Germany has been struck by a wave of hackers from the People’s Republic of China as the PRC moves to steal from cutting-edge manufacturers.

The German government

is now moving to shield companies from state-backed hackers and criminal gangs, offering to pay to harden the defenses of Germany’s most vulnerable firms.

This is a start, but it’s insufficient.

Hacks like this, originating as they do from a fundamentally autocratic nation, can only be taken as state-sanctioned, if not outright -directed, as such they are overt acts of aggression, and so they require commensurately serious responses.

Germany—and the US where we’re hacked against—need to engage in sterner, more concrete responses to the PRC’s hacks.  Such responses should include sanctions against PRC companies in the same or similar industries as the hacked companies that range from punitive tariffs to barring those companies from doing business in Germany or the US to blocking their access to deutschmarks and dollars.  Further responses should include cyber attacks against PRC companies in the same or similar industries as the hacked companies with goals ranging from temporarily blocking their operations to permanently damaging them.