
U.S. developing sanctions against China over cyberthefts - notsony
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/administration-developing-sanctions-against-china-over-cyberespionage/2015/08/30/9b2910aa-480b-11e5-8ab4-c73967a143d3_story.html
======
orf
> “The indictments were a strong move,” said Rob Knake, a former White House
> cyber official

Yeah, you sure showed those peksy Chinese! "Shut it all down boys, the US has
issued indictments against 5 of us. Better stop this hacking nonsense, things
are getting serious".

~~~
briandon
Owning homes, educating one's children, and stashing ill-gotten money overseas
is de rigueur for hypocritical PRC chieftains.

Those five indictments were perhaps a way of gently signalling to the higher-
ups, who do have exposure to the legal machinery of the USA and its allies,
that the golden parachutes they've painstakingly created for themselves
outside of China could easily be taken from them.

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rockyleal
Looking forward to see who sanctions who.

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CountSessine
The wheels turn slowly. Amazing that it's taken this long.

~~~
halviti
The US has been involved in some similar activity, so it will be interesting
to see if anything actually comes of this.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/06/22/u-s-
hacked-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/06/22/u-s-hacked-china-
universities-mobile-phones-snowden-tells-china-press/)

------
vonklaus
This is utter bullshit. This looks like a whitehouse leaked story that is
speaking directly to the Chinese saying:

"we could sanction you, and you're economy is pretty shit right now so rein
your people in and stop promoting IP theft. Also, with that $180B[0] reduction
in your position in t-bonds a few weeks ago, the tables are turning back in
our favor"

Look at this quote from the article:

>The sanctions would be a second major shot at China on the issue. In May
2014, the Obama administration secured indictments on economic spying charges
against five Chinese military members for hacking into the computer systems of
major U.S. steel and other firms.

> The indictments were a strong move, said Rob Knake, a former White House
> cyber official.

Well, five people isn't that many but it was a show of strength, a strong move
if you will, and a definitive stance against the hackers. This all but proves
the US is serious about standing up to China.

From the NYT article about that incident:

The move by the Justice Department was almost certainly symbolic since there
is virtually no chance that the Chinese would turn over the five People’s
Liberation Army members named in the indictment.[1]

Ahh, got it political posturing via the American media doing some public
scolding and little else.

EDIT: This is probably the most infuriating part though, snuck in right at the
end:

>The sanctions would not be imposed in retaliation for China’s hacks of the
Office of Personnel Management databases, which compromised the personal and
financial data of more than 22 million current and former government employees
and family members. The data heists, which took place last year but were
discovered this year, were judged as having been carried out for traditional
intelligence purposes — not to benefit Chinese industry.

So, the message we seem to be sending is steal 7% of OUR ENTIRE COUNTRIES
PERSONAL DATA, no biggie. Hurt a few companies steel and energy competitive
advantage and we will threaten you, then ultimately back down. Why? Because
publicly we want to reaffirm our commitment to valuing companies much higher
than our own citizens.

[0][http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-09/china-
slas...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-09/china-slashes-u-s-
debt-stake-by-180-billion-and-bonds-shrug)

[1][http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/20/us/us-to-charge-chinese-
wo...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/20/us/us-to-charge-chinese-workers-with-
cyberspying.html?_r=0)

------
irixusr
Pot meet kettle.

~~~
kittiepryde
Can you sight your sources?

~~~
rockyleal
There's tons of better sources, but this can give you an idea:

"NSA 'engaged in industrial espionage' \- Snowden"

