As Lou Dobbs remarked on his CNN show in 2007, “Three thousand front [...]]]>
As Lou Dobbs remarked on his CNN show in 2007, “Three thousand front companies we know of, Chinese front companies, trying to steal American industrial secrets, in addition to the effort to steal U.S. technology.”
It’s crazy for America to continue admitting Chinese immigrants and students as if there were no danger from such naive openness. Of course the internet makes long-distance theft easier, but there’s nothing like in-person spying to locate and steal valuable information even in our connected age.
Fortunately there is attention now being paid to the Chinese spy threat, according to author Bill Gertz, who recently published the book Deceiving the Sky: Inside Communist China’s Drive for Global Supremacy.
]]>‘Economic espionage’: Special DOJ unit cracks down on China’s illicit activities, by Bill Gertz, Washington Times, January 8, 2020
The Justice Department’s special China unit is aggressively prosecuting technology theft and other illicit activities by Beijing’s spies and government officials, a senior department official said in an interview.
China was implicated in more than 80% of all economic espionage cases brought by the Justice Department since 2012, and more than 60% of all trade secrets theft cases were linked to Beijing’s aggressive spying and acquisition programs, U.S. officials said.
Those activities involve traditional human and cyber intelligence gathering operations as well as what officials term “nontraditional” spying: the use of students, business people and other nonprofessional collectors of intelligence.
“It’s an objective fact that the number of economic espionage investigations has increased dramatically in recent years,” Adam Hickey, deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s national security division, told The Washington Times.
“That could be a function of us seeing more or the private sector reporting more. It also could suggest that China is doing more,” said Mr. Hickey, a key official in a program called the China Initiative.
China’s efforts also involve purchases of American companies, a noncriminal matter but one involving Justice Department officials who are part of the Treasury Department-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. Congress has passed reform measures strengthening regulatory procedures used to control Chinese investments that could harm national security.
At the Federal Communications Commission, Justice Department officials help counter Chinese electronic spying in the United States through a group called Team Telecom.
Attorney General William Barr recently backed the FCC decision announced in November to ban the use of telecommunications gear in the United States made by Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies over electronic spying concerns. (Continues)
DOBBS: Three thousand front companies we know of, Chinese front companies, trying to [...]]]>
DOBBS: Three thousand front companies we know of, Chinese front companies, trying to steal American industrial secrets, in addition to the effort to steal U.S. technology.
Now, what I find particularly galling about this is that the president of the United States and neither the House speaker nor the leader of the Senate, is addressing this issue publicly. And everyone knows it’s going on. We’re reporting it on this broadcast.
It’s incredible.
On Wednesday, Lou Dobbs was still the diligent watchdog, reporting the news that 10 Chinese spies have been charged with hacking US companies trying to steal jet engine technology. “It’s only now that we’re beginning to take action against them,” he observed.
Red China seems not to have changed that much at the core.
One very open doorway for stealing US knowledge is through the universities:
Chinese military researchers exploit western universities, FT.com, October 28, 2018
Study shows US and UK scientists aiding high-tech progress for People’s Liberation Army
China has sent thousands of scientists affiliated with its armed forces to western universities — especially in countries that share intelligence with the US — and is building a web of research collaboration that could boost Beijing’s military technology development.
About 2,500 researchers from Chinese military universities spent time at foreign universities — led by the US and UK — over the past decade, and many hid their military affiliations, according to a new report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a think-tank partly funded by Australia’s department of defence. (Cont.)
A CNN article about the Chinese military infiltration remarked that these activities are described as “picking flowers in foreign lands to make honey in China.”
]]>On Wednesday, Fox [...]]]>
On Wednesday, Fox News host Steve Doocy interviewed national security analyst Morgan Ortagus about the danger:
Doocy observed that the Chinese find it easier to steal American ideas than to invent stuff on their own.
Ortagus responded, “They are also using human spies to do this. . . They do it via hacking and also via using human spies.”
That means a cadre of Chinese nationals, who may arrive here as college students and advance to employment in tech industries, are stealing valuable secrets for their homeland because they are here and able to do so.
The number of Chinese students has skyrocketed to more than 350,000 now attending American colleges and universities, a situation that benefits no one except institutions of higher education that covet the full tuition that foreign learners pay.
