It sounds like an airport thriller: a near-future in which American firms wage private cyber-combat against Chinese rivals. But precisely that scenario is being considered by former senior American officials, who report that intellectual property (IP) is being stolen on an unprecedented scale, and that passive defences no longer work. Annual losses from the theft of American ip are probably on a similar scale to America's total exports to Asia, at around $300 billion a year, concludes a report by a Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, a private initiative led by Dennis Blair, Barack Obama's first director of national intelligence, and Jon Huntsman, a former ambassador to China and unsuccessful contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
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