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Comment by protontorpedo | Hacker News Reader

It looks like cyber warfare, as well as espionage, is considered pretty much fair game in geopolitics nowadays. I wonder where the line is drawn that would make it an act of war. In any case, a direct attack from the Chinese government towards it's main trade partners (US, Germany and Japan among them) sounds crazy to me.

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I don't think it's crazy at all. We (i.e. the US) use our SIGINT abilities to spy on allies all the time, or at least according to numerous books and leaks. With that said, I'm not sure that the US government considers China an ally.

espionage != cyber warfare

> attack crippled thousands of computers around the world

Technology has a tendency of merging realms. Whether you compromise a system to get information or to cripple it is pretty much a detail.

Yes, and that includes stealing trade secrets from European companies, which are nominally US allies.

Was there ever a time when espionage and cyber warfare weren't fair game? To me the only difference seems to have been where a nation state did have the capability and where they didn't.

Why? China wants to build an empire and views the US as an enemy. They will use their military and intelligence forces to achieve that, just like any other country does to achieve their respective goals.

China goes down, so does aapl and tsla and our entire economy. Until the American voter is more powerful that the collected business interests of those mega-corps, China will be our most favored trade partner, even as they commit war crimes against the American people (in theory :)

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