According to a recent report in the Washington Post, Internet sites in China are targeting computer systems in the Pentagon and other US agencies, successfully breaching hundreds of unclassified networks. This hasn't so far compromised classified (secret) systems, but the US authorities are concerned about where it is all going.
"Analysts are divided over whether the attacks constitute a coordinated Chinese government campaign to penetrate US networks. Some in the Pentagon are convinced of official Chinese involvement; others suspect other hackers using Chinese networks to disguise the origins of the attacks," the Post report said.
It is hard to believe that a large-scale targeting of official US sites from the Chinese side can happen without the knowledge, encouragement and, possibly, involvement of the Chinese authorities. It is a country where the regime is continuously updating its systems to control its Internet users, and such "lapses" like the targeting of US Pentagon networks would surely not have gone undetected.
It is said that "more attempts to scan [US] Defense Department systems come from China, where there are 119 million Internet users, than from any other country." It is absurd, therefore, to imagine that the authorities in China are oblivious to it.
It might be argued that since the breaches involve unclassified networks, they are not much use to the Chinese authorities. Hence, their culpability is perhaps over-stated. But, as a US official reportedly pointed out, "even seemingly innocuous information collected from different sources can provide useful intelligence to an opponent."
More importantly, "The scope of this thing is surprisingly big," going back three years. It is interesting that the responsibility for managing the Pentagon's computer networks was assigned last year to the new joint task force for global network operations under the US Strategic Command.
Which brings us to the military significance of the hacking operations. One doesn't have to be an Einstein to understand that in any future warfare scenario electronic measures to disable the US' military and technological superiority will figure prominently in Beijing's calculations. An important strategy will be to let loose an army of trained hackers to do the damage. The leaking of the information about the targeting of networks is indicative of US worries on this account.
Obviously, China is no match for the US in military terms. As Gerald Segal wrote in Foreign Affairs, "At best, China is a second-rank middle power that has mastered the art of diplomatic theater."
And this disparity in their relative military power is likely to persist for the foreseeable future. But China is in a hurry to become a superpower. The easiest way would be for the US to facilitate and accommodate China's emergence into that role, particularly in Asia.
The US, though, is not that obliging. It is even standing in the way of letting China incorporate Taiwan. Without that, US-China relations are likely to be in an adversarial mode.
Taiwan aside, the US is determined not to let any other power challenge its global supremacy. It is part of its strategic doctrine. China, on the other hand, is working to establish its paramountcy in Asia. As Richard Bernstein and Ross Munro wrote in Foreign Affairs a while ago, "China's goal of achieving paramount status in Asia conflicts with an established American objective: preventing any single country from gaining overwhelming power in Asia."
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