(The Daily Wire) FBI Director Chris Wray warned of the extreme national security threat that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) poses to the United States and highlighted the level of resources that America is devoting to combatting criminal activity in the U.S. that can be traced back to China.
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by Staff Writer, June 25th, 2020
In an interview on Fox News’ “Special Report” with anchor Bret Baier, Wray said that China was the greatest threat to “America’s innovation to economic security and to our democratic ideas.”
“Just to give you some context for that. Just as we’re sitting here having this conversation – the FBI has over 2,000 active investigations that trace back to the government in China,” Wray said. “And that’s – a little more context on that – that’s about a 1300% increase in terms of economic espionage investigations with the Chinese nexus from about a decade ago.”
“This is not about the Chinese people or Chinese Americans. This is about the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party,” Wray said. “And they are pursuing a campaign of intellectual property thief, economic espionage, cyber intrusions that target businesses – big and small – all across the country and our academic research institutions. And they do it not just through traditional government officials, which they certainly do, but also through what we sometimes call non-traditional collectors, which can be businessmen, high-level scientists, high-level academics – people like that. All of whom are in different ways incentivized to steal American innovation and confidential information to take back to China.”
Wray said that China is trying to steal information from nearly all types of businesses regardless of size or the industry that they are in.
“The FBI is opening a new counterintelligence investigation that ties back to China every 10 hours,” Wray later concluded. “So you put some of those things – and that’s sort of just the tip of the iceberg.”
Video and transcript below:
BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Director Wray, thanks for being here.
CHRISTOPHER WRAY, DIRECTOR OF THE FBI: Thank you.
BAIER: There are a lot of topics we want to talk about and cover here with you. I want to talk about first foreign influence in this country. The Justice Department recently indicted a professor at Harvard for lying about his relationship with the Chinese government. For people who don’t know about China and what they’re trying to do in the U.S., how much is China doing? How much is China spying in the U.S.?
WRAY: Bret, there’s not a country that presents a broader, more comprehensive threat to America’s innovation to economic security and to our democratic ideas than China does. Just to give you some context for that. Just as we’re sitting here having this conversation – the FBI has over 2,000 active investigations that trace back to the government in China.
BAIER: 2,000?
WRAY: And that’s – a little more context on that – that’s about a 1300 percent increase in terms of economic espionage investigations with the Chinese nexus from about a decade ago.
BAIER: So how much of that economic espionage – how much is it government espionage?
WRAY: Well that’s the thing that a lot of people don’t really understand about the Chinese government. This is not about the Chinese people or Chinese Americans. This is about the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party. And they are pursuing a campaign of intellectual property thief, economic espionage, cyber intrusions that target businesses — big and small — all across the country and our academic research institutions. And they do it not just through traditional government officials, which they certainly do, but also through what we sometimes call non-traditional collectors which can be businessmen, high-level scientists, high-level academics – people like that. All of whom are in different ways incentivized to steal American innovation and confidential information to take back to China.
BAIER: So in the 30s and 40s, the Soviet Union, for example, had more than 100 spies in the State Department. Is espionage a real problem in the U.S.? What is China doing on that front?
WRAY: Well traditional espionage is certainly – the old spy versus spy thing is still very much a phenomenon in today’s world. But we’re much more focused in many ways on the economic espionage which targets American businesses and hurts American jobs, American consumers. And it’s everything from Fortune 100 companies to startups. It’s agriculture. It’s high tech. It’s aviation. It’s health care. As I said before, it’s our academic research institutions.
BAIER: Are they taking an interest in elections?
WRAY: They certainly have an interest in influencing our political thought – our policies – to try and shift them in a more friendly, pro-China, pro-Chinese Communist party direction. And so sometimes that gets wrapped up in election issues.
BAIER: Is the FBI in charge of the investigation of the origins of the coronavirus?
WRAY: We certainly have a role in looking into the origins of the coronavirus.
BAIER: Are you getting closer?
WRAY: I would say, at this point, there’s nothing to add to what the intelligence community has already said publicly on that. There’s still insufficient information to really know exactly how the virus emanated from Wuhan.
BAIER: When you say that China’s active – when there is a crisis – for example, the protests after the George Floyd killing — are you seeing foreign intervention to kind of stir up chaos inside the U.S.?
WRAY: We have certainly seen in the past a variety of foreign adversaries looking to amplify controversy in this country. And they use state media. They use social media. Some of that is through propaganda, some of that’s through disinformation, some of that’s through just fake information. And we are looking carefully at the prospect of foreign influence or foreign interference in all of the protests and activities that have occurred over the last few weeks. …
The sheer volume of the threats that face this country is remarkable. So just to give you a flavor of it. In the past few months alone, our joint terrorism task forces have thwarted potential terrorists attack in Tampa, in New York, in Cleveland, in Kansas City. Then you had COVID come in, right? And we probably got over 400 COVID-19 fraud investigations open. We have probably in the last year something like 1,500 kids that the FBI has recovered or rescued from child sexual exploitation or human trafficking. We talked about China before. The FBI is opening a new counterintelligence investigation that ties back to China every 10 hours. So you put some of those things – and that’s sort of just the tip of the iceberg.
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