WASHINGTON – Cyberattacks by Chinese and Russian intelligence services, as well corporate hackers in those countries, have swallowed up large amounts of high-tech American research and development data, and that stolen information has helped build their economies, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded.

The report, offering the first such detailed public accusations from U.S. officials, said computer attacks by foreign governments are on the rise and represent a “persistent threat to U.S. economic security.”

Assessing the implications, the report said “the governments of China and Russia will remain aggressive and capable collectors of sensitive U.S. economic information and technologies, particularly in cyberspace.”

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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – The Obama administration delivered a blunt warning Thursday that the United States will do what it must to go after militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan, whether Pakistan helps or not.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton led an unusually large U.S. delegation for two days of talks with civilian and military leaders who have resisted previous U.S. demands to take a harder tack against militants who attack American soldiers and interests in Afghanistan.

The large U.S. contingent was meant to display unity among the various U.S. agencies, including the CIA, Pentagon and State Department, with an interest in Pakistan. CIA chief David Petraeus and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey joined Clinton, who said the team would “push Pakistan very hard.”

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States believes Iran's shadowy Quds Force is becoming increasingly aggressive overseas and may be working on other international plots beyond the alleged plan to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington, three U.S. officials told Reuters.

U.S. allegations last week of a foiled plot in Washington have escalated tensions between the United States and Iran. They have also renewed Washington's focus on the Quds Force, the covert operations arm of Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which is believed to have sponsored attacks on U.S. targets in the Middle East — but never before in the United States.

"They're being more aggressive … not only in Iraq but worldwide," one senior U.S. official said in an interview. The official and others insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record and because of the sensitive nature of the matter.

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“We are not talking to Iran, so we don’t understand each other,” outgoing Joints Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen told the Carnie Endowment for International Peace last month. “If something happens, it’s virtually assured that we won’t get it right — that there will be miscalculation which could be extremely dangerous in that part of the world.”

Mullen’s warning of the perils arising from the two sides inability to communicate and understand each other’s intentions — “even in the darkest days of the Cold War, we had links to the Soviet Union” — seems especially prescient amid the fallout from the alleged plot to kill the Saudi Ambassador to Washington blamed by the U.S. on “elements of the Iranian government”. Claims that officials within the elite Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps initiated a bizarre scheme, via an Iranian-American used car salesman — described by his former business partner as “a sort of hustler” — to enlist the services of a Mexican drug gang for a terror strike in the U.S. capital, have been seized on by the Administration press for tougher international action against Tehran. (See “Iran’s Alleged Assassination Plot and Its Political Fallout.”)

“We see this as a chance to go out to capitals and around the wrold and talk to allies and partners about what the Iranians tried to do,” an unnamed official told the Washington Post. “We’re going to use this to isolate them to the maximum extent possible.” Vice President Joe Biden added, darkly, that when it came to responding to Iran’s behavior, “Nothing has been taken off the table.”

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RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (Reuters) – When Pakistan Army Sergeant Abdur Rehman hears America's oft-repeated demand that Pakistan do more to fight militants, he glances down at the stumps of his legs and wonders what more it wants from him.

A mortar bomb shredded him from the waist down as he led an advance against Taliban fighters in 2007 in Pakistan's unruly northwestern tribal areas on the Afghan border.

Instead of enjoying full retirement benefits, he underwent rehabilitation, was given artificial limbs and returned as a commander to a desk job in the militant-infested region where he was wounded.

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