|
China's war on the U.S. economy |
|
|
|
|
Written by Sara Haimowitz
|
|
Monday, 18 January 2010 |
|
Peter Navarro, Greg Autry
Friday, January 15, 2010
China's recent cyberattacks against Google and as many as 33 other U.S. corporations open up a dangerous new industrial espionage front in Beijing's war on American business.
China's objective was not that of a rogue hacker - to create chaos. Rather, the target was any intellectual property that would give Chinese enterprises a competitive edge - from trade secrets and new technologies to software such as Google's proprietary source code.
Chinese cyberattacks are hardly new. China's military regularly hacks into America's defense networks to acquire military technologies. A glaring case in point: the highly sophisticated penetration last April of the Pentagon's $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project.
Chinese industrial espionage, along with other illegal means to acquire American business technology, is hardly new either. For example, an American manufacturer such as GM or Intel that produces in China must surrender some of its technology. Such forced technology transfer is clearly illegal under World Trade Organization rules, but U.S.executives meekly kowtow for a piece of the action.
Similarly, on the industrial espionage front, a shadow network of Chinese visitors to American soil regularly troll for new designs, processes, products and software that can be copied or reverse-engineered. The standard joke: What do they call an American patent in China? A blueprint.
More broadly, according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission: "China is the most aggressive country conducting espionage against the United States." Of course, once intellectual property is stolen and exported,China gains yet another competitive edge - even as China's economy booms and America's goes bust.
What's new and alarming about China's latest wave of cyberattacks is the extension of Beijing's flagrant industrial espionage to cyberspace. If the bank accounts, client lists, trade secrets, patented technologies and proprietary software of American corporations are not safe from Chinese hackers, this becomes an issue not only of economic policy but also of national security.
Predictably, Chinese government officials deny any culpability. This is supremely disingenuous, given the tight control of China's Internet by its vast army of cybercops and the sophistication of the attacks.
At the dawn of this new cold cyberwar, President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton must be clear: Any attack on America - from Pentagon hackings and industrial espionage to forced technology transfer and mercantilist weapons like currency manipulation - represents an act of aggression and will not be tolerated.
Peter Navarro is a business professor at UC Irvine and author of "The Coming China Wars." Greg Autry is a UC Irvine graduate student. Contact: www.peternavarro.com.
Trackback(0)
 |
|
In the news
|
March 2-4, The Coalition for a Prosperous America
Legislative Fly-In
CPA will hold its Second Annual Legislative Fly-In on
March 2-4, 2010. This is a powerful opportunity for us to work
together to advance trade reform in the halls of Congress. We need to
bring the concerns of the grass roots to our legislators.
This is efficient advocacy, well worth your time. We make all the
meeting arrangements with legislators or their staff, we put together
materials, we plan a message, and we pack meetings together in a
concentrated period of time. You make a bigger impact with your time
using only three of the 365 days in the year.
Click here to sign up for the CPA Fly In.
CPA has a special offer--limited time only: the first 50 registrants
get a free copy of Ian Fletcher's new book: Free Trade Doesn't Work.
This is a highly acclaimed book about trade policy and the needed
changes therein.
Agenda:
March 2, 2010: 2p to 6p - Group meeting for training, talking points and team assignments
March 3-4, 2010: Hill visits
Place: Capitol Skyline Hotel, 10 I ("Eye") Street SW, Washington, DC 20024
Once registered, please call 202.488.7500 for hotel room reservations
and ask for the CPA room block. You should book for the evenings of
March 2 and March 3. CPA has negotiated discounted rates for a limited
number of rooms at $129 per night plus tax. Booking deadline is February 15, 2010, so reserve your room soon.
If you have questions about the events, please call Sara Haimowitz,
Development Coordinator, at 413-203-1410 or email at
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
|
|
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed