Let’s be realistic: every nation has government spies. China however, had several incidents in which it hacked information and secrets from American companies… but for how long?
The answer to this is unclear, but what’s known for sure is that this has been apart of China’s strategy for quite some time. China has been denying these accusations from the U.S. but just on Monday, the United States listed 5 members of the China’s People’s Liberation Army and accused them for looking into American Companies and observing trade tactics and secrets.
The argument here is that many countries engage themselves in industrial espionage and that the spotlight shouldn’t be placed solely on China. However, according to Kevin Mandia, the founder of Cyber Secutriy firm Mandia, China does it excessively.
Investigators claim that Chinese spies are doing this to help modernize the nation and find solutions to certain economic issues that may take many years to resolve.
According to a CNN article, “The campaign has targeted industries from agricultural to aviation and computing. Today’s indictment indicated that recent targets included a solar panel and manufacture, aluminum and steel producers and a company that designs nuclear powerplants.”
The U.S. has good reasons to suspect. Dungun “Greg” Chung, an employee at NASA’s space shuttle program was convicted back in 2009 when thousands of secret files were found under his home in California. According to prosecutors, Chung provided these documents to several Chinese officials, going in depth about space and military technology.
Chung was sentenced over 15 years in prison.
The Obama Administration plans to raise the bar with military espionage and economic theft. Of course, China wouldn’t take this so lightly and on Tuesday, the Minister of Foreign Affairs stated that “it is widely known that the U.S. has for a long time been using its advanced technology and infrastructure to perpetrate large-sclae teft of secrets and eavesdropping against foreign political leaders, enterprises and individuals.”
The U.S. charged many of the individuals who were accused.