In the September issue of Vanity Fair, Michael Joseph Gross investigates the complex, growing nature of Chinese cyber hacking of U.S. computer networks:

...because the People’s Republic of China is such a massive entity, it is impossible to know how much Chinese hacking is done on explicit orders from the government. In some cases, the evidence suggests that government and military groups are executing the attacks themselves. In others, Chinese authorities are merely turning a blind eye to illegal activities that are good for China’s economy and bad for America’s.

Even more troubling is that China may be planning many more attacks:

Like so many Rip Van Winkles, most of Washington has been asleep while cyber-attacks proliferated. But a few voices have been trying to wake the town up. One belongs to Scott Borg, director and chief economist of the U.S. Cyber-Consequences Unit, whose research indicates that China, to sustain economic growth, “is relying increasingly on large-scale information theft. This means that cyber attacks are now a basic part of China’s national development strategy.”

Read the full article.