Long article detailing China's theft of USA IP in recent years.
https://www.wired.com/story/us-china-cybertheft-su-bin/
...Donald Trump’s trade war against China has largely been couched as a way to punish China for its years of rampant intellectual property theft. And the official documents that make a case for that war have made scant mention of the progress that the Obama administration made. “After years of unsuccessful US-China dialogs, the United States is taking action to confront China,” wrote the US Trade Representative’s office, disregarding the quite successful dialog that took place at the Omni Shoreham hotel in 2015. If the US isn’t going to acknowledge that things ever got better, what incentive does China have to keep on good behavior?
At the same time, Chinese hacking may be on the rise again for reasons that are quite internal to Beijing. Between 2005 and 2014, the main force behind China’s campaign of cybertheft was the People’s Liberation Army. In turn, after the outing of the five PLA soldiers in 2014, that agency bore most of the embarrassment and blame for China’s weakened hand in negotiations with the US. Since 2016, for a host of reasons, the army has had its wings clipped politically by President Xi, both through a reorganization and through anticorruption drives that have seen numerous government officials sidelined, imprisoned, and, in at least one case, even sentenced to death.
Into the vacuum left behind by the PLA, the Chinese Ministry of State Security—a powerful agency that combines elements of the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA—has apparently stepped in and become China’s new central office for cybertheft. “The PLA have stepped back significantly, but the MSS and their affiliated contractors have stepped into that void,” Alperovitch says.
These new hackers with the Ministry of State Security have evidently learned from the PLA’s mistakes. “They’ve gotten steadily better,” Alperovitch says. “They’re thinking much harder about how to be more stealthy.” After all, no Chinese hacker wants to be the next one splashed across an FBI “Wanted” poster.
https://www.wired.com/story/us-china-cybertheft-su-bin/
...Donald Trump’s trade war against China has largely been couched as a way to punish China for its years of rampant intellectual property theft. And the official documents that make a case for that war have made scant mention of the progress that the Obama administration made. “After years of unsuccessful US-China dialogs, the United States is taking action to confront China,” wrote the US Trade Representative’s office, disregarding the quite successful dialog that took place at the Omni Shoreham hotel in 2015. If the US isn’t going to acknowledge that things ever got better, what incentive does China have to keep on good behavior?
At the same time, Chinese hacking may be on the rise again for reasons that are quite internal to Beijing. Between 2005 and 2014, the main force behind China’s campaign of cybertheft was the People’s Liberation Army. In turn, after the outing of the five PLA soldiers in 2014, that agency bore most of the embarrassment and blame for China’s weakened hand in negotiations with the US. Since 2016, for a host of reasons, the army has had its wings clipped politically by President Xi, both through a reorganization and through anticorruption drives that have seen numerous government officials sidelined, imprisoned, and, in at least one case, even sentenced to death.
Into the vacuum left behind by the PLA, the Chinese Ministry of State Security—a powerful agency that combines elements of the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA—has apparently stepped in and become China’s new central office for cybertheft. “The PLA have stepped back significantly, but the MSS and their affiliated contractors have stepped into that void,” Alperovitch says.
These new hackers with the Ministry of State Security have evidently learned from the PLA’s mistakes. “They’ve gotten steadily better,” Alperovitch says. “They’re thinking much harder about how to be more stealthy.” After all, no Chinese hacker wants to be the next one splashed across an FBI “Wanted” poster.
