The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has already arrested nearly 80 % of the total
number of arrests it made in China-related cases this year as it did in all of 2019.
FBI counterintelligence chief John Brown told a conference at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS) in Washington on 5th Feb that the bureau had already arrested
19 people in cases in which the Chinese government was involved in the first 37 days of 2020,
compared to 24 in all of last year and 15 five years earlier.
Brown said, “We believe that no country poses a greater
threat than Communist China.
Today investigations related to China make up a greater percentage of our counterintelligence
workload than at any other time in the FBI’s history.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray said that China was seeking to steal U.S. technology by "any
means necessary" and the law enforcement agency has about 1,000 investigations open into Chinese
technology theft across its 56 regional offices.
He stated that the threat from China was "diverse and multilayered.”
He added that China takes advantage of academic openness in the U.S. to steal technology using
“campus proxies” and through the establishment of “institutes on our campuses”
Senior U.S. counter-intelligence official William Evanina told the same conference that
China was placing priority on stealing U.S. aircraft and electric vehicle technology.
He has estimated that Chinese theft of trade secrets costs the U.S. hundreds of billions
of dollars annually and warned that “the long-term existential threat to the security
of our nation is real.”
In this video Defense Updates analyzes 3 ways China is waging a silent war against the U.S.
Let’s get started.
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The Chinese government has encouraged its student fraternity to get educated in the
U.S and mingle into the system.
The Center for Immigration Studies called foreign student visas a “weak point” in
national security, and pointed a finger at China as a key abuser of the system, a claim
made by several other immigration and national security groups.
It said that the explosion of student visas to STEM schools takes positions that U.S.
students can use and puts potential spies inside institutions that have key national
security ties to the U.S. government.
In its report, it stated that, “An unknown number of them also engage in
activities hostile to our country and communities.
These activities range from participation in terrorism to espionage.
Some of them are ‘sleepers’ put into place to be activated either by order of their masters,
or upon some specific triggering event.
While the percentage and number of such individuals is undoubtedly small, it takes only a few
aliens intent on serious harm to the United States to create a national tragedy,”
The center suggested that the administration put new limits on student and exchange visas
and punish colleges and universities with high numbers of foreign students who overstay
their visas.
The report said that nearly 70,000 foreign students overstayed their visas in 2017.
Chinese students were first, with 18,075.
Several Chinese in the U.S are in the payroll of the Chinese government.
These people have been used to gather information on vital military installations in the U.S.
On 26th Dec last year, a Chinese man in the United States has been caught for snapping
photos of Naval Air Station in Key West, Florida.
The man went to the area early and started snapping clips of sensitive location.
As per reports, at about 6.50 am some people in the vicinity saw him walking around a perimeter
fence and entering the military facility from the rocks along the water.
They even warned him that he was trespassing in a restricted site which is also known as
Truman Annex.
In the meantime, the US Military Police noticed it and swung into action.
US Military Police approached him and checked out the photos on his mobile phone.
The police officers immediately called a federal agent.
The federal agent arrested Liao on a charge of entering the naval property for the purpose
of photographing defense installations.
According to the complaint affidavit, Liao agreed to waive his Miranda rights and
told the agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service in broken English that “he was trying
to take photographs of the sunrise”.
But his lie was caught immediately when he provided the passcode to his cellphone and
allowed the agent to look at the images.
The agent “observed photographs of Truman Annex on the camera”.
Beginning in the winter of 2009, two Chinese hackers began sending malicious e-mails to
Boeing employees disguised to look as if they came from familiar people.
Even if one employee opened the mail and downloaded the attached file, it could give hackers a
portal to secrets, corporate and US Department of Defense plans, engineering details, and
potentially classified Pentagon files stored on Boeing networks.
And that’s exactly what happened.
Over the next two years, hackers stole some 630,000 files from Boeing related to the C-17,
the third most expensive plane that the Pentagon has ever developed, with research and development
costs of $3.4 billion.
They obtained detailed drawings; measurements of the wings and fuselage, and other parts;
outlines of the pipeline and electric wiring systems; and even flight test data.
On 26 Jan 2013 Chinese copy of C17, Y-20 Doppelganger, first flew.
Currently, 8 is in service more production is planned in the future.
China obtained more than 50 terabytes of data from U.S. defense and government networks,
notably the Joint Strike Fighter’s stealth radar and engine secrets, through cyber espionage.
The NSA or National Security Agency estimated that the Chinese had conducted more than 30,000
cyber attacks as part of the massive defense industrial espionage and that more than 500
attacks were significant.
In all, the NSA concluded that the Chinese compromised key components of F-35.
For example, designed details of AN/APG-81 active electronically scanned array radar
for the F-35 has been stolen.
Importantly critical aspects of F 35’s stealth capability moved to the Chinese hand.
The Chinese stole data on the methods used by the turbine to cool gases emitted by F
35’s engine as well as other heat reduction techniques.
China's Chengdu J-20 has been developed to an extent by stealing data of the F 35 Joint
Strike Fighter.
In the 1980s, China purchased two dozen civilian version of the Black Hawk.
They got some insights about design but were not able to do much since these did not contain
secret components like the military version.
This changed in 2011.
Pakistan gave China access to the previously unknown U.S. "stealth" Sikorsky UH 60 Black
Hawk helicopter that crashed during the commando raid which killed Osama bin Laden in May.
This was done despite, explicit requests from the CIA not to.
It is believed that Chinese experts took detailed photographs of the design and more importantly
collected the sample of the stealth coating which is used to hide the craft from radars.
During the 5th China Helicopter Exposition in Tianjin, China showcased Z-20.
The Z-20 is expected to replace several helicopters in People Liberation Army service including
the Super Frelons Z-20 helicopter looks very much similar to American UH-60 Black Hawk.
In the late 1980s, AM General, a major vehicle manufacturer based in Indiana, wanted to sell
the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, also known as the Humvee, to the Chinese People’s
Liberation Army (PLA).
The PLA rejected the offer and picked up one Humvee that was left by AM General in China.
They also gathered the few civilian Humvees that Chinese oil companies had bought in the
1990s.
Using reverse engineering, they built a prototype and named it Dongfeng EQ2050 Brave Soldier.
Variants of this have been developed for civilian and military use.