If the Trump administration follows through with threats to retaliate against China for dumping steel and other trade policies, cybersecurity specialists say Beijing will almost certainly respond in cyberspace.
Countries have made asymmetrical responses to economic moves before. Exhibit A is Russia’s increasingly blatant online attacks in response to Western economic sanctions related to its moves in Ukraine, including efforts aimed at influencing the U.S. elections.
With China, the Obama administration believes economic espionage and other online attacks aimed at the United States have tapered off in recent years, an assertion disputed by other cybersecurity experts.
The administration cites the 2014 indictments of Chinese military officers, and a 2015 agreement between President Obama and President Xi Jinping, as factors that led to substantially lower cybersecurity tensions between the two countries and less Chinese use of online espionage to aid its domestic industries.
Former Assistant Attorney General John Carlin has asserted that the indictments led to the agreement that the Chinese government would not use its hacking capabilities to spy on behalf of Chinese companies.
The 2016 annual report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, released this month, noted China’s strengths and history of commercial cyber espionage, but didn’t say whether the behavior has stopped.
Officials broached the topic behind closed doors at last week’s U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade meeting in Washington, D.C. Security sources said China is carrying out the same activities despite the Obama-Xi agreement.
“A fair amount of intellectual property theft, of advanced manufacturing theft, is still going on,” said one security source, who added that such theft “is largely China-driven. The U.S. declared a win in the Xi agreement, but I don’t think it’s true.”
China is just “less noisy” about it, the source said.
As President-elect Trump promises a “get-tough” approach toward unfair or illegal Chinese imports, sources said the U.S. should be prepared for an asymmetrical response that will likely include aggressive online attacks.
China’s reactions to prohibitive new tariffs on its products could vary, perhaps involving hacking campaigns aimed at U.S. partners in the Pacific region, rather than at the U.S., sources speculated.
“Trump has stated that he will impact global trade, so China will take action,” one security source said. “China, regardless of trade agreements, will continue to fight an asymmetric economic war with the U.S. It’s what they do.”
Some in the security field say the battle in cyberspace has been barely affected by Obama administration efforts to establish international norms of conduct.
“Cyber is now seen by many countries as just another tool in foreign policy,” said a source from the tech community. “I see no reason why this will not continue.
“It’s another tool countries can deploy as leverage in the business of statecraft. It’s more than a sternly worded letter, but less than firing bullets and, of course, there’s a range of actions — and damage — countries can take to achieve their foreign policy objectives.”
The Trump team, and the president-elect, haven’t been shy about calling out China for unfair trade practices. That has continued in the transition period, though at a lower decibel level.
But this battle is likely to be fought in many unexpected places beyond the World Trade Organization’s hearing rooms, including in the dark corners of cyberspace.
Charlie Mitchell is editor of InsideCybersecurity.com, an exclusive service covering cybersecurity policy from Inside Washington Publishers, and author of “Hacked: The Inside Story of America’s Struggle to Secure Cyberspace,” published by Rowman and Littlefield.
