10% were non-Chinese actors (usually U.S.49% of incident directly involved Chinese military or government employees.For those cases where we could identify the actor and intent, we found: While this list is not complete, certain patterns emerge. But hacking is not the only form of spying and China uses traditional methods of agent recruitment (usually sex or money) as well as unconventional approaches, such as buying property next to a military or research facility. We found so many instances of reported Chinese cyber espionage – 104 in the last ten years – that we created a separate list (Appendix A). Hacking is China’s preferred mode of espionage. The espionage problem is the result of the increasingly hostile policies of China’s ruling Communist Party. In contrast, Americans of Chinese descent are very unlikely to be recruited. Often they intend to return to China or have close family members resident in China, making them more susceptible to coercion. Chinese nationals who come to the US to work or study are a fertile ground for recruitment. It is worth noting that while nationality is a predictive factor for espionage, ethnicity is not. In the last few years, China has added the theft of massive quantities of personal information (PII), political coercion, and influence operations, to its espionage activities. Chinese espionage also created immeasurable damage to national security with the theft of weapons technology, including nuclear weapons test data. The long-term cost to the American economy and national security cannot be precisely measured, but estimates run into the billions of dollars for commercial and technological espionage. It should be noted that the incidents of Chinese espionage far outnumber those by any other country, even Russia. A few cases reflect what seem to be global campaigns aimed at commercial, military and government targets in many countries and lasting for years. These categories are not hard and fast, since in many cases, an incident showed that Chinese collectors obtained information of both commercial and military value. We have divided the publicly know incidents into categories of military, political, and commercial espionage, and covert efforts to influence the target nation’s politics. Of the 224 incidents, we found that 69% were reported after Xi took office. stealing commercial technology and providing it to private companies for cash or favors) as part of his larger campaign against corruption. When Xi Jinping took office, first as Chair of the Central Military Commission in November 2012 and after he became President in March 2013, one of his first acts was to repurpose and reorient China’s collection priority to better serve long -term goals, clamping down on what appeared to be collection by some PLA units intended for personal gain (i.e. This is a change from the past where commercial motives were often equally important, but commercial espionage by both private and government entities remains a feature of Chinese spying. The focus is on the illicit acquisition of information by Chinese intelligence officers or their agents and on the increasing number of Chinese covert influence operations.Ĭhinese espionage is undertaken in pursuit of China’s strategic objectives. companies against Chinese entities in either the U.S. to China (usually munitions or controlled technologies) or the more than 1200 cases of intellectual property theft lawsuits brought by U.S.
firms or persons located in China, nor the many cases involving attempts to smuggle controlled items from the U.S. It does not include espionage against other countries, against U.S.
This updated survey is based on publicly available information and lists 224 reported instances of Chinese espionage directed at the United States since 2000.
0 kommentar(er)
