U.S. Tries Candor to Assure China on Cyberattacks

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/07/world/us-tries-candor-to-assure-china-on-cyberattacks.html

By DAVID E. SANGER
The New York Times
APRIL 6, 2014

WASHINGTON -- In the months before Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's arrival 
in Beijing on Monday, the Obama administration quietly held an 
extraordinary briefing for the Chinese military leadership on a subject 
officials have rarely discussed in public: the Pentagon's emerging 
doctrine for defending against cyberattacks against the United States -- 
and for using its cybertechnology against adversaries, including the 
Chinese.

The idea was to allay Chinese concerns about plans to more than triple the 
number of American cyberwarriors to 6,000 by the end of 2016, a force that 
will include new teams the Pentagon plans to deploy to each military 
combatant command around the world. But the hope was to prompt the Chinese 
to give Washington a similar briefing about the many People’s Liberation 
Army units that are believed to be behind the escalating attacks on 
American corporations and government networks.

So far, the Chinese have not reciprocated -- a point Mr. Hagel plans to 
make in a speech at the P.L.A.’s National Defense University on Tuesday.

The effort, senior Pentagon officials say, is to head off what Mr. Hagel 
and his advisers fear is the growing possibility of a fast-escalating 
series of cyberattacks and counterattacks between the United States and 
China. This is a concern especially at a time of mounting tensions over 
China's expanding claims of control over what it argues are exclusive 
territories in the East and South China Seas, and over a new air defense 
zone. In interviews, American officials say their latest initiatives were 
inspired by Cold-War-era exchanges held with the Soviets so that each side 
understood the "red lines" for employing nuclear weapons against each 
other.

[...]

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