By Andrew Thornebrooke
February 3, 2023Updated: February 3, 2023
News Analysis
News that the Pentagon
is tracking a Chinese
communist spy balloon hovering over the United States this week is raising
concerns about the extent of China’s espionage efforts against America and its
citizens.
But just how far is the
regime willing to go in order to spy on and undermine the United States?
The espionage efforts of
the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China
as a single-party state, go much broader and deeper than mere sensor balloons.
Such efforts include human intelligence gathering, transnational repression
schemes, cyber theft and hacking, intellectual property theft, and even the
harvesting of Americans’ genetic material.
In the words of one
retired Air Force General, “If [the CCP has] any access to American society,
then they’ll use that access to undermine American society.”
HUMINT and Transnational Repression
Key among the CCP’s
efforts to spy on the United States is its traditional human intelligence
(HUMINT) efforts, which relies on person-to-person exchanges of information,
both wittingly and otherwise.
The CCP’s HUMINT network
permeates American society at many levels, with many such efforts being
overseen directly by the regime’s top intelligence agency, the Ministry of
State Security (MSS).
One of the most infamous
such cases is that of Christine Fang or “Fang Fang”, the alleged Chinese spy
who posed as a
university student, and fostered relationships with numerous politicians in
California and elsewhere, including Rep. Eric Swalwell when he was a city
council member, and used that access to collect intelligence on up and coming
politicos. Fang reportedly targeted at least two Midwestern mayors with
whom she had romantic or sexual relationships.
Apparently the Chinese have a message for congressman Eric Swalwell on their spy balloon. pic.twitter.com/EOmAASTuOp
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) February 3, 2023
Politicians aren’t the
only targets of such espionage, however. Many everyday Americans, particularly
those of Chinese descent, are frequently the preferred targets of the
CCP’s spy and harassment campaigns.
In such efforts, MSS
agents and their U.S. proxies have allegedly stalked an American
Olympic figure skater and her family, conspired with New
York police officers to gather intelligence on the Asian American community,
and even plotted to attack a
U.S. Army veteran running for Congress in a bid to silence and intimidate people
holding critical views of the CCP.
FBI Director Christopher
Wray testified that
Chinese agents and their proxies actively stalked U.S. residents and planted
bugs in their cars and homes.
Cyber Theft and Hacking
Similarly, the regime has
used cyber attacks and misinformation campaigns to illicitly collect U.S.
defense information and sow division among American citizens.
U.S. intelligence leaders
have identified the CCP
as the world’s largest malicious cyber actor, and its affiliated hackers have
stolen more data from Americans than every other nation combined.
Such efforts are often
aimed at stealing vital technological secrets, such as when suspected
state-backed agents hacked into a U.S.
government department last year and stole sensitive defense information.
Likewise, CCP-sponsored hackers have penetrated and
stolen sensitive information from multiple U.S. telecom firms.
The incidents highlight
what U.S. defense officials have long warned: that the regime is studying how the
United States fights with the intent of developing technologies capable
of toppling its
military and forcibly transferring cutting-edge
American technologies to China.
Americans’ sensitive
personal information is also a valued target, as evidenced by multiple
massive hacks by Chinese
actors over the years, including the breaches of the U.S. Office of Personnel
Management, credit-reporting agency Equifax, Mariott hotels, and insurer
Anthem. These hacks resulted in hundreds of millions of Americans’ personal
data being stolen.
Officials and experts
have said the regime is
using this massive trove of Americans’ personal data to aid in its espionage
and overseas influence operations, and feed its artificial intelligence
technology.
The TikTok logo is
displayed at a TikTok office in Culver City, California on Dec. 20, 2022.
(Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Social Media and Telecommunications
The CCP also uses its
control over the data of Chinese companies to leverage Chinese-owned social
media and telecommunications giants against an unsuspecting American populace.
TikTok, a popular short
video app owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, is perhaps the most telling
example of this.
Described by intelligence leaders as a “national security threat” and labeled by security experts as a “weaponized military application,” social media giant TikTok has censored stories Americans see at the request of the CCP and has allowed its Chinese engineers access to U.S. user data. Officials have repeatedly sounded the alarm about the app because CCP law mandates Chinese companies provide data to the regime upon request.
Relatedly, employees at
ByteDance used geolocation data from TikTok to illicitly stalk American
journalists believed to be reporting on the company.
