Spy Chiefs in 5 Nations Sound Warning on China

Spy movies have taught us to suspect figures lurking around military bases and federal buildings, yet the focus of Chinese spying in the US looks quite different, according to the heads of spy agencies in the Five Eyes coalition—US, Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand—who gathered for an unusual meeting Tuesday in Silicon Valley. The location for this "summit of the spy hunters" was no accident, as the New York Times reports, noting "FBI officials estimate that more than half of Chinese espionage focused on stealing American technology takes place in the Bay Area." In explaining the "unprecedented meeting," FBI Director Christopher Wray cited the "unprecedented threat" of Chinese spying. "There is no greater threat to innovation than the Chinese government," he said.

The intelligence chiefs said China is looking to steal information related to quantum technology, robotics, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence, per Reuters. "They are using AI to improve their already massive hacking operations," Wray said, per the Times, adding that the technology could take "what's already the largest hacking program in the world by a country mile, and make it that much more effective." The experts also described efforts to steal trade secrets from private businesses, including small startups, and highlighted ways those businesses could protect technologies. "If you are anywhere near the cutting edge of tech, you may not be interested in geopolitics, but geopolitics is interested in you," Ken McCallum, director general of Britain's MI5, said from Stanford University, per the Times.

McCallum described Chinese spying "on a pretty epic scale," noting 20,000 people in the UK had been approached online by covert spies, per the BBC. "China has long targeted businesses with a web of techniques all at once: cyber intrusions, human intelligence operations, seemingly innocuous corporate investments and transactions," Wray said, per Reuters. "Part of what makes it so challenging is all of those tools deployed in tandem, at a scale the likes of which we've never seen." Mike Burgess, director-general of Australia's Security Intelligence Organization, said his department uncovered a plot just last month to plant a Chinese spy in a research institution. "This sort of thing is happening every day in Australia, as it is in the countries here," he said. A rep for China's Embassy in Washington disputed the claims as groundless "smears." (More Chinese spies stories.)