War on the IP Front

Some thoughts on how the IP front of the Trade War with China is going…

Conflicts over intellectual property protection continue to constitute one of the central fronts in the broader trade war between China and the United States. Economic espionage threatens individual U.S. firms, but also the overall technology ecosystem that the United States has developed. Consequently, the Trump administration (and the Obama administration before it) has determined that Chinese espionage poses a core national security threat.

The United States has laid out an impressive case against China. The “China Initiative” from the U.S. Department of Justice focuses directly on Chinese espionage against U.S. firms, as well as other means of acquiring technology from the United States and other Western countries. The Commerce Department similarly laid the foundation for expanding export controls on a variety of sensitive technologies, including artificial intelligence.