The United States and three allies chastised China for economic espionage on Thursday, ratcheting up tensions as U.S. prosecutors indicted two Chinese nationals linked to a spy agency on charges of stealing confidential data from American government agencies and businesses around the world, Reuters reported.

Prosecutors charged Zhu Hua and Zhang Jianguo in hacking attacks against the U.S. Navy, the space agency NASA and the Energy Department and dozens of companies. The operation targeted intellectual property and corporate secrets to give Chinese companies an unfair competitive advantage, they said.

Britain, Australia and New Zealand joined the United States in slamming China over what they called a global campaign of cyber-enabled commercial intellectual property theft, signaling growing global coordination against the practice.

“No country poses a broader, more severe long-term threat to our nation’s economy and cyber infrastructure than China,” FBI Director Chris Wray said at a news conference. “China’s goal, simply put,

The United States and three allies chastised China for economic espionage on Thursday, ratcheting up tensions as U.S. prosecutors indicted two Chinese nationals linked to a spy agency on charges of stealing confidential data from American government agencies and businesses around the world.

Prosecutors charged Zhu Hua and Zhang Jianguo in hacking attacks against the U.S. Navy, the space agency NASA and the Energy Department and dozens of companies. The operation targeted intellectual property and corporate secrets to give Chinese companies an unfair competitive advantage, they said