Chinese Students Studying in American Colleges
But colleges are clueless about the threat to business and national secrets from Chinese student spies, something about which FBI Director Christopher Wray warned in a Senate intelligence hearing last February. “I think the level of naiveté on the part of the academic sector about this creates its own issues,” he said. “[The Chinese are] exploiting the very open research and development environment that we have, which we all revere. But they’re taking advantage of it.”
Why does the practice of welcoming spies continue when it is clearly a danger to American national security? The college pipeline is the royal road for Red China espionage, but nobody in Washington can speak the obvious solution: end all Chinese student visas — which would protect US secrets and also open up thousands of competitive college slots for American students.
Win, win.
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Khazaee was raised in Iran and entered to this country to attend the University of Oklahoma, later earning a doctorate in mechanical engineering from New Mexico State University. Interestingly, Washington doesn’t mind thousands of foreign students from unfriendly nations studying technology and other useful subjects. Literally hundreds of thousands of Chinese from the communist People’s Republic are currently taking valued college slots, along with quite a number of Saudis (thanks to some cheapie social engineering from George W. Bush a decade ago). This year saw a record number of foreign students attending American universities, where the full tuition checks are welcome.
It’s crazy to be equipping our enemies with top-notch educations that enable them to attack us more effectively. Bad guys can easily arrive as students and then stay. Or there’s the business ploy: Lou Dobbs mentioned in 2007, “Three thousand front companies we know of, Chinese front companies, trying to steal American industrial secrets, in addition to the effort to steal U.S. technology.”
Despite numerous espionage episodes from foreign students and workers, Washington continues to run our national immigration system as if America has no enemies in the world.
Back to Khazaee, who got a ridiculously light sentence — whatever happened to capital punishment for spies?
]]>Ex-Pratt Engineer Given 8-Year Sentence For Attempt To Deliver Secrets To Iran, Hartford Courant, October 23, 2015
A former Pratt & Whitney engineer was sentenced to more than eight years in prison Friday for attempting to deliver what federal prosecutors called “highly sensitive” information about military jet engines to Iran.
Mozaffar Khazaee, 61, formerly of Manchester, was sentenced to 97 months and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine by U.S. District Judge Vanessa L. Bryant for violating the Arms Export Control Act.
Khazaee was accused of trying to send to Iran proprietary, trade-secret and export-controlled material relating to U.S. military jet engines, which he had stolen from Pratt and other U.S. defense contractors where he had worked. In addition to Pratt, Khazaee had been employed by General Electric and Rolls-Royce.
Bryant, at the urging of federal prosecutors, imposed a sentence that exceeded the 57- to 72-month sentence recommended by the advisory sentencing guidelines used in federal court.
“Violations of the Arms Export Control Act, particularly those involving attempts to transfer sensitive defense technology to a foreign power, are among the most significant national security threats we face, and we will continue to leverage the criminal justice system to prevent, confront, and disrupt them,” said John P. Carlin, assistant attorney general for national security.
Defense lawyer Hubert J. Santos of Hartford asked for a sentence below the guideline range, arguing, among other things, that, Khazaee “did not threaten or harm the security or foreign policy interest of the United States.”
Prosecutors said Khazaee, a dual citizen of Iran and the United States with a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, offered proprietary and controlled information he stole from his U.S. employers to Iran in an effort to obtain a position with an Iranian university.
Beginning in 2009, he is accused of corresponding by email with an individual in Iran to whom he attempted to send, and in some cases did send, documents related to the U.S. Joint Strike Fighter program. In one email Khazaee asserted that the material he was delivering was “very controlled … and I am taking [a] big risk.” He told his Iranian correspondent to “delete everything immediately.”
Prosecutors said that a search of Khazaee’s computer storage devices revealed letters and application documents to technical universities in Iran. In those materials, he said that, as “lead engineer” in various projects with U.S. defense contractors, he had learned “key technique[s] that could be transferred to our own industry and universities.”
He said he wanted to “move to Iran,” that he was “looking for an opportunity to work in Iran,” and that he was interested in “transferring my skill and knowledge to my nation.”
While living in Connecticut in 2013, prosecutors said, Khazaee tried to send a shipping container to Iran that was packed with thousands of sensitive technical manuals, specification sheets, test results, technical drawings and data and other proprietary material relating to U.S. military jet engines, including those relating to the U.S. Air Force’s F35 Joint Strike Fighter program and the F-22 Raptor.
