time is no longer merely a market participant but has been granted an institutional identity within the national defense mobilization system by law, solidifying the rigid status of cybersecurity construction. Against the backdrop of an intelligent warfare wave sweeping the globe, a national defense duty support system for cybersecurity built on a legal foundation, supported by industry, and oriented toward real combat will become an important barrier for safeguarding national cyberspace security in the future.