David Sanger

American officials insist, when speaking off the record, that the United States was never acting on behalf of specific American companies. But the government does not deny it routinely spies to advance American economic advantage, which is part of its broad definition of how it protects American national security. In short, the officials say, while the National Security Agency cannot spy on Airbus and give the results to Boeing, it is free to spy on European or Asian trade negotiators and use the results to help American trade officials -- and, by extension, the American industries and workers they are trying to bolster.

Now, every one of the examples of NSA spying on corporations around the world is becoming Exhibit A in China’s argument that by indicting five members of the People’s Liberation Army, the Obama Administration is giving new meaning to capitalistic hypocrisy.

In the Chinese view, the United States has designed its own system of rules about what constitutes “legal” spying and what is illegal. That definition, the Chinese contend, is intended to benefit an American economy built around the sanctity of intellectual property belonging to private firms. And, in their mind, it is also designed to give the NSA the broadest possible rights to intercept phone calls or email messages of state-owned companies from China to Saudi Arabia, or even private firms that are involved in activities the United States considers vital to its national security, with no regard to local laws. The NSA says it observes American law around the globe, but admits that local laws are no obstacle to its operations.

In the months before Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s arrival in Beijing, the Obama Administration quietly held an extraordinary briefing for the Chinese military leadership on a subject officials have rarely discussed in public: the Pentagon’s emerging doctrine for defending against cyberattacks against the United States -- and for using its cybertechnology against adversaries, including the Chinese.

The idea was to allay Chinese concerns about plans to more than triple the number of American cyberwarriors to 6,000 by the end of 2016, a force that will include new teams the Pentagon plans to deploy to each military combatant command around the world. But the hope was to prompt the Chinese to give Washington a similar briefing about the many People’s Liberation Army units that are believed to be behind the escalating attacks on American corporations and government networks. So far, the Chinese have not reciprocated -- a point Hagel plans to make in a speech at the PLA’s National Defense University. The effort, senior Pentagon officials say, is to head off what Hagel and his advisers fear is the growing possibility of a fast-escalating series of cyberattacks and counterattacks between the United States and China.

This is a concern especially at a time of mounting tensions over China’s expanding claims of control over what it argues are exclusive territories in the East and South China Seas, and over a new air defense zone. In interviews, American officials say their latest initiatives were inspired by Cold-War-era exchanges held with the Soviets so that each side understood the “red lines” for employing nuclear weapons against each other. President Obama told the Chinese president that the United States, unlike China, did not use its technological powers to steal corporate data and give it to its own companies; its spying, one of President Obama’s aides later told reporters, is solely for “national security priorities.”

But to the Chinese, for whom national and economic security are one, that argument carries little weight. For that reason, the disclosures changed the discussion between the top officials at the Pentagon and the State Department and their Chinese counterparts in quiet meetings intended to work out what one official called “an understanding of rules of the road, norms of behavior,” for China and the United States.

All of the major combat commands in the United States military will soon have dedicated forces to conduct cyberattacks alongside their air, naval and ground capabilities, President Barack Obama’s nominee to run the National Security Agency ,Vice Admiral Michael Rogers, told the Senate. He said the activation of the long-discussed combat units would help counter the perception around the world that the United States is “an easier mark” for cyberattacks because it did not “have the will to respond.”