The Biden administration’s scrapping of a controversial FBI initiative that monitored industrial and academic relations with China has emboldened the economic giant to increase its spying on the US, according to a security expert.
“It was the wrong thing to do,” said Brandon Weichert, author of the 2020 book “Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower” and an intelligence consultant. “China has strategic deception at the heart of their grand master plan for taking on the US — and part of that initiative of strategic deception is basically convincing your enemy that you are not a threat.”
Last year, the Attorney General’s Office shut down the Department of Justice’s “China Initiative,” a Trump-era national security program focused on prosecuting economic espionage and trade secret theft by Chinese government agents.
The program, which began in 2018, was fiercely criticized by Democrats and civil rights groups who said it allowed federal agents to unfairly target Asian Americans in their pursuit of intellectual property theft by China.
“The FBI’s core responsibility to prevent foreign spying must be focused on the CCP [Chinese Community Party]. To scrap the program focused on this target emboldens China’s efforts to steal American jobs and American intellectual property and American secrets,” former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told The Post. “Allowing a spy balloon to transit sensitive military sites evidences an absence of seriousness and urgency with respect to the offensive action of China inside our country.”
Weichert also cited recent spy balloon activity in US airspace as a sign that China has stepped up its surveillance, as it continues to rely on lobbying groups and trade associations to normalize their influence on US lawmakers, he said.
“The Chinese use lobbyists to influence our political class, who go into power and initiate policy and plans under the belief that China is not a threat,” Weichert told The Post. “And those politicians believe that if we work through peace and in a non-military way, we will create greater understanding between the two countries. It’s very naive when you are dealing with China.”
According to Laura Harth, spokeswoman for the Madrid-based think tank Safeguard Defenders, “All these efforts largely make use of existing United Front networks of individuals and front organizations across the globe. The United Front Work Department is the CCP’s prime influence agency, which seeks to influence various public- and private-sector entities outside the PRC, including but not limited to political, commercial and academic spheres. The UFWD on the one hand promotes efforts to align policies and activities with CCP interests and narratives — propaganda — and on the other hand seeks to divide and silence CCP/PRC critics.”
She added that among the groups targeted are “chambers of commerce.”
Last year, weeks before the Biden administration was considering ending the “China Initiative,” FBI Director Christopher Wray called China the biggest threat to US security. He also said that the ruling Communist Party had become “more brazen, more damaging” than ever. At that time, the FBI had more than 2,000 China-related cases, Wray said, adding that it was opening a new China-related case every 12 hours. Yet the program was officially scrapped Feb. 23, 2022.
“To be clear, we are focused on the actions of the PRC government, the Chinese Communist Party, and their agents — not the Chinese people or those of Chinese descent,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen in a speech announcing the end of the initiative last year. “As we talk about the threats that the PRC government poses to the United States, we must never lose sight of that fundamental distinction.”
In the last year, the DOJ issued a flurry of indictments against US former law enforcement officials and private investigators who have cooperated with Chinese authorities to harass Chinese nationals in the US and spy on their own citizens.
The indictments filed against US-based private detectives allege that some have traded on their federal law enforcement connections to obtain classified documents and private information on political dissidents living in the US and targeted by the Chinese Communist Party.
In addition to working with private investigators, the Chinese government has set up a network of more than 100 “police stations” in urban centers across the globe, including New York City, according to Safeguard Defenders. The stations, which are ostensibly set up to help Chinese nationals with bureaucratic matters such as renewing driver’s licenses, are said to have a more sinister purpose: to spy on political dissidents and in, some cases, force them to return to the Communist country.
Safeguard Defenders’ Harth said there are at least four “overseas police service centers” in the US set up by “three local police security authorities” in China.
“They’re harassment stations, and there is almost no outrage on the part of the Biden administration about this or the balloons,” Weichert said. “Most of the Biden administration are doves when it comes to China and still angling to do these big geopolitical deals with the country.”
Biden has been a longtime supporter of China, said Weichert. In 2000, when the president was the US senator representing Delaware, he voted to normalize relations with the Communist superpower by pressing for its inclusion in the World Trade Organization.
“Biden is desperate not to raise the threat level too high with China,” said Weichert. “If more Americans find out what China is doing on their shores, they would be outraged.”
Now the Chinese government may also be arming Russia in its invasion of Ukraine through the Wagner Group, a paramilitary organization, Weichert said.
“People I know in the special forces community in Australia have said that the Wagner Group soldiers are using Chinese-made drones, and that they have seen multiple Chinese military advisers on the ground in Ukraine,” he said. “It’s a very dangerous situation.”
On the eve of Friday’s first anniversary of the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Chinese officials called for a cease-fire and peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
