They’re targeting research on everything from military equipment to wind turbines to rice and corn seeds. But the sad fact is that instead of engaging in the hard slog of innovation, China often steals American intellectual property and then uses it to compete against the very American companies it victimized-in effect, cheating twice over. To achieve its goals and surpass America, China recognizes it needs to make leaps in cutting-edge technologies. And they’ve pioneered an expansive approach to stealing innovation through a wide range of actors-including not just Chinese intelligence services but state-owned enterprises, ostensibly private companies, certain kinds of graduate students and researchers, and a whole variety of other actors working on their behalf. They’ve even engaged in outright physical theft. The second thing the American people need to understand is that China uses a diverse range of sophisticated techniques-everything from cyber intrusions to corrupting trusted insiders. Instead, China is engaged in a whole-of-state effort to become the world’s only superpower by any means necessary. But it’s waging this fight not through legitimate innovation, not through fair and lawful competition, and not by giving their citizens the freedom of thought and speech and creativity that we treasure here in the United States. China-the Chinese Communist Party-believes it is in a generational fight to surpass our country in economic and technological leadership. To understand this threat and how we must act to respond to it, the American people should remember three things.įirst: We need to be clear-eyed about the scope of the Chinese government’s ambition. The Chinese Regime and the Scope of Its Ambitions So, when I speak of the threat from China, I mean the government of China and the Chinese Communist Party. For generations, people have journeyed from China to the United States to secure the blessings of liberty for themselves and their families-and our society is better for their contributions. Every year, the United States welcomes more than 100,000 Chinese students and researchers into this country. And at this very moment, China is working to compromise American health care organizations, pharmaceutical companies, and academic institutions conducting essential COVID-19 research.īut before I go on, let me be clear: This is not about the Chinese people, and it’s certainly not about Chinese Americans. Of the nearly 5,000 active FBI counterintelligence cases currently underway across the country, almost half are related to China. We’ve now reached the point where the FBI is opening a new China-related counterintelligence case about every 10 hours. Our data isn’t the only thing at stake here-so are our health, our livelihoods, and our security. In 2017, the Chinese military conspired to hack Equifax and made off with the sensitive personal information of 150 million Americans-we’re talking nearly half of the American population and most American adults-and as I’ll discuss in a few moments, this was hardly a standalone incident. If you are an American adult, it is more likely than not that China has stolen your personal data. It’s the people of the United States who are the victims of what amounts to Chinese theft on a scale so massive that it represents one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history. But if you think these issues are just an intelligence issue, or a government problem, or a nuisance largely just for big corporations who can take care of themselves-you could not be more wrong. This threat is so significant that the attorney general and secretary of state will also be addressing a lot of these issues in the next few weeks. It’s a threat to our economic security-and by extension, to our national security.Īs National Security Advisor O’Brien said in his recent remarks, we cannot close our eyes and ears to what China is doing-and today, in light of the importance of this threat, I will provide more detail on the Chinese threat than the FBI has ever presented in an open forum.
The greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property, and to our economic vitality, is the counterintelligence and economic espionage threat from China. I realize it’s challenging, particularly under the current circumstances, to put on an event like this, so I’m grateful to the Hudson Institute for hosting us today.
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