Chinese "Cyber Militia"

Or, "Reason Number 286 or so to Drop Microsoft."

This is old news to anyone in IT security (and Time first wrote about the subject years ago), but the article might be interesting to those who don't work in the field.

What is interesting to me--apart from the article--are all the Fortune 1000 companies that are all too eager to do business with, and in, China when China's government all but openly sponsors intellectual property theft. Believe me, it was just not the US government that was hit by Titan Rain and other coordinated attacks from China. In fact, the running gag amongst some of us IT security weenies is something akin to "why don't we just give them all of our intellectual property and save everyone a lot of time and money?"

Then again, I suppose I would be out of a job if they did. So...I guess we will just have to get used to blatant, state-sponsored, multi-billion dollar theft and hope it doesn't hurt us too badly. The US government is so beholden to Chinese loans that nothing substantial will be done about it for years, if within our lifetimes. I would love to be wrong about that--but I don't think I will be.