(The Hill) U.S. intelligence leaders said Tuesday they believe China currently poses the most dangerous and complex counterintelligence threat to the nation.
“As I look at the landscape today and over the course of my career … the Chinese counterintelligence threat is more deep, more diverse, more vexing, more challenging, more comprehensive and more concerning than any counterintelligence threat I can think of,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Wray and other intelligence leaders pointed to China, alongside Russia, as a top threat to the United States.
A threat assessment by the intelligence community also released Tuesday found that China “presents a persistent cyber espionage threat and a growing attack threat to our core military and critical infrastructure systems.”
“China remains the most active strategic competitor responsible for cyber espionage against the US Government, corporations, and allies,” the report states, adding that the country also “has the ability to launch cyber attacks that cause localized, temporary disruptive effects on critical infrastructure” in the U.S.
The report also found that Chinese intelligence services “will exploit the openness of American society, especially academia and the scientific community, using a variety of means.” . . . (Read the rest)
REPORT: Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community (DNI, 29 Jan 19)
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FBI has dozens of probes into Chinese economic spying (AFP)
The FBI is investigating Chinese economic espionage in nearly all of its 56 field offices around the country, underscoring the depth of the threat to US business, Director Christopher Wray told Congress Tuesday.
“China writ large is the most significant counterintelligence threat we face,” Wray told the Senate Intelligence Committee in a hearing on foreign threats.
“We have economic espionage investigations, for example — that’s just one piece of it — in virtually every one of our 56 field offices,” he said.
“The number of those has probably doubled over the last three or four years, and not all of them, but almost all of them lead back to China.” . . . (read more)
