Why Beijing is Curbing Industrial Spying on the West

Posted: April 2nd, 2017

By Chris Porter

Christopher Porter is the Manager of FireEye's Horizons team, which conducts strategic forecasting to anticipate risks posed by emerging technologies and geopolitical developments. Prior to joining FireEye, Christopher served nearly nine years in operations and analysis at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he won the National Intelligence Analysis Award medal, coauthored a National Intelligence Estimate, and was the first analyst to win the Cyber Threats Group Director's Award for Innovation. Christopher's work at CIA included assignments as the White House National Security Council and West Wing briefer for cyber threat intelligence, as the Directorate of Operations representative to the Scientific and Technical Intelligence Committee, to numerous public-private intelligence cooperation organizations, and in warzones.

In September 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama reached an agreement that neither nation would “conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, including trade secrets or other confidential business information, with the intent of providing competitive advantages to companies or commercial sectors.”

Many astute observers of Chinese cyber operations viewed the pact as a shocking development for numerous reasons, not least of which was that Beijing had never before formally acknowledged conducting cyber operations, much less welcomed limitations on them. Many scoffed that a paper agreement between politicians would impede economic espionage, which Keith Alexander, the former director of the National Security Agency, described as “the greatest transfer of wealth in history.”

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