U.S. officials are set to talk to their Chinese counterparts about the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) cyber breaches in bilateral dialogues occurring this week, a State Department official said Monday.
Although the U.S. government has not officially discussed attribution for the OPM breaches, several media outlets have cited anonymous government sources confirming China was likely behind the hacks (Defense Daily, June 17). On Monday a senior State Department Official echoed those claims and noted it will be discussed in the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) and Strategic Security Dialogue (SSD).
“So, of course, as you know, we haven’t talked in terms of attribution on the part of the U.S. Government with respect to the OPM intrusions. But there’s been plenty of public domain information that has been out there on this issue, and certainly the issue will be addressed, I think, in pretty direct terms with the Chinese,” a senior State Department Official said on Monday.
Cybersecurity generally has been a topic on the agenda of the S&ED for the previous six years “Of course, some of the revelations are fairly recent, and those will certainly be talked about in very direct terms, both at the Strategic Security Dialogue, but also in all of the other sort of tracks where we have a chance to raise these issues, both in the strategic track of the S&ED but also in the economic track,” the official said.
“We’re able to raise it both with officials in the security side of the Chinese Government, but also with officials in the economic side of the Chinese Government…They don’t always necessarily look at questions from the same perspective, and we want to make sure that we’re getting through to both of those sides.”
The S&ED is a “premier, regularly-scheduled, bilateral dialogue with the Chinese Government, and this year is the seventh round of this dialogue, and it includes a whole bunch of interactions at the working and highest levels of our governments,” the official said.
The dialogue, which was established by President Obama and Chinese President Hi in April 2009, is meant to focus on addressing challenges and opportunities both countries face on a range of international economic and strategic issues. The regularized platform is designed to “strengthen our relationship, to deepen our coordination, to promote cooperation, and to narrow or manage our differences,” said the State Department’s official blog, the DipNote.
The Strategic Security Dialogue has senior civilian and military officials exchange views on a range of security issues of strategic importance to China and the United States. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Bilnken co-hosted the fifth SSD with his Chinese counterpart, Executive Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui on Monday.
“They tackle a full range of strategic security issues and really try to get at those issues which are the most likely to drive strategic mistrust between the U.S. and China,” the official said.
The official linked this week’s meetings to multilateral discussions on cybersecurity. “We have this week up at the UN in the group of governmental experts, there’s a discussion going on with U.S. and Chinese experts on trying to come up with global norms for behavior of governments in cyber space–the kinds of norms that we have in other fora for things like arms control, et cetera.”
State Department spokesman John Kirby confirmed the importance of cybersecurity in the dialogues but did not tie it to the OPM breaches.
“Obviously cyber security will be discussed over the next couple of days, as it routinely is every time we engage with senior leaders from China. But I’m not going to get into this specific breach. There’s, again, no–been no allegation of responsibility,” Kirby said at the State Department Daily Press Briefing on Monday.
Although both the United States and China are publicly against cyber attacks, there are disagreements on policy, Kirby said
“It’s a very new and dynamic domain. It is one in which international norms and sets of parameters are not well established.”
“We’ve made our concerns clear not just to China but to other state and non-state actors. And I think it’s an area where, while we don’t necessarily always agree on the approach to cyber security and cyber defense, it is certainly one of those areas where there is room for better cooperation and better dialogue and more transparency.”