Eric Schmidt: China is world’s most prolific hacker

Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt has criticised China over its ‘sophisticated and prolific’ hacking.

Schmidt unloaded on China in an upcoming book he co-authored with Google ideas director Jared Cohen.

WSJ has managed to get hold of a copy of the book, entitled The New Digital Age.

Schmidt and Cohen calls China ‘the world’s most active and enthusiastic filterer of information’ as well as ‘the most sophisticated and prolific’ hacker of foreign companies.

“The disparity between American and Chinese firms and their tactics will put both the government and the companies of the United States as a distinct disadvantage,” because “the United States will not take the same path of digital corporate espionage, as its laws are much stricter (and better enforced) and because illicit competition violates the American sense of fair play,” reads an extract.

“This is a difference in values as much as a legal one.”