It's no secret that the recently popular Zoom video conference platform got caught rerouting conferences to China and sending encryption keys there, too.

China also causes other numerous digital problems for the U.S., including malware, online account theft, fraud, and rampant botting/cheating in online video games.

I recommend that the Trump administration should set up a new initiative to prevent such incidents from happening. China's out to pwn us, and the best way to prevent that is to pwn them first.

The idea: Set up an America-sponsored Internet data packet header marking convention so that only data packets specifically marked as "valid for transport to China" may be routed to China.

This could be done via options in the Internet Protocol (IP) packet header.

First, tag all data packets going out of the U.S. marked in the header's options field as "originating from the U.S." at the exit gate. Data packets marked as such are prohibited from being routed to China, except if the data packet is specifically marked as "valid for transport to China".

Enforce stiff penalties for violations. Any foreign telecom, internet provider, or exchange that leaks U.S. data packets to China (or a banned telecom/internet provider) when they are not marked as valid for such routing will be sanctioned. Small sanctions and fines for accidental or incompetence violations. Willful violators could face U.S. sanctions and be banned on the same terms as China, which means they would be prohibited from handling U.S. data packets and possibly booted out of the U.S. economic system. Any state actor caught facilitating illegal data leakage would be sanctioned on par with Iran and North Korea.

Anyone who doesn't comply with the standard would be cut off from the U.S. network. Only fully compliant communication companies and countries will be allowed to handle data originating in the U.S. This forces the rest of the world to choose either the U.S. or China. Can't have it both ways. It's a fight between good and evil. Pick a side.

U.S. companies, organizations, groups, and individuals who want to send data to China will have to register with their Internet provider so their data packets can be marked as "valid for transport to China". All registrations will be subject to federal review and may be denied or revoked at any time for national security purposes.