Bengaluru (Aryavarth): Every ten hours, the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI), USA opens a new China-related counterintelligence case. Of the 5000 under active investigation, close to 50 per cent are related to China. If you are an American adult, it is more likely than not that China has stolen your personal data.
FBI Director Chris Wray shared several high-profile cases. In 2017, four Chinese military officers hacked credit reporting agency Equifax. THE PLA of China stole out trade secrets and personal data on 145 million Americans. FBI charged them in 2020 after unravelling the case. It’s always easy to lure people with financial problems, China has now data of many Americans and it can do a targeted plan to find people whose relatives and families are having access to sensitive information.
The program is part of the china’s “strategic plan to acquire knowledge and intellectual property from researchers, scientists, and the U.S. private sector, says the “Threats to the U.S. Research Enterprise: China’s Talent Recruitment Plans,” report by the U.S. Senate in 2019.
China’s 1001 Talent Program For Spying
China has even contaminated the noble profession of teaching. China’s Thousand Talents Program, an elaborate machine which recruits overseas researchers to send their skills home, has many countries worried. They are making all efforts to identify Chinese moles in their country. Through 1001 Talent Program, China attempts to entice scientists to bring our knowledge and innovation back to China secretly.
In June 2020, federal prosecutors charged Charles M. Lieber, a globally renowned Harvard Professor of Chemistry about hiding from federal authorities his affiliation with Thousand Talents Spying Program of China. The U.S. Attorney for the Dist. of Massachusetts, Andrew E. Lelling, described the
1001 Talent program by China as “a very carefully designed effort by the Chinese Government to fill what it views as its strategic gaps,” including nanotechnology, Dr Lieber’s speciality. Chinese government was paying him, through the Wuhan Institute of Technology, a $50,000 monthly stipend, more than $150,000 in living expenses, and more than $1.5 million to establish a laboratory back in China.
Wray, FBI director, pointed to a scientist Jongjin Tan, a 36-year-old Chinese national, who had a residency permit for the U.S. In November 2019, Jongjin Tan pleaded guilty to his involvement in stealing proprietary information worth more than $1 billion from a U.S. petroleum the company, his employer. China recruited Tan after he joined China’s Thousand Talents Program.
You Xiaorong was employed as Principal Engineer for Global Research by Coca Cola in Atlanta for various parties. Due to her strong education and experience with BPA and BPA-free coating technologies, You was one of a few employees with access to trade secrets belonging to the various owners. The U.S. Government has charged her for stealing trade secrets worth $120 million by uploading files to her Google drive and taking photographs of industrial laboratory equipment.
China operates very well as a gang of thieves, even rewarding people who do the biggest heist for them. The indictment points that Dr You was offered a Thousand Talents award “based on the secrets she stole.” Ms You has pleaded not guilty.
Xiao-Jian Li and his wife, Shihua Li, were employed at the Emory University’s school of medicine, in the Department of Human Genetics. They were under NIH-funded grants. In parallel, They also were associated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, known for the infamous Wuhan virology lab and links to Bio Warfare program. In May 2020, Xiao-Jian pleaded guilty to omitting the $500,000 he had received from China on his tax returns.
70,000 Scientists Globally Enlisted by China
Many scientists were recruited to the 1001 Talent Spy program by China, lured by starting compensation that can go up to four times their existing wages. China’s 1000 Talents Program engages more than 70,000 specialists in sharing their knowledge and expertise with China. Many of these enlisted teachers have been working to keep their relationship with China secret from their employers. Many a time, China pays them in cash to avoid any track. Many of these scientists may have been compromised, according to William Hannas. Who was a member of the Senior Intelligence Service at the Central Intelligence Agency, USA.
Spying starts as a “Consulting Assignment.”
If a Chinese person approaches you on LinkedIn, and you have your family members working in a sensitive government department. There are chances that they are cultivating you for spying. Please be very careful with requests from China. It is actively used in the U.S. by China’s dirty CCP regime to recruit spies.
Wray, Director FBI said China is using social media platforms “to identify people with access to U.S. government’s sensitive information” and making efforts to target those individuals to try and steal it. It’s common to have Chinese intelligence officers pose as a head-hunter on popular social media platforms. In one case recently, they offered an American citizen a sizeable sum of money in exchange for so-called ‘consulting’. services.” “That sounds noble enough until you figure those ‘consulting’ services were linked to secret and sensitive information the American target had access to as a U.S. military intelligence specialist.”
Indian Scientists & Technology at Risk
The Indian Government is yet to launch an investigation or map how many researchers in top universities are being funded by Chinese grants either directly from China or through their partner network in other countries. Without wasting time, the UGC should ask all our top researchers to declare if they have been approached. And if they have got any funding, an early mapping without witch-hunting would help us in discovering their modus operandi and help the world in bringing these Chinese thieves to the court.
“China, as led by the Chinese Communist Party, is going to continue to try to misappropriate our ideas, influence our policymakers, manipulate our public opinion, and steal our data. They will use an all-tools and all-sectors approach—and that demands our own all-tools and all-sectors approach in response, summed up FBI Director Christopher Wray