The U.S. military will start fighting back in cyberspace, through a new strategy released by the Pentagon. The guidelines, which allow the U.S. military to retaliate against hackers using cyberweapons, have leaders from the Chinese regime concerned.
The Chinese regime’s Defense Ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng said the programs will “up the ante on the Internet arms race.”
“We are concerned and worried about this,” Geng said, Reuters reported on April 30.
While the Pentagon strategy is not specifically targeted at China, the Chinese regime is particularly active in launching cyberattacks on U.S. businesses and government offices.
Theft of U.S. innovation, primarily through the Chinese regime, costs the U.S. economy $5 trillion a year, when the expected 10-year life of research and development is factored in. Casey Fleming, CEO of BlackOps Partners Corporation, which does counterintelligence and protection of trade secrets for Fortune 500 companies, detailed the impact in a previous interview with the Epoch Times.
Cyberattacks tied to economic theft have been traced by several organizations to the General Staff Department of the Chinese military. Five Chinese military hackers under the department were indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice on May 19, 2014.
Geng pulled a common line used by the Chinese regime, and tried pointing to spy programs run by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) as similar to the regime’s cyberattacks.
U.S. officials have pointed out that the NSA’s programs are merely for espionage, while the Chinese regime’s programs are for both espionage and economic theft.
