China’s been hacking up a storm recently, up to and including stealing sensitive confidential weapon designs from the US. Things started coming to something of a head early last month, when the Pentagon finally directly accused China of being the perpetrator of all this cyber-treachery. Now, according to the New York Times, a nice little hacking-chat has been scheduled between the two powers.
From The Times:
The talks will begin in July. Next Friday, President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China, who took office this spring, are scheduled to hold an unusual, informal summit meeting in Rancho Mirage, Calif., that could set the tone for their relationship and help them confront chronic tensions like the nuclear threat from North Korea.
American officials say they do not expect the process to immediately yield a significant reduction in the daily intrusions from China. …Nonetheless, a senior American official involved in the negotiations to hold regular meetings said in an interview on Friday that “we need to get some norms and rules.”
It’s only the first very small step in dealing with a pretty enormous problem, but it’s far more palatable than something like, say, war. And even if everything is civil, it’s not exactly easy to agree to the regulation of nebulous cyberweapons. But if we can agree to not completely demolish each other’s digital infrastructure, that’d be a pretty good start. [The New York Times]
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