On the other hand, while China engages in espionage to inform its decision makers, it also shares the information it collects with Chinese companies. The United States considers espionage as a nation-state activity conducted solely for the benefit of government decision makers to understand the capabilities, intentions and activities of potential adversaries and to protect the security interests of the United States. 4 The United States conducts espionage against other nations to furnish its military and political decision makers with the necessary information to inform policy, influence military readiness, and positively impact military outcomes. 3Įspionage, in one form or another, is a common nation-state activity that has existed for thousands of years. This approach will result in a cybersecurity model that recognizes the value of a defense-in-depth approach and eliminates any notion that a single solution can prevent the Chinese from stealing the Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) most valuable intellectual property. If the government is paying for the research and development, it is only reasonable to assume that this payment agreement includes the assurance that the work product will be protected from theft. A crucial component to this strategy is incentivizing these companies and research institutes to value this information as much as the government does. The approach must introduce a comprehensive array of obstacles and deterrents that could help prevent China from having the nearly unrestricted access it currently seems to enjoy to this information. This method should support a resilient cyber defense posture that can still be effective in the event individual components of the strategy fail. This layered approach will require combined efforts from both the government and private industry to create an overlapping protection scheme. Simply put, the United States is not incentivizing the protection of this information, so contractors and research institutes are not making cybersecurity a priority.Ĭonsidering this deeply troubling reality, the United States government must require private industry and research institutions to take this threat seriously and develop cybersecurity policy and practices that will result in multiple layers of cybersecurity protections. What, after all, could be more important than information pertaining to the defense of the nation? However, the track record for many defense contractors in protecting classified information is abysmal and seems to suggest that the United States government values this information much more than the companies contracted to research and develop it. So, why are contractors and research institutes so vulnerable to having their work product stolen? Given the technical and sensitive nature of these activities one would assume that these companies would take enormous care in protecting that information from being stolen or destroyed. This wholesale theft represents losses to the United States in the range of hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Defense contractors, research institutes, and universities are failing to adequately secure their computer networks, allowing China to steal research and development pertaining to some of America’s most important military technology. Confronting China’s Efforts to Steal Defense Information Ĭhina’s cyber espionage activities 1 represent a significant threat to the United States military and the safety and security of this nation.
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