[http://www.bbc.com/news/25907502](http://www.bbc.com/news/25907502)

~~~
vonklaus
While I think it is possible that the US is engaged in economic spying for
profit, there isn't as much info about them providing data to companies
directly for profit, and certainly not in that link. Industrial spying is a
power grab more than an economic one. Your article noted Siemens as a spying
target. Here is a a possible reason for industrial spying:

> Stuxnet functions by targeting machines using the Microsoft Windows
> operating system and networks, then seeking out Siemens Step7 software.[0]

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet)

------
IIAOPSW
I doubt it will come to fruition.

Where do I start.

1\. Sanctions are only effective if a lot of other countries also do it. Who
would be willing to follow suit because of a cyber skirmish that doesn't
involve them? Traditionally the Europeans would follow suit with this type of
thing. But hell, Russia is taking land in their backyard and the Europeans
can't even come to a consensus on that. Snow balls chance they form a unified
opinion on China. Furthermore they are tired of following America in its
quixotic foreign adventures. How about Australia? Nope. Their economy nowadays
is shipping mineral wealth to China. Anything short of the PLAN maneuvering
towards Sydney would make them think about sanctions. By the same reasoning,
discount any country that appears darkly colored on this map:
[http://imgur.com/msbZwo6](http://imgur.com/msbZwo6)

2\. Is America's geopolitical enemy China or Russia? Because right now they
are getting quite close with each-other. Russia's economy would be even more
fucked without China buying its gas, and China needs resources like I need
adderall (hint: a lot). If you try to isolate and contain both at once, you'll
just end up with a regional power bloc that parallels or even surpasses US
hegemony.

3\. Right now the Chinese economic slowdown has caused ripples in the world
economies. Even though the Chinese stock market is relatively contained, the
mere fear that the Chinese engine is stalling has caused a small panic around
the world. Are we really so confident in our post-2008 recovery to just yolo
it and inform investors that we will be kicking China while its down? This is
like pointing a gun at your foot hoping to blow that hang-nail straight off.

4\. China isn't some two-bit country. It will look like America is trying to
use diplomatic and military clout in lieu of actual competitive advantage to
maintain global dominance.

I'd like to imagine that Obama is smart enough not to actually do this (or
only have a hopelessly watered down version). Here is my pet theory: Donald
goddamn Trump. This upcoming election year the crotchety-old-man demographic
has gone mainstream. Trump has bought China (and Mexico and a few other
things) to the forefront. If status-quo candidate Clinton is to have a chance,
the status-quo needs to look anti-China. Obama can help with that by throwing
some hot air around and making some empty threats at China. Its ok, the
Chinese understand that election year rhetoric means nothing. Maybe while Xi
is dining at 1600 next week, Obama will tell him all of this explicitly.

If you really wanted to f over the Chinese and start a new cold war, start by
undermining their canal plans to circumvent the straight of Malaca, promote
regime change / instability in Pakistan (see: maritime silk road) and a few
other countries (the other silk road project), conclude the Iran deal for good
measure, finance Japanese political groups that want to amend away the passive
part of their constitution, Strengthen ties with that other billion-people
country in the region (India), and use Turkey to keep on doing what their
doing with the Uigers. Warning: about half of this may result in another 9/11
at some point.

------
1971genocide
Good Good Let the Hate flow through !

A cyber-security cold war would be the best thing to happen to the CS industry
and a lot better than real wars.

~~~
Alupis
> and a lot better than real wars

Instead of people dying, everyone just loses all their credit and savings.
That is until someone shuts down a dam and opens all the flood gates, or shuts
off the power grid to a city, shut down airport flight tracking (or make
planes show up where they are not), etc.

Cyber war seems almost scarier than a "real" war - because it almost
exclusively targets civilians instead of combatants.

~~~
viraptor
It depends how you look at it. If what you listed is possible to do, then it's
possible to do right now - no war is needed. If people really expect such
actions, then security will finally stop being an afterthought.

Credit cards and savings are already being stolen. Industrial controls are not
yet taken over, (ignoring one-offs like stux) but they're definitely not
controlled very well (have a look at the project which scanned the internet
for exposed VNC). While flight tracking is isolated, false flight plans
already stopped take-offs for some time.

Sure, governments can go much further than anyone has so far. But if we start
to really think about it and protect systems for that possibility - great!

------
jordache
isn't the us government hacking all the time too?

~~~
roel_v
While true as an abstract point, is there any evidence that US government
shares (on a large scale) intel or stolen IP with commercial firms? I mean
it's one thing if a high-ranking official would say to a CEO 'we found out
company XYZ is bidding x million dollars against you'; but it's another to
systematically feed design documents, customer records etc. into firms and
keep that under wraps. Occam's Razor says that at some point, someone would
have spilled the beans - long before Snowden.

~~~
fspeech
Do you think that the US government won't share with industry if another
country is leading in research and development?

~~~
roel_v
That's not my question. My question is, if it would happen at a detailed scale
(i.e., anything more than can be communicated in ad-hoc conversations), how
likely is it that this could be kept under wraps?

My point being, of course, that I think that's highly unlikely, given how
apparently even a US president can't stop the world from finding out that he
fingerbanged a single intern. Therefore, the most logical conclusion would be
that it doesn't happen. To all those saying it does: why isn't there proof of
it? (please no 'the landing on the moon didn't happen' tinfoil hattery)

