President Obama is 'very blunt' with President Xi on hacking

President Barack Obama said he had a "very blunt conversation" with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping about cybersecurity earlier this month during a U.S.-Sino meeting in California.

In an interview with PBS' Charlie Rose, President Obama said he confronted Xi about Chinese hackers cracking into the computer systems of top American companies in an attempt to steal proprietary information and blueprints about future products. The President said he believes China understands that continuing this cyber espionage campaign could damage the relationship between the two countries. "There is a big difference between China wanting to figure out how can they find out what my talking points are when I’m meeting with the Japanese, which is standard fare, and we try to prevent them from penetrating that, and they try to get that information," President Obama said. "There’s a big difference between that and a hacker directly connected with the Chinese government or the Chinese military breaking into Apple’s software systems to see if they can obtain the designs for the latest Apple product. That’s theft. And we can’t tolerate that," he added.