Instead of responding to its offer to limit cyberattacks, the Obama Administration has chosen to berate China.
The BBC reports that in a recent television interview, President Obama “upbraids” China, telling George Stephanopoulos that the United States will have “some pretty tough talk” with the Chinese over their failure to abide by international norms in cyberspace. Washington has strong reasons to protest China’s widespread industrial espionage and penetration of our civilian and military networks, including even those that govern U.S. infrastructure.
But calling on China—in March 2013—to help formulate and enforce new rules of international conduct in cyberspace, without even acknowledging that China provided a detailed and surprisingly reasonable proposal for exactly that in 2011, is astonishing. It seems that the White House and the peripatetic new secretary of state—who seems out to collect even more frequent-flier miles than Secretary Clinton—are left without time to work out a China policy and did not even do their homework. Or the White House is playing to the home galleries rather than paying mind to China’s sensibilities and, in this case, ignoring the valid contributions China has made to the much-needed international dialogue on cybersecurity.
Read more at the National Interest.