Will China and America Clash in Cyberspace?

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.nationalinterest.org/feature/will-china-america-clash-cyberspace-12607

By Jon R. Lindsay, Tai Ming Cheung, Derek Reveron
The National Interest
April 12, 2015

The information revolution has been a mixed blessing for China and the 
world. On one hand, computer networks enhance economic productivity, 
national security, and social interaction. On the other, valuable 
information infrastructure provides lucrative targets for thieves, spies, 
and soldiers. Nearly every type of government agency, commercial firm, and 
social organization benefits from information technology, but they can 
also be harmed through cyberspace. Not a week goes by where a major hack 
is not reported in the media or countries chastise each other for 
cyberespionage.

In the absence of shared norms or even concepts, cybersecurity discourse 
becomes mired in competing morality tales. Chinese hackers are pillaging 
intellectual property and creating asymmetric threats. The National 
Security Agency (NSA) is jeopardizing civil liberties and weakening the 
Internet. Communist censorship is undermining the democratic promise of 
information technology, even as American firms unfairly dominate its 
development. Cybercrime is costing everyone trillions of dollars.

There is a grain of truth in all of these claims, which means that the 
phenomenon as a whole must be more complicated than any one suggests. 
China both generates and experiences serious cyber threats, shaped by a 
combination of bureaucratic politics and economic policy, domestic 
security imperatives, military modernization, and ambitions for 
international influence. Nevertheless, the United States and China both 
have far more to gain than lose through their digital interdependence.

[...]



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