This is really pretty interesting. On Dec. 15th, 2011, the editorial board of the Washington Post wrote an op-ed that called for the US government to directly confront China on its "massive cyberwar against the United States." The op-ed pointed out that PLA hackers are trying to penetrate US systems (including government agencies, tech firms, critical infrastructure, and private e-mail accounts of American citizens), and they are succeeding. Essentially, the op-ed argued that everyone knows China is engaging in massive cyber-espionage, but no one is doing anything about it.
However, with the recent Wall Street Journal report that the NSA has identified the Chinese groups involved in this cyber-espionage, the US government has no excuse to directly confront the Chinese. The Washington Post believes that the Obama administration should "demand that Beijing shut down the military-backed groups; if it does not do so, they could be subjected to countermeasures, including sanctions against individuals."
This part made me smile. The Washington Post acknowledged that this response could anger the Chinese, but the loss of national and economic security "is simply too important to ignore."
The rest of the op-ed can be found here.
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I'm impressed with the Washington Post; an entire newspaper called out the Chinese government. I don't know about all of you, but every time I read a report about billions of dollars of US intellectual property stolen and thousands of US jobs lost to Chinese cyber-espionage, I get riled up. Is it time for Uncle Sam to grow a spine? Or do political considerations (i.e. the debt) make this too touchy a subject? I liked this op-ed so much because the editorial board essentially said "political considerations be damned, this has gone too far."
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