(PatrioticPost.com)- Just two weeks after the Justice Department announced it was ending the Trump-era China Initiative program to target Chinese espionage within the United States, the intelligence community is warning Congress that China’s espionage efforts pose a significant threat to US national security and the American economy.
Talk about bad timing.
Last month, Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division Matthew Olsen announced that the China Initiative program was shutting down over concerns from the “civil rights community” that the program “fueled a narrative of intolerance and bias.”
Then, last Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines submitted the intel community’s annual assessment of worldwide threats to the House Intelligence Committee which held hearings on the report.
In the assessment, China is described as a “top threat” with Beijing targeting key US sectors including commercial and military technology. Because China is willing to use “espionage, subsidies, and trade policy” to gain a competitive advantage, the report explains, it is an “ongoing challenge” for the US economy and also “advances Beijing’s ability to assume leadership of the world’s technological advancement and standards.”
In her testimony, DNI Haines told the Intelligence Committee that China “remains an unparalleled priority” for the US intel community as it challenges the US for supremacy.
Haines also raised the alarm about the grave threat from China’s cyber-espionage and hacking operations, which the assessment describes as “the broadest, most active, and persistent” threat to both the US government and the private sector.
Sounds like it was a bad time to end the Justice Department’s China Initiative over silly concerns that it might be perceived as “racial profiling.”
According to the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, Chinese espionage has resulted in between $200 billion to $600 billion in stolen intellectual property every year.
In a speech in late January, FBI Director Christopher Wray revealed that the FBI has over 2,000 investigations focusing on the Chinese government’s attempts to steal US information and technology. Wray said at the time that no other country comes close to China when it comes to threatening “our ideas, our innovation, and our economic security.”
But sure, let’s shut down the DOJ program trying to combat this out of fear that it might be fuel “a narrative of intolerance and bias.”
