FBI spy nix is better – for Beijing
‘Wrong thing to do’
The Biden administration’s scrapping of a controversial FBI initiative that monitored industrial and academic relations with China has emboldened the economic giant to increase its spying on the US, according to a security expert.
“It was the wrong thing to do,” said Brandon Weichert, an intelligence consultant and author of the 2020 book “Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower.” “China has strategic deception at the heart of their grand master plan for taking on the US — and part of that initiative of strategic deception is basically convincing your enemy that you are not a threat.”
Last year, the Attorney General’s Office shut down the Department of Justice’s “China Initiative,” a Trumpera national-security program focused on prosecuting economic espionage and trade-secret theft by Chinese government agents.
The program, which began in 2018, was fiercely criticized by Democrats and civil-rights groups who said it allowed federal agents to unfairly target Asian Americans in their pursuit of intellectual-property theft by China. “The FBI’s core responsibility to prevent foreign spying must be focused on the CCP [Chinese Community Party]. To scrap the program focused on this target embolden[ed] China’s efforts to steal American jobs and American intellectual property and American secrets,” former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told The Post.
“Allowing a spy balloon to transit sensitive military sites evidences an absence of seriousness and urgency with respect to the offensive action of China inside our country.”
Weichert also cited recent spy balloon activity in US airspace as a sign that China has stepped up its surveillance, as it continues to rely on lobbying groups to normalize their influence on US lawmakers, he said.
“The Chinese use lobbyists to influence our political class, who go into power and initiate policy and plans under the belief that China is not a threat,” he said. “And those politicians believe that if we work through peace and in a non-military way, we will create greater understanding between the two countries. It’s very naive when you are dealing with China.”