Federal authorities intercepted the shipment.
Khazaee was arrested in January 2014 while trying to board a flight to Iran at Newark Liberty International Airport. A search of his luggage turned up more protected materials concerning jet engines and $59,945 in cash.
Prosecutors said that, had Khazaee succeeded in shipping the stolen materials, he would have enabled Iran to “leap forward” 10 years or more in academic and military turbine engine research and development.
It is crazy to educate our enemies, be they Red Chinese or Islamic. America has more enemies than anybody, but Washington pretends otherwise to please business and university interests. Our national security is severely endangered by short-term economic choices, like colleges welcoming full-tuition students from dangerous nations like Saudi Arabia and Red China.
Here’s the Washington Post article from Tuesday that stirred up the interest in China’s theft of America’s military secrets:
]]>Confidential report lists U.S. weapons system designs compromised by Chinese cyberspies, Washington Post, May 27, 2013
Designs for many of the nation’s most sensitive advanced weapons systems have been compromised by Chinese hackers, according to a report prepared for the Pentagon and to officials from government and the defense industry.
Among more than two dozen major weapons systems whose designs were breached were programs critical to U.S. missile defenses and combat aircraft and ships, according to a previously undisclosed section of a confidential report prepared for Pentagon leaders by the Defense Science Board.
Experts warn that the electronic intrusions gave China access to advanced technology that could accelerate the development of its weapons systems and weaken the U.S. military advantage in a future conflict.
The Defense Science Board, a senior advisory group made up of government and civilian experts, did not accuse the Chinese of stealing the designs. But senior military and industry officials with knowledge of the breaches said the vast majority were part of a widening Chinese campaign of espionage against U.S. defense contractors and government agencies.
The significance and extent of the targets help explain why the Obama administration has escalated its warnings to the Chinese government to stop what Washington sees as rampant cybertheft.
In January, the advisory panel warned in the public version of its report that the Pentagon is unprepared to counter a full-scale cyber-conflict. The list of compromised weapons designs is contained in a confidential version, and it was provided to The Washington Post.
Some of the weapons form the backbone of the Pentagon’s regional missile defense for Asia, Europe and the Persian Gulf. The designs included those for the advanced Patriot missile system, known as PAC-3; an Army system for shooting down ballistic missiles, known as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD; and the Navy’s Aegis ballistic-missile defense system.
Also identified in the report are vital combat aircraft and ships, including the F/A-18 fighter jet, the V-22 Osprey, the Black Hawk helicopter and the Navy’s new Littoral Combat Ship, which is designed to patrol waters close to shore.
Also on the list is the most expensive weapons system ever built — the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which is on track to cost about $1.4 trillion. The 2007 hack of that project was reported previously.
China, which is pursuing a comprehensive long-term strategy to modernize its military, is investing in ways to overcome the U.S. military advantage — and cyber-espionage is seen as a key tool in that effort, the Pentagon noted this month in a report to Congress on China. For the first time, the Pentagon specifically named the Chinese government and military as the culprit behind intrusions into government and other computer systems.
As the threat from Chinese cyber-espionage has grown, the administration has become more public with its concerns. In a speech in March, Thomas Donilon, the national security adviser to President Obama, urged China to control its cyber-activity. In its public criticism, the administration has avoided identifying the specific targets of hacking.
But U.S. officials said several examples were raised privately with senior Chinese government representatives in a four-hour meeting a year ago. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a closed meeting, said senior U.S. defense and diplomatic officials presented the Chinese with case studies detailing the evidence of major intrusions into U.S. companies, including defense contractors.
In addition, a recent classified National Intelligence Estimate on economic cyber-espionage concluded that China was by far the most active country in stealing intellectual property from U.S. companies.
The Chinese government insists that it does not conduct cyber-espionage on U.S. agencies or companies, and government spokesmen often complain that Beijing is a victim of U.S. cyberattacks.
Obama is expected to raise the issue when he meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping next month in California.
