The newspaper said the new policy will also govern how US intelligence agencies can carry out searches of overseas computer networks for signs of potential attacks on the US.

 

　　And the policy says if the president approves, a counter attack will be carried out even if there is no declared war.

 

　　The new policy came as the US Department of Defense approved a five-fold expansion of its cybersecurity force over the coming years in a bid to increase its ability to defend critical computer networks.

 

　　Jiang Qiping, chief editor of China Netweek, says interest groups in the US is hyping cyber security to get support.

 

　　"We are not ruling out the possibility that some people in the US are using this to get themselves more funding and attention."

 

　　Jiang Qiping says the new policy is also lacking legal support.

 

　　"US Defense Department has released a Cyber Security Strategy in 2011, which came up with the idea of active defence. This is to pave the way for the latest preemptive attacks. So far, there's no international law on this, Russia once hoped to have a international pact to ban the use of cyberattacks for military purposes, but the US didn't sign the pact."

 

　　Li Yan, researcher with the Institute of American Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, says the US government needs to address a number of issues before it can carry out such preemptive strikes.

 

　　"Cyber space is transnational, how are you able to pinpoint the hacker how are you going to find out who's behind the hacking, is it an individual or a country? How are you going to make sure the attacks are not going to cause a meltdown of the cyber space? Unless the US is able to answer these questions, any of its counter cyber attacks will have huge consequences."

 

　　During the past week, the US media has also played up fresh rhetoric of a 'China threat' in cyberspace.

 

　　It's being reported in the US that the New York Times, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post have all accused China of hacking their computers.

 

　　Jiang Qiping says US has never been able to provide enough evidence to back up its accusation against China.

 

　　IP addresses do not constitute sufficient evidence to confirm the origins of hackers.

 

　　A study by an American cyber security company says the amount of computers being hacked in China accounts for 12 percent of the number in the world. And many of the hackers are operating in the US.

 

　　For CRI, I'm Su Yi.