GOP presidential hopefuls Donald Trump and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie warned China that neither will allow cyberattacks to go unanswered if elected to the White House.
As the Obama administration prepares for a new round of talks with China in the wake of a reaching a supposed agreement between Washington and Beijing, the Republican contenders announced separately Tuesday that any cyberattacks incurred while in office would garner an immediate, unmatched response.
“We will enforce stronger protections against Chinese hackers and counterfeit goods and our responses to Chinese theft will be swift, robust and unequivocal,” reads an excerpt from policy blueprints published on Mr. Trump’s website on Tuesday. “If China wants to trade with America, they must agree to stop stealing and to play by the rules.”
Mr. Christie, meanwhile, said during the first of two GOP debates held Tuesday evening that, if elected to the White House, he won’t hesitate to wage a full-fledged retaliation if the U.S. is hacked by China.
“The Chinese don’t take us seriously, and why should they? They hacked into the American government’s personnel file and took millions of records in cyberwarfare against this country,” he said.
“Let me be really clear about what I would do,” the governor added. “If the Chinese commit cyberwarfare against us, they are going to see cyberwarfare like they have never seen before.”
The candidates made their remarks as Alejandro Mayorkas, deputy secretary of homeland security, prepares to visit China this week to speak with officials there ahead of an event scheduled for December in D.C., a first-of-its-kind “Ministerial Dialogue on Cybercrime and Related Issues.” In Beijing he’ll “participate in meetings with senior Chinese officials to advance implementation of bilateral commitments on cyber issues,” the Homeland Security Department said in a statement on Monday.
Next month’s summit is slated to be the first major meeting between American and Chinese officials since President Xi Jinping’s visit to the U.S. in September. Following talks with President Obama at the White House that month, the two leaders announced the U.S. and China had reached a “common understanding” with regards to cyberwarfare and would refrain from attacking the government networks of either nation.
U.S. security experts said Chinese hackers have targeted American computers in the weeks since, however, raising questions of whether the Obama administration is fully committed to responding to offensive attacks in the digital realm, especially in the wake of a colossal hack of Office of Personnel Management records — largely blamed on Beijing.
The Obama administration had weighed sanctioning China as a result of the OPM breach and other hacks before September’s meeting. During Tuesday’s debate, Mr. Christie for the first time claimed publicly that he was affected by the breach.
“I’m one of the victims of that hack,” he said. “They took my Social Security number, my fingerprints as a former United States attorney that was on file in there. And what has this president done? Not one thing.”
More than 22 million current and former government employees and contractors had their personal information compromised during the OPM breach.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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