Alan Shaffer, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Acquisition, and Sustainment, discussed the threat from China and what the U.S. must do to respond to the threat.
He spoke at the Professional Services Council-sponsored Defense Services Conference in Arlington, Va., on 21 November 2019.
””We’ve been in conflict with China for 10 years and I”m not sure we know it. But we”ve got to wake up to it,”” he warned, citing an example.
””How valuable is your intellectual property to you?”” Shaffer asked several dozen small and large military contractor executives in the audience.
””Very valuable,”” they responded. ””It better make you mad,”” Shaffer said. ””China doesn’t play fair.””
Each year, China steals over half a trillion dollars of IP in the U.S. through human and cyber espionage, he said, citing several reports.
That”s why the Defense Department is pushing hard to have strong standards for cyber protection of venders” computers and databases, he said.
Another area of national security concern for the U.S. is that China is the only nation in the world with 5G end-to-end network infrastructure, he said, naming Chinese company Huawei that has fielded this network.