US Charges China With Cyber

The Justice Department has filed criminal charges against several Chinese government officials, accusing them of stealing American trade secrets through cyber espionage, according to U.S. officials familiar with the case.

It's the first time the United States has brought cyber espionage charges against a state actor.

Details of the charges are to be announced by Attorney General Eric Holder later on Monday.

The charges will name several individuals who are Chinese government employees, according to a U.S. official. 'They used military and intelligence facilities to commit cyber espionage against U.S. companies,' the official said.

The names of the targeted companies could not immediately be determined, but they were said to be in the energy and manufacturing sectors.

The Obama administration has long considered China the most aggressive nation in obtaining industrial secrets through spying.

'Chinese actors are the world's most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage,' said the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, a U.S. government agency, in a 2011 report.

A year ago, several U.S. newspapers, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, said hackers traced to China attacked their newsroom computer systems.

A spokesman for China's foreign ministry called any suggestion that the Chinese were involved in those intrusions 'irresponsible,' though U.S. security experts said China targeted news organizations in the U.S. and overseas to try to identify the sources of news leaks within the Chinese government.

Those disclosures prompted a computer security expert and former Justice Department lawyer, Marc Zwillinger to say, 'the only computers these days that are safe from Chinese government hackers are computers that are turned off, unplugged, and thrown in the back seat of your car.'

First published May 18 2014, 6:59 PM

Pete Williams

Pete Williams is an NBC News correspondent based in Washington, D.C. He has been covering the Justice Department and the U.S. Supreme Court since March 1993. Williams was also a key reporter on the Microsoft anti-trust trial and Judge Jackson's decision.Prior to joining NBC, Williams served as a press official on Capitol Hill for many years. In 1986 he joined the Washington, D.C. staff of then Congressman Dick Cheney as press secretary and a legislative assistant. In 1989, when Cheney was named Assistant Secretary of Defense, Williams was appointed Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. While in that position, Williams was named Government Communicator of the Year in 1991 by the National Association of Government Communicators.A native of Casper, Wyo. and a 1974 graduate of Stanford University, Williams was a reporter and news director at KTWO-TV and Radio in Casper from 1974 to 1985. Working with the Radio-Television News Directors Association, for which he served as a member of its board of directors, he successfully lobbied the Wyoming Supreme Court to permit broadcast coverage of its proceedings and twice sued Wyoming judges over pre-trial exclusion of reporters from the courtroom. For these efforts, he received a First Amendment Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.