The Wall Street Journal
A Chinese J-31 stealth fighter performs at the 10th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai, south China's Guangdong Province, Nov. 11, 2014.
Are the U.S. and China entering a new era of good feeling?
A whirlwind of summitry this week yielded agreements to extend tourist, student and business visas, settle trade disputes over some technology products, establish new mechanisms for averting military confrontations, and limit greenhouse gas emissions—“a major milestone in the U.S.-China relationship,” said President Obama Wednesday.
After strolling the gardens of Beijing’s leadership compound with Xi Jinping, Mr. Obama noted that “when the U.S. and China are able to work together, the whole world benefits.”
We wish we could be as sanguine, but Xi’s China remains an authoritarian state seeking to displace the U.S. and the international norms that it views as impediments to its regional dominance.
That goal was also on display this week.
While Xi hosted world leaders Tuesday in Beijing, his military officially debuted its new J-31 stealth fighter jet in the southern city of Zhuhai.
The timing was especially bold because the J-31 is modeled on secret blueprints of the American F-35 stolen by Chinese cyber spies.
Having pilfered terabytes of data about the F-35’s design and operational capabilities, Beijing scheduled the J-31’s maiden flight as if to underscore that it robs America blind with impunity.
The J-31 is the most visible fruit of Chinese cyber espionage that targets America’s military, government and economy—from the Pentagon to Los Alamos, oil pipelines to power plants, Google to Coca-Cola .
Cyber spies from the People’s Liberation Army stole F-35 data by hacking into the systems of behemoth defense contractor Lockheed Martin and at least six subcontractors.
Those firms were “totally compromised—emails, their networks, everything,” said Lockheed’s chief information security officer in 2009.
Now China is the only country other than the U.S. building two stealth fighters (the J-20 debuted in 2011).
The U.S. says it never lost the F-35’s most sensitive flight-control data because it was stored off-line. And there are limits to how much the Chinese might gain from thievery: The J-31 could still lack the materials and electronics necessary for reliably stealthy radar evasion, while its pilots receive inferior training and its inferior engines are Russian-made.
Yet U.S. officials nonetheless acknowledge enormous damage.
“What it does is reduce the costs and lead time of our adversaries to doing their own designs,” chief Pentagon weapons buyer Frank Kendall told Congress last year, “so it gives away a substantial advantage.”
The dollar value of that advantage is suggested by the more than $400 billion that U.S. taxpayers have spent developing the F-35 over two decades—a number that only increases with the redesigns, delays and other costs of responding to China’s hack attacks.
Chinese military and commercial cyber theft amount to “the greatest transfer of wealth in history,” said Keith Alexander, then head of U.S. Cyber Command, last year.
The most acute threat is to U.S. troops who rely on secure cyber networks to stay alive.
The Defense Science Board and other U.S. agencies have warned of recent Chinese efforts to degrade the Thaad, Pac-3 and Aegis missile-defense systems, the Black Hawk helicopter, the F/A-18 and F-22 fighter jets, the tilt-rotor Osprey aircraft, the Littoral Combat Ship and many more.
This Chinese behavior persists because it is cost-free.
Nothing has changed in the 20 months since then-National Security Adviser Tom Donilon declared that stopping Chinese cyber intrusions was at “the forefront of our agenda.”
First Mr. Obama asked Xi to agree to “common rules of the road” for cyberspace, as if unenforceable arms-control promises are the answer.
Then in May the Justice Department indicted five Chinese military officers for snooping on U.S. steel, solar and nuclear-power companies.
The men will never face trial, and criminal proceedings are inadequate for addressing state-sponsored cyber aggression.
Washington has stronger means to respond to Beijing’s behavior.
It can help U.S. firms better protect themselves within the law, limit military-to-military exchanges that China so eagerly pursues, sanction Chinese officers and officials directing cyber espionage and deny market access to Chinese companies benefiting from stolen U.S. data.
It can also expand counteroffensive capabilities to force greater costs on Beijing.
But as long as arms-control talk and useless law-enforcement dominate U.S. policy, China will continue to steal U.S. secrets and close the remaining U.S. military advantage.
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