Experts Warn Congress of Growing Chinese Counterintelligence Threat

Cyber security experts are warning Congress that a changing counterintelligence threat from Communist China is troubling and America’s response has been inadequate.The McCrary Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Security at Auburn University’s director, Frank Cilluffo, on Wednesday, told the House Intelligence Committee that the nature of the counterintelligence challenge has evolved but the American architecture for confronting it has not.“The People’s Republic of China is conducting a sustained campaign to acquire and exploit American innovation, technology, talent, and industry in ways that threaten not only our economic competitiveness, but our national security,” Mr. Cilluffo told the committee in prepared remarks.Mr. Cilluffo said that adversaries no longer need to penetrate a classified facility or recruit a government official to acquire something of enormous strategic value. It may, instead, target a researcher at a university, an engineer at a technology company, a promising startup, a venture capital firm, or the supply chain supporting a critical American industry.Mr. Cilluffo said technologies that shape American military power, intelligence capabilities, economic competitiveness, and geopolitical influence are increasingly developed outside government through private-sector technological innovation. He says, in many cases, the technology isn’t classified but its loss can still have profound consequences for national security.“That distinction matters. We should not allow a twentieth-century definition of what constitutes a national security asset to constrain our response to a 21st century counterintelligence threat,” Mr. Cilluffo told Congress.A former deputy assistant secretary of state, David Feith, told the committee that America needs a new counterintelligence map for the AI age because of the amount of strategically important technology that lives in private companies and commercial infrastructure.Mr. Feith, now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, described what he coined the “Sputnik Problem.” He said that after the Soviet Union launched the first satellite, it was what America did next that mattered. Washington mobilized and funded science and engineering and changed education, defense, space policy, and national priorities to catch and surpass what the Russians were doing. “The test of a Sputnik moment is not the adversary’s accomplishment. It is our response,” Mr. Feith said. “By that standard, much of the China challenge has produced Sputnik warnings without a Sputnik response.”Mr. Feith says Washington has made far too few changes despite recognizing for more than a decade Chinese military modernization, cyber espionage, technology theft, supply-chain leverage, and subversion of critical infrastructure. He suggested that America needs a private sector counterintelligence partnership with Washington.“Our counterintelligence perimeter must follow strategically important technology wherever it is created – not wait for that technology to migrate inside the traditional national-security perimeter,” Mr. Feith said.The Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Defense and Security Department president, Seth Jones, warned the committee that the threat goes beyond technology theft. He said that China and other adversaries are building drones with longer ranges, higher payloads, more autonomy, a greater ability to evade countermeasures, and AI that allows for swarming. He says that is bad news for America’s critical infrastructure, military bases, and even sports stadiums and outdoor concert venues. He says foreign controlled drones can strike almost any target in the United States and American defenses have not kept pace.Mr. Jones said America is “woefully unprepared” for an external attack. He told the committee that it is a new era with evolving threats. “Geography is no longer a guarantee of security, nor is U.S. conventional and nuclear might a deterrent against conventional or subversive attacks,” Mr. Jones said.Mr. Jones suggested that the United States needs to urgently develop capabilities, policies, and laws to better protect the homeland. He said Washington needs plans to harden critical infrastructure, collaborate with the private sector, and communicate with the public. Mr. Jones also said a priority should be to increase deploy counter-drone defenses around critical infrastructure.

Experts Warn Congress of Growing Chinese Counterintelligence Threat

Experts Warn Congress of Growing Chinese Counterintelligence Threat

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