The United States and China need to work together to avoid any “miscalculation” that could lead to brinksmanship between the two nations in the cyber realm, according to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
“Because the United States and China have developed technological capabilities in this arena, it’s extremely important that we work together to avoid any miscalculation or misperception that could lead to crisis in this area,” Panetta said Monday after a meeting with Chinese Ministry of National Defense Minister Gen. Liang Guanglie at the Pentagon. “I appreciate the General’s willingness to see if we can develop an approach to having exchanges in this arena in order to develop better cooperation when it comes to cyber.”
Guanglie said the two nations discussed ways to strengthen each other’s cyber security apparatus, but didn’t get into specifics.
“In our discussion, we also talked about the possible ways that China and the U.S. can jointly work on to try to find ways to strengthen the cyber security,” Liang said. “Although we did not touch upon the details or technical issues on this, in this regard. We will leave that to the experts.”
China, as well as Russia, have been accused of stealing proprietary information from U.S. businesses. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, Management and Investigations, pointed to China and Russia as the “most aggressive collectors of U.S. economic information and technology” during an April 24 hearing (Defense Daily, April 25).
“I can hardly agree with the proposition that the cyber attacks directed to the United States are directly coming from China,” Liang said. “And during the meetings, Secretary Panetta also agreed on my point that we cannot attribute all the cyber attacks to (the) United States to China.”