Chinese spies repeatedly infiltrated U.S. national
security agencies, including official email accounts, and stole
U.S. secrets on Pentagon war plans for a future conflict with
China, according to a forthcoming congressional commission
report.
"The United States faces a large and growing threat to its
national security from Chinese intelligence collection operations,"
states the late draft report of the U.S.-China Economic and
Security Review Commission.
"Among the most serious threats are China’s efforts at cyber and
human infiltration of U.S. national security entities."
Chinese intelligence activities have "risen significantly" in
the past 15 years and are conducted through several spy services,
including the Ministry of State Security (MSS), the People’s
Liberation Army (PLA), and Communist Party military organizations
such as the PLA General Political Department and the Party’s United
Front Work Department.
A copy of the draft annual report for 2016 was obtained by the
Washington Free Beacon. The final report will be released Nov.
16.
The report identified repeated infiltrations by Chinese spies of
U.S. national security entities, including the FBI and the U.S.
Pacific Command.
Defense officials said one of the more damaging spy cases
involved retired Lt. Col. Benjamin Pierce Bishop, a defense
contractor at the U.S. Pacific Command, who pleaded guilty in March
2014 to supplying classified information to a Chinese woman he
dated.
The compromised information included secret U.S. war plans,
nuclear weapons and deployment information, secrets on the MQ-9
Reaper drone, and a classified report titled "The Department of
Defense China Strategy."
Other Chinese human intelligence operations included the case in
2010 of James Fondren, a high-ranking Pacific Command official who
passed a secret 2008 National Defense Strategy report to China; and
Gregg Bergersen, who passed secrets to China until his arrest in
2008. Both were recruited by PLA spies.
In addition to targeting officials with access to secrets,
Chinese intelligence is targeting American academics at think tanks
involved in China studies and, in at least one case, an American
student in China, Glenn Duffie Shriver.
"Chinese intelligence has repeatedly infiltrated U.S. national
security entities and extracted information with serious
consequences for U.S. national security, including information on
the plans and operations of U.S. military forces and the designs of
U.S. weapons and weapons systems," the report said.
"This information could erode U.S. military superiority by
aiding China’s military modernization and giving China insight into
the operation of U.S. platforms and the operational approaches of
U.S. forces to potential contingencies in the region."
Additionally, the report states that China cyber operations have
targeted critical U.S. infrastructure, such as the electrical power
grid and financial networks.
"U.S. critical infrastructure entities are a major target of
Chinese cyber operations, and China is capable of significantly
disrupting or damaging these entities," the report says.
Regarding intelligence targeting of American decision makers,
the report noted that MSS hackers conducted the cyber attacks
against the Office of Personnel Management last year involving the
theft of records on 22 million federal employees.
In August, an FBI electronics technician, Kun Shan "Joey" Chun,
pleaded guilty to acting as a Chinese agent after passing sensitive
data to China about FBI surveillance technologies.
"Among the information extracted were 5.6 million fingerprints,
some of which could be used to identify undercover U.S. government
agents or to create duplicates of biometric data to obtain access
to classified areas," the report said.
Chinese intelligence also hacked and infiltrated the personal
email accounts of many Obama administration officials, the report
said.
Chinese cyber espionage is carried out by what the report said
was a "large, professionalized cyber espionage community."
"Chinese intelligence services have demonstrated broad
capabilities to infiltrate a range of U.S. national security (as
well as commercial) actors," the report says. "Units within the
former 3PLA, in particular, have been responsible for a large
number of cyber operations against U.S. actors."
Other targets of cyber attacks include U.S. diplomatic,
economic, and defense industrial sectors involved in supporting
American national defense programs. The data could be used to
support Chinese military modernization, as well as provide Chinese
Communist leaders with insights into U.S. leadership perspectives
on key China issues.
Chinese military planners also would benefit from the
intelligence activities by helping "build a picture of U.S. defense
networks, logistics, and related military capabilities that could
be exploited during a crisis."
China’s government also uses unofficial spies to gather
information.
"In addition to the cyber espionage elements of the MSS and PLA,
many unofficial Chinese actors target the United States with cyber
espionage operations," the report said.
"These actors include government contractors, independent
‘patriotic hackers,’ and criminal actors," the report added.
"Distinguishing between the operations of official and other
Chinese cyber actors is often difficult, as is determining how
these groups interact with each other. Some reports suggest China
is shifting cyber espionage missions away from unofficial actors to
centralize and professionalize these operations within its
intelligence services."
Spy targets include cyber intrusions of defense and military
systems that are allowing China to spy on deployed U.S. military
forces.
"Moreover, by infiltrating and attempting to infiltrate defense
entities in U.S. ally and partner countries, China could affect
U.S. alliance stability and indirectly extract sensitive U.S.
national defense information," the report says.
The annual report also concludes that despite extensive ties
between Beijing and Washington, "U.S.-China relations over the past
year continued to be strained."
Among the causes of tensions are Chinese territorial claims in
the South China Sea, U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, the deployment of
missile defenses in South Korea, Chinese cyber attacks, and the
U.S. "rebalance" to Asia.
Despite a September 2015 U.S.-China agreement not to conduct
government-sponsored cyber economic espionage, "Chinese cyber
espionage against a range of U.S. entities continued in 2016, to
the detriment of U.S. economic and national security," the report
said.
In a related development, an Agriculture Department geneticist
pleaded guilty on Monday to making false statements to the FBI as
part of an economic espionage case involving China.
Wengui Yan lied to FBI agents about plans by a group of Chinese
tourists to steal U.S. genetically-modified rice samples.