While the U.S.’ recent indictments against five alleged PLA hackers targeted the human side of China’s repeatedly disavowed cyberespionage forces, The Wall Street Journal focuses on its physical infrastructure, identifying a number of facilities thought to house the Third Department of the People’s Liberation Army’s General Staff Department, or 3PLA. From James T. Areddy, Paul Mozur, and Danny Yadron:

At some 3PLA units in Beijing and Shanghai, where arrays of satellite dishes often dwarf the walls surrounding them, visitors face stiff-faced guards and written warnings. Security is less tight at others, including a farm field that sprouts dozens of thin radio towers next to a base in northern Shanghai. Outside Beijing, a 3PLA base thought to primarily monitor Europe operates from a secret town tucked into a mountainside and hidden behind a dozen normal-looking residential towers—though its more than 70 structures and soccer field can be seen from nearby hills.

[…] Coordinates for 61800’s likely “collection facilities,” provided by Mr. Stokes, lead toward another Shanghai district known for a large steelworks and on to a zigzagging lane not shown on some maps. Near a large prison, a well-guarded PLA facility ringed by high walls containing more than a dozen satellite dishes. The surrounding onion fields bristle with dozens of thin antennas that are interlinked with cable to form big radio-reception nets.

And at the edge of a nature reserve for migrating birds on a Shanghai island, a sign bearing the PLA’s logo and marked “Unit 61398” warns against digging because of an “optical cable for national defense underground.” A stone’s throw away is where major Chinese links to the Internet, including the China-U.S. Cable Network and Trans-Pacific Express, enter China after crossing from Oregon. [Source]