China ‘determined to steal up economic ladder at US’ expense’, FBI chief Christopher Wray says
- Head of America’s principal federal law enforcement agency calls intelligence threat posed by China ‘broader [and] more severe’ than that of any other country
- Wray's remarks came after his bureau reportedly blocked the visas of Chinese scholars entering the US, on national security grounds
China is determined to “steal its way up the economic ladder” at the United States’ expense, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Friday, warning of the “multilayered” counter-intelligence threat posed by Beijing.
“China has pioneered a societal approach to stealing innovation in any way it can, from a wide array of businesses, universities and organisations,” said Christopher Wray, who has served as the head of America’s principal federal law enforcement agency since 2017.
Beijing’s campaign to steal US technology and trade secrets was being waged through intelligence services, state-owned enterprises, “ostensibly private companies” and graduate students and researchers, Wray said, calling the intelligence threat posed by China “broader [and] more severe” than that of any other country.
The threat posed to the US by China was part of what Wray called a “paradigm shift” in the perception of danger to national security, characterised by a “blended threat where cybercrime and espionage merge together in all kinds of new ways”.
Addressing the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, Wray said that economic espionage investigations, which dominate the FBI’s counter-intelligence programme, “almost invariably lead back to China in nearly all of our 56 field offices”.