According to Assistant Attorney General John Carlin:

Right about the time SolarWorld was rapidly losing its market share to Chinese competitors that were pricing exports well below costs, these hackers were stealing cost, pricing, and strategy information from SolarWorld’s computers.

China has quickly surpassed the US in the solar market, supplying nearly half of the world’s solar panels in 2011 after delivering only 20% of the world’s supply in 2008. Meanwhile, US-supplied panels fell from 7% in 2008 to a mere 3% in 2011.

Specifically Unit 61398 of the Chinese military operating out of Shanghai.

According to a report, the so-called “Shanghai Group” has “drained terabytes of data from companies like Coca-Cola, increasingly its focus is on companies involved in the critical infrastructure of the United States — its electrical power grid, gas lines and waterworks.”

The Unit 61398 headquarters on the outskirts of Shanghai

We know foreign countries and companies swipe our corporate secrets…We cannot look back years from now and wonder why we did nothing in the face of real threats to our security and our economy.

That’s why, earlier today, I signed a new executive order that will strengthen our cyber defenses by increasing information sharing, and developing standards to protect our national security, our jobs, and our privacy.

Read the annotated full address here.

The knife fight continues: Peter retracts his blade while Clarissa brings hers out.

Both Clarissa and Peter are now brandishing blades; Peter his knife and Clarissa her scissors.

The encounter will later be described as battle:

So before a battle begins, the horses paw the ground; toss their heads; the light shines on their flanks; their necks curve. So Peter Walsh and Clarissa, sitting side by side on the blue sofa, challenged each other.

Septimus, unlike the others, is not interested in the content of the transmission. He alone does not attempt to decipher the plane’s script; rather, the melting shapes provide beauty.

The phrase “for nothing” offers a dual reading: 1) in exchange for nothing, and 2) for no reason.

Septimus is not only averse to discerning meaning; he is troubled by it. Before the plane’s skywriting supersedes, the appearance of the Queen’s car, that supreme signifier, horrifies Septimus with its ability to center things. Neither the identity of the car’s passenger nor the meaning of the plane’s writing is his focus. In the case of the Queen, the despotic signifier is terrifying:

…this gradual drawing together of everything to one centre before his eyes, as if some horror had come almost to the surface and was about to burst into flames, terrified him. The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames.

Signs of consumer capitalism overtake the crowd’s fascination formerly transfixed by state power.

But it should be noted that neither system of signs are clear or knowable in this scene. We don’t know who was in the car, and we don’t know what product was being advertised. We only know their power.

Maker of toffee at the time.