China has come a long way, very quickly, from supplying McDonald’s with Happy Meal toys covered in lead paint. Last week, WBUR’s (Boston University Radio) On Point with Tom Ashbrook had a show about corporate espionage by Chinese hackers.
[audio:http://audio.wbur.org/storage/2012/02/onpoint_0216_hacking-americas-future.mp3|titles=On Point with Tom Ashbrook – China hacking]Listening to this exchange was, for me, frustrating. There’s a lot of alarmist talk in the show, but why was it okay for American corporations to send their manufacturing jobs to China in the first place? Why, only now, with the theft of proprietary information, is China being seen as a threat? And if these victimized companies have such sophisticated intellectual property, why couldn’t they invest more in better protection against online attacks? In the old days, employees would have to be moles, or be corrupt and willing to sell secrets, for serious damage to be done. Now, just having an Internet connection is all it takes? Seems to me this is a case of reaping what you sow.