FBI Director says China is the most dangerous and pervasive espionage threat.

FBI Director Chris Wray. Business Insider/Aspen Security Forum. 

FBI Director Chris Wray says China, not Russia, is the most pervasive and dangerous espionage threat to the United States. Business Insider. Wray, when asked about if China is a foe said, "I think China, from a counterintelligence perspective, in many ways represents the broadest, most challenging, most significant threat we face as a country".

 China is using traditional and non-traditional methods along with economic espionage as well. Wray said there are active economic espionage investigation in all 50 states. The espionage is much more pervasive than Russia's limited attacks and show a larger focus on quick results while China is acting more strategically.  

My Comment:

FBI Director Wray's comments have been widely talked about in the media but his comments on China have flown under the radar. It's fairly obvious why. These statements tend to undermine the Russia narrative that the media is focusing on (for this week at least). Instead of Russia being an existential threat they are paying second fiddle to China. 

China's threat has been well known for a long time. The Business Insider article detailed how Australia has been completely infiltrated and was effecting politics at all levels. Australia stepped up and passed anti-China laws but for the American media Russia is the bigger threat. Similar things are happening in America as well. 

To his credit President Trump has often talked about China's threat in terms of economic espionage. He has often called them out for stealing our innovations and attacking our institutions. This threat goes beyond just spying on our companies, but on our colleges and government institutions as well.

But it's not just economic espionage. More traditional espionage is happening as well. Many of China's military developments are stolen from the United States. There is a widely held belief that China's fighter Shenyang J-31 is a copy of the F-35. 

Of course neither of those things make the headlines like election interference does. Supposedly the couple of twitter accounts and facebook adds that Russia bought are the end of the world, but did China do something similar? Well nobody is talking about that possibility. I have been saying that what Russia did probably wasn't unique as many other countries, including China, have done the same thing. 

But it is possible that China is responsible for more than we realize. It is very possible that they were the ones that got John Podesta's e-mails and released them. And it is very possible that they have attempted the same kind of election interference that Russia has been accused of. My guess is that they did not favor President Trump though as he was very obviously anti-China.

Without a government investigation into what China did in 2016 or a media that is willing to investigate, the general public will never know what they did. My guess is that they probably did things on a similar level to what Russia did, which means not much at all. Indeed, it's possible that China and Russia canceled each other out so the whole thing is a moot issue.That being said, I do think the hypocrisy here is pretty ridiculous. I think there is a very good chance that China has done as much or more than Russia but we will never hear about it. 

No matter what though I think that foreign interference is the last thing we need to be worried about in our elections. Much more important is voter integrity. We need better options to protect our elections to make sure that people that are not allowed to vote can not do so. A few adds or twitter accounts are nothing compared to someone illegally voting...