I just read a blog on the online Foreign Policy Magazine  “REPORTING INSIDE THE FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE “ THE CABLE, an article entitled Congressman: Obama is letting China steal U.S. military secrets. As you might imagine, that headline got my attention. That’s because for the past several months we’ve been bombarded with news related to the Chinese attempts to obtain U.S. military secrets.

 

Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH), chairman of the house subcommittee on the middle East and South Asia, tells The Cable, “The administration made a mistake by letting China play a role in the rim of the Pacific exercises.” adding, “they will likely utilize these exercises to their advantage: stealing our military secrets and better understanding military strategy.”

 

The Cable reports, that ”Michael Auslin, a resident scholar of Asian security studies at the conservative American enterprise Institute, “agrees.” Auslin also said, “they will get a better understanding of our tactics and procedures as they see how we can coordinate with our allies and friends.”

 

The current Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said that China accepted the current invitation in March of this year, even though it was originally extended to the then Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, sometime last year.

 

Of course the brouhaha concerning the Chinese trying to steal our military secrets were not front and center in the news high-lights last year as is true today.

 

The Cable states, “But now, with heightened fears that China is chipping away at America’s qualitative military edge in wake of a contentious Pentagon report citing Chinese cyber intrusions of the nation’s most advanced weapons systems, White House critics are sounding the alarm.”

 

Austin reiterated some of his earlier fears by stating, “If I’m the Chinese, I’m happy with this invitation. It affirms my whole belief that I can get away with slowly ratcheting up the pressure against the U.S. and its allies without any consequences.”

 

For obvious reasons, military action of any sort against China in an effort to stop that country from hacking our industrial and military intellectual property through the Internet is out of the question because the escalation of such a venture would be too destructive for either side to even contemplate.

I believe no amount of diplomatic dialogue is going to stop either the U.S. or China from stealing industrial or military secrets via cyber space.

 

Some type of action to try to prevent cyber attacks on our military and industrial intellectual properties need to occur because if what China is doing is left unattended by Washington, the inaction that would seriously jeopardize our military security and our ability to compete industrially with other nations in general and China in particular.

 

Richard A Clarke, the special advisor to the president for cyber- security from 2001 to 2003, and  Robert Knake  an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, are the author of Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It.

 

Clarke and Knake have suggested that President Obama’s administration have shied away from further government monitoring of industrial secrets involving cybernetic piracy because it may be perceived as illegal, therefore, a  violation of citizens’ rights, or privacy.

 

If what Clarke and Knake say is true, our president should do what he  and his administration feel is right regardless of the political consequences. When the security of our industrial and military secrets are at stake, our Founding Fathers would believe protecting the American citizens security, or our Constitution, should trump politics every time. I also believe that our Founding Fathers would agree that the giving up of some freedoms may be required if acts of cybernetic piracy are to be minimized. That’s because freedom and security are mutually exclusive concepts.

 

Having said that, if there is indeed a violation of a citizen’s privacy, complete transparency and Congressional debate should be the ‘order of the day’, so that a consensus of opinions is achieved as to how we collectively will deal with cybernetic espionage in the years ahead, since it will be something we will have to deal with for the foreseeable future.

As Clarke and Knake suggest, by Washington failing to act to protect our industrial intelligence by allowing China to fulfill its “research requirements” through stealing such information, this type of cybernetic stealing of our industrial secrets may ultimately help put our fellow Americans out of work. Considering the state of our fragile economy today, we can well afford to allow that to happen.

 

“To do, or not to do, that is the question?” I hope Congress and our president chooses the right answer to that question.