A huge cost to America as a result of China's theft of its intellectual property
The US Department of Justice has held several trials related to China's economic espionage.
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China is America's enemy when it comes to economic espionage. About 80% of all economic espionage trials brought by the US Department of Justice claim that such behavior would benefit the Chinese state.
One estimate for 2017 puts the loss to the United States from stolen trade secrets, hacked software and counterfeiting by China at between $225 and $600 billion a year.
An FBI agent in Silicon Valley told the Financial Times that Chinese spies are seeking knowledge in an "amazing" array of technologies, including biotechnology, nanotechnology, agricultural technology, quantum computing, and others.
Much of this activity is thought to be undetected, but cases that do appear to show a sharp upward trend.
About 73% of the 137 publicly reported cases of China-related spying against the United States since 2000 have occurred in the past decade, and the FBI says, on average, every 12 hours a new counterintelligence case is opened against China.
China, for its part, should consider the reputational damage to its reputation of state-directed technology espionage.
Technology theft was partly why Washington launched its 2018 trade war against Chinese interests, and similar tensions are evident in Europe.
For Beijing, the costs of such hacking may already outweigh the benefits.
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