The Chinese have a rule of engagement that says they fight when they are ready, and not before. Note that not every country follows that rule, usually to their detriment. What the OPM and a stream of other hacks shows is their readiness to engage, acknowledge their hacking with in-your-face attacks that can be traced to China, and overt acts in the South China Sea. Think of these as warnings.
Sony and South Korea's banking targets (North Korea was held responsible), are equal warnings. Both were destructive and intended to show us that the next big fight will not be the theft of data from private and government sources. It will be a damaging attack against the core services of our country, businesses especially. Lots of information will be released to the public and systems will be destroyed.
That is part of the game of war played by governments. Usually, the basic rules require covert engagement, something the Chinese have done by denying something so easily traced to them. The usual approach is to use deterrence as a way of persuading them that this is not a good idea. Do we have a good deterrence here? No.
So, if they are ready to fight and we don't have a good deterrence, we have to fight too. Are we ready? The military is ready and thinks it can fight, but this war is not about the military capability of a country. Can our businesses withstand an attack if it came? We can't afford to wait to find out. The attack on South Korea cost $500M to repair, and they are a small country. I hope our government has let our industries know how that attack was done and what they should be doing about deflecting a similar effort here.
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