A Plurality Of Americans Say Cyber Attack From China Is Act Of War

In the first-ever move of its kind, the U.S. indicted five Chinese military hackers Monday and charged them with stealing intellectual property rights and other trade secrets. According to a new poll, a plurality of Americans say a cyber attack on the United States by another country is an act of war, though slightly fewer American voters says so now than in the past.

Voters also continue to be believe cyber attacks pose a bigger economic threat than traditional military attacks. A new Rasmussen Reports survey found that 85 percent of likely U.S. voters are at least “somewhat concerned” about the threat to the safety and security of America’s computer infrastructure coming from cyberattack. The number includes 43 percent who are “very Concerned,” while just 13 percent are “not very” or “not at all concerned.”

But U.S. officials are certainly attempting to raise awareness among the general public, as was evident by the press conference Monday.

“This is a tactic that the United States government categorically denounces,” Holder said. “This case should serve as a wake-up call to the seriousness of the ongoing cyberthreat.”

John Carlin, who recently rose to head of the Justice’s National Security Division, echoed Holder and said the prosecution of state-sponsored cyberthreats was a top goal for the Obama administration.

“For the first time, we are exposing the faces and names behind the keyboards in Shanghai used to steal from American businesses,” he said Monday, accusing the Chinese officials of “stealing the fruits of our labor.”

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel made similar comments at the National Security Agency headquarters in suburban Washington, which came as he prepared to visit China.

“Our nation’s reliance on cyberspace outpaces our cybersecurity,” Hagel said at the time. “Our nation confronts the proliferation of destructive malware and a new reality of steady, ongoing and aggressive efforts to probe, access or disrupt public and private networks, and the industrial control systems that manage our water, and our energy and our food supplies.”

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on May 19-20, 2014 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.