After years of complaining that China is engaged in stealing trade secrets from American companies, the United States on Monday for the first time filed cyber-espionage charges against individuals belonging to a unit of the Chinese military, accusing them of hacking trade secrets since 2006 from five domestic manufacturers and the steelworkers union.
The indictment, filed by the US Attorney's Office for the western district of Pennsylvania, where several of the US companies are based, names five Chinese nationals who worked for China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) in Unit 61398, a cyber-intelligence-gathering section. It alleges that state-owned companies hired the unit to provide “information technology services” that included economic cyber-espionage.
The PLA workers named in the indictment are not in US custody, and probably never will be. By taking this legal action, the US is signaling to China that its tolerance of economic cyber-spying, which results in loss of American firms' competitive position on the world market, is at a breaking point.
“This is a very welcome toughening of our stance toward a wave of industrial espionage that has been going on for years,” says one former senior US intelligence official who asked not to be named so as to preserve political ties. “The question now is whether this case will lead to sanctions against Chinese companies or products that profited from the thefts. That would be a difficult gap to jump.
