U.S. Hands China a Cyber Propaganda Win

Of course, Washington will continue to try to make the distinction between state-on-state espionage (harder to stop than it is to put down a John le Carre novel) and corporate or economic spying (which it deems to be plain theft). Yet even that case will be harder to make after Mr Snowden’s leaks about the close and secret collaboration between US technology companies and the US government. As Adam Segal of the Council on Foreign Relations says: “This will reinforce in Chinese minds that US tech companies are instruments of US power.” Or at least, when Beijing says so, it will be harder to refute.