For those who are calling the actions of the US "hypocritical" and others who are indiscriminately defending the US by saying "but we didn't do this and that" - don't forget to distinguish between individuals and countries.
Those who are doing this in China are most likely not doing this for China - they are taking advantage of state resources to benefit themselves and their cronies. As much as they are stealing from the US, they are stealing from their own citizens. This is good old-fashioned corruption.
The loop of corruption tends to be more subtle and longer in the US, but it's also most likely the case many people who are engaged in espionage, corporate or otherwise, are out for themselves and using the information, expenditures, etc, to directly or indirectly benefit themselves.
Random people from China and France and the US arguing among themselves pretending that the enemy is definitely the spying apparatus in the other country and not their own and so on is kind of missing the point and worse, doing exactly what the perpetrators want us to be doing. The discord between nations, manufactured or not, is their raison d'etre - it's what keeps them funded.
With that said, holding specific individuals responsible and make their lives difficult is sounds pretty good to me. I wish this happened more often, for US officials abusing their authority as well as foreign officials.
Edit: The point isn't that these people aren't employed by the Chinese government, but that the end goal is almost certainly private gains. China isn't some single unified entity where all government employees are working tirelessly for "China" or in this case, to benefit corporate titans who are much richer than they are - economic espionage on behalf of specific private sector entities is almost certainly about some quid pro quo by which government employees are monetizing their official capacity.
This is exactly what I thought. Think about the organizational challenge and the bureaucracy involved, there's no way for a "secret" spy unit's head to evaluate the economic value of all those targets, select for the ones needed, carry out the operation and distribute gained information to the corresponding domestic parties. It must work in the opposite way: the military set up the unit and recruited/trained the people for strategic missions like hacking through US military and private contractors. In the process of doing this, these people came across many other stuff, which they sell to other players through black market or backroom dealings to compensate themselves over the laughable salary they receive from the government. And I guess that's also how they got caught in the first place.
Bottom line is this, for your Particular corporation to be really helped by your government, there must be some corruption involved. I think this is true everywhere, but especially true in China.
"Those who are doing this in China are most likely not doing this for China - they are taking advantage of state resources to benefit themselves and their cronies"
Quite the contrary. Odds are that the people in China that could access computers, and the people that could spend months doing this ARE working for the government of China.
It is the Government of China he who has resources, not so individuals.
Individuals in China could be at much script kiddies. Education is poor at the moment, and most people are so poor that just buying a computer is a sacrifice.
You think that people that work in the intelligence industrial complex don't use information they are privileged to for their own economic advantage? Heck, even members of congress are allowed to buy and sell stocks in companies even when there are conflicts of interest.
It may not be as direct as "I'll sell you 10k files from your main foreign competitor", but just because its done at arms length in the US doesn't make it any less corrupt.
Those who are doing this in China are most likely not doing this for China - they are taking advantage of state resources to benefit themselves and their cronies. As much as they are stealing from the US, they are stealing from their own citizens. This is good old-fashioned corruption.
The loop of corruption tends to be more subtle and longer in the US, but it's also most likely the case many people who are engaged in espionage, corporate or otherwise, are out for themselves and using the information, expenditures, etc, to directly or indirectly benefit themselves.
Random people from China and France and the US arguing among themselves pretending that the enemy is definitely the spying apparatus in the other country and not their own and so on is kind of missing the point and worse, doing exactly what the perpetrators want us to be doing. The discord between nations, manufactured or not, is their raison d'etre - it's what keeps them funded.
With that said, holding specific individuals responsible and make their lives difficult is sounds pretty good to me. I wish this happened more often, for US officials abusing their authority as well as foreign officials.
Edit: The point isn't that these people aren't employed by the Chinese government, but that the end goal is almost certainly private gains. China isn't some single unified entity where all government employees are working tirelessly for "China" or in this case, to benefit corporate titans who are much richer than they are - economic espionage on behalf of specific private sector entities is almost certainly about some quid pro quo by which government employees are monetizing their official capacity.