FBI director asks US businesses to work more closely with the agency to defeat Chinese espionage efforts

Name: US, Britain and EU accuse China of sponsoring massive Microsoft email server hack
Uploaded: 2021-10-28T21:35:06.000Z
Duration: 2 min 44 s
Description: US, Britain and EU accuse China of sponsoring massive Microsoft email server hack

Christopher Wray says the Chinese government commands a ‘multi-avenue threat’ to acquire technology that requires businesses to help the bureau to combat

The call was the latest in a series of dire warnings he has issued about Chinese espionage since he became the FBI director in 2017

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FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Economic Club of New York on Thursday that “most of the time” cyber thefts or other intellectual property threats are “coming from the Chinese government or companies under the Chinese government‘s sway”. Photo: AP

Robert Delaneyin Washington

Published: 5:35am, 29 Oct 2021Updated: 11:01pm, 29 Oct 2021

The head of the FBI urged US companies on Thursday to develop closer ties with it to counter a “multi-avenue” effort by Beijing to amass enough intellectual property to “become the world’s only superpower”.

In a virtual address to the Economic Club of New York, Christopher Wray, the director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, encouraged its members to establish partnerships with the agency’s local offices – before breaches occur like the Microsoft Exchange email server hack discovered earlier this year.

“Too often when we see a cyberthreat and start digging, we find that the same adversary is also working with an unwitting company insider to target … sensitive and proprietary information,” Wray said.

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US, Britain and EU accuse China of sponsoring massive Microsoft email server hack

He continued: “Or they may be going after it through a foreign-controlled company trying to use a corporate transaction like a joint venture or something as a way to get access to the information.”

“Most of the time that threat is coming from the Chinese government or companies under the Chinese government‘s sway, and to say that they’re well resourced would be an understatement,” Wray added. “No company is armed to defend against that kind of multi-avenue threat alone and that’s why we’ve got to be working together.”

Wray’s call to action was the latest in a series of dire warnings he has issued about Chinese espionage since he assumed his role at the FBI in 2017. They have risen in urgency since he told a Senate Homeland Security Committee in 2018 that China poses a greater security threat to the US than Russia did.

Those comments came just hours after the US Justice Department announced the arrest of a top Beijing intelligence official for allegedly trying to steal trade secrets from GE Aviation and other US aerospace companies.