China is unable to steal that kind of data

The secrecy regarding the cyber capabilities and activities of the United States and China creates difficulty in estimating the relative balance of cyber power across the Pacific. Nevertheless, the United States appears to be gaining an increasing advantage. For every type of purported Chinese cyber threat, there are also serious Chinese vulnerabilities and growing Western strengths.

Much of the international cyber insecurity that China generates reflects internal security concerns. China exploits foreign media and digital infrastructure to target political dissidents and minority populations. The use of national censorship architecture (the Great Firewall of China) to redirect inbound internet traffic to attack sites such as GreatFire.org and GitHub in March 2015 is just the latest example of this worrisome trend. Yet prioritizing political information control over technical cyber defense also damages China's own cybersecurity. Lax law enforcement and poor cyber defenses leave the country vulnerable to both cybercriminals and foreign spies. The fragmented and notoriously competitive nature of the Communist Party state further complicates coordination across military, police, and regulatory entities.

There is strong evidence that China continues to engage in aggressive cyber espionage campaigns against Western interests. Yet it struggles to convert even legitimately obtained foreign data into competitive advantage, let alone make sense of petabytes of stolen data. Absorption is especially challenging at the most sophisticated end of the value chain (e.g., advanced fighter aircraft), which is dominated by the United States. At the same time, the United States conducts its own cyber espionage against China , as the Edward Snowden leaks dramatized, which can indirectly aid U.S. firms (e.g., in government trade negotiations). China's uneven industrial development, fragmented cyber defenses, erratic cyber tradecraft, and the market dominance of U.S. technology firms provide considerable advantages to the United States.

Despite high levels of Chinese political harassment and espionage, there is little evidence of skill or subtlety in China's military cyber operations. Although Chinese strategists describe cyberspace as a highly asymmetric and decisive domain of warfare, China's military cyber capacity does not live up to its doctrinal aspirations. A disruptive attack on physical infrastructure requires careful testing, painstaking planning, and sophisticated intelligence. Even experienced U.S. cyber operators struggle with these challenges. By contrast, the Chinese military is rigidly hierarchical and has no wartime experience with complex information systems. Further, China's pursuit of military "informatization" (i.e., emulation of the U.S. network-centric style of operations) increases its dependence on vulnerable networks and exposure to foreign cyberattack.

To be sure, China engages in aggressive cyber campaigns, especially against nongovernmental organizations and firms less equipped to defend themselves than government entities. These activities, however, do not constitute major military threats against the United States, and they do nothing to defend China from the considerable intelligence and military advantages of the United States.