Skeptics argue that Xi never planned to stick to the 2015 agreement in the first place. Former Obama officials maintain that Xi was sincere, that the deal would have stuck had Trump not flipped the tables over. What we do know is that in the three years since Xi signed the deal, he had consolidated PLA hacking divisions under a new Strategic Support Force, similar to the Pentagon’s own Cyber Command, and moved much of the country’s hacking operations away from the PLA’s scattershot hacking units to the stealthier and more strategic Ministry of State Security.
