Recall the PRC’s invasions of our government computer systems including theft of personally identifying information—including fingerprints—of millions of Americans who are, or were, or merely applied to be Federal government employees. Keep in mind that “government employees” includes our soldiers and our intelligence personnel.

Recall what President Barack Obama said he’d do about that.

We’re not going to just stand by while these threats grow. If you think you can just hide behind borders and leap laws and carry out your activities, that’s just not going to be the case.

Here’s what Obama actually did about that. He got PRC President Xi Jinping to agree to this:

neither country’s government will conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, including trade secrets or other confidential business information, with the intent of providing competitive advantages to companies or commercial sectors.

Of course the PRC’s non-government entities will be winked at (Did that do that? Really? That’s a shame) and go merrily on their way doing the thefts to the State’s content.

Never mind, too, that there are a lot of reasons to penetrate another nation’s computer systems other than to steal information:

• test their cyber penetration tools
• test our cyber defenses of their penetration tools
• test our cyber defenses generally
• learn what we know about their capabilities—military, economic, cyber, political, etc
• learn what we know, or think we know about our own capabilities—military, economic, cyber, political, etc
• oh yeah—steal information for its own sake

Of course the famous Yale Law Review Editor and Constitutional Law Instructor knows this, full well.