Lou Dobbs has long been a rare exception: he was reporting on China [...]]]>
Lou Dobbs has long been a rare exception: he was reporting on China espionage in 2007 with the crime of Chi Mak, an engineer who stole critical technology that allows submarines to run silently in a case that was then called “the most significant Chinese spying case in two decades.”
Dobbs also reported around the same time that Red China had 3000 front companies in the US for the purpose of stealing US technology and industrial secrets, so there have been plenty of crimes to investigate, but Washington wasn’t interested.
But more analysis and prosecution have been bubbling up recently during the Trump administration. One important case has been that of the Huawei tech mogul whose recent arrest in Canada made the Chi-Coms howl:
How arrest of Chinese ‘princess’ exposes regime’s world domination plot, By Steven W. Mosher, New York Post, December 22, 2018
Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou’s arrest in Vancouver on Dec. 6 led to immediate blowback.
Furious Chinese Communists have begun arresting innocent Canadians in retaliation. So far, three of these “revenge hostages” have been taken and are being held in secret jails on vague charges. Beijing hints that the hostage count may grow if Meng is not freed and fast.
Even for a thuggish regime like China’s, this kind of action is almost unprecedented.
So who is Meng Wanzhou?
Currently under house arrest and awaiting extradition to the US, she will face charges that her company violated US sanctions by doing business with Iran and committed bank fraud by disguising the payments it received in return.
But to say that she is the CFO of Huawei doesn’t begin to explain her importance — or China’s reaction.
It turns out that “Princess” Meng, as she is called, is Communist royalty. Her grandfather was a close comrade of Chairman Mao during the Chinese Civil War, who went on to become vice governor of China’s largest province.
She is also the daughter of Huawei’s Founder and Chairman, Ren Zhengfei. Daddy is grooming her to succeed him when he retires.
In other words, Meng is the heiress apparent of China’s largest and most advanced hi-tech company, and one which plays a key role in China’s grand strategy of global domination. (Continues)
On Thursday, Tucker Carlson interviewed Michael Pillsbury, a long-time critic of Red China and author of The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower. Recent actions of the Trump Administration against Chinese thefts and espionage have put the topic more in the news, for which Pillsbury was grateful that the public would understand how China intends “to steal their way to global leadership.”
It’s definitely good that America is learning that the Chi-Coms are not our friends — maybe we could stop admitting them as students and immigrants.
TUCKER CARLSON: The Administration today issued a strong condemnation of a major foreign power that routinely hacks American infrastructure, steals national secrets, technology, personal information in huge quantities.
The Director of the FBI called this country the greatest long-term threat to America’s wellbeing. Russia, oh sorry, excuse me. China, misread that, for more than two decades now, of course, it has always been China, America’s greatest geopolitical rival.
You wouldn’t know that though from watching television. Even this week, with this new news about China, there’s only one foreign power on the radar considered a threat. You know what it is.
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN: The Russians exploited a massive backdoor into the foundation of our democracy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Moscow’s attack on American democracy.
TONY ROMM, WASHINGTON POST: The work by Russian agents to try to destabilize American democracy.
DON LEMON, CNN: It’s everything you need to know about the threat to our democracy.
DAVID GERGEN, COMMENTATOR: The long-term damage is going to be to weaken our democracy.
ELISE JORDAN, MSNBC: You have Republicans who are silent and seemingly OK with this kind of attack on our democracy.
CARLSON: These people are so stupid it’s amazing they’re employed.
Michael Pillsbury, not stupid, and employed, Director of the Center for Chinese Strategy, the Hudson Institute, author of the remarkable book, The Hundred-year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America As the Global Superpower, a strategy no longer secret, thanks to his book.
Mr. Pillsbury joins us tonight. Thank you very much for coming on. So, this seems like a confirmation, this announcement today, of what we may have known, but still striking.
MICHAEL PILLSBURY: Yes. I think when the Director of the FBI calls China our main rival and then specifically said their goal is to replace us as the global superpower, that’s the subtitle of my book.
So, it’s not just good news for me though, Tucker. It shows the recognition of the problem of China is now getting quite widespread.
CARLSON: Give us a scale of the hacking efforts by the Chinese government here.
PILLSBURY: Well they’re number one, by far, more than the Russians. They have a number of techniques, some of which were revealed today, formerly classified matters. There’s this wonderful term, I hope you’ll start using called, Stone Panda. It’s the codename for the Chinese unit that’s been doing this.
CARLSON: Sounds like a restaurant but I like it.
PILLSBURY: And it seems to, according to this declassified material, it seems to go back 12 years. It seems to focus on American companies. The data that they stole then can help them in negotiations, business negotiations with American companies. They also get trade secrets.
