China syndrome: a giant sucking sound

national intelligence (2007-9), Michael Chertoff, a former secretary of homeland security (2005-9), and William Lynn, who served as deputy secretary of defense (2009-11) and undersecretary of defense (1997-2001).

They authors note that only three months ago they would have violated U.S. secrecy laws by sharing what they write in the article (three month earlier, in October 2011, some details of a report on the subject to Congress by the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive were made public).

They note that discussions of cyber warfare usually focus on the threat posed by terrorists to U.S. critical infrastructure – power grid, water systems, financial institutions, etc. “The threat of [China’s] economic cyber espionage looms even more ominously,” they write.

The reason: the October 2011 report “is a summation of the catastrophic impact cyber espionage could have on the U.S. economy and global competitiveness over the next decade.”

In 2007 we wrote that China’s elaborate and all-embracing industrial espionage campaign against the United States and Western European countries was part of China’s “effort to short-cut its way to global economic pre-eminence.” The three officials concur, writing that the evidence indicates that China intends to help build its economy by industrial espionage and theft “rather than by innovation and investment in research and development (two strong suits of the U.S. economy).”

They conclude:

The bottom line is this: China has a massive, inexpensive work force ravenous for economic growth. It is much more efficient for the Chinese to steal innovations and intellectual property — the source code of advanced economies — than to incur the cost and time of creating their own. They turn those stolen ideas directly into production, creating products faster and cheaper than the U.S. and others.

The authors offer a series of recommendations for government organizations and corporations on how to bolster their cyber defenses, and urge Congress and the administration to work on strengthening the role of the U.S. intelligence community in analyzing and protecting economic and industrial information.

One recommendation of the three officials caught our eye, especially now when the attention of the U.S. political system is justifiably focused and budget cuts and deficit reduction:

The U.S. also must make broader investments in education to produce many more workers with science, technology, engineering and math skills. Our country reacted to the Soviet Union’s 1957 launch of Sputnik with investments in math and science education that launched the age of digital communications. Now is the time for a similar approach to build the skills our nation will need to compete in a global economy vastly different from 50 years ago.

McConnell, Chertoff, and Lynn published their article in the Wall Street Journal last Friday, but it was not the only sign that day of the increasing concern with China’s rise to a position of global pre-eminence and with the manner of its climb to that position. On the same day, the venerable Economist changed its format to accommodate the growing preoccupation with China.

The Economist groups its articles into these sections: “United States,” “The Americas,” “Asia,” “Middle East and Africa,” “Europe,” and “Britain.” Britain is where the journal is published. The only other country singled out for more in-depth coverage is the United States. The U.S.-specific section was launched in February 1942. Last Friday, exactly seventy years later, the Economist launched another country-specific section: “China.”

This much is clear: We already live in interesting times.

Ben Frankel is the editor of the Homeland Security NewsWire