Jun 07, 2016

South China Sea tensions appear to reveal the innate character and intentions of both countries. However, small inkblots, just like small islands, can only explain so much when assessing the overall China-U.S. bilateral relationship. These inkblots imperil a more comprehensive scrutiny of the larger geo-political canvas of the ongoing 8th China-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogue.

Jun 03, 2016

President Barack Obama’s announcement that he will lift the decades-old embargo on the sale of military equipment to Vietnam raises the question of whether or not it will alter the military balance in the South China Sea. This outcome, Stefan-Gady argues, depends on both the effective training and the ability to successfully integrate new weapons systems within the existing military structures.

Jan 28, 2016

Sino-U.S. relations in cyberspace in 2016 will be defined by three key policies: attribution, sanctions, and norms. Franz-Stefan Gady discusses what each policy could look like, and also the reviews the cyber diplomacy between the two countries in 2015.

Jan 07, 2016

China used the World Internet Conference to promote its vision of Internet governance to an international audience and to defend the concept of cyber sovereignty. China will continue to push for multilateral internet governance, rather than multi-stakeholder internet governance, which can include private companies and other groups.

Oct 29, 2015

It may be too premature to argue that the China-U.S. cyber-agreement has failed. The vagueness of the agreement needs to be followed up with specific cooperation, like a cooperative agreement between both nations’ Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs), which are the first (and last line) of defense in protecting a country’s critical information infrastructure from cyberattacks.

Oct 12, 2015

South Korea and China need to understand that the moral and military defeat of the Japanese military in World War II was so total, that it echoes to this day. Despite the historical revisionism and fear mongering of Shinzo Abe’s faction, the Japanese public appears unwilling to trust another “military clique” and engage in adulations of its military leadership and the military.

Mar 25, 2015

China’s controversial new anti-terrorism law would require foreign companies to install “backdoors” to give authorities remote access to computers and networks, and has been placed under review due to Western concerns. Since China still has to rely on foreign technology in the immediate future, the law might have been used to tell the United States government not to engage in what Beijing called “reckless behavior,” or to further expose U.S. hypocrisy in its own cyber espionage practices.

Mar 23, 2015

Much has been made about the explicit acknowledgement of cyber-warfare forces within the People’s Liberation Army. Yet these revelations are neither groundbreaking nor constitute a formal strategic doctrine for cyber or military applications of information technology in the event of war. More interesting is the insights it yields in what appears to be a comprehensive Chinese “whole nation” approach to conducting cyber war, something that experts have suspected for many years.

Mar 03, 2015

The USCC assessment on the weaknesses of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) offered little new analysis on PLA’s cyber-warfare capabilities. This is due to impossibility of finding a comprehensive assessment of China’s military cyber capabilities on the public record. Much of the debate surrounding the PLA’s cyber war capabilities is mere speculation based on evidence of its undoubted success in cyber espionage.

Jan 15, 2015

Lu Wei, China’s cyber czar has stressed “cyber sovereignty” as China’s official Internet policy. While the recent Sony hack may reveal that China was complicit in the unlawful breach of cyber norms, Gady argues that China and the U.S. need to find less politically sensitive ways to cooperate on mutually beneficial Internet issues, while circumventing their disagreements in other domains.