Start by Filling the Holes

As a just-released report shows, China has been systematically filching America’s most precious secrets for decades. But reprehensible as this activity may be, its general outlines, if not all the details, have been known to the U.S. intelligence community for years. Washington’s response to what undoubtedly is a massive breach of security should be to improve safeguards. Intensifying China bashing and threatening economic retaliation would not fix the problem but certainly would widen the U.S.-China breach.

According to a House select committee chaired by Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), China has been harvesting the latest advances in American nuclear technology, including information on seven types of U.S. nuclear warheads that can be delivered from submarines or by intercontinental missiles. The theft of this information, combined with legitimate but ill-controlled American exports of supercomputers and satellites, helped China obtain more and deadlier technology from the United States than it has from Russia under a bilateral technology cooperation program that Washington has been trying to stop.

What the report does not say is that China has been just as active in stealing advanced technology and trade secrets from the private sector. James Chandler, the founder of the Washington-based National Intellectual Property Law Institute, says Chinese spies have stolen billions of dollars worth of new technology from U.S. companies since the 1970s.

But both the American government and the private sector have been aware of this campaign from the start and also know that other countries, including allies Israel and France, have been stealing U.S. technology. A classified 1996 FBI report concluded that China stole information on the neutron bomb from the Livermore labs in the late 1970s. Moreover, for the past decade the FBI, which is in charge of safeguarding the nation’s secrets, has been warning businesses of China’s industrial espionage and offering advice on how to protect new technology.

Though the official investigation into Chinese espionage has not reached past the finger-pointing stage, it seems clear the government has not followed the FBI’s recommendation No. 1: Commit your top management to the protection of valuable secrets.

While Congress’ sense of betrayal by China might be justified, the call for retribution is not. Particularly harmful is the appeal by some legislators to punish Beijing by denying it the “normal trading status” and membership in the World Trade Organization. China’s entry into the WTO--if subject to strict terms, including open markets--would benefit all of Beijing’s trading partners, including the United States, and bind China to years of economic reforms under the watchful eye of the world trading community. The theft of U.S. nuclear weapons secrets is a serious problem and should be an area most closely watched. The solution is to find out where and how the important leaks occurred and plug the holes.