Witnesses from key federal agencies could not give an answer why the United States hasn’t sanctioned China for its cyberattacks against Microsoft and other U.S. companies, responding to Sen. Ted Cruz’s question on Tuesday with silence.
Earlier this month, the Biden administration and a host of U.S. allies blamed China’s Ministry of State Security for a massive hack against the Microsoft Exchange Server. But the U.S. did not impose sanctions like it did against Russian intelligence hackers earlier this year over the SolarWinds attack, and it did not charge anyone related to the Microsoft hack.
“Let me ask anyone on the panel,” Cruz, a Texas Republican, asked witnesses from the Justice Department, FBI, and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on ransomware Tuesday. “Do you have an answer as to why the administration has not sanctioned China for repeated cyberattacks over and over and over again against the United States?”
Richard Downing, the deputy assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s criminal division, Bryan Vorndran, the assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division, and Eric Goldstein, the executive assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA, all sat silently with no response.
“Well, I think that’s a question that the administration should answer,” Cruz said. “And showing weakness to China and weakness to Russia only invites more aggression and more cyberattacks attacking our nation.”
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In April, the Biden administration responded to the SolarWinds cyberattack by leveling sanctions against Russia, with the Treasury Department blacklisting companies it said “support the malign activities of the Russian intelligence services” behind the attack. The U.S. expelled 10 Russian diplomats at the same time.
When asked this month why the U.S. had not sanctioned China, President Joe Biden replied, “They’re still determining exactly what happened.”
Biden gave a muddled response when pressed on the difference between Chinese and Russian hacking.
“My understanding is that the Chinese government, not unlike the Russian government, is not doing this themselves but are protecting those who are doing it and maybe even accommodating them being able to do it,” he said. “That may be the difference.”
Rep. Mike Rogers, an Alabama Republican and the ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, said the U.S. needed to get tougher on China in a letter to Biden, calling for criminal charges against Chinese intelligence officials or sanctions against China’s government.
Late last week, the Justice Department also dropped a half-dozen cases against Chinese military researchers it had accused of lying on their visas to work in the U.S. Cruz raised the issue on Tuesday, saying it was another example of the Biden administration going soft on China.
“Why is this administration refusing to prosecute Chinese scientists who lied about their ties to the Chinese military in order to come to this country and gain access to information?”
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Earlier in the hearing, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said he was concerned that the DOJ’s China Initiative, implemented by the Trump administration to combat cyberattacks, might be scuttled.
“I would like to reassure you that, indeed, the department continues to be keenly focused on the problem of the theft of intellectual property by Chinese actors and by the Chinese government,” Downing replied.
