USA officials skeptical China will honor cyber agreement

Obama also said he told Xi that cyber threats from China have to stop.

As part of the agreement, a U.S. fact sheet said, China and the United States agreed 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”.

While the “common understanding” reached between the USA and China during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit last week shows progress, many have cast doubt on the impact it will really have in protecting the U.S.in the ever-changing cyberspace landscape.

“I personally am somewhat of a skeptic”, Clapper later said. At a Senate hearing, Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper if he was optimistic that the agreement would result in the elimination of such attacks from China. Chinese forces have since rolled out the J-31 fighter, which looks almost identical to the Lockheed-designed F-35 joint strike fighter, as well as a radar system that appears to be based on Lockheed’s offering for the US Air Force’s Three Dimensional Expeditionary Long-Range Radar program.

“I think there is a question about the extent to which the (Chinese) government actually orchestrates all of it or not”, he said.

“The agreements announced between the United States and China regarding cyber warfare represent a step forward”. Even a few U.S. allies have been known to use cyber theft as a means to help their domestic businesses.

The Office of Personnel Management, the agency which vets prospective employees to work with classified and secure work with the federal government, suffered at least two massive cyberattacks earlier this year, which led to a data breach on as many as 22.1 million individuals. He said the Pentagon was finalizing a broad cyber warfare policy that was supposed to have been shared with Congress over a year ago.

Lawmakers immediately expressed concerns that the arrangement is unenforceable and won’t mitigate the number of hacks on USA firms originating in China.

He said the response could involve a variety of tools, including economic sanctions and criminal indictments, as well as potential use of offensive cyber weapons. He added that the protection of US defense contractors “is not as robust”.