Pentagon Ups Hacking Accusations Against China

wiredmikey writes "A new report from the Pentagon marked the most explicit statement yet from the United States that it believes China's cyber espionage is focused on the U.S. government, as well as American corporations. China kept up a steady campaign of hacking in 2012 that included attempts to target U.S. government computer networks, which could provide Beijing a better insight into America's policy deliberations and military capabilities, according to the Pentagon's annual assessment of China's military. 'China is using its computer network exploitation capability to support intelligence collection against the U.S. diplomatic, economic, and defense industrial base sectors that support U.S. national defense programs,' said the report to Congress (PDF). The digital espionage was part of a broader industrial espionage effort that seeks to secure military-related U.S. and Western technology, allowing Beijing to scale back its reliance on foreign arms manufacturers, the report said. One day later, Beijing dismissed the Pentagon's report that accused it of widespread cyberspying on the U.S. government, rejecting it as an 'irresponsible' attempt to drum up fear of China as a military threat."

Comments

Surprising?

[venom85]

Is this supposed to surprise anyone? And, more importantly, does anyone out there actually believe that the US isn't doing the same thing toward [insert long list of nations here]? I, for one, certainly believe they are.

Re:Surprising?

[Austerity Empowers]

Compared to a communist dictatorship, yes we are. I am free to talk about how much my government sucks, loudly and with great fanfare. It's not that we don't suck, it's that they suck much, much more.

The question is whether we should continue to prop up their mfg industry which seems to be a major attack vector for their espionage activities. Pre-owned cars have a market, pre-ripped jeans have a market, I'm not sure who the market is for pre-rooted machines.

Polite pretense

[onyxruby]

How long do we uphold the polite pretense that China isn't behind the overwhelming majority of real world hacking? How long are we supposed to avoid to avoid offending them and continue to allow them to steal all of our intellectual property that we supposedly value? At least the Chinese government actually bothers to protect Chinese businesses from foreigners unlike the US government which only protects big business. Turn the other cheek, what if your out of cheeks?

Re:Polite pretense

[chill]

Trade secrets, such as formulas and manufacturing processes are the responsibility of the individual companies to protect, not government. Copyrights and Patents are given governmental protection thru legal prosecution because they are, by nature, disclosed to the public. They are published and the protection of secrecy is not available.

We didn't abandon a manufacturing based economy. The United States is the number one manufacturing country in the world, measured by production. What has gone away is the manufacturing JOBS. This is a result of automation as much as outsourcing, and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. Brush up on the history of the Luddite Movement and the Industrial Revolution to understand how futile an attempt at stopping progress and efficiency by refusing to automate is.

If you aren't talking about copyright and patents, then the answer becomes -- do we value the quality process improvements in Chinese manufacturing more than the supposed "theft" of trade secrets? I'd argue the answer is "no". We gain more from the stuff we're buying from China being better quality than we lose in any lost competitiveness.

I'd also argue that the competitive companies in the U.S. are not sitting still. IP that is "stolen" is ever evolving. If a Chinese company takes Process v1.0 and uses it to improve their manufacturing, they're still behind the company who is constantly upgrading their processes and already on Process v3.0. Copying isn't innovation, and innovation is much more important economically than mass production.

Re:Polite pretense

[localman57]

Trade secrets, such as formulas and manufacturing processes are the responsibility of the individual companies to protect, not government.

I would agree that it's up to them to protect themselves from other companies. But individual companies don't stand a chance of protecting against attacks from the resources available to a nation-state. It is reasonable to expect our government to take action to prevent hacking by the Chinese military and other government sponsored efforts, in the same way that we would it expect it to protect some office building in Hawaii from being burglurized by Chinese special forces.

Government morons - just fix the problem

[Indy1]

Null route all the Chinese networks, problem solved. Worked great on my mail server, amount of spam I got dropped massively.

guess those

[nimbius]

sequestration cuts are getting a little close.
Seriously, terrorism or communism. I only have enough patience for one government-sponsored boogey man at a time.
Schedule it between the mandatory monthly fiscal cliff panic and the gay marriage thing if you could...or if you can roll it into some weird freedom war that works too.

Let's Troll 'em!

[caspy7]

I say we request that businesses and government agencies (especially ones we know they've gone after) set up poorly secured areas with misinformation about "important" projects and such.
Not only do we get them with misinformation, but try to bury them with gobs of data in the form of poorly scanned (un-OCRable) image files.

(Yes, I know the plan probably has flaws, but a boy can dream.)

Re:Not sure why this isn't a declaration of war?

[aaaaaaargh!]

Why is it not a declaration of war. Hm, let me guess... because signals intelligence is not a declaration of war?

Re:You better watch your back bro....

[jellomizer]

[sarcasm]Yes, like forcing the United States into a real finical crisis is a good idea for China Self interest.[/sarcasm]

China buys US Dollars to keep their own economy stable. Also the United States is their biggest buyer. Put all Americans in the poor house, you have lost your own economy.