The national security
risks posed by Chinese social media apps also apply to other tech firms,
including telecommunications. In recent years, Washington has cracked down on
Chinese telecom firms, including Huawei and ZTE, for this reason.
Huawei and its employees
have been found to have deep
links with Chinese military and intelligence. Federal prosecutors
have charged the company
with conspiracy to steal trade secrets, while the Canadian government alleged that the
company actively employed CCP spies. The firm also reportedly actively engaged in covert
attacks on Australian and U.S. networks as far back as 2012.
Biodata
The CCP’s efforts to
glean every last bit of information from the United States go further than
intellectual property and surveillance balloons. Indeed, the assault goes down
to the bone, and then down deeper: To Americans’ genetic material.
Clinical and genetic data
of U.S. citizens obtained by Chinese biotechnology companies through
their partnerships with U.S. institutions pose national
security risks, a top U.S. counterintelligence agency warned in 2021.
The mass DNA collection
performed by companies such as genome-sequencing firm BGI could be used in
myriad ways against the United States, according to congressional reports.
These include allowing
the CCP to blackmail individuals with the threat of exposing embarrassing
medical information, or even using data on health conditions such as allergies
to conduct targeted biological attacks against diplomats, politicians,
high-ranking federal officials, or military leaders.
Some experts have warned that the CCP
could use this rich genetic information to create bioweapons to target certain
groups of people.
Importantly, while BGI is
a private company, it has definite ties to the CCP. In January 2018, China’s
state-run media Xinhua reported that Du Yutao, the Party secretary of BGI’s
research institute, spoke of the importance of learning and putting into action
of “the spirit behind the 19th National Congress,” referring to a
twice-in-a-decade CCP meeting.
BGI maintains concrete
ties to the CCP and its scientists have expressed their
interest in the regime’s efforts to develop biochemical weapons, which experts
suggest may link the company’s efforts to harvest the genetic
material of Americans to a darker interest in developing weapons to be used
against Americans.
Nuclear and Hypersonic Research
Beyond active efforts to
spy on the United States, the CCP also uses state-sponsored talent programs to
give itself a long-term edge in critical research.
By recruiting experts and
scholars from abroad to study at work in China, such talent programs aim
to develop a new generation of researchers in areas crucial for China’s
technological and military development.
The most telling case of
this phenomenon concerns the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), the United
States’ most advanced nuclear research center.
According to a report, to
date, at least 162 researchers from the LANL, at least one of whom had a
top-secret security clearance in the United States, now work for China,
where many of them now assist the regime’s development of its most cutting-edge
weapons, including hypersonic missiles.
Many of the researchers
who worked at the LANL came to the United States to be trained and work in
areas critical to national security were involved in the CCP’s talent programs.
At least 59 of those who worked at the LANL and subsequently returned to China
to do research were part of the regime’s “Thousand Talents Program” or its
youth branch, for example.
To that end, one report
on the issue found that “[Chinese] talent programs are ever-expanding
recruitment networks,” with which the regime continuously usurps knowledge from
the United States.
Strategic Purchases of Farmland
Chinese companies with
links to the CCP are also purchasing strategic
parcels of land in the United States, which has sparked concern that the regime
could conduct espionage or otherwise sabotage U.S. national security interests.
In recent years, Chinese
land purchases in Texas and North Dakota, which both were situated near U.S.
military bases, raised alarm among
locals and policymakers in state and federal governments.
In one instance, a
Chinese billionaire purchased 140,000
acres of Texas land. The billionaire in question is one Sun Guangxin, who
maintains extensive ties to
the CCP and has reportedly employed numerous government and military officials.
Chinese investors purchased
more than $6 billion in U.S. real estate between March 2021 and March 2022,
according to the National Association of Realtors, making it the largest
foreign buyer in terms of dollars spent.
A controversial Chinese
corn mill project in Grand Forks, North Dakota, on land that’s located within
15 miles of a U.S. Air Force Base housing sensitive drone, satellite, and
surveillance technology, is now set to be terminated following
warnings from the U.S. Air Force that the project posed a “significant threat
to national security.”
Many state officials have
also sounded the alarm about Chinese ownership of U.S. farmland. As a result, some
states are creating legislation to prohibit or restrict Chinese entities from
buying U.S. agricultural land and businesses. These states include South
Dakota, Florida, Texas, Virginia, Missouri, and Iowa.
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