Cyber Command officer: China is targeting Pentagon

The U.S. Cyber Command's top intelligence officer accused Chinese actors on Thursday of persistent efforts to infiltrate Pentagon computers, Reuters reports.

Rear Adm. Samuel Cox, the command's director of intelligence, said that "their level of effort against the Department of Defense is constant.” He declined, however, to comment on whether any classified U.S. networks had been breached. He spoke following a forum on the history of computer threats hosted by the Atlantic Council think tank.

The Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, a U.S. intelligence arm, said in a 2011 report that Chinese groups are “the world's most persistent perpetrators of economic espionage." Cox said that such threats were “still accelerating.”