Kissinger, Huntsman: U.S., China need cyber detente

Source: Paul Eckert and Daniel Magnowski, Reuters

The United States and China need to reach an agreement to restrict cyber attacks and designate some areas as off limits to hacking, two former senior U.S. officials said on Tuesday.

Henry Kissinger, an architect of the opening of U.S. relations with China in the 1970s, told a Thomson Reuters event that Washington and Beijing both had significant espionage capabilities and the key was finding a way to discuss them.

Jon Huntsman, the former U.S. ambassador to China, likened raising cyber attacks with Beijing to the challenge of discussing missile defense and the military use of space — issues that are also highly sensitive to the Chinese.

“At some point, we are going to have to develop a context in which we can actually discuss this and, I would think, draw some red lines around areas that we don’t want them into and they might not want us into,” said Huntsman, who left China in April to plan his presidential election campaign, and was speaking at the same event.

Their calls for a cyber detente follow a blitz of hacking attacks on major U.S.-based institutions in recent weeks, including the International Monetary Fund, the Senate, and companies such as Citigroup and Lockheed Martin.

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