Haley Barbour Op-Ed – You can’t hack a steakhouse
Last week, we learned that the Chinese government had hacked into the computers of some of Washington’s most prominent organizations — law firms, think tanks, news outlets, human rights groups, congressional offices, embassies, and federal agencies — not to steal intellectual property or unearth state secrets, but rather to find out how things get done in the nation’s capital. According to the Washington Post, hackers were “searching for the unseen forces that might explain how the administration approaches an issue … with many Chinese officials presuming that reports by think tanks or news organizations are secretly the work of government officials — much as they would be in Beijing.” In other words, it appears that Chinese hackers have a lot of time on their hands and don’t know much about Washington. There are probably instances where a massive database and a fancy algorithm can tell you what you need to know about a place, but D.C. isn’t one of them.
Foreignpolicy.com
2/25/13
