President Barack Obama has warned Wednesday the Chinese authorities against the growing phenomenon of cyber attacks against the United States, citing “tough talks” with Beijing.
Reactions to attempts of suspected Chinese hackers to penetrate U.S. government networks or companies’ networks have multiplied in recent weeks, prompting each time formal denials of the Beijing government. But this is the first time President Obama takes a clear stand on this matter.
“What is absolutely true is that we have seen a steady ramping up of cyber security threats. Some are state sponsored. Some are just sponsored by criminals,” he said in an interview with ABC. “We’ve made it very clear to China and some other state actors that, you know, we expect them to follow international norms and abide by international rules,” noted president Obama.
The president also warned against the bellicose rhetoric in case of cyber attacks. “You know, there’s a big difference between them engaging in cyber espionage or cyber attacks and obviously a hot war,” he said during the interview on Tuesday.
China said Wednesday it was ready to cooperate with the United States to combat cybercrime, arguing that it was also the target of such attacks. “What is needed in cyberspace it is not war but rather regulation and cooperation,” said the spokesman of Chinese diplomacy, Hua Chunying.
Hacking and digital espionage were in recent weeks a hot topic in the already strained relations between Washington and Beijing. On Monday, the national security adviser to Barack Obama, Tom Donilon, had called on China to “take serious steps to investigate and end these activities.” On Tuesday, the U.S. intelligence chief James Clapper had stated in the annual report to Congress that cyber attacks were, together with North Korea, the main threat against the U.S.
The same day, the head of the National Security Agency (NSA), General Keith Alexander, warned a congressional committee about a worsening situation of computer attacks, and acknowledged that the army has now “offensive units that the Pentagon would use to defend the country” in the case of cyber attacks.
On February 20, the Obama administration promised a strong response to theft of trade secrets by foreign companies or countries in a document which mentioned many examples of such activities for the benefit of Chinese entities. Beijing had back then vigorously denied having established a large-scale operation to steal industrial secrets, despite the identification by a U.S. computer security of a building on the outskirts of Shanghai from which these attacks were conducted.
Computer attacks on Tuesday were a personal issue for Obama, whose wife Michelle may have been a victim of bank data disclosure, in which case investigations by the FBI and Secret Service are underway. The President refused to confirm that his wife had been the victim of hackers, but conceded on ABC that this phenomenon was a “big problem.”
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