Trust but Verify: The United States, China & Economic Espionage

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) hack raised the threat of Chinese cyber-espionage in a way that the American people had never seen before. American businesses, on the other hand, should have been extremely familiar with it. The Chinese government has a history of engaging in economic espionage – the theft of trade secrets and intellectual property – which it uses to benefit Chinese industry. This is a distinct and separate set of activities from the type of intelligence gathering conducted by the United States.  U.S. intelligence services only collect in the interest of national security, rather than to give American businesses a competitive advantage in the world economy.

In September 2015, the United States and China made an agreement to stop using cyber-capabilities to conduct economic espionage operations against one another. The agreement was seen as a very positive step towards easing relations between the two nations, but many were skeptical as to whether China would actually abide by the agreement. However, a recent report from cybersecurity firm FireEye concluded that the overall amount of cyber-enabled economic espionage conducted against the U.S. by China has decreased to a significant degree. This finding is not without its skeptics, but if accurate, it could have profound implications for both U.S.-China relations and broader international norms about cyberspace.