Chinese spying: A huge effort and a huge success

Chinese spy balloons are one small part of an enormous, “whole of society” decades-long espionage campaign that communist China has been conducting against the United States. And unfortunately, it has been successful.

As with most intelligence operations, it’s a mix of technical and human platforms that aim to obtain (by any means) other countries’ secrets. However, China operates on a completely different scale.

It’s not just the Ministry of State Security (MSS) deploying officers to recruit spies.

China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law explicitly requires all Chinese companies and citizens to assist: “An organization or citizen shall support, assist in and cooperate in national intelligence work in accordance with the law and keep confidential the national intelligence work that it or he knows. The state shall protect the individual organization that has supported, assisted in, or cooperated in national intelligence work.”

Even before 2017, an “invitation for tea” by the security services would have been plenty to know what was expected of one. It still is. Every Chinese company or citizen anywhere is a potential platform. Even people of Chinese extraction can be pressured to assist, especially if they have family, business interests, or anything else that ties them back to China.

This is very different than the United States, where, for example, Apple refused even to help American authorities unlock a terrorist’s phone.

Conversely, the Chinese use satellites, electronic eavesdropping, and cyber operations, as well as their companies and hardware, to get into U.S. telecommunications and electrical networks. To name just a few: Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo, Hikvision, and China Telecom. And U.S. companies helped them get set up and embedded into American systems. Why? The Chinese make sure their products are cheap, and the American companies just can’t resist.

And this isn’t just “sucking up information.” Some of it can be used offensively. Don’t be surprised when the power goes off and public utilities in the United States don’t function.

China’s spies also capitalize on all the freedoms the United States has to offer, including freedom of movement, freedom to call yourself a journalist (even if you are an MSS operative), and freedom to buy strategically located real estate to serve as collection platforms.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said the FBI opens a counterintelligence case involving China every 12 hours. But for every case they open, they are probably missing 100.

China goes after military and state secrets, as well as commercial secrets and intellectual property—anything that’s potentially useful.

It’s been doing this for years. The idea is to “leap over stages” and advance China’s economic development. And, in that, the Chinese regime doesn’t have a monopoly on spying.

Individual Chinese will steal technology and know-how with the aim of setting up their own companies. And an American company that sets up in China is making things easy for Chinese spies—both from the government and “freelancers.” Even Elon Musk is going to learn the hard way.

Read more HERE.