[ISN] A New Cold War, in Cyberspace, Tests U.S. Ties to China

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/25/world/asia/us-confronts-cyber-cold-war-with-china.html

By DAVID E. SANGER
The New York Times
February 24, 2013

WASHINGTON -- When the Obama administration circulated to the nation’s Internet 
providers last week a lengthy confidential list of computer addresses linked to 
a hacking group that has stolen terabytes of data from American corporations, 
it left out one crucial fact: that nearly every one of the digital addresses 
could be traced to the neighborhood in Shanghai that is headquarters to the 
Chinese military’s cybercommand.

That deliberate omission underscored the heightened sensitivities inside the 
Obama administration over just how directly to confront China’s untested new 
leadership over the hacking issue, as the administration escalates demands that 
China halt the state-sponsored attacks that Beijing insists it is not mounting.

The issue illustrates how different the worsening cyber-cold war between the 
world’s two largest economies is from the more familiar superpower conflicts of 
past decades - in some ways less dangerous, in others more complex and 
pernicious.

Administration officials say they are now more willing than before to call out 
the Chinese directly - as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. did last week in 
announcing a new strategy to combat theft of intellectual property. But 
President Obama avoided mentioning China by name - or Russia or Iran, the other 
two countries the president worries most about - when he declared in his State 
of the Union address that "we know foreign countries and companies swipe our 
corporate secrets." He added: "Now our enemies are also seeking the ability to 
sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions and our air traffic control 
systems."

[...]


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