US case against Chinese economic spying opens debate on the limits of digital theft

Tensions between China and the US has escalated to new heights when an unsealed indictment revealed that the federal government has accused five Chinese military officers of digital theft for economic purposes.

The mainland has since reacted strongly to the accusations, calling the indictment "absurd," Bloomberg said. The indictment also caused China to pull out from a US-China cyber working group to discuss cyberspace rules, which was reportedly viewed as a mechanism to manage the differences between the two nations.

On the other hand, Center for Strategic and International Studies fellow James Lewis in Washington said that the indictment has been brewing since last year, and was postponed after Edward Snowden's revelations indicated that the US has an ongoing massive surveillance operation itself. Lewis said the US government felt the need to shift focus on Snowden's revelations to China's undertaking to steal trade secrets for economic purposed.

"We've told the Chinese we know they spy on us for military purposes and we spy on them for military purposes, which is what big powers do. What's weird is when you spy purely for commercial purposes, and that has to stop," Lewis told Bloomberg.

Cybersecurity expert Adam Segal at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York said that US' final goal might probably be to set the norm that economic espionage is off-limits.

"What they wanted to do was begin this push to pressure the Chinese, but more importantly they could go to other countries and say we are trying to create this norm that puts this sort of spying off limits. Snowden derailed this massive push, but I don't know if they are picking up the pieces to try to march forward or if this is just an appendix."

According to three people who had knowledge with the administration debate on how to confront China with the charges, prosecutors do not expect much to extradite the hackers and get them to appear physically in a US courtroom. Bloomberg said that the indictment could probably be the US' intentions to have it in public document about the extensive evidence the country was able to obtain thanks to its surveillance operation, which was obviously a counterpoint to Snowden's allegations.

Tags

US-China Relations, Chinese military spying case, Edward Snowden, Edward Snowden leak

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