China's Spying On The U.S.: SPOTLIGHT

An Air force report highlights Chinese Spying against the U.S.

The National Counterintelligence Executive says a record 108 nations were involved in trying to steal sensitive US technologies in 2005, the last year for which full data are available.

That Chi Mak may have been spying for China is suggestive of another trend: Experts say China is far and away the most aggressive and resourceful state sponsor of technological spying. (See “The China Problem,” August 1999, p. 70.)

The FBI estimates that there are more than 3,000 Chinese “front companies” operating in the US with the express purpose of gathering intelligence and technology. Much of this is “dual use,” with both civil and military uses.

The FBI has stated publicly that the number of Chinese counterintelligence cases in Silicon Valley alone is increasing by 20 to 30 percent each year.

By nearly all accounts, however, the top two “threat nations” are in a class by themselves. Thus, US intelligence officers and investigators spend much of their counterintelligence energies looking particularly into the activities of China and Russia.

Too “Remarkable”In a report, the House of Representatives listed 16 “remarkable” Chinese technological breakthroughs that suggest industrial espionage, from supercomputers and advanced communications systems to satellites and nanotechnology.

The 863 Program also helps explain how China was able to rapidly field leap-ahead weapons systems that seemed to clone the Tomahawk cruise missile and the Aegis seaborne radar system.

“I think you see [signs of Chinese industrial espionage] in cases where something that would normally take 10 years to develop takes them two or three,” said David W. Szady, then chief of FBI counterintelligence operations, in 2005 to the Calgary Herald.