The Department of Justice has taken the unprecedented step of charging a number of officials from the Chinese People's Liberation Army, who are accused of hacking into American private-sector companies to steal trade secrets. The indictments might seem strange, given that none of the individuals, who allegedly work in Shanghai for a PLA hacking unit called "61398," may ever be physically hauled in front of the US justice system to face prosecution. Nevertheless, the move comes after increasingly vocal warnings from both the DoJ and the Pentagon that cyber-spying won't be tolerated merely for the sake of wider US-China relations. For its part, China has always insisted that the problem runs both ways, and that it's also a victim of US cyber-spying -- although that response hasn't really tackled the (blurred) distinction between spying for military purposes, versus using military resources for commercial spying.
[Image credit: CoolCaesar, Wikimedia Commons]
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