nice try derailing the conversation with a "quick question", let's ignore it.
you are correct, it is cyber warfare, and china sees the US as their enemy. however it is not "ABSOLUTELY" defense.
i guess the conventional warfare equivalent would be to place explosives on the territory of your enemy to set it off in case of war. which smells way more like preparing active warfare than some kind of defense.
it brings it's own set of problems as well. let's say they get triggered by accident, either by incompetency or a third conflict party.
it will be very hard to explain why they were there in the first place, and "yes we deployed the <insert 'defensive' measure> on your soil, but it wasn't us who triggered it." might just not cut it.
Thanks for your reply, it made some good points. It however didn't need the part starting with "It however..." as phrases like this simply devalue everything that was written before them, and are usually followed by a change of topic.
The topic was the question if deploying trojans in another country's infrastructure counts as an "ABSOLUTELY defensive" measure.
This could have been a perfect sentence to finish with, don't you think? ;)