A spokesman for the Pentagon declined to discuss the list from the science board’s report. But the spokesman, who was not authorized to speak on the record, said in an e-mail, “The Department of Defense has growing concerns about the global threat to economic and national security from persistent cyber-intrusions aimed at the theft of intellectual property, trade secrets and commercial data, which threatens the competitive edge of U.S. businesses like those in the Defense Industrial Base.”
The confidential list of compromised weapons system designs and technologies represents the clearest look at what the Chinese are suspected of targeting. When the list was read to independent defense experts, they said they were shocked by the extent of the cyber-espionage and the potential for compromising U.S. defenses.
“That’s staggering,” said Mark Stokes, executive director of the Project 2049 Institute, a think tank that focuses on Asia security issues. “These are all very critical weapons systems, critical to our national security. When I hear this in totality, it’s breathtaking.”
The experts said the cybertheft creates three major problems. First, access to advanced U.S. designs gives China an immediate operational edge that could be exploited in a conflict. Second, it accelerates China’s acquisition of advanced military technology and saves billions in development costs. And third, the U.S. designs can be used to benefit China’s own defense industry. There are long-standing suspicions that China’s theft of designs for the F-35 fighter allowed Beijing to develop its version much faster.
“You’ve seen significant improvements in Chinese military capabilities through their willingness to spend, their acquisitions of advanced Russian weapons, and from their cyber-espionage campaign,” said James A. Lewis, a cyber-policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Ten years ago, I used to call the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] the world’s largest open-air military museum. I can’t say that now.”
The public version of the science board report noted that such cyber-espionage and cyber-sabotage could impose “severe consequences for U.S. forces engaged in combat.” Those consequences could include severed communication links critical to the operation of U.S. forces. Data corruption could misdirect U.S. operations. Weapons could fail to operate as intended. Planes, satellites or drones could crash, the report said.
In other words, Stokes said, “if they have a better sense of a THAAD design or PAC-3 design, then that increases the potential of their ballistic missiles being able to penetrate our or our allies’ missile defenses.”
Winslow T. Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Project on Government Oversight, made a similar point. “If they got into the combat systems, it enables them to understand it to be able to jam it or otherwise disable it,” he said. “If they’ve got into the basic algorithms for the missile and how they behave, somebody better get out a clean piece of paper and start to design all over again.”
The list did not describe the extent or timing of the penetrations. Nor did it say whether the theft occurred through the computer networks of the U.S. government, defense contractors or subcontractors.
Privately, U.S. officials say that senior Pentagon officials are frustrated by the scale of cybertheft from defense contractors, who routinely handle sensitive classified data. The officials said concerns have been expressed by Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Adm. James A. Winnefeld Jr., the vice chairman, as well as Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency.
“In many cases, they don’t know they’ve been hacked until the FBI comes knocking on their door,” said a senior military official who was not authorized to speak on the record. “This is billions of dollars of combat advantage for China. They’ve just saved themselves 25 years of research and development. It’s nuts.”
In an attempt to combat the problem, the Pentagon launched a pilot program two years ago to help the defense industry shore up its computer defenses, allowing the companies to use classified threat data from the National Security Agency to screen their networks for malware. The Chinese began to focus on subcontractors, and now the government is in the process of expanding the sharing of threat data to more defense contractors and other industries.
An effort to change defense contracting rules to require companies to secure their networks or risk losing Pentagon business stalled last year. But the 2013 Defense Authorization Act has a provision that requires defense contractors holding classified clearances to report intrusions into their networks and allow access to government investigators to analyze the breach.
The systems on the science board’s list are built by a variety of top defense contractors, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. None of the companies would comment about whether their systems have been breached.
But Northrop Grumman spokesman Randy Belote acknowledged the company “is experiencing greater numbers of attempts to penetrate its computer networks” and said the firm is “vigilant” about protecting its networks.
A Lockheed Martin official said the firm is “spending more time helping deal with attacks on the supply chain” of partners, subcontractors and suppliers than dealing with attacks directly against the company. “For now, our defenses are strong enough to counter the threat, and many attackers know that, so they go after suppliers. But of course they are always trying to develop new ways to attack.”
The Defense Science Board report also listed broad technologies that have been compromised, such as drone video systems, nanotechnology, tactical data links and electronic warfare systems — all areas where the Pentagon and Chinese military are investing heavily.
“Put all that together — the design compromises and the technology theft — and it’s pretty significant,” Stokes said.