Chinese Attack On Google Seen As Cybertheft

Google's carefully worded announcement last week that it had experienced "a highly sophisticated and targeted" cyber attack in China caught the attention of both human rights advocates and industrial espionage experts, though for quite different reasons.

Activists focused on a Google statement that a "primary goal" of the attack had been to access the Gmail accounts of Chinese dissidents. Espionage experts, however, were drawn to Google's acknowledgement that the cyber attack "resulted in the theft of intellectual property."

Those words say a lot. "Intellectual property" means knowledge and ideas. It's what makes innovation possible, and it can include everything from secret formulas to computer source code. Google is among the most innovative companies on the planet, and someone in China has been stealing its secrets. Some China experts see this as the real story behind Google's threat to pull out of China.