Secret Intelligence Fuels U.S. Hacking Fight With China

When Barack Obama meets with President Xi Jinping at a California estate known as Sunnylands today, China’s hacking will be high on the agenda, pushed there by a drumbeat of bad news linking that country’s military to attacks on U.S. companies and defense contractors.

The seeds of the dispute, though, are at least three years old. That’s when a set of key intelligence breakthroughs and devastating attacks, including a breach of Google Inc.’s computers, reshaped the White House view of China’s cyber spying.