Mandel Ngan, AFP / Getty Images
The latest exchange between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and China suggests that the keyboard is mightier than the warhead. Clinton's groundbreaking speech on Thursday, the first by a senior U.S. official to suggest that a threat against the "free flow of information" on the Internet also threatens "our economy, our government, and our civil society," made a case for Internet freedom as part of American foreign policy in response to reports that China initiated a cyber-attack on Google in December. The Chinese Foreign Ministry fired back on Friday–appropriately enough–via its web site. The ministry posted this terse message: "We urge the U.S. side to respect facts and stop using the so-called freedom of the Internet to make unjustified accusations against China." Clinton said in the speech that the U.S. supported Google in defying the Chinese government, and called on China to investigate the sophisticated attack against Google's network, which the company says originated in mainland China.