HONG KONG — Just days after China and the United States hailed a high-level agreement limiting cyberattacks, a former commander of one of the Chinese military’s top hacking units lashed out at U.S. Internet policy, in a sign of how
HONG KONG — Just days after China and the United States hailed a high-level agreement limiting cyberattacks, a former commander of one of the Chinese military’s top hacking units lashed out at U.S. Internet policy, in a sign of how far apart Beijing and Washington remain on technology issues.
In prepared remarks Tuesday, Hao Yeli, the former deputy head of the Fourth Department of the People’s Liberation Army General Staff Department — which is responsible for the Chinese military’s offensive electronic warfare — said the United States had double standards with online surveillance and that the uncertainty behind the origin of digital attacks makes it difficult to apply traditional rules of engagement to the Internet.
Hao’s speech punctured some of the cautious optimism analysts had expressed about last week’s agreement between the United States and China, which was intended to rein in hacking theft of intellectual property and create international standards for “appropriate conduct in cyberspace.” Speaking at an Internet security conference in Beijing that also featured a former National Security Agency director, Keith B. Alexander, Hao’s position was inimical to that generally favored by U.S. politicians.
Referring to the Arab Spring, Hao — now the deputy director of the China Institute for Innovation and Development Strategy — warned that taking away developing countries’ ability to control public opinion through Internet controls and surveillance would result not in more openness, but instead in “blood” and “hatred,” according to an official transcript of her speech.
Although Hao ultimately called for greater communication between the world’s two largest economies, she also said the United States should be less imperious in dictating how governments of other countries manage their own Internet, and in general behave online.
“America spreads the ideas of democracy widely across the world, but in cyberspace, it’s the opposite,” she said. “The United States continuously maintains a system to monitor the rest of the world but asks other countries to strictly control themselves and remain within bounds. This unsymmetrical line of thinking continues.”
Hao and Alexander, whose speech largely called for cooperation between the United States and China on the shared threat of online attacks, both spoke as part of the China Internet Security Conference sponsored by the Chinese online security and search firm Qihoo 360.
Likening China and the United States to strangers walking in the dark who mistake each other for ghosts, Hao said it was critical for each country to stop demonizing the other and instead begin a broader dialogue.
Hao also said any new rules of engagement for online attacks would probably be different from those used in other forms of warfare.
“Because of the complexities and uncertainties of cyberspace, many of the rules of engagement applied normally would be difficult to directly follow,” she said.
