The Obama administration is debating whether to issue financial sanctions and potentially criminal indictments against Chinese people and businesses engaged in hacking of American companies, U.S. officials and China analysts told The Daily Beast. It’s a sign of escalating tensions between the United States and China over cyber spying.
Indictments on their own would be largely symbolic, since the accused would almost certainly never see the inside of an American courtroom. But pairing them with economic sanctions would constitute the administration’s strongest public response to a years long campaign of Chinese cyber espionage that officials say has stolen billions of dollars in trade secrets and intellectual property from companies in practically every sector of the American economy.
Read Full Article »