FBI chief Wray 'blown away' by scale of Chinese espionage in US to steal American tech

FBI Director Christopher Wray recently said that the Chinese spying in the US has become so widespread that the FBI is launching an average of two counterintelligence investigations a day to counter the activity. In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Wray, who has become the US government most outspoken critic of Beijing’s spying, said that when he became the FBI Director in 2017, he was “blown away” by the scale of Chinese efforts to steal US technology. He said that the bureau is opening a new Chinese-related counterintelligence investigation on average every 12 hours, with more than 2,000 such cases currently underway. 

“This one blew me away. And I’m not the kind of guy that uses words like ‘blown away’ easily," Christopher Wray said. 

"There is no country that presents a broader, more severe threat to our innovation, our ideas and our economic security than China does,” he added. 

Further, the FBI chief went on to say that other countries sometimes steal technology by planting spies inside a company. But other cases involve theft committed remotely through computer intrusions, he added. Wray said that China has no equal when it comes to the second method. "The scale of their hacking programme, and the amount of personal and corporate data that their hackers have stolen, is greater than every other country combined," Wray told the media outlet.

FBI accuses China of stealing US ideas and innovations

Meanwhile, the latest criticism against Beijing comes after Wray on Monday warned that China’s economic espionage has reached a new level, “more brazen, more damaging than ever before”. Wray stated that the Chinese government is stealing American ideas, innovations and launching massive hacking operations. He was giving a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library where he highlighted that as American foreign policy remains consumed by Russia-Ukraine tensions, the country continues to regard the Chinese government as its biggest threat to long-term economic security.

Wray accused Chinese spies of targetting a wide range of US innovations, including COVID-19 vaccines, computer chips, nuclear power plants, wind turbines and smartphones. Moreover, previously, Wray had even accused China of using pressure tactics to block criticism from dissidents and members of the immigrant community in the US, which he said amounts to Chinese officials exporting their oppressive tactics. 

(Image: AP)