Is a U.S.–China Battle Already Underway—in Cyberspace?

Dean Cheng / November 18, 2010

In sharp contrast to this year’s Pentagon report on Chinese military power, this year’s report from Congress’s U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission includes a number of startling revelations.

Perhaps the most notable is the report that the Chinese diverted 15 percent of global Internet traffic to Chinese servers at one point. This incident, which occurred on April 8 of this year, involved a Chinese Internet service provider that redirected traffic from 37,000 networks around the world to China. Intriguingly, the report notes that rerouted traffic included information from the U.S. Senate, the Department of Defense, and NASA.

As with most cyber-related activities, it would be difficult to make a firm attribution of responsible parties for such an action. After all, as the famous New Yorker cartoon once observed, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” Or a “patriotic hacker” or someone working for the Chinese government. (more…)