The Obama-Xi Cyber Mirage A digital arms deal that is full of promises but no enforcement.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-obama-xi-cyber-mirage-1443387248
Not long before Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington last week, the Obama Administration leaked that it might sanction Chinese companies and individuals for digitally plundering U.S. trade secrets and intellectual property. That followed an April executive order that declared “significant malicious cyber-enabled activities” to be a “national emergency” punishable by visa bans, asset freezes and other means.
“We’re not going to just stand by while these threats grow,” one Administration official told the Washington Post at the time. “If you think you can just hide behind borders and leap laws and carry out your activities, that’s just not going to be the case.”
Well, never mind. On Friday Presidents Xi and Obama announced a new cyber-agreement that is supposed to put the unpleasantness to rest. A White House fact sheet notes that both sides agreed that “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.”
Other steps include information exchanges; legal cooperation in investigating cybercrimes “in a manner consistent with their respective national laws”; a “high-level joint dialogue mechanism” with regularly scheduled meetings; a “hotline for the escalation of issues”; and a U.N.-influenced effort to “further identify and promote appropriate norms of state behavior in cyberspace.”
All of this is an elaborate way of saying that the two sides agreed to nothing. Though Mr. Obama hailed the deal for creating “architecture to govern behavior in cyberspace that is enforceable and clear,” it transparently is neither. Mr. Xi still insists that his government “does not engage in theft of commercial secrets in any form,” or encourage Chinese companies to do so, as he told The Wall Street Journal last week. So what’s the problem?
As for enforceability, the line about abiding by “respective national laws” gives the game away. In China the Communist Party is by definition above the law, as are the companies and entities it controls. If Mr. Xi won’t admit to the problem, his minions won’t either. Knowing this, U.S. officials will also be reluctant to disclose much of what they know about Chinese cyber-espionage abuses lest they compromise U.S. sources and methods.
All of this means the Chinese are unlikely to be deterred from engaging in the kind of cybertheft that has served them so well, such as the 2007 hack of one of the military contractors building the F-35 fighter jet, which allowed the Chinese to develop the copycat J-20 and J-31 stealth planes. Other victims of suspected Chinese cyberespionage include Canada’s once-giant Nortel Networks, which was driven into bankruptcy in 2009 partly due to the hacking, as well as media companies like Bloomberg and this newspaper.
The agreement gives Mr. Xi the opportunity to play the diplomatic games China has specialized in for years regarding the South China Sea, known to Beijing-watchers as “talk and take.” In the South China version, Beijing has become adept at negotiating endlessly with its Asian neighbors over disputed claims and codes of conduct—all while seizing control of disputed reefs, building islands, and interfering in maritime traffic. To adapt Clausewitz, diplomacy for the Chinese is the continuation of cyberespionage by other means.
The agreement also ignores China’s cyberassaults on U.S. government targets, such as last year’s mega-hack of the Office of Personnel Management. Washington may have good reasons not to codify principles that would prohibit the U.S. from responding to such an attack, but if so it would be good to know if the Administration is forgiving the OPM hack.
In his press conference with Mr. Xi, Mr. Obama said the U.S. would use sanctions and “whatever other tools we have in our tool kit to go after cybercriminals, either retrospectively or prospectively.” But nearly seven years into his Presidency, Mr. Obama isn’t famous for follow through.
The cyber accord looks like another case of Mr. Obama claiming an imaginary moral high ground that sounds tough but is likely to be unenforceable. Expect more digital theft until Beijing pays a price for it, presumably in a future U.S. Administration.
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