Best Defense
Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

Google vs. China

Building Peace, AKA Reach 364 — who is just your typical Air Force pilot who is blogging on movies, learning Arabic and writing a novel — offers this smart comment on Google’s recent denunciation of Chinese hacking: "We’re seeing low-level warfare between a state and a corporation." There’s a good war college or SAMS paper ...

Kage Tora/flickr
Kage Tora/flickr
Kage Tora/flickr

Building Peace, AKA Reach 364 -- who is just your typical Air Force pilot who is blogging on movies, learning Arabic and writing a novel -- offers this smart comment on Google's recent denunciation of Chinese hacking:

Building Peace, AKA Reach 364 — who is just your typical Air Force pilot who is blogging on movies, learning Arabic and writing a novel — offers this smart comment on Google’s recent denunciation of Chinese hacking:

"We’re seeing low-level warfare between a state and a corporation."

There’s a good war college or SAMS paper to be written exploring that thought. I’d like to know more about precedents of states vs. companies, such as the British East India Company, and the merchant princes of Renaissance Italy, who seemed to have one foot in each camp. 

We’re also seeing states hiring corporations (the United States using Blackwater instead of Marines to protect its diplomats) and corporations hiring states (Maersk contracting a Tanzanian warship to protect its vessels from Horn of Africa pirates). Reminds me a bit of the 30 Years’ War in which bands of contracted fighters just roamed around endlessly devastating chunks of Germany.

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military from 1991 to 2008 for the Wall Street Journal and then the Washington Post. He can be reached at ricksblogcomment@gmail.com. Twitter: @tomricks1

More from Foreign Policy

Keri Russell as Kate Wyler walks by a State Department Seal from a scene in The Diplomat, a new Netflix show about the foreign service.
Keri Russell as Kate Wyler walks by a State Department Seal from a scene in The Diplomat, a new Netflix show about the foreign service.

At Long Last, the Foreign Service Gets the Netflix Treatment

Keri Russell gets Drexel furniture but no Senate confirmation hearing.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and French President Emmanuel Macron speak in the garden of the governor of Guangdong's residence in Guangzhou, China, on April 7.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and French President Emmanuel Macron speak in the garden of the governor of Guangdong's residence in Guangzhou, China, on April 7.

How Macron Is Blocking EU Strategy on Russia and China

As a strategic consensus emerges in Europe, France is in the way.

Chinese President Jiang Zemin greets U.S. President George W. Bush prior to a meeting of APEC leaders in 2001.
Chinese President Jiang Zemin greets U.S. President George W. Bush prior to a meeting of APEC leaders in 2001.

What the Bush-Obama China Memos Reveal

Newly declassified documents contain important lessons for U.S. China policy.

A girl stands atop a destroyed Russian tank.
A girl stands atop a destroyed Russian tank.

Russia’s Boom Business Goes Bust

Moscow’s arms exports have fallen to levels not seen since the Soviet Union’s collapse.