China Syndrome // Ben FrankelU.S. intelligence services aware of vast Chinese espionage campaign
Multifaceted Chinese espionage campaign in the United States and other Western countries aims not only to steal military secrets, but also industrial secrets and intellectual property in order to help Chinese companies better compete in the global economy; Chinese government and state-sponsored industries have relied not only on trained intelligence officers, but also on the Chinese diaspora — using immigrants, students, and people of second- and third-generation Chinese heritage
Readers of the HS Daily Wire would know that we have been writing — and raising the red flag — about the vast, coordinated spying campaign by various agencies of the Chinese government. During the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign, independent candidate Ross Perot said that if the North American free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were approved, we would all hear a “giant sucking sound” as thousands of jobs left the united States for Mexico. We wrote that the giant sucking sound we are now hearing is the sound of technology secrets — both military and commercial — being stolen by Chinese operatives in the West. Others have ngean to notice. In a detailed New York Times article, Neil Lewis writes that recent Chinese espionage cases have intensified the evaluation in American intelligence and law enforcement circles about the breadth of the threat from Beijing. Many cases involved 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. 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.
Lewis writes that 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.”
Ben Frankel is editor-in-chief of the HS Daily Wire
