RT America -- May 19, 2014

The US Department of Justice is charging five Chinese military officers for hacking American entities. Companies and organizations ranging from Alcoa to the nuclear giant Westinghouse were the targets of economic espionage, according Attorney General Eric Holder. The federal charges come one week after new evidence revealed the scope of a program in which the National Security Agency intercepts and bugs hardware destined for foreign targets. Discussing the charges with RT's Lindsay France is Arik Hesseldahl, the senior editor of Re/code.

DirecTV accepted a $48.5 billion buyout offer from AT&T, the satellite TV provider announced Sunday. If approved by federal regulators, the merger would create the second-largest internet and television provider in the US. Mergers between communications companies are increasingly common, with Comcast trying to merge with Time Warner and rumors abound of a possible Sprint takeover of T-Mobile. The increasing concentration of media ownership plus challenges to net-neutrality have digital rights activists up in arms, Georgetown University professor Christopher Chambers explains to RT's Lindsay France.