For the past few years, there has been an explosion of ways in which countries can engage in destructive behavior. The use of cyberspace as a venue of battle has changed the nature of conventional warfare. This poses problems in terms of response to those threats as well as how to develop international agreements to curtail its use.
A March 7 report by U.S. weapons manufacturer Northrop Grumman, "Occupying the Information High Ground: Chinese Capabilities for Computer Network Operations and Cyber Espionage," warns of Beijing's integration of network operations into a broader military and intelligence context and of the threat this represents to U.S. economic and strategic interests.
According to this report, more than 50 Chinese universities are conducting research on information security, funded by five national grant programs as part of a broad national policy. Several sectors of the U.S. economy are seriously endangered, including public and private facilities, banking and finance, education and government, and other operations that depend on computers for daily operations.