FBI Director says Chinese Government is greatest threat to US
by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) –
The head of the FBI has made a speech affirming that it is now the Chinese Government and Communist Party which pose the greatest threat to the US. In remarks delivered at the Hudson Institute in Washington DC Tuesday, Christopher Wray said: “The greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property, and to our economic vitality, is the counterintelligence and economic espionage threat from China. It’s a threat to our economic security—and by extension, to our national security.”
At pains to stress he was not referring to the Chinese people or to Chinese Americans when talking about the threat, Wray outlined a number of diverse categories in which China is seriously undermining American security. These categories include economic espionage, hacking corporate and personal data, paying academics to secretly give knowledge and information to China, using malign foreign influence to sway US policy, and international rule of law violations.
When discussing the Chinese threat against US economic security specifically, Wray went so far as to say: “It is the people of the United States who are the victims of what amounts to Chinese theft on a scale so massive that it represents one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history.”
Wray said that the FBI was now opening a new China-related counterintelligence case “about every 10 hours.” And, he added: “At this very moment, China is working to compromise American health care organizations, pharmaceutical companies, and academic institutions conducting essential COVID-19 research.”
Concluding his speech with remarks on the way forward, Wray said the FBI is working very closely with partner agencies in the US and abroad: “We can’t do it on our own; we need a whole-of-society response. That’s why we in the intelligence and law enforcement communities are working harder than ever to give companies, universities, and the American people themselves the information they need to make their own informed decisions and protect their most valuable assets.”