by Aaron Kliegman at Just the News
Just two weeks after the Justice Department ended its program to thwart Chinese spies, the U.S. intelligence community warned Congress that China’s espionage efforts pose a major threat to America’s economy and national security.
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines on Tuesday submitted the intelligence community’s annual assessment of worldwide threats to the House Intelligence Committee, which held open and closed hearings on the report.
“China will remain the top threat to U.S. technological competitiveness as Beijing targets key sectors and proprietary commercial and military technology from U.S. and allied companies and institutions,” the assessment states. “Beijing uses a variety of tools, from public investment to espionage, to advance its technological capabilities.”
The document adds that China’s “willingness to use espionage, subsidies, and trade policy to give its firms a competitive advantage represents not just an ongoing challenge for the U.S. economy and its workers, but also advances Beijing’s ability to assume leadership of the world’s technological advancement and standards.”
Haines told lawmakers that China “remains an unparalleled priority” for the intelligence community, challenging the U.S. for supremacy across a range of economic, military, and technological domains.
Chinese espionage costs the U.S. between $200 billion-$600 billion dollars a year in stolen intellectual property, according to Mike Orlando, acting director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center.
“This is theft of America’s future, a mortal wound to our economy,” said Gordon Chang, author of “The Coming Collapse of China and The Great U.S.-China Tech War.” “China is trying to destroy the U.S.”
“No country poses a threat even close to that,” Chang continued. “We need to understand China’s malicious ends.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray expressed similar sentiments in a Jan. 31 speech on the threats posed by China inside the U.S.
“When we tally up what we see in our investigations — over 2,000 of which are focused on the Chinese government trying to steal our information or technology — there is just no country that presents a broader threat to our ideas, our innovation and our economic security than China,” he said.
Wray has testified his agency is opening counterintelligence investigations into China “every 12 hours.”
In 2018, the Trump administration launched…
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