The indictment of five Chinese military officers on charges of hacking American companies shows a blatant disrespect for intelligence of the American voters.

This legal pursuit at best is plain silly. Despite a couple of other unsubstantiated claims, spying is the world’s oldest profession. Spying has been going on for thousands of years, is going on, and will go on for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, it is the duty of every national military to provide intelligence for its country. How are we going to assert jurisdiction over military officers of another country acting on their own territory? How we are going to prove beyond reasonable doubt that it was they who indeed did or controlled the hacking? The indicted officers must be grateful for this recognition of their efforts and doubtlessly will be decorated and promoted. This will be the only real result of our action.

This legal charade perfectly fits the election cycle and is clearly aimed at showing American voters that the current Administration is doing something about the daunting problem of hacking. However, American voters are surely smart enough to understand that instead of developing real defenses against cyber attacks we are wasting money on a legal farce. What should we expect next? The indictment of every designer, manufacturer, and operator of foreign satellites and eavesdropping equipment?

We probably have enough lawyers to sue every foreigner that spies on us, but not enough money to pay for them. As a nation we would be much better off effectively defending ourselves rather that whining about being helpless victims and becoming the world’s laughing-stock.