China's Cyber Prgm US Strat

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

China's Cyber Program and U.S. National Security Strategy From Economic Espionage to Critical Infrastructure Pre-Positioning This seminar uses the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) cyber program as a lens for examining—and rethinking—the United States’ approach to national security strategy in response to nation-state cyber threats. The first phase of the course traces the evolution of the PRC cyber threat from economic espionage through the 2015 U.S.-China Cyber Commitments, grounded in an opening session that introduces both the PRC’s cyber apparatus and the U.S. national security decision-making process. The middle of the course pivots on Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon—the PRC’s campaigns to pre-position in American critical infrastructure and telecommunications—to confront the intelligence dilemmas that accompanied discovery and examine the specific domains that any serious response must address. The course culminates in a simulated National Security Council Principals Committee meeting. Each student will author a policy paper in support of an assigned principal’s position, and the seminar convenes as an interagency team to develop and debate a four-year strategy for the next administration’s approach to the PRC cyber threat. Students will engage throughout the semester with primary sources including declassified assessments, indictments, executive orders, and international frameworks, and will produce several short policy papers progressing from analytic assessments to structured decision memoranda.