President Donald Trump’s decision to solve intellectual property disputes with China with unilateral action is a mistake. Instead, the US should go through the existing WTO framework.

Donald Trump’s recent order to the United States Trade Representative to determine whether to launch an investigation against China concerning its alleged theft of U.S. intellectual property fail to make clear what the actual problem is that they are trying to solve. There are many things businesses can currently do already, while governmental processes are on-going. A sound corporate IP strategy will include non-disclosure agreements for businesses operating with Chinese partners or staff, thorough IP registration and documentation procedures, and aggressive litigation against infringers.

If The U.S. can’t come to a coherent position on cyber affairs domestically, what chances for success are there for a body such as the GGE, seeking to lay the groundwork for a comprehensive agreement?

While Russia’s hybrid warfare tactics have dominated the news cycle since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, China’s activities in the South China Sea have drawn close lessons from the Kremlin’s playbook. Beijing’s embrace of the concept of modern hybrid warfare has been part of the regional power’s calculated bid to blur the lines between ‘war’ and ‘peace’ in pursuit of its maritime sovereignty claims and avoid outright provocation of its rivals – particularly the United States.

Both countries must put the common security threat ahead of developing their own cyberweapons — further strengthening cooperation on cyberthreat information sharing, giving full play to the technological advantages of each country’s enterprises in such collaboration to reduce mutual suspicion and misunderstanding.

As China’s new Cybersecurity Law is now irrevocably coming into force, the question is more what foreign businesses can do to adapt to or mitigate the law’s effects. China’s political project remains self-generation in all senses of the world, which nearly automatically means limited or controlled engagement with foreign commercial counterparts. Foreign businesses need to understand this in order to position their own potential contribution to that process of development as a path to growth.

Currently, there is no sufficient distinction in international law or norms to be made between simple system breaches and more malicious actions that damage or destroy systems, and that will almost certainly become necessary for the United States and China alike.

The question for Western diplomats dealing in global Internet governance must be how to effectively engage China so as to maintain peace, security and stability in cyberspace – goals to which China’s cooperation strategy commits explicitly. Will cold-shouldering China empower those voices in Beijing advocating a more hawkish and isolating approach to global internet norms? Meeting China halfway on some of its desiderata, for instance a more high-profile presence at flagship Chinese events, might not only lead to a broader basis for engagement and trust, but also enable support for those voices within the Chinese system whose objectives overlap more with that of outside countries.

A series of episodes in recent years – including Russia’s cyber interventions to skew the United States’ 2016 presidential election toward Donald Trump, the anonymous cyber-attacks that disrupted Ukraine’s electricity system in 2015, and the “Stuxnet” virus that destroyed a thousand Iranian centrifuges – has fueled growing concern about conflict in cyberspace.

Is a Geneva Convention the only response to the problem of government cyber-attacks against individuals? As global stakeholders of the internet, we must do more.