China and Russia have made little attempt to hide their geopolitical ambitions. Militarily, each has asserted a right to terrain not recognized as theirs. Economically, the two have designs on gaining a greater foothold in the world marketplace, Western roadblocks be damned.

And while an unprecedented pact not to deploy network hackers against each other may prove largely symbolic, it's yet another glaring sign of the two countries' shared desire to shake up a world order largely dominated by the U.S. since the end of World War II.

"This agreement is not about Russia's and China's love for each other – it's about how they dislike the U.S.," says James Lewis, a cybersecurity researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

It was during a visit to Moscow this month by Chinese President Xi Jinping – punctuated by a military parade commemorating the 70th anniversary of Nazi Germany's defeat in the Second World War – that Russia and China took their partnership to the next level. Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed dozens of bilateral agreements, including one outlining their shared agenda for the Internet.

The accord states that both countries agree not to attack each other's networks, and highlights the risk of technology that aims for the "destabilization [of] the political and socio-economic environment" and "to undermine the sovereignty and security [of the] State." A rough translation of the original document, which was published by the Russian government, is available online.

The bilateral non-hacking pact is the first of its kind, but is mostly a symbol of Russian and Chinese efforts to undermine American dominance of the tech industry and the Internet, says Lewis, a former State Department official.

It increases the likelihood that Russian and Chinese hackers will be more aggressive in blocking the spread of free information that could threaten their countries' regimes, and portends trouble for tech businesses hoping to expand to those markets. China's censorship and surveillance regime already has led to Google limiting its presence there, allowing Baidu to become that nation's dominant search engine.

"They were never going to stop spying on each other's networks," Lewis says. But "they were never going to use cyberattacks against each other in anything short of a war. The Russians and Chinese are trying to create an alternate structure to the economic and military structure created by the U.S."

The pact additionally is a not-so-subtle way of saying that hacking against the U.S. is still on the table – something that's been increasingly evident in recent months.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper earlier this year listed Russia and China as among the top cybersecurity threats to the U.S., singling out China's economic espionage efforts against U.S. companies as "a significant issue." The two countries have been linked to numerous breaches of corporate networks, with many attacks believed to be carried out by hacker groups that steal trade secrets from U.S. companies and are sponsored by the Russian and Chinese regimes.

Punishing such assaults is difficult from a traditional law enforcement perspective. Despite the U.S. indictment last year of five Chinese military members for hacking and economic espionage offenses, both China and Russia typically refuse to extradite suspected hackers to the U.S. President Barack Obama, however, recently took aim at Beijing and Moscow by authorizing financial sanctions against businesses that sponsor attacks on U.S. networks or the theft of trade secrets.

The U.S. military's plans to build up its recruitment of tech experts also highlight the importance of cybersecurity, and nod to the emergence of online networks as a battlefield. And as intelligence agencies become better at tracking the origin of online attacks, nations that hit U.S. networks should be prepared for a real-world response, National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers said this week during an event in the nation's capital.

Nations are still developing international norms to outline when a network attack should be treated as a possible provocation for war. But if a hack against a NATO member causes real-world damage – like, for instance, the loss of life from disabling electricity at a hospital – the alliance has left open the possibility of retaliation against the aggressor nation "on a case-by-case basis," Rogers explained.

"If you are thinking of engaging in cyber activities against NATO member states, you need to realize that there are implications for that," he said.

The China-Russia agreement also states the shared interest between the two nations – both of whom are known for Internet censorship – in creating an "international system of governance" for the Internet. Between the lines, that means they will continue to pressure the U.N. to grant governments a larger role in managing telecommunications networks, something the U.S. and other Western nations have opposed.

"This agreement is really about preserving their regimes," says Ben FitzGerald, director of the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security think tank. "Russia is more subtle about how they suppress freedom of information online, but China is investing heavily in offensive cybersecurity capabilities."

China's willingness to go on the censorship offensive has been seen most poignantly through its use of an online weapon dubbed "the Great Cannon," which has targeted Internet freedom group GreatFire.org and GitHub, a U.S.-based site that hosts content banned in China. The tool can steer the traffic of individual users and overwhelm sites with data in a direct denial of service attack.

The accord also appears to be a bump in the road for Silicon Valley companies like Apple and Facebook, which have worked hard to build closer ties with China and are eager to take advantage of its growing middle class. But the agreement with Russia hints that both nations will likely continue to keep the U.S. tech industry at arm's length, says Fitzgerald, who has consulted on software security for the Australian government and companies like IBM.

Both countries harbor fears that U.S. software can be used as an NSA surveillance tool, and impose limits on tech trade in an attempt to give their own businesses a chance to grow without competition, he says.

"This tech alliance shows that those two nations think they can take advantage of international technology when they can't develop it themselves, but clamp down on it when it's a threat to their regimes or economies," he says.

Putin has sought a closer relationship with Xi since sanctions imposed by the U.S. and European nations have sought to punish his support of pro-Russia rebels in Ukraine. China so far has been "willing to play along because it doesn't cost them anything," Lewis says, and because they believe it increases their influence on the world stage.