Candidates line up to bash China

A growing number of Republican presidential candidates are calling for the United States to take offensive action against China for persistent hacking.

Beijing is widely believed to be behind the theft of 21.5 million private records from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Meanwhile, U.S. companies claim that Chinese hackers — backed by the government — are pilfering trade secrets and other intellectual property to give their domestic companies an edge.

{mosads}Republicans running for the White House say President Obama has been too soft on China on a slew of issues, ranging from cybersecurity to currency manipulation to navigation in the South China Sea.

“We have the capability to not only have a defensive posture, but also to make it clear to people that if you attack us with cyberattacks, we will destroy the mechanisms that you are using to attack us,” Ohio Gov. John Kasich said during this week’s Republican presidential debate.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who was relegated to the undercard debate on Tuesday, promised that “if the Chinese commit cyber warfare against us, they are going to see cyber warfare like they have never seen before.”

Front-runner Donald Trump also waded into the fray on Tuesday, releasing a policy paper that pledged “zero tolerance” for China’s digital theft of U.S. corporate secrets.

“China’s government ignores this rampant cyber crime and, in other cases, actively encourages or even sponsors it — without any real consequences,” the paper says. “China’s cyber lawlessness threatens our prosperity, privacy and national security.”

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush similarly called for a more aggressive strategy during the CNN Republican primary debate in September.

“We need to be strong against China,” Bush said. “We should use offensive tactics as it relates to cybersecurity, send a deterrent signal to China.”

Bush had already cast himself as tough on cyber crime, releasing a five-point plan to strengthen the nation’s posture days before the CNN debate.

His plan calls for increased support for the intelligence community and law enforcement to respond to cyberattacks, although it does not specifically mention China.

“We must hold to account those who are stealing our nation’s intellectual capital,” Bush’s plan reads. “Efforts to expose, prosecute, and in some cases retaliate against these actors will raise the cost of conducting such attacks and increase deterrence of future attacks.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said during the CNN debate that “of course” China has committed acts of cyber war, pivoting immediately to President Obama’s response.

“We need a new commander in chief who will stand up to our enemies and have credibility,” Cruz said.

Most candidates have used the question of how best to respond to China’s digital pilfering as an opportunity to hit the Obama administration on its foreign policy approach.

“[China’s cyber behavior] is a very serious threat, it’s an opportunity to credibly criticize the Obama administration in an area where they’ve not shown leadership, and it’s a reasonable criticism of China,” said Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist.

The White House has yet to publicly blame Beijing for the OPM hack, drawing vocal criticism from several GOP candidates over the summer.

Christie on Tuesday called the Obama administration’s refusal to respond “weak and feckless.”

“I’m one of the victims of that hack,” Christie said. “They took my Social Security number, my fingerprints as former United States attorney … and what has the president done? Not one thing.”

Intelligence officials and policy experts say the administration’s muted response is because the intrusion was conducted for intelligence-gathering purposes — something the U.S. does as well.

Intelligence officials have also pushed back on the use of the word “cyberattack” to describe the breach, characterizing it as an act of passive surveillance rather than an act of aggression.

They have cautioned lawmakers against responding rashly in a series of Capitol Hill hearings.

“Many times, I’ll hear people throw out ‘attack,’ ‘act of war,'” National Security Agency Director Adm. Michael Rogers told the House Intelligence Committee in September. “And I go, ‘That’s not necessarily in every case how I would characterize the activity that I see.'”

The White House has tried to draw a distinction between hacking for intelligence and hacking for commercial gain.

In September, the U.S. and China agreed that neither nation would support or conduct hacks on one another’s companies. The two nations are hosting the first of multiple planned ministerial-level dialogues on the issue in December.

Lawmakers and others have expressed doubt that China will hold up its end of the bargain without an enforcement mechanism.

Obama has indicated that he reserves the option of sanctioning Beijing if it doesn’t keep its word and dismantle its vast economic espionage apparatus.

“I did indicate to President Xi that we will apply [sanctions] and whatever other tools we have to go after cyber criminals either retrospectively or prospectively,” the president said at a press conference with China’s President Xi Jinping.

Critics have accused some of the Republican candidates who are calling for retaliation of insufficiently understanding the complex — and still-evolving — policy that surrounds cyber warfare.

Mackowiak cautioned that the high learning curve associated with cyber policy will likely keep most candidates from wading in too deep. Unless there is another major breach, he says, candidates will likely use China’s cyber behavior to broadly criticize the Obama administration.

“I’d be surprised if more than one or two more candidates put out prescriptive solutions as relates to cybersecurity,” Mackowiak said. “You have to kind of know what you’re talking about.”