FBI and MI5 chiefs warn of espionage and hacking by China .
Ken McCallum and Christopher Wray .
KYIV. UkraineGate .7 . July . 2022 | World News .
US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Christopher Wray and Britain’s MI-5 head of domestic intelligence, Ken McCallum, issued a joint address to warn business leaders and academics of the “long-term economic threat” from China, which they say is seeking steal their intellectual property and influence Western politics.
Details
In a speech at MI-5 headquarters in London, intelligence chiefs highlighted their joint work to thwart the Chinese government’s “most serious problem of espionage and hacking”. As Ray noted, in addition to stealing technology, China is also taking steps to protect its economy from any future sanctions if it tries to seize Taiwan by force, drawing lessons from the West’s attempts to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
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“We’ve seen China look for ways to protect its economy from potential sanctions, trying to protect itself from harm if it does something that will draw the ire of the international community. In our world, we call this behavior tipping,” the FBI director said.
He cited recent estimates from a Yale University study that Western companies lost $59 billion as a result of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
“And if China does invade Taiwan, we could see the same thing again, on a much larger scale,” Ray added.
McCallum observed that “the Western assumption that China’s growing prosperity and increased ties with the West would automatically lead to greater political freedom has proven to be wrong.” He added that Beijing is interested in foreign democratic, media and legal systems in order to use them to its advantage, instead of imitating them.
MI-5 is now conducting seven times as many investigations into China’s activities in the UK as it did in 2018, according to Britain’s director of intelligence.
Before
NATO will strengthen its battle groups in the eastern part of the Alliance. NATO’s new strategic concept will “for the first time” include discussion of China, Alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said.
Source: Ukrgate
