It must have been a merry Christmas and a happy New Year for professional cyberwarriors, as extensive new Pentagon plans focusing on Internet security were revealed in mid-December, just after a week’s worth of stories appeared in the business press about massive information theft by Chinese hackers.
On the surface, the combination of media reports and defense posturing seem to indicate a new Chinese digital offensive against American interests. Dramatic as that may sound, these events are merely part of the status quo in the brittle relationship between the Chinese economy and innovative American companies, and not the first shots of a digital Pearl Harbor.
