Last week, the United States and China came to an agreement on cyberspying. What are its consequences likely to be?
The agreement addresses a big U.S. concern.
Over the last several years the United States has repeatedly raised concerns about China’s efforts to steal commercial secrets and pass them to Chinese companies. These concerns have sometimes led to unfortunate manifestations of paranoia, but are rooted in real worries. China has indeed sought to hack into many U.S. businesses. Thus, China’s apparent assent to an arrangement under which:
neither country’s government will conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, including trade secrets or other confidential business information, with the intent of providing competitive advantages to companies or commercial sectors.
This marks an important (and unexpected) concession to the United States.
However, its scope is limited.
The agreement does not address many of the more dramatic recent examples of Chinese spying, such as the apparent hack of the U.S. security clearance system, which led Washington to withdraw embassy personnel from Beijing for fear that the cover of CIA operatives has been blown. One excellent reason why the agreement doesn’t address this kind of spying is that the United States does it too, is very good at it, and doesn’t want to stop. US officials have expressed chagrin at the hacking of U.S. security clearances. They have also expressed some envy, and made it clear that if they could do the same to the Chinese government, they would.
Furthermore, the Chinese government can still hack U.S. companies, and steal their secrets with impunity. The only difference is that they cannot pass the secrets that they have learned to Chinese companies to give them competitive advantage. Gary Hufbauer at the Peterson Institute suggests that the “exact lines of demarcation” will mean that defense contractors remain fair game, while other companies, such as telecoms, might perhaps be off limits. This seems to misunderstand the agreement. The United States has not only been willing to hack into telecommunications companies, but also into energy companies, and, for that matter, universities and human rights organizations. It is unlikely that China’s sensibilities are any daintier. The agreement limits the goals of spying, not the targets being spied upon.
Read the full piece at The Washington Post.
- Publication Type:Other Writing
- Publication Date:10/01/2015