Top US and UK law enforcement officials met with business and academic leaders on Wednesday to draw attention to what they said was the serious economic and security threat posed by China, which is trying to steal their intellectual property and influence policy in Western countries.
FBI Director Christopher Wray and Director General of MI5, the British intelligence service, Ken McCallum, held the event in London to highlight the joint work of the two security agencies to thwart what they said was the most pressing challenge. serious of espionage and hacking by the Chinese government.
In addition to technology theft, China is now also making moves to protect its economy from any future sanctions if it tries to take over Taiwan by force, drawing lessons from Western efforts to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, Wray said.
“We’ve seen China looking for ways to insulate its economy from possible sanctions, trying to protect itself from harm if they do something to draw the ire of the international community,” Wray said. “In our world, we call this type of behavior a cue.”
He cited recent estimates from a Yale University study that Western companies lost $59 billion as a result of the Russia-Ukraine war.
“And if China invades Taiwan,” Wray said, “we could see the same thing again, on a much larger scale.”
McCallum drew attention to the fact that Wednesday’s meeting was the first time that FBI and MI5 leaders held a joint public event. The two agencies have close ties, with MI5 officers working at the FBI and FBI agents at MI5.
Companies and universities for decades sought access to the growing Chinese market as a way to expand their business. But the risk also increased.
“The West’s widespread assumption that rising prosperity in China and increased connectivity to the West would automatically lead to greater political freedom has turned out to be completely wrong,” McCallum said. “But the Chinese Communist Party is interested in our democratic, media and legal systems. Not in imitating them, unfortunately, but in using them for your own gain.”
Wray cited recent FBI investigations into Chinese intelligence activity, including an effort to target a US Congressional candidate in New York over ties to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests that were crushed by the Chinese military. He said the FBI also caught people working for Chinese companies trying to dig up fields in rural areas of the US to try to gain access to genetically modified seeds.
McCallum said MI-5 is now carrying out seven times as many investigations as in 2018 related to Chinese activity in the UK.
Source: CNN Brasil
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