Chinese spy campaign targets US space tech

China is stealing U.S. military and civilian space technology in an effort to disrupt its access to intelligence, navigation and communications satellites. This is to make it harder for the United States to develop weapons and communications systems, one report noted.

In a Bloomberg report Thursday, the U.S. State and Defense Departments released a report the same day saying that "China's continuing efforts to acquire U.S. military and dual-use technologies are enabling China's science and technology base to diminish the U.S. technological edge in areas critical to the development of weapons and communications systems".

"Additionally, the technologies China has acquired could be used to develop more advanced technologies by shortening Chinese R&D cycles," it added in the report.

The newswire cited two unnamed U.S. intelligence officials who said that while the Chinese military was not preparing to fight a major land war, its goal was to deny military access to the other four arenas in which a war might be fought--the seas around China; the airspace surrounding the country; space; and cyberspace.

Bloomberg added that Chinese officials have denied their government's involvement in cyberespionage or hacker attacks on computer systems, and have called such assertions a "Cold War ghost".

This is not the first time the U.S. has accused China of directing espionage efforts toward them. In March, the U.S. identified China as being behind the cyberattacks against security vendor RSA in 2011, in which hackers conducted a spear-phishing campaign that sent e-mails containing malware.