Tuesday 28 May 2013

Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping will discuss cybersecurity and closer military ties

We are told that President Barack Obama will discuss cybersecurity with Chinese President Xi Jinping when two two meet in California next week. 

This comes after a Washington Post report that Chinese hackers have been able to access designs of some of the most advanced US defense systems:


Designs for many of the nation’s most sensitive advanced weapons systems have been compromised by Chinese hackers, according to a report prepared for the Pentagon and to officials from government and the defense industry.
Among more than two dozen major weapons systems whose designs were breached were programs critical to U.S. missile defenses and combat aircraft and ships, according to a previously undisclosed section of a confidential report prepared for Pentagon leaders by the Defense Science Board.
At the same time Obama's National Security Adviser is calling for deeper military ties with communist China:

The United States called for deeper military ties with China on Tuesday, including working closer together in areas like peacekeeping, fighting piracy and disaster relief, despite growing tensions between the two on a range of security issues.
White House National Security Adviser Tom Donilon made the remarks at a meeting with senior Chinese military leader Fan Changlong, two weeks ahead of a summit between the U.S. and Chinese presidents in California.

"An essential part of building a new model for relations between great powers is ensuring we have a healthy, stable and reliable military to military relationship," Donilon told Fan at the Chinese Defence Ministry, in brief comments before reporters.
If Obama's intention really is to have "a healthy, stable and reliable military to military relationship" with the People's Liberation Army, then the question of Chinese military hackers should not be a problem. So maybe Obama actually will tell comrade Xi that he can order his Army of Hackers to concentrate on other, more interesting jobs, because within the framework of the new healthy military relationship, he could have the new weapon designs delivered by ordinary mail, for a modest fee, of course....

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