US must get tough on fighting Chinese cyber espionage, congressional advisory panel is told

Name: US sanctions DJI and 7 other Chinese companies over alleged Xinjiang human rights abuses
Uploaded: 2022-02-17T20:29:33.000Z
Duration: 1 min 42 s
Description: US sanctions DJI and 7 other Chinese companies over alleged Xinjiang human rights abuses

Private firms like Google and Microsoft will have to play an active role in government efforts, US-China Economic and Security Review commissioners hear

Beijing has exploited America’s free market system and slow responses to network hacks, witnesses say

Reading Time:4 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

“China no longer cares about whether or not it’s being named named and shamed” about hacking and other cyber crimes, a witness told a congressional advisory panel on Thursday. Photo: Shutterstock

Robert Delaneyin Washington

Published: 4:29am, 18 Feb 2022Updated: 9:11am, 18 Feb 2022

The US government’s leading advisory panel on China policy was told on Thursday that Washington must devote more resources to countering Chinese cyber espionage and cyberwarfare capabilities and make companies like Microsoft and Google play a more active role in the effort.

In testimony about China’s ability to exploit America’s free market system and slow responses to network hacks, witnesses including Winnona DeSombre, a fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs, warned that the US government must support countermeasures against Chinese hacking the way it did its space race against the former Soviet Union.

This would require an expansion of visa quotas for cybersecurity experts, similar to the National Defence Education Act, which was passed in 1958 to attract international aerospace experts to work on US space missions. The effort would also benefit from changes to China-related legislation making its way through Congress to allocate more funding for domestic semiconductor production and research into detection and interception of malicious software.

Measures taken so far – including the Commerce Department’s Entity List and sanctions against companies with Chinese military connections – are inadequate to counter the pilfering of American intellectual property that can be used against the US commercially and militarily, said Dean Cheng, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

01:42

US sanctions DJI and 7 other Chinese companies over alleged Xinjiang human rights abuses

“China no longer cares about whether or not it’s being named and shamed,” DeSombre said, asserting that Beijing sped up hacking operations conducted against the Microsoft Exchange email server after the US, Britain, the EU and Nato accused China of sponsoring the attack.

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x