In a January 2022 talk at the Reagan Presidential Library, FBI Director Christopher Wray stated that Peoples Republic of China’s threat to the West and the US is “more apparent” as well as destructive than ever before, accusing Beijing of stealing American ideas and inventions and launching large hacking operations. “When we add up what we see in our investigations, of which over 2,000 are focused on the Chinese government attempting to steal our information or technology, there is simply no country that poses a greater threat to our ideas, innovation, and economic security than China,”. Besides that, Wray also quoted the PRC Sponsored hackers are found to be stealing more sensitive data from the US than all other countries combined. Wray indicated that the FBI is launching a new cyber manoeuvre investigation involving China on average every ten hours. The backlog has climbed by around 130% over the previous decade.
The PRC steals enormous amounts of research and development secrets, patents, and intellectual property to maintain economic competitiveness and achieve political objectives.
Between 2016 and 2019, the PRC and its Ministry of State Security were accused of hundreds of trade theft offences, accounting for more than half of all economic espionage indictments filed under the US Economic Espionage Act of 1996. This has had a substantial economic effect: According to independent researcher Nicholas Eftimiades, Chinese economic espionage activities cost $320 billion in damages in 2018, accounting for almost 80% of the total cost of intellectual property theft in the United States in 2018.
Economic espionage is sometimes used to undermine a foreign country’s national security and defence. The goal of the PRC was to focus on advanced military equipment design and unmanned aerial vehicle technology. China initiates local manufacturing of this equipment and sells it at a discount, inflicting catastrophic damage to original equipment manufacturers. As a response, the United States has enacted various regulations to detect and combat economic espionage. Countermeasures have been created with proportionality in mind. According to independent academic Catherine Lotrionte, the harm incurred by the US as a consequence of Chinese economic espionage includes not only financial losses but the values that are also violated. Economic espionage jeopardises businesses’ abilities and incentives to grow, as well as the principles that underpin the global trading system.
Additionally, it fosters unethical trade practices. Allowing private American firms to fight against cyber assaults, some think, would be more effective at encouraging China to discontinue its economic espionage activities. Others have suggested that the injured state notify the offending state of the violation and seek to resolve the matter before resorting to countermeasures. The US has also shown an attentiveness in suing China for economic espionage under the World Trade Organization’s fair trade criteria. To oppose the Chinese invasion of cyberspace, the United States has established an unusually aggressive cyber strategy of ‘defending forward.’ The approach is intended to compromise the hackers’ infrastructure at their source and expose their tools.
Additionally, Chinese enterprises that benefit from cybercrime have been penalised. According to Reuters, the US Department of Commerce has barred the sale of US technology to a Chinese chip manufacturer accused of recruiting employees to steal data from Micron, a semiconductor company. Indian firms have also strengthened their infrastructure to stave against Chinese infiltration, since they host the backend technology for several information technology firms.
On the flip side, the PRC officials have regularly refuted US government allegations, with the Chinese embassy spokesperson in Washington alleging that Americans had launched “baseless attacks” and nasty smear campaigns against China. The statement referred to China as a “stalwart promoter of cybersecurity.”
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