The media have been hyping this weekend’s summit between President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping as if it were a heavyweight-boxing match. Specifically, they are reporting on Obama’s declared intent to give Xi the riot act over Chinese hacking American military and corporate secrets as if he intends to lead off their summit by punching Xi in the nose.
Hackers have accessed designs for more than two dozen major U.S. weapons systems … senior military and industry officials with knowledge of the breaches say they come primarily from China…
‘This is billions of dollars of combat advantage for China. They’ve just saved themselves 25 years of research and development. It’s nuts.’
(Business Insider, May 28, 2013)
The reality, of course, is that the interaction between these two men will be so cordial and genteel it will make English High Tea seem barbaric. It will be thus because they both know full well that a high-tech country complaining about hacking is tantamount to a combat soldier complaining about killing.
So if you’re looking for fisticuffs you’re going to be even more disappointed than the entomomaniacs now waiting for cicadas or Vladimir and Estragon Waiting for Godot. In fact, nothing militates against Obama lecturing Xi about Chinese hacking quite like widespread reports about Americans hacking Iranian nuclear secrets.
Frankly, instead of Xi, the person Obama should punch in the nose is the White House staffer who leaked this notorious U.S. hacking caper to the media:
No doubt you’ve seen Republicans and their right-wing hit men (most notably pundit Charles Krauthammer) all over the media accusing the White House of compromising nationality security just to make President Obama look good.
Their accusations pertain to disclosures (aka leaks) that enabled the New York Times and other publications to report on how the United States (and Israel) launched cyber-attacks to undermine Iran’s nuclear and military capability.
(“Holy Stuxnet: The White House is Leaking,” The iPINIONS Journal, June 12, 2012)
I assure you, if Chinese government officials were as vainglorious, loose-lipped, and stupid as their American counterparts, there would be twice as many reports about Americans hacking Chinese military and corporate secrets than vice versa.
In the meantime, it’s plainly feckless for the United States to threaten China with economic reprisals if China does not curtail its cyberspying – as hawks in the U.S. Congress are goading Obama to do. Not least because this would be like a junkie threatening his dealer with legal reprisals if the dealer does not lower his prices.
In other words, the United States is so financially/economically dependent on China that threatening China would be tantamount to cutting off its nose to spite its face; and, again, vice versa:
The U.S. market is even more indispensable to China’s economic growth than China’s credit is to the U.S.’s.
(“Countries Queuing Up to Become as Indebted to China as U.S. Is,” The iPINIONS Journal, September 15, 2011)
Obama would be far wiser to appeal to Xi to do all he can to crackdown on the Chinese pirates who make almost as much cash off American intellectual property (covering everything from software to movies) as the owners of that property. And no company has been more victimized (or vandalized) in this respect than Apple. Except that companies like Apple have become so notorious for their avoidance of corporate taxes that this piracy might be a form of poetic justice.
At least 18 companies, including Nike, Microsoft and Apple, are stashing profits in offshore tax havens likely in a bid to avoid paying taxes, according to a new report from the Citizens for Tax Justice…
If the companies brought that money home, they would pay combined more than $92 billion in U.S. taxes, the report found.
(Huffington Post, June 3, 2013)
I fear, however, that, even if he wanted to, Xi would have no success in deterring such piracy until Chinese entrepreneurs become so innovative in their own right that local pirates begin cannibalizing the intellectual property of their own….
Incidentally, I’m sure Obama welcomes the media focusing on Xi’s cyberspying on American companies instead continuing their colonic investigation into his cyberspying on American journalists. (For more on this, I refer you below to “Nixonian Obama Right to Spy on Associated Press,” The iPINIONS Journal, May 14, 2013.)
More important, though, while the United States is accusing China of gaining superpower-economic status by cyberspying, China is gaining superpower-political/military status by brazenly buying up alliances all over the world.
Indeed, it is no accident that Xi is holding a summit in Trinidad with leaders from the Caribbean and Central America before meeting in California with Obama. Never mind that you’d think these leaders would be loath to enter into mercantile relationships with China — given the exploits and inequities their countries suffered under the mercantile demands of British colonialism. But no…. (I have written many commentaries on this superpower dynamic – most recently in “China Invading U.S. Sphere of Influence in the Caribbean,” The iPINIONS Journal, April 11, 2012)
What’s more, while the war-weary United States is “pivoting” from the Middle East to Asia, China is not only doing everything to defend its sphere of influence in Asia, but also brazenly filling the void the United States is leaving behind in the Middle East with lucrative oil and other nation-building contracts.
Coming full circle, it’s an indication of how overhyped this summit is that the media are hyping Michelle Obama’s decision to snub Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, almost as much as the matchup between Obama and Xi. Reports are that she won’t be traveling with her husband to California to meet them because she wants to be home for their daughters’ final days of this school year.
Really? She’s picking this seminal state occasion to skirt her duties as first lady so she can play stay-at-home mom? And by the way, didn’t she have her mother move into the White House precisely to help her with mom duties on occasions like this?
No, I think the increasingly unruly diva in Michelle just does not want to be upstaged by Peng – who, , in my humble opinion, is not only more beautiful, but has a far more interesting background as a soldier in China’s Red Army, a folk singer, and a performing artist. So, shame on you, Michelle….
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