The US should adopt a tougher stance with China on issues ranging from persistent cyberespionage to its economic claims in the South China Sea, a top Republican senator said on Tuesday.
Senator John McCain, the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former presidential candidate, said US President Barack Obama’s administration needed to send a clear message to China that it could not “do whatever they want.”
McCain, a former US Navy pilot, took issue with China’s aggressive claim to the South China Sea, calling it “a violation of every principle of freedom of navigation of the seas that we have fought wars for,” as well as repeated cyberattacks on US computers that were traced back to China.
His comments at the Reuters Washington Summit came a week after a US intelligence report identified China as the most active and persistent nation using cyberespionage to steal US trade and technology secrets.
McCain stopped short of calling for a direct confrontation with China, but said the US should leverage its alliances in Asia to act as a “brake to China’s ambitions.”
With regard to escalating cyberattacks on US computer networks, McCain said the US first needed to develop its own capabilities and improve coordination within the government and the US Congress on cyber issues.
However, it should also be firm with China, he said.
“We have to make it clear to the Chinese that there are costs to engaging in this kind of activity,” he said.
“We ought to make it very clear to the Chinese that their past and present behavior is unacceptable,” he added.
McCain said he was alarmed by the lack of cyberexpertise in Congress and lack of coordination given the overlapping oversight by five or six congressional committees.
Cybersecurity was “of the utmost seriousness,” but the US was “not only not aggressive enough, but totally not prepared” for the rapidly changing threats in this area, McCain said.
James Miller, the No. 2 official in the Pentagon’s policy shop, this week underscored the importance of beefing up US defenses against cyberespionage, which he said was costing US industry and government hundreds of billions of dollars each year, and the increasing threat of destructive attacks.
The Pentagon’s advanced research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, on Monday disclosed new efforts to build offensive cyberweapons for possible keyboard-launched US military attacks against enemy targets.
US defense officials and diplomats are working with a range of international partners to establish codes of conduct for the new domain of cyberspace.
McCain said it was crucial to plot out how the US would respond to “certain scenarios.”
For instance, he said, Washington should explore the possible use of offensive cybercapabilities to respond to Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons, such as the Stuxnet virus that snarled Iran’s enriched-uranium-producing centrifuges last summer.
Experts say that virus was likely created by the US or Israel.
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