The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age

by David E. Sanger

The stalemate was broken when American outrage over OPM ran headlong into government pageantry. Xi Jinping, settling into China’s presidency, was heading to Washington in September 2015 for his first state visit—a moment of pomp and circumstance that most Americans tended to ignore but was vital to the status-conscious Chinese leadership. Chris Painter, the head of the State Department’s cyber unit, recalled later that the Chinese officials were “almost pathological in wanting his trip to go perfectly.” Obama’s team realized they had leverage and promptly threatened to impose sanctions on China for a variety of cyber activities, including Unit 61398’s exploits, in the days just before President Xi was scheduled to arrive. They knew that to the Chinese, sanctions would cast a huge pall over the trip and would suggest that Xi wasn’t in command of the relationship. The only way to avoid this embarrassment, they told the Chinese, was to negotiate the bare bones of the first arms-control accord for cyberspace.