Cybertheft:
U.S., China reach accord to curb economic espionage.
WASHINGTON — The United States and China have agreed that neither country will conduct economic espionage in cyberspace in a deal that addresses a major source of tension in the bilateral relationship.
The pact also calls for a process to ensure compliance.
The agreement, reached in talks Thursday and Friday between President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping, is a major breakthrough that has the potential to alleviate one of the most significant threats to U.S. economic and national security.
But, Obama said in a joint news conference with Xi on Friday, “the question now is, are words followed by actions?”
The United States has accused China of stealing billions of dollars’ worth of intellectual property and trade secrets from U.S. companies and was ready to impose economic sanctions on Chinese firms that benefited from cyber-enabled theft.
China has long denied such activity — and Xi this week reasserted as much.
Washington, for its part, has said it does not conduct cybertheft for the benefit of U.S. companies. The disclosures of a former National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden, about extensive U.S. cyberspying overseas has given Beijing ammunition to counter such assertions.
Nonetheless, apparently rattled by the threat of sanctions — a threat that Obama reiterated in his meetings with Xi — China agreed to affirm the norm against cyber economic spying.
The two sides also said they would set up a high-level joint dialogue on cybercrime in which senior officials from both countries would be able to review allegations of cyberintrusions. They agreed to establish a hotline to discuss issues that arise.
The U.S. secretary of homeland security and the attorney general will co-chair the dialogue on the American side.
Sanctions are not off the table, Obama administration officials said.
Obama said he described to Xi the “tools” the administration has to deter and punish cybercrime and cyberattacks. They include criminal indictments, such as the those issued against five Chinese military officials last year for economic cyberespionage. He said that while they did not discuss specific cases of alleged Chinese cybertheft, he mentioned the executive order he signed in April that authorized the imposition of economic sanctions for malicious cyber-acts.
“I did indicate to President Xi that I would apply those and whatever tools we have in our tool kit to go after cybercriminals, either retrospectively or prospectively,” Obama said.
The agreement does not address traditional espionage, such as China’s alleged theft of personal information of more than 22 million current and former federal employees through a hack of Office of Personnel Management computers.