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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