China Criticizes US For Making Weapon Plans Steal-able, Alleges Attacks From US 209
Etherwalk writes "Huang Chengqing, China's top internet security official, alleged that cyberattacks on China from people in the U.S. are as serious as those from China on the U.S. 'We have mountains of data, if we wanted to accuse the U.S., but it's not helpful in solving the problem.' Huang, however, does not necessarily attribute them to the U.S. government just because they came from U.S. soil, and he thinks Washington should extend the same courtesy. 'They advocated cases that they never let us know about. Some cases can be addressed if they had talked to us, why not let us know? It is not a constructive train of thought to solve problems.' In response to the recent theft of U.S. military designs, he replied with an observation whose obviousness is worthy of Captain Hammer: 'Even following the general principle of secret-keeping, it should not have been linked to the Internet.'"
A few experts think China's more cooperative attitude has come about precisely because the U.S. government has gone public with hacking allegations.
I don't get this. (Score:4, Interesting)
I always thought it was a rule from Espionage 101 that you don't let the other side know when your side has been compromised. You use it as an opportunity to start sending out false information, and to learn their tactics and precisely who is involved. I don't understand why we are telling everyone in the world that the Chinese have stolen our information. It just makes us look inept in all sorts of ways.
Re:Blah blah blah (Score:4, Interesting)
I do hope that means a second space race. If China seriously looked like they were about to set the first man on Mars, or establish a long-term moon base, I think America would have to devote billions of dollars to doing it first just to defend their national ego. Again.
Re:I don't get this. (Score:2, Interesting)
It's to gain political currency. Make China out to be the bad guy, try to rally international sympathy for the US. Part of an ongoing narrative.
The US loves bad guys. They justify spending and fear. The USSR fell apart, Iraq has been dealt with, Bin Laden is dead and his organization seems to be ineffectual these days. China is the new bad.
Re:Outsourced R&D (Score:5, Interesting)
Arm chair generals. Although the information they stole is valuable they haven't stolen information that's going to have them building Raptors. China has been trying to copy SU-27 jets for about a decade now, they can't get the engines built right and are at the point of having to go back to a Russia that vowed never to sell to them again to beg them for rights to purchase more advanced systems.
Even though they have working Russian built engines to compare against they weren't able to duplicate the engines. Any Engineer can tell you why, even with detailed schematics, if you don't understand the design you don't know where the critical sections of the design are or what processes to use during assembly that prevent catastrophic failure later. Most of these highly advanced weapon systems have decades of incremental experience built into the design. Even small differences in manufacturing can render parts unusable and it's experience that teaches you that, not schematics and working samples. Though the design information and working samples accelerate learning they don't do away with it.