FBI counter-intelligence official warns US to unite against Chinese espionage threats
- Cautions are issued amid news of a Marriott data breach linked to Chinese hackers and the extradition case of a Huawei executive
- US lawmakers are told that China ‘is the most severe counter-intelligence threat facing our country today’
Calling China “the most severe counter-intelligence threat facing our country today”, a senior FBI official told US lawmakers on Wednesday that the American government, along with the business and academic communities, must adopt a more integrated approach to Beijing’s commercial espionage efforts.
“Make no mistake,” Bill Priestap, the bureau’s assistant director of counter-intelligence, said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington. “The Chinese government is proposing itself as an alternative model for the world, one without a democratic system of government, and it is seeking to undermine the free and open rules-based order we helped establish following world war two.”
Priestap, who will retire at the end of the year, cautioned that the US was not doing enough to coordinate its response to Chinese espionage.
“There are pockets of great understanding of the threat we’re facing and effective responses, but in my opinion we’ve got to knit that together better,” he said.
Warning against what he called “ad hoc responses”, he said: “We need more people in government, more people in business, more people in academia pulling in the same direction to combat this threat effectively.”