Mattis, Jamestown Foundation China Program fellow, 2015
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- Cyber Not Key
Relations AnswersAlt CausesDefense to good cyber relationsAustin, EastWest Institute Professorial Fellow, 2015 (Greg, “Cyber Security: All China’s Fault?”, 8-30, http://www.theglobalist.com/cyber-diplomacy-us-china-problem/) Why is only the United States a problem At one level, the present state of affairs can be explained easily and positively for the United States. It can (afford to) be more strident in its diplomacy than any other Western country because it is more powerful. In addition, relative to most countries that are getting along better with China in cyber affairs, the United States also puts more stock in certain issues of principle, such as human rights protections in cyberspace or theft of intellectual property. Washington also believes that it has to stand up to China on such issues, not least because of the way in which China’s power is disturbing American allies in the Pacific. This is, after all, one motivation of the “rebalance” in U.S. strategic policy. At another level, the style and tone of current U.S. cyber diplomacy toward China looks surprisingly messy. This is unexpected because U.S. diplomacy toward China under Obama has generally been very impressively organized and thought through. The best way to understand the current situation is to point to several negative factors which, in their sum total, undermine the coherence of U.S. cyber diplomacy. They include: A misplaced U.S. sense of moral outrage which, in turn, arises from the mistaken belief that there are unambiguous norms in cyberspace – as if there really were a black letter law like the Ten Commandments, so to speak – that China is flagrantly violating Failure to appreciate China’s deep insecurity in cyberspace (its internal and external security dilemmas) Lack of knowledge of the detail of U.S. cyber espionage and cyber military operations against China (the “need to know” principle keeps the detail totally concealed even from some key players in the U.S. administration who shape cyber diplomacy toward China). In addition, there is no net assessment readily available Unresolved inter-departmental turf disputes (e.g., the Pentagon or NSA skewing the cyber debate for institutional interests) Inflation of the threat from China’s theft of intellectual property (as argued by Jon Lindsay and me) A failure to give due weight to the consideration that most cyber systems are inherently vulnerable and cannot be secured against a determined cyber adversary The emergence of the U.S. cyber security industry as a lobby group that is very alert to all of the above and plays it for commercial gain (e.g. the Mandiant report) A lack of understanding of how dependent China is on the U.S. and Allied supply of communications and information technology An almost hysterical relationship between the two major political parties inside the United States on national security issues A mass media environment that is all too receptive to cyberspace dramas and anti-China stories. Need for an anti-China argument This Democratic Administration is particularly susceptible to some of those traps. Deep down, it feels that China is morally bankrupt. On the economic front at home, it needs an anti-China argument to help buttress its defenses in the face of mass social dislocation arising from the erosion, resurgence and restructuring of the U.S. manufacturing industry. Consider, for example, the 2014 decision to bring court indictments against five PLA personnel for cyber espionage. The court action rather unexpectedly named the Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union (a.k.a. United Steelworkers) among the victims. The labor movement, a key Democratic constituency, has been a particularly active opponent of Administration policy toward China on off-shoring of the manufacturing industry (and other issues such as exchange rate manipulation and human rights). Then there is the eternal Washington “logic” of bureaucratic politics. Consider this. On the one hand, security chiefs all across the United States already have staggeringly large budgets and resources at their disposal. On the other hand, it is very difficult for them to admit that their technical skills and technologies have not been good enough in most cases to stop China’s cyber thievery. Would it be surprising therefore for all of them to fall unconsciously into finding a common public scapegoat, a “whipping boy,” a strategy that downplays other bad cyber actors, such as Russia, Israel, France and even Iran? Enter the China blame game. This is not to say by any means that China is without fault. Far from it. But what is equally undeniable is that the impact of the China cyber threat relative to other threats is exaggerated by the U.S. cybersecurity community. The other side of that same coin is that the U.S. capabilities and reach into Chinese networks is conveniently belittled – and strategically obscured. Major U.S. media, always interested in their ratings and click statistics, are all too happy propagators of that one-sided threat world. Industry as a middleman What is particularly ironic, given all the U.S. charges against China, is the deep integration of the cyber industry sectors of the two countries. China depends on the United States for its own cyber power. Meanwhile, leading U.S. suppliers of communications and information technology are heavily dependent on China in their supply chain or even as a source of final manufacturing. Their level of involvement in China is so deep that they have even lobbied against U.S. sanctions on China for cyber espionage. Cyber Not KeyCyber won’t derailSegal and Lan, CFR Digital and Cyberspace Policy director and China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations deputy director, 2016 (Adam and Tang, “Reducing and Managing U.S.-China Conflict in Cyberspace”, April, http://www.nbr.org/publications/specialreport/pdf/Free/06192016/SR57_US-China_April2016.pdf) Yet despite the gaps in their positions, and the hyperbolic rhetoric that often shows up in the media in both countries about cyberwar, policymakers in Zhongnanhai and the White House appear committed to not letting cyber issues derail the relationship. The September 2015 summit between Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping produced breakthrough agreements on several important cybersecurity measures. Both sides pledged 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.”1 Washington and Beijing also agreed to identify and endorse norms of behavior in cyberspace and establish two high-level working groups and a hotline between the two sides. However, as President Obama acknowledged following the summit in September, “Our work is not yet done. I believe we can expand our cooperation in this area.”2 The U.S.-China cyber agreement could be a model for future international discussions. China and the United Kingdom, for example, reached a similar agreement, and in November 2015 China, Brazil, Russia, the United States, and other members of the Group of Twenty (G-20) accepted the norm against conducting or supporting the cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property.3 After a year of ups and down in the Sino-U.S. cybersecurity relationship, the agreement signed by the two presidents may provide a mechanism to mediate conflict in the future. Failure to build on the agreement, however, could generate greater mistrust that spills over into other aspects of the relationship. U.S. and People’s Republic of China (PRC) forces, for example, are in close contact in the South China Sea, and cyberattacks could quickly escalate a stand-off and, through misperception or miscalculation, lead to military conflict. Defense planners in both countries appear to assume that offense dominates in cyberspace, and so there are strong incentives to strike first, further heightening the risk that a crisis could quickly escalate. A cyberattack that causes damage or destruction could create domestic demand for immediate action that both leaderships would have a hard time ignoring. Directory: wp-content -> uploads -> sites sites -> 587 Return function, r i(X) r i(0) r i(1) r i(2) r i(3) 1 0 2 4 6 Thermal Station, I 2 0 1 5 6 3 0 3 5 6 10 sites -> Medical Radiography Program sites -> Background on the Haitian Earthquake sites -> Desk review yemen sites -> Safe Transitions for the Elderly Patient (step) sites -> District profile Haripur Introduction sites -> Germanie VanTrease and Tyler Tetzloff sites -> For more information sites -> To be completed by the cerf secretariat. Type of submission sites -> Sponsor Content Above the Clutter with Pete Krainik Download 0.59 Mb. Share with your friends:
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