To date, both states have attempted to find common ground against transnational criminal organizations and have made modest progress on reconciling views on intellectual property. However, as cyber capabilities develop and deepen inside the national security establishments of both countries, it is difficult to ignore tensions created through the cyber activities of all parties.

Likewise, it is futile to hope to eliminate cyber exploitation across national boundaries. It is simply too essential a tool for China’s economic development and political stability strategy and for the national security strategy of the United States, although neither state likes to admit it publicly.

Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Cyber Bomb

Understanding cyber threats to and from China requires more attention to domestic and international institutions and the incentives they create. Paradigms matter, and the political economy of trade and industrial regulation might be as or more important than deterrence or warfighting for analyzing cybersecurity.

Cyberspace is ultimately a human creation and its potential for abuse will be shaped through a long and complex process of institutional bargaining in the context of ongoing architectural redesign. Misunderstanding not only leads to oversimplification in analysis but also to potential miscalculation in strategic interaction.

While it might not be possible to completely eliminate cyberthreats through norms or formal agreements, we should be able to avoid making them worse through ignorance. Both the U.S. military and the Chinese PLA assume that cyberspace is a highly offensive, asymmetric, and unstable domain of conflict, yet the history of minor irritants and tolerable abuses experienced thus far suggest that restraint and limited effectiveness is the norm.

Bad assumptions are dangerous in international relations, so both states should work to dispel illusions about catastrophic cyber attacks.  “More transparency will strengthen China-U.S. relations,” former U.S. Secretary of Defense Charles Hagel observed, adding: “Greater openness about cyber reduces the risk that misunderstanding and misperception could lead to miscalculation.”

The worries over cybersecurity should not risk the mutual value both countries derive from an open and innovative cyberspace.

Jon R. Lindsay is an assistant research scientist with the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and assistant adjunct professor at the UC San Diego School of International Relations and Pacific Studies. Tai Ming Cheung is the director of the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. Derek S. Reveron is a professor of national security affairs and the EMC Informationist Chair at the U.S. Naval War College. They are the co-editors of the book China and Cybersecurity: Espionage, Strategy, and Politics in the Digital Domain (Oxford University Press, 2015).

Image: Flickr/AFN-Pacific Hawaii News Bureau​