Restraint

I agree with the Bloomberg editors that we should show restraint in the aftermath of the hacking of the Office of Personnel Management’s information:

Applying big-data tools to such a vast trove might yield insights into U.S. intelligence and military strategy, expose a revealing web of government relationships, or find unexpected correlations that Chinese analysts could exploit. In short: This is bad. The U.S. would be within its rights to respond aggressively.

It shouldn’t.

Restraint, though unsatisfying, is the prudent response.

I disagree, however, on what a restrained response would be. Nuking Beijing would show a lack of restraint. Mitigating the risks posed by Chinese hacking by, for example, blocking Chinese sites from access to the United States entirely would not be. There are 1,001 measured, restrained moves that are exquisitely painful and punishing to the Chinese government that we can and should make.

IMO the editors at Bloomberg make a mistake we’ve seen a lot of lately—claiming that any response is an over-reaction. Here’s another example. Invading Iraq was a mistake but it wasn’t an over-reaction. If anything, it was an under-reaction. We really need to learn to distinguish between restraint and passivity.

To repurpose another phrase I’ve heard a lot of lately we cannot value a good relationship with the Chinese more than they value a good relationship with us and, pretty clearly, they don’t value that relationship nearly enough. Friends don’t hack into other friends’ computers.