Not Even Obama's Intel Boss Believes in His "No Cyberattacks" Deal w/China
Obama will boldly stand up to China. As long as it doesn't involve standing up to China.
September 30, 2015
Daniel Greenfield
Obama loves making worthless deals with murderous dictatorships. The more worthless and the more murderous, the better. That's #SmartPower.
But not even his own Director of National Intelligence is taking this one seriously.
[Obama and Jinping] agreed not to conduct or knowingly support cyber theft of trade secrets or competitive business information. The White House said the agreement covers cyber theft where the intent is to provide a competitive advantage to a country’s companies or commercial sectors.
At a Senate hearing, Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper if he was optimistic that the agreement would result in the elimination of such attacks from China. Clapper replied: “No.”
The agreement is ridiculous and worthless, but this gives Obama something to show his corporate donors while pretending that he's doing something about a crisis which has seen major pieces of classified information compromised.
The hacking agreement is a lot like Obama's carbon agreement with China. Both are worthless, but they give Media Matters some press releases to churn out. Obama needs to pretend that he's a world leader and this is how he does it.
It's all theater and China no doubt finds it hilarious. But the media butches it up to make Obama seem tough to Americans.
Somber against a backdrop of grand pageantry, President Barack Obama laid out a fresh threat of sanctions against China for alleged cybercrimes on Friday, even as he and Chinese President Xi Jinping reached an agreement not to conduct or support such hacking. "It has to stop," Obama declared.
The president, in a Rose Garden news conference with Xi, was clear that he'll be wary until the Chinese follow through on promised efforts to stop cyberespionage, saying, "The question now is: Are words followed by action?"
The president announced that he and Xi had come to a "common understanding," saying, "We have agreed that neither the U.S. or the Chinese government will conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property including trade secrets or other confidential information for commercial advantage."
Words from Obama are followed by more words. China will continue taking action since this agreement doesn't even cover things like the OPM hack.
The agreement to clamp down on the theft of trade secrets falls short of addressing the Obama administration's greater concerns about theft of national security information, such as the tens of millions of U.S. federal personnel records that American lawmakers and some U.S. officials have said was engineered by Beijing.
The president has not assigned blame to China for that breach nor taken action to sanction its government, amid concerns that retaliating for that breach could have led Xi to cancel the state visit.
Obama will boldly stand up to China. As long as it doesn't involve standing up to China. Meanwhile the US is pulling its people out of China.
Employees of the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency assigned to China are at risk of being exposed, U.S. intelligence officials determined in recent months. The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the CIA has pulled a number of officers from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
The hack is expected to have a major impact on U.S. national security, in part because the stolen data includes information from U.S. government forms used for security clearances, known as SF86 questionnaires.
Are words followed by action? Sure they are. Another American retreat. That's an action, right?
http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/260290/not-even-obamas-intel-boss-believes-his-no-daniel-greenfield
