CHANGE: China flagrantly violating last year’s bilateral agreement against cyber attacks.

“China continues to have success in cyber espionage against the U.S. government, our allies, and U.S. companies,” [Director of National Intelligence Admiral James R.] Clapper emphasized. “Beijing also selectively uses cyberattacks against targets it believes threaten Chinese domestic stability or regime legitimacy.”

Clapper goes on to say that U.S. intelligence agencies will monitor China’s compliance with the September 2015 bilateral agreement to refrain from conducting or knowingly supporting cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property with the intent of providing competitive advantage to companies or commercial sectors.

It wouldn’t take much seed money to entice American hackers into providing China with a different set of incentives regarding cyber attacks — but that doesn’t provide our leadership with enough opportunities for headline-making “agreements.”