The Scope of Chinese Spying

Posted on July 10, 2008
Filed Under China |

There is a fantastic piece out today from The New York Times outlining the broad and systematic spying being conducted by China.

I’m posting some key excerpts but the entire article is well worth the read.

We’ve been banging the drum on the widespread nature of the Chinese spying threat for some time here on The Conservative Beacon and hopefully this nice summary from The New York Times will put it in sobering perspective:

The cases have intensified the evaluation in intelligence and law enforcement circles about the breadth of the threat from Beijing. Many have been similar to the one involving Mr. Bergersen, in that prosecutors describe them as carefully planned intelligence operations run by the Chinese government intended to steal national security secrets. Other cases, however, are less clear in their nature; some seem to be closer to violations of commercial export laws, with the transferred information intended to provide Chinese companies a technological benefit.

Beyond the case of Mr. Bergersen, prosecutors in the last year have brought about a dozen cases involving China’s efforts to obtain military-grade accelerometers (used to make smart bombs), defense information about Taiwan, American warship technology, night-vision technology and refinements to make missiles more difficult to detect.

In interviews, current and former intelligence and law enforcement officials demonstrated uncertainty as to the precise scope of the problem of Chinese espionage. But many officials offered a similar description of the pattern of the cases: Chinese government and state-sponsored industries have relied on the Chinese diaspora — using immigrants, students and people of second- and third-generation Chinese heritage — and regular commercial relations to operate a system in which some people wittingly or unwittingly participate.

One senior law enforcement official involved in prosecuting such cases said the Chinese had “a game plan of sending out lots of tiny feelers in hopes of getting back small bits of seemingly unrelated information in hopes of creating a larger picture.”

David W. Szady, who as an assistant director of the F.B.I. ran its counterintelligence division until retiring in 2006, said the Chinese had “mastered the use of multiple redundant collection platforms” by looking for students, delegates to conferences, relatives and researchers to gather information.

Federal investigators have come to believe, Mr. Szady said in an interview, that while the collection system may appear haphazard, even random, the Chinese “have become very focused on what they want.”

But it’s not just China ramping up spy operations on America:

Officials said that several other nations, notably Iran and Russia, had aggressively engaged in espionage aimed at the United States. But Joel F. Brenner, the intelligence community’s top counterintelligence official, said China was by far the leading practitioner.

Shocking. I’m utterly surprised the increasingly Stalinst Putin in Russia and the Hitler of Iran would be allegedly spying on us, but let’s not lose focus on China.

I’m going to keep saying it folks: China is at war with us technologically, commercially, economically, and from an intelligence gathering standpoint.

We can close our eyes, pretend everything is fine because we import so much from China, but simply because we choose to ignore the rising threat from China doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Let’s face it folks, the Chinese have taken blatant advantage of us over the last two decades in particular. Unfortunately we have been a willing victim.

Comments

Leave a Reply