An Agreement With China on Cyber

So, we have no sanctions, but we have an agreement with China.  The press reports all say this agreement says (read any of several like http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-34360934 )  we agree not to steal each others trade secrets and proprietary information.  This is a fanciful agreement, since it isn't the U.S. stealing that kind of data.  We are agreeing to not do something we aren't doing anyway.  It is easy to agree to.

China, in spite of an abundance of evidence, says it does not steal from other countries and has laws to prevent such activity.  Those laws are being followed, they say.  So, they are agreeing to not do something they already say they do not do.  That negotiation must have gone smoothly, given that both sides agreed to not do something they don't do anyway.  Our legislators would do well to pass a law saying we will not steal information from another country or business entity, so we would be on equal footing.

The BBC article mentions something that not may others do.  It says the agreement does not cover national security information, state secrets.  So, we can continue to steal state secrets from each other and not violate the agreement.  That would be things like the entire database of security clearances in OPM, and other PII in the Post Office, and IRS.  It seems like an agreement in that area would be easy since neither side does that either.  The Chinese have denied stealing any of this data, and we would deny that we steal any such things from China.  We are all in agreement here.

I did say there would be an agreement.  It is totally worthless, but we got one.  We still have no deterrent capability to stop the Chinese from stealing from us, and this agreement, while it might be part of a state dinner conversation for 10 minutes, is only  a reflection of the real problems between us.  The Chinese are stealing us blind, plowing our own technology back into their industrial base, and competing with us everywhere on unequal footing.   We can pretend like signing an agreement will help that, but we need a big stick instead..