It’s massive. And it seems to be focused on the high-end technology sectors that China would need to dominate by 2030 or 2035 in order to be the world leader. So, in other words, they’re going to steal their way to global leadership, let’s put it that way — it’s more polite than domination. And the FBI is blowing the whistle today along with the Deputy Attorney General.
The pity is, as you know from our local press, there’s been a big leak that Steve Mnuchin and the Treasury Department were going to offer sanctions today as punitive for these things that DoJ and the FBI are finding.
For some reason, at the last minute, Treasury pulled out, so they weren’t at the announcement and they’re not putting the sanctions forward. So, this leak shows dissent inside the Trump team.
And, of course, the Chinese have a strategy that Vice President Pence spoke about back in October that they want to divide the Trump Administration. They know they’re hawks and doves. So this is good news. It raises public awareness for what China is up to.
There were no actual sanctions announced other than the indictment of these two Chinese hackers out of possible 10,000 hackers, let’s say.
CARLSON: Meanwhile, there are calls for more Russia sanctions. It just tells you everything. Michael Pillsbury, thank you very much for this and all you’ve done on this topic.
So, you can’t exactly call the increased enforcement a “crackdown” but it’s been a start.
]]>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.”
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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.
Strangely, nobody seems concerned about the thousands of Chinese [...]]]>
The press has recently been full of articles about cyber attacks from Red China hacking into business and government networks to steal vital intellectual property and security secrets. Media outlets from NPR to Fox News have sounded the alarm about an escalated level of hacking intrusions.
Strangely, nobody seems concerned about the thousands of Chinese students who have been flooding our universities. In fact, they are the largest cohort of international students, with 127,628 Chinese attending US universities in the 2009-2010 school year.
The numbers of non-American students has increased generally because strapped colleges have become dependent on the full tuition paid by the foreigners.
In addition, political figures from across the spectrum think America should reward foreign students with an official welcome. For example, candidate Romney said he would “staple a green card to the diploma of someone who gets an advanced degree in America.”
How convenient for spies to be awarded entrance to our nation’s top technology companies! Cyber intrusion could be greatly enhanced by having actual humans physically present and able to pick up ideas before they reach the internet.
Seriously, the naiveté of many Americans about the national security threat of unfriendly immigrants is getting old.
Red China has been spying on the United States for years in various ways. During the trial of the accused spy Chi Mak, it was revealed that China has 3000 front companies in the United States to rip off secrets. China-born Mak himself was described by prosecutors as a “perfect sleeper agent”, who burrowed into the US defense establishment for decades as he rose to a position of high security clearance, ideal for stealing classified military information.
Here’s another pertinent example:
]]>Spies from China, Russia and Iran infect American universities to steal government and corporate secrets, Daily Mail, April 9, 2012
[. . .] However, on the academic spying front, China seems to be the biggest player of them all.
China employs up to 3,000 shell companies that it uses to try to acquire us technology secrets, Bloomberg reports.
It also has an army of student spies. Some of them are merely students who are coerced into spying. Others are plants posing as students — trained foreign operatives with ulterior motives.
Professor Daniel J. Scheeres, who studies aerospace engineering, took on a student named Yu Xiaohong to study with him at the University of Michigan.
Scheeres, who studies the movement and control of spacecraft and objects in space, told Bloomberg Xiaohong listed a Chinese civilian university as her research background.
He never suspected she had ties to the Chinese military. However, on her American university documents, she listed her home as the Academy of Equipment Command & Technology — a college for young Chinese military officers and cadets.
She had also written a lengthy article on upgrading the accuracy of Chinese anti-satellite weapons.
As Yu pressured him to reveal secrets about his research, Scheeres soon realized that her interests who not merely of a civilian nature.
‘It was pretty clear to me that the stuff she was interested in probably had some military satellite-orbit applications,’ he told Bloomberg.
Foreign intelligence services, especially the ones in China, are also looking to exploit American study-abroad programs as an opportunity to find and turn American students.
Such is the case of Glenn Duffie Shriver, a former student at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, who studied at East China Normal University in Shanghai.
After he graduated, Chinese intelligence service agents hooked up with him and paid him, more than $70,000 and sent him back to the US, where he applied to work for the CIA.
If accepted for a job, he admitted in 2011, he planned to sell secrets to the Chinese. He was sentenced to four years in federal prison.
‘Study-abroad programs are an attractive target. Foreign security services find young, bright U.S. kids in science or politics, it’s worth winning them over,’ Figliuzzi, the FBI counterintelligence director, told Bloomberg.