Chinese hackers are still stealing American trade secrets despite an agreement the country signed last year, CIA Director John Brennan said on Thursday.
Brennan made the statement during a panel of the Senate Intelligence Committee, in response to a question about whether “theft of intellectual property by people from China has ended.” He responded simply, “No.”
The Obama administration has made it an unofficial policy never to attribute responsibility for cyberattacks to the Chinese government. That includes even last year’s massive breach of the Office of Personnel Management, which experts have universally attributed to the country.
However, China in September entered into a bilateral agreement with the U.S. saying it would no longer engage in hacking for the purpose of stealing trade secrets. Members of Congress have probed intelligence officials more than once for an answer to whether China seems to be abiding by that agreement.
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Brennan spoke carefully. “I see some effort by the Chinese government to follow through on some of the commitments they’ve provided in political channels,” he said. “There are a lot of entities, people, organizations inside of China, some of them operating as part of the Chinese government, some parastatal, some working basically on contract.”
“We are exceptionally vigilant about all of the different attack vectors that individuals or countries could attempt to use in order to penetrate our systems and networks and databases, whether they be government systems or [in the] private sector, to steal intellectual property,” he added.
“I continue to be concerned about the cyber capabilities that reside within China as well as the actions that some continue to undertake